This Is Not Spinal Tap: A Concert Film by Fans

Nathanial Hornblower Interview

In the decades since Woodstock, many a concert film has gotten mired in its own clichés. Cameras on booms swoop high over the crowd. Handheld cameras off to the side lovingly capture guitarists teasing out notes or windmilling riffs. Obligatory shots of ululating fans follow - all, increasingly, on pristine high-definition video.

But as the Beastie Boys set out to commemorate a concert at Madison Square Garden, the hip-hop group had a different idea. Why not smash the model?

They decided to lend hand-held video cameras to 50 fans, told them to shoot at will, and then presented the end result in movie theaters in all its primitive, kaleidoscopic glory.

The result of this brainstorm is "Awesome; I Fuckin Shot That ," which will be shown Saturday night at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, before being released by ThinkFilm in late March. The movie is more than a new twist on an old form. "Awesome" - its full title praising the fans' involvement in the final film cannot be printed in this newspaper - plugs into some of the currents surging through the media and entertainment worlds.

Technology has unmoored some the constructs that have girded those businesses for decades, giving the consumers of pop culture a growing ability to watch or listen to their entertainment on their own terms and on their own time, and re-evaluating the role of traditional distribution companies. "Awesome" pushes that tension further, giving the ultimate user a chance to actually create the content. "It's the democratization of filmmaking," said Jon Doran, a producer of the movie.

As with most films, of course, there is a benevolent despot - read, a director - involved. And that would be Adam Yauch, who is known as MCA in the band, but who prefers the archly pretentious nom de plume Nathanial Hörnblowér for his directorial and photographic endeavors.

New York punk rockers turned rappers turned caring hip-hop artists and family men, members of the Beastie Boys have more than most musicians used technology to involve fans in the creative process. They have been posting a capella songs on www.beastieboys.com, for instance, and inviting fans to use those building blocks for remixes of their own.

While perusing the message boards on the site one day in mid-2004, Mr. Yauch came across a concert photo snapped by a fan with his cellphone and found himself taken with the shakiness and rawness of the image. "The energy of it looked cool, and I thought it would look interesting to document a whole concert," Mr. Yauch said.

Three days before the October 2004 concert at Madison Square Garden, the Beastie Boys decided to go ahead. The band posted a notice on its Web site seeking volunteers. The instructions were simple: " 'Start it when the Beastie Boys hit the stage and don't stop till it's over,' " recalled one cameraman, Fred Zilliox, a 35-year-old cook from Keansburg, N.J. "Other than that, it was up to us to do whatever we wanted."

The camera-toting fans took those instructions to heart. They shot the band, they shot the fans, they shot their fellow camera operators. Four even took their cameras along on their bathroom breaks.

"I wasn't very jumpy," said Sharon Gruber, a 26-year-old fan from Bayside, Queens, who was sitting in the top-most row of the Garden. "I basically shot a lot of close-ups of the stage."

Then Mr. Yauch, Mr. Doran, assorted editors and others took over. The postproduction phase stretched more than a year as they waded through nearly 60 angles and about 100 hours of material. (The band supplemented the 50 camera-wielding fans with five friends who had digital video cameras and several high-quality cameras fixed on stage.)

Though one of Mr. Yauch's favorite concert films is "Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii," "it's basically the antithesis of this movie," Mr. Yauch said with a laugh.

"Live at Pompeii," filmed in 1971 in a 2,000-year-old amphitheater devoid of fans, is filled with languid shots without a cut, some shots lasting five minutes. The longest cut in "Awesome" barely breaks a minute. Many shots clock in at less than a second. All told, the hour-and-a-half "Awesome" contains 6,732 edits.

ThinkFilm, the independent distributor behind films like "Murderball," picked up the movie last fall for a fee in the low seven figures. (The film will cost the Beastie Boys about $1.2 million when the sampling fees are added in; the band returned all the Hi-8 Sony cameras (a step above a typical camcorder) to the stores where they were bought, in some cases for a full refund.

"I loved the notion that this was a film for the fans, by the fans," said Mark Urman, head of ThinkFilm's theatrical division.

The film will open on March 31 in 10 to 15 markets, including New York and Los Angeles; a DVD will be released about three months later. But to attract people who may not be hard-core Beastie Boys fans - the band's latest album, "Solid Gold Hits," has sold fewer than 140,000 copies since its release in November - ThinkFilm and the band are lining up other promotions.

At Sundance the Beastie Boys will be the headliners at a party next week being given by MySpace, the social-networking Web site, to celebrate the debut of its filmmaker-community site. And MySpace will hold a contest urging its members to create a video of one of two Beastie Boys songs, "Sabotage" and "Shake Your Rump."

MySpace, in its two years of existence, has allowed more than 660,000 aspiring bands and solo artists to upload their music to the site, where it can then be discovered by the site's nearly 50 million members and perhaps even by music labels. "We're trying the same thing for filmmakers - a platform for our users to express themselves creatively," said Chris DeWolfe, the company's chief executive.

Independent filmmakers will be able to put their films on the site, allowing users to stream and watch selected work at no charge and making it possible to network with other filmmakers. But while music label representatives regularly troll MySpace, it remains to be seen whether studio executives will follow suit and deviate from the typical way talent is discovered.

Still, movie executives understand the business is changing, and they may end up combing through what promises to be a virtual slush pile of submissions. "I don't rule it out," Mr. Urman of ThinkFilm said.

Let's blame the Media for what's going on in Iraq....nice try, not buying that one!

This is an excerpt from CNN's The Situation Room 23/3/06, Jack Cafferty bitch slaps Howard Kurtz after Howie agreed with the GOP talking point that the press is too negative in its coverage of Iraq. Cafferty came on immediately and was livid, saying that was ridiculous.

Video-WMP Video-QT

Howard Kurtz tells us that it's so dangerous in Iraq that reporters can't cover all the stories they would like and they are frustrated, yet he defends the negative reporting argument. If it's too dangerous to cover stories for journalists doesn't that tell you something? Earth to Howie.

transcript

Howard Kurtz: Wolf, as I know you know, is that it's very dangerous for journalists in Baghdad. We've seen that with some of the deaths and injuries of journalists there. Most recently ABC's Bob Woodruff. And so journalists are frustrated that they can't tell more of the story of ordinary Iraqis and what they think about the U.S. presence there because they have to curtail their travels or travel with security details. So when you add that to the natural tendency to play up violence, the dramatic pictures that television, of course, loves, I do think we are seeing more negative coverage now. And, obviously, it's in the political self-interest of George Bush and Dick Cheney to highlight that because they are trying to make the case that things are not as bad as they seem in Iraq and the media are a handy target.

WOLF BLITZER: Very briefly, is there any sign of a backlash against the mainstream media because of our coverage of what's happening in Iraq?

KURTZ: Yes, among conservatives, among military family members and others. A lot of people, as we saw that woman from West Virginia, blaming us for the situation there.Kurtz: Yes, among conservatives and military family members, a lot of people-as we saw that woman from WV, blaming us for the situation there.

Cafferty:..You know, I just have a question. I mean, part of the coverage, they don't like the coverage, maybe because we were sold a different ending to this story three years ago. We were told that we'd be embraced as conquering heroes, flower pedals strewn in the soldiers' paths, a unity government would be formed, everything would be rosy this -- three years after the fact, the troops would be home. Well, it's not turning out that way. And if somebody came into New York City and blew up St. Patrick's Cathedral and in the resulting days they were finding 50 and 60 dead bodies a day on the streets of New York, you suppose the news media would cover it? You're damn right they would.This is nonsense, it's the media's fault and the news isn't good in Iraq. The news isn't good in Iraq. There's violence in Iraq. People are found dead every day in the streets of Baghdad. This didn't turn out the way the politicians told us it would. And it's our fault? I beg to differ.

Iraq and the Media - MaximsNews

Bernie Sanders' Independent Revolution

The only Independent member of the U.S. House discusses his Senate campaign, and his plans to shake up our two-party system.

When Bernie Sanders won election as Vermont's sole member of Congress in 1991, he became the House of Representative's first Independent in 40 years.

Through eight terms in office, the former mayor of Burlington, Vt., has struck a maverick, middle path between Democrats and Republicans, agitating most often for pocketbook issues of importance to middle- and lower-class Americans: protecting Social Security, expanding access to lower-cost prescription drugs, raising the minimum wage, and promoting trade policies that protect rural and manufacturing jobs.

The Nation magazine, which profiled Sanders last August, had this to say about the congressman's ability to operate effectively across the political spectrum:

"When the question of the moment is, What's the matter with Kansas? it's no surprise that Democrats want to know how Sanders wins tough races in an overwhelmingly rural state by drawing the enthusiastic support of precisely the sort of white working-class voters Democrats have had such a hard time hanging on to in recent months."

With polls consistently showing him to be far and away the most popular politician in Vermont, Sanders is currently seeking the Senate seat of the country's other famous Independent, James Jeffords, who is stepping down from office next year. In this, however, Sanders may be in for his toughest fight yet; his GOP contender in the race, high-tech entrepreneur Rich Tarrant, is the state's wealthiest person, and plans to pump upward of $10 million of his own money into the campaign -- five times the most money ever spent on a Vermont race.

The congressman spoke with Truthdig's managing editor, Blair Golson, about the current administration's standing as "the most reactionary government in the modern history of the United States," the failure of Russ Feingold's movement to censure the president, and the progressive revolution he hopes to lead in American politics as the junior senator from Vermont.

Blair Golson: What did you make of the president's Cleveland speech on Iraq?

Bernie Sanders: Same old, same old. Clearly what's going on in Iraq is a disaster; clearly the president has no plans on how to get our troops home. Just as he had no plan for waging war, just as he went to war under false premises. So his Iraq agenda is a disaster. My own view is that we need to bring our troops home as soon as possible. And by that I mean the majority in the next six months, and the rest within the next year. Polls indicate that the majority of Iraqis want our troops home, and we should respect their wishes.

BG: In light of the president's persistent unpopularity, should we expect increasing resistance to his policies in Congress?

BS: What you are going to see is a more unified Democratic Party, and you're beginning to see some modest dissent on the part of Republicans who, because of the president's free fall in the polls, are more comfortable doing that. You already saw that on the Dubai Ports World, you'll see it on budget issues, you may see it on the war, or environmental issues. There are virtually no moderate Republicans left in Congress -- but the few that are there may choose to stand up on some issues and speak out.

BG: Bush's numbers have been in a free fall for several months now -- since Katrina. Why haven't we seen Congress playing a more aggressive role up until now -- until his numbers have bottomed out to historic lows?

BS: Well, I'm not the leader of the Democratic Party.

BG: Sure, but my question wouldn't only apply to Democrats.

BS: The answer is that the Republican Party is a tightly controlled party in Congress, and they don't tolerate dissent very easily. People lost their committee chairmanships, people don't get access to campaign funds when they dissent. That's been the history of the modern Republican Party in Washington. But we'll see some Republicans, because of Bush's free fall in popularity, show a little bit more courage.

BG: In the wake of the WMD scandal and the botched rebuilding of Iraq, can we expect tougher questioning on Iraq?

BS: Well, I'm actually co-sponsor of a resolution with Rep. John Conyers that calls for an investigation into why we went to war. There are huge questions to be asked about Iraq, and it's not enough for the president to say simply that we got bad intelligence -- and that that's why we invaded Iraq. There are many people who don't believe that. You've seen books by former CIA agents who disagree with that assertion. The American people have a right to know why we went to war, what the entire process was about. Not just to beat up on George Bush, but to make sure that the process doesn't happen again.

Something that has not been widely publicized by the media is the complete abrogation of Congress' constitutional responsibility to do oversight. Whether it is Iraq, and how we get into the war, whether it is the horrendous Medicare prescription drug bill, whether it's Katrina, or a dozen other issues, Congress has chosen to play the role of rubber stamp, rather than asking hard, important questions that the American people wants answers to.

BG: Why do you think the Congress decided to play the role of rubber stamp?

BS: You have one-party government. Obviously right-wing Republicans control the House, they control the Senate, and they made the decision when Bush came in, that instead of operating as an independent branch of government they would act as a rubber stamp to make the president look good when they could, and to sweep under the rug any problems that the administration was having.
I am a member of the House Government Reform Committee, which is the oversight committee for the House, and what I can tell you is that when Clinton was president, there were hearings after hearings after hearing. Since Bush was president, [there have been hardly any].

It's not a sexy issue, per se -- but oversight, independent oversight, holding government agencies accountable, holding the White House accountable, no mater who is president, is one of the important responsibilities of Congress, and clearly, clearly, under Republican leadership they have not done that. And that has been a huge shortfall and insult to the American people -- an abrogation of responsibility. Somebody has got to stand up and say, "Mr. President, we need an explanation. Department of Defense, we need an explanation." And that's what Congress' job is. And under Republican leadership, that has not occurred.

BG: Can you make sense of the fate of Sen. Russ Feingold's censure resolution?

BS: What the Democrats are now dealing with in the Senate and elsewhere is a very simple issue. On issue after issue, President Bush's policies are widely unpopular -- whether it is the economy, healthcare, civil liberties, environmental issues, oil prices, Katrina, war in Iraq, you name it. And what Democratic leaders are now trying to figure out is, given the free fall in President Bush's popularity, the widespread contempt people have for the Republican leadership in Congress, what are the issues that they are going to focus on in the next eight months to win back the House and the Senate? And what they're wrestling with is: Is the censure of the president the most effective way to go forward? And some of them don't think so, because you have so many more issues that the American people feel so much more strongly about.

BG: Why did the Patriot Act extension pass by such a wide margin?

BS: I voted against the original Patriot Act and voted against the one that came up a few weeks ago. I think that fighting terrorism and protecting the American people is very serious stuff, but we can do it without undermining our constitutional rights.
There were actually more votes in the House against the re-authorization than I would have thought, but the reason it passed so strongly is that it became a political issue for Republicans -- that anybody who voted against it is soft on terrorism. The truth is that we can effectively defend our country against terrorist acts without undermining constitutional rights. That's why I voted against the original USA Patriot Act, and that's why I've led the effort against various [subsequent] provisions of the act.

BG: What are some of the things you hope to accomplish as senator?

BS: My hope is in some way to fill the large shoes of the late Paul Wellstone. Paul was a good friend of mine, and was the only member of the U.S. Senate to be part of the Progressive Caucus, which I helped found in 1991. One of the most important issues that we have to deal with is the huge void that exists between what's going on in Washington and people back home. And how you connect the grass roots of progressive America to the United States Congress, and keep them appraised of what's going on, listen to what they have to say, support what they have to say, get support for important legislation, in other words, to create a political revolution, if you like, and a revitalization of American democracy. Getting people active in the political process and fighting for a progressive agenda would be the most important goals I have.

When we talk about a progressive agenda, I'm talking about a national healthcare program that guarantees healthcare to all people; we are talking about fundamental changes in our economic trade policy -- doing away with our disastrous trade agreements that have cost us millions of decent-paying jobs; doing away with Bush's huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country; protecting Social Security and expanding our safety net so that the elderly and low-income people can live with dignity; protecting our civil liberties, protecting our right to dissent; also addressing the very serious problem that I have spent a decent amount of time on in Congress, which is corporate control over the media -- how we create a media which informs people in a way consistent with a vibrant democracy, and we certainly don't have that right now.

BG: Why is it still important to you to keep your "Independent" moniker if you lean so heavily towards Democratic policies?

BS: I have disagreements with the Democrats, and I'm proud to be Independent. I'm not a Democrat. And just because I agree with the Democrats more than I agree with the Republicans does not cease to make me an Independent, or somebody who has a very different viewpoint than the Democrats hold. In Congress you have two parties you can work with. And there's no question in my mind that I have and always will work much more closely with the Democrats and support the Democratic leadership.

BG: What kind of race do you anticipate against your opponent?

BS: We are running against a guy who is the wealthiest person in the state of Vermont, who will spend five times more money on his campaign as has ever been spent on any campaign in Vermont history. In fact he will probably spend more money per voter than any candidate in U.S. Senate history. He's been on TV for five or six weeks and will probably remain on until election day.
When you're up against that kind of money, it's a serious race. We think we're going to win, because we're in the process of putting together the strongest grass- roots effort that the state of Vermont has ever seen. And our hope is to knock on virtually every door within the state and talk to people about the important issues in their life.

BG: What's the future for Independents? Between you and retiring Sen. Jim Jeffords, are you unique to Vermont?

BS: The important issue for today is for people to understand that we're dealing with the most reactionary government in the modern history of the United States, and it's absolutely imperative to replace the Republican leadership in the House and the Senate and simultaneously it's vitally important that we organize from one end of the country to the other a strong grass-roots movement which fights for progressive change in our country, and which takes power away not only from Republicans but from the big- money interests who dominate our economy, our political life and the media. Those are the goals I have, and that's what I think the times call for.

Blair Golson is the managing editor of Truthdig.

Noam Chomsky has a new book out called Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy.

He did an excellent two part interview with Democracy Now's Amy Goodman & Juan Gonzalez that I've linked here:

Part 1

Part 2

An American Theocracy? Thy name is Dominionist

Kevin Phillips, author of American Theocracy, a book which examines the influence religious extremists have over (and in) the White House, was a guest of Lou Dobbs' yesterday. Curiously, Phillips is a former Republican strategist who "helped design that party's Southern strategy, made his name with his 1969 book, 'The Emerging Republican Majority,' which predicted the coming ascendancy of the G.O.P.," but now spends his time as a populist social critic--and he's none too pleased with what he sees as the increasing stranglehold of religion on the Republican Party and American politics in general.

Crooks and Liars has the video and a partial transcript:

Phillips:...One of the reasons I think we have kind of screwed up economic politician in some ways is that a lot of Americans have stopped worrying about the economy because they're waiting for the second coming.

Dobbs: And you mean this quite literally?

Phillips: I mean it quite literally.

Yikes. Unfortunately, that's not as crazy as it sounds. There's an entire movement of people who not only don't care about decimating the economy, but are quite content to let the environment fall to ruin as well, for the same reason. They have a keen interest in theocratizing the American government, and although we often stumble over what we call them, causing all sorts of fusses when it appears all Christians are being lumped together, these folks have a name. They're called Dominionists. Anyway...

Phillips' book was referenced in the first question of yesterday's disastrous press conference I mentioned earlier. (Video and transcript.) Today at TPMCafe, Phillips comments:

Parenthetically, when Bush was at the City Club in Cleveland on Monday, someone in the audience cited my book and asked whether Bush would comment on how he felt about the relevance of the Apocalypse to the current-day Mideast. He spent five minutes evading the issue and the word. He has to. If he has to talk about these things, he'll lose a lot of people, and if he ducks, true-believers may start to wonder.

GOP presidential aspirants should take note, because they'll face the same conundrum. The Dominionists aren't going anywhere when Bush finally takes his leave at long last.

In fact, (if you can believe it) they're disappointed that Bush has not managed to do more to accommodate their plethora of demands. These people may be lunatics, but they're patient--and any GOP hopeful will have to straddle the same intimidating fence if they want to tap into the not-insignificant Dominionist vote. That's why we're already seeing the so-called maverick McCain courting the god-vote by endorsing the teaching of intelligent design in schools, supporting an Arizona state ban on gay marriage, and giving hesitant but nonetheless positive feedback on the recent abortion pan passed in South Dakota.

The question about Phillips' book was not just another stumbling block for Bush, but a glance into our collective future come 2008. How does one manage to indulge the Dominionists without making the rest of us cringe in revulsion? That'll be fun.

The Unitary Executive: Is The Doctrine Behind the Bush Presidency Consistent with a Democratic State?

When President Bush signed the new law, sponsored by Senator McCain, restricting the use of torture when interrogating detainees, he also issued a Presidential signing statement. That statement asserted that his power as Commander-in-Chief gives him the authority to bypass the very law he had just signed.

This news came fast on the heels of Bush's shocking admission that, since 2002, he has repeatedly authorized the National Security Agency to conduct electronic surveillance without a warrant, in flagrant violation of applicable federal law.

And before that, Bush declared he had the unilateral authority to ignore the Geneva Conventions and to indefinitely detain without due process both immigrants and citizens as enemy combatants.

All these declarations echo the refrain Bush has been asserting from the outset of his presidency. That refrain is simple: Presidential power must be unilateral, and unchecked.

But the most recent and blatant presidential intrusions on the law and Constitution supply the verse to that refrain. They not only claim unilateral executive power, but also supply the train of the President's thinking, the texture of his motivations, and the root of his intentions.

They make clear, for instance, that the phrase "unitary executive" is a code word for a doctrine that favors nearly unlimited executive power. Bush has used the doctrine in his signing statements to quietly expand presidential authority.

In this column, I will consider the meaning of the unitary executive doctrine within a democratic government that respects the separation of powers. I will ask: Can our government remain true to its nature, yet also embrace this doctrine?

read on...

Scholar says Bush has used obscure doctrine to extend power 95 times

We Live in a Society, Not an Economy

New Times Need New Ideas

By Peter McMahon
Posted Thursday, 23 March 2006

All but the wilfully ignorant now know that civilisation faces a challenge of unique proportions. The profligate consumption of fossil fuels over the last century has polluted the atmosphere to the point where it is changing the very climate, while that consumption has used up most of the easily available oil. As realisation that Peak Oil is imminent and the climate models become more alarming (as the underlying mechanisms are better understood), the future looks more and more difficult.

Quite clearly, drastic and immediate action is called for if disaster is to be averted. But there are no signs that such remedial action is at hand: instead, economic growth and terrorism dominate world politics.

The reason for this is that the core ideas of mainstream politics have not been challenged. In essence these ideas view society as a collection of individuals interacting through free markets, with the state just tidying up around the edges. In other words, they are the basic ideas of classical (or neo-classical) economics.

These big ideas never had much to say about human beings other than they were consumers and less important, producers. They never had much to say at all about the ongoing incidence of war. And they never had much to say about the costs of economic growth on the natural world. Nevertheless, because they arose with mass industrialisation, they seemed to be the best way of explaining the manifest material changes that occurred, and which transformed the daily lives of all. That phase, short by historical standards, is now concluding due to the end of cheap oil and the impact of industrial pollution on the environment.

A new big idea is being pushed by some commentators writing about the new age of environmental uncertainty and energy crisis. This idea says that cheap energy, not markets, is the key cause, and that the great spurt in wealth and population has been built on the use of oil, an unavoidably short-term situation. They would talk about society in terms of energy usage, and they mostly see huge trouble ahead as cheap energy goes.

This view is at least a return to the physical reality, and a shift away from the ideals of free markets and "rational economic men", but it has its own problems and is ultimately too limiting. Ultimately, it discounts the great potential for social co-operation when the chips are down; however, this co-operation can only occur under the right conditions.

There is another big idea that gives us hope for such co-operation. This idea centres on the growth of information in modern times, some of which we can call knowledge. The explosion of information is the single most extraordinary phenomenon of modernity, much more significant that the growth in wealth or energy usage. This is because, unlike material wealth and energy sources, information, although related to material conditions, is not ultimately limited by them. Unlike material things, the more information there is, the more information is created. This abundance of information has completely flummoxed economists who rely on a "scarcity" model of value.

The modern age did not begin with oil, not really even with steam, but with a surge of information related to changes in Europe and the spread of European power across the globe. The Renaissance unleased an era of unprecedented creativity which fed into the Enlightenment which was directly about the capacity of human beings to understand their world, and thus generate knowledge. Science, modern philosophy and a plethora of big ideas (including economics) grew out of this radical transformation.

Indeed, the most important aspect of the creation of modernity was the unleashing of a multitude of human minds to collaborate in changing the world. Hitherto held in check by church, state and grinding poverty, the masses of humanity played little part in history, the big decisions being made by a tiny fraction of men who ran the church, military and state. The two properties by which we identify ourselves - liberal and democratic - resulted from the rise of middle and working classes which played an ever larger part in the generation and exchange of information in an increasingly complex society. Education, literacy and a mass media surged, and with them came a new mass politics. With the development of true information technologies - everything from telegraphy to the Internet - a real, increasingly global information society arose.

Over the last few decades, however, the level of popular participation in politics has dropped off. Politics is now dominated by a stratum of professional politicians who wield power in the interests of the dominant economic powers, mostly huge transnational corporations and global finance markets, which increasingly express their interests through advertising, lobbyists and think tanks. The mass media have given up any claim to serious investigation or analysis, and the education system is in rapid decline as government support evaporates. These are changes experienced right across the developed world.

Most people are now not well enough informed to even understand the gravity of the situation they are in. Instead, for them the information society has become about money (that singular form of information) and entertainment. They concentrate on their own core needs - family, house, work - while wider social contacts decay through neglect. And they vote accordingly - those that bother to vote - immediate self interest being the only concern.

Information is essential to running complex organisations, and to dealing with complex problems. If we are to climb out of the hole we have dug for ourselves through the explosive surge of economic growth and associated energy usage, we can only do it through expanding our capacity to generate and use appropriate information. Information from experts, information from our everyday experiences, integrated into policy through a process of sustained negotiation.

To do this we need to re-engage people in a concern for the big picture. Change and sacrifice are needed, and they must be shared fairly through consultation. At the very least our mass media needs to take up the big issues seriously and we need to refocus on education for education's sake to produce more people who can understand complex issues and whose stock in trade is knowledge itself.

There is currently in existence an extraordinarily powerful information infrastructure, made up of TV, computers, the Internet, mobile phones and so on. This infrastructure can be used to provide the necessary debate on how to rectify things, and to carry out decisions in such a way that everyone feels as if they can participate, and thus take responsibility. Or this infrastructure can be used to continue doing what it does now - mostly just distracting us while our civilisation teeters on the edge.

The material world is undergoing profound transformation, and we must turn to our greatest strength as a species to prevail. That strength is the ability to think, to communicate and to co-operate with a view to the big picture and to sacrifice for the greater good once we understand just what is required.

Dr Peter McMahon is a professional writer, researcher and teacher. He has worked in a range of jobs from ore miner to political consultant.

"Iraq was awash in cash. We played football with bricks of $100 bills"

At the beginning of the Iraq war, the UN entrusted $23bn of Iraqi money to the US-led coalition to redevelop the country. With the infrastructure of the country still in ruins, where has all that money gone? Callum Macrae and Ali Fadhil on one of the greatest financial scandals of all time

Monday March 20, 2006

In a dilapidated maternity and paediatric hospital in Diwaniyah, 100 miles south of Baghdad, Zahara and Abbas, premature twins just two days old, lie desperately ill. The hospital has neither the equipment nor the drugs that could save their lives. On the other side of the world, in a federal courthouse in Virginia, US, two men - one a former CIA agent and Republican candidate for Congress, the other a former army ranger - are found guilty of fraudulently obtaining $3m (£1.7m) intended for the reconstruction of Iraq. These two events have no direct link, but they are none the less products of the same thing: a financial scandal that in terms of sheer scale must rank as one of the greatest in history.

At the start of the Iraq war, around $23bn-worth of Iraqi money was placed in the trusteeship of the US-led coalition by the UN. The money, known as the Development Fund for Iraq and consisting of the proceeds of oil sales, frozen Iraqi bank accounts and seized Iraqi assets, was to be used in a "transparent manner", specified the UN, for "purposes benefiting the people of Iraq".

For the past few months we have been working on a Guardian Films investigation into what happened to that money. What we discovered was that a great deal of it has been wasted, stolen or frittered away. For the coalition, it has been a catastrophe of its own making. For the Iraqi people, it has been a tragedy. But it is also a financial and political scandal that runs right to the heart of the nightmare that is engulfing Iraq today.

Diwaniyah is a sprawling and neglected city with just one small state paediatric and maternity hospital to serve its one million people. Years of war, corruption under Saddam and western sanctions have reduced the hospital to penury, so when last year the Americans promised total refurbishment, the staff were elated. But the renovation has been partial and the work often shoddy, and where it really matters - funding frontline health care - there appears to have been little change at all.

In the corridor, an anxious father who has been told his son may have meningitis is berating the staff. "I want a good hospital, not a terrible hospital that makes my child worse," he says. But then he calms down. "I'm not blaming you, we are the same class. I'm talking about important people. Those controlling all those millions and the oil. They didn't come here to save us from Saddam, they came here for the oil, and so now the oil is stolen and we got nothing from it." Beside him another parent, a woman, agrees: "If the people who run the country are stealing the money, what can we do?" For these ordinary Iraqis, it is clear that the country's wealth is being managed in much the same way as it ever was. How did it all go so wrong?

When the coalition troops arrived in Iraq, they were received with remarkable goodwill by significant sections of the population. The coalition had control up to a point and, perhaps more importantly, it had the money to consolidate that goodwill by rebuilding Iraq, or at least make a significant start. Best of all for the US and its allies, the money came from the Iraqis themselves.

Because the Iraqi banking system was in tatters, the funds were placed in an account with the Federal Reserve in New York. From there, most of the money was flown in cash to Baghdad. Over the first 14 months of the occupation, 363 tonnes of new $100 bills were shipped in - $12bn, in cash. And that is where it all began to go wrong.

"Iraq was awash in cash - in dollar bills. Piles and piles of money," says Frank Willis, a former senior official with the governing Coalition Provisional Authority. "We played football with some of the bricks of $100 bills before delivery. It was a wild-west crazy atmosphere, the likes of which none of us had ever experienced."

The environment created by the coalition positively encouraged corruption. "American law was suspended, Iraqi law was suspended, and Iraq basically became a free fraud zone," says Alan Grayson, a Florida-based attorney who represents whistleblowers now trying to expose the corruption. "In a free fire zone you can shoot at anybody you want. In a free fraud zone you can steal anything you like. And that was what they did."

A good example was the the Iraqi currency exchange programme (Ice). An early priority was to devote enormous resources to replacing every single Iraqi dinar showing Saddam's face with new ones that didn't. The contract to help distribute the new currency was won by Custer Battles, a small American security company set up by Scott Custer and former Republican Congressional candidate Mike Battles. Under the terms of the contract, they would invoice the coalition for their costs and charge 25% on top as profit. But Custer Battles also set up fake companies to produce inflated invoices, which were then passed on to the Americans. They might have got away with it, had they not left a copy of an internal spreadsheet behind after a meeting with coalition officials.

The spreadsheet showed the company's actual costs in one column and their invoiced costs in another; it revealed, in one instance, that it had charged $176,000 to build a helipad that actually cost $96,000. In fact, there was no end to Custer Battles' ingenuity. For example, when the firm found abandoned Iraqi Airways fork-lifts sitting in Baghdad airport, it resprayed them and rented them to the coalition for thousands of dollars. In total, in return for $3m of actual expenditure, Custer Battles invoiced for $10m. Perhaps more remarkable is that the US government, once it knew about the scam, took no legal action to recover the money. It has been left to private individuals to pursue the case, the first stage of which concluded two weeks ago when Custer Battles was ordered to pay more than $10m in damages and penalties.

But this is just one story among many. From one US controlled vault in a former Saddam palace, $750,000 was stolen. In another, a safe was left open. In one case, two American agents left Iraq without accounting for nearly $1.5m.

Perhaps most puzzling of all is what happened as the day approached for the handover of power (and the remaining funds) to the incoming Iraqi interim government. Instead of carefully conserving the Iraqi money for the new government, the Coalition Provisional Authority went on an extraordinary spending spree. Some $5bn was committed or spent in the last month alone, very little of it adequately accounted for.

One CPA official was given nearly $7m and told to spend it in seven days. "He told our auditors that he felt that there was more emphasis on the speed of spending the money than on the accountability for that money," says Ginger Cruz, the deputy inspector general for Iraqi reconstruction. Not all coalition officials were so honest. Last month Robert Stein Jr, employed as a CPA comptroller in south central Iraq, despite a previous conviction for fraud, pleaded guilty to conspiring to steal more than $2m and taking kickbacks in the form of cars, jewellery, cash and sexual favours. It seems certain he is only the tip of the iceberg. There are a further 50 criminal investigations under way.

Back in Diwaniyah it is a story about failure and incompetence, rather than fraud and corruption. Zahara and Abbas, born one and a half months premature, are suffering from respiratory distress syndrome and are desperately ill. The hospital has just 14 ancient incubators, held together by tape and wire.

Zahara is in a particularly bad way. She needs a ventilator and drugs to help her breathe, but the hospital has virtually nothing. Her father has gone into town to buy vitamin K on the black market, which he has been told his children will need. Zahara starts to deteriorate and in desperation the doctor holds a tube pumping unregulated oxygen against the child's nostrils. "This treatment is worse than primitive," he says. "It's not even medicine." Despite his efforts, the little girl dies; the next day her brother also dies. Yet with the right equipment and the right drugs, they could have survived.
How is it possible that after three years of occupation and billions of dollars of spending, hospitals are still short of basic supplies? Part of the cause is ideological tunnel-vision. For months before the war the US state department had been drawing up plans for the postwar reconstruction, but those plans were junked when the Pentagon took over.

To supervise the reconstruction of the Iraqi health service, the Pentagon appointed James Haveman, a former health administrator from Michigan. He was also a loyal Bush supporter, who had campaigned for Jeb Bush, and a committed evangelical Christian. But he had virtually no experience in international health work.

The coalition's health programme was by any standards a failure. Basic equipment and drugs should have been distributed within months - the coalition wouldn't even have had to pay for it. But they missed that chance, not just in health, but in every other area of life in Iraq. As disgruntled Iraqis will often point out, despite far greater devastation and crushing sanctions, Saddam did more to rebuild Iraq in six months after the first Gulf war than the coalition has managed in three years.

Kees Reitfield, a health professional with 20 years' experience in post-conflict health care from Kosovo to Somalia, was in Iraq from the very beginning of the war and looked on in astonishment at the US management in its aftermath. "Everybody in Iraq was ready for three months' chaos," he says. "They had water for three months, they had food for three months, they were ready to wait for three months. I said, we've got until early August to show an improvement, some drugs in the health centres, some improvement of electricity in the grid, some fuel prices going down. Failure to deliver will mean civil unrest." He was right.

Of course, no one can say that if the Americans had got the reconstruction right it would have been enough. There were too many other mistakes as well, such as a policy of crude "deBa'athification" that saw Iraqi expertise marginalised, the creation of a sectarian government and the Americans attempting to foster friendship with Iraqis who themselves had no friends among other Iraqis.
Another experienced health worker, Mary Patterson - who was eventually asked to leave Iraq by James Haveman - characterises the Coalition's approach thus: "I believe it had a lot to do with showing that the US was in control," she says. "I believe that it had to do with rewarding people that were politically loyal. So rather than being a technical agenda, I believe it was largely a politically motivated reward-and-punishment kind of agenda."

Which sounds like the way Saddam used to run the country. "If you were to interview Iraqis today about what they see day to day," she says, "I think they will tell you that they don't see a lot of difference".

· Dispatches: Iraq's Missing Billions produced by GuardianFilms was broadcast 20.3.2006 on Channel 4.

Getting back to fundamentals in Iraq

By Taya Fabijanic
Posted Monday, 3 April 2006

In the early 20th century the American satirist Ambrose Bierce said, "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography". For the 21st century the truth still resonates, more so if we replace the updated jargon, "the coalition of the willing", for "Americans".

The phrase itself has a particularly eerie biblical symbolism, especially "the willing". It is like "the damned", "the virtuous" or the "the raptured".

In regards to the second war with Iraq, the satire present in Bierce's phrase captures the religious undertones of the coalition's campaign, as well as the continued cultural and geo-political ignorance suffered by many concerned citizens of the West.

God may be using war to teach the US, UK, Australian, Korean, Polish, Japanese, Romanian, Georgian, Danish and other governments Iraqi geography, but he certainly has used the two major leaders of this coalition - Blair and Bush - in a cheap trick of blind belief (though the Almighty has worked in mysterious ways, from time to time).

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Bill Moyers - A Time for Heresy

We need such courage today. This is a time for heresy. American democracy is threatened by perversions of money, power, and religion. Money has bought our elections right out from under us. Power has turned government "of, by, and for the people" into the patron of privilege. And Christianity and Islam have been hijacked by fundamentalists who have made religion the language of power, the excuse for violence, and the alibi for empire. We must answer the principalities and powers that would force on America a stifling conformity. Either we make the heretical choices that will inspire us to renew our commitment to America's deepest values and ideals, or the day will come when we will no longer recognize the country we love.

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The Untied States of America