Michael Moore Needs Your Help to Expose Wall Street Swindle February 13, 2009
Posted by rogerhollander in Economic Crisis.Tags: bailout, bank CEOs, banks, brave new films, documentary film, economic loss, financial industry, foreclosures, hege funds, injustice, michael moore, private equity firms, roger hollander, unemployment, wall street swindle
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Posted by ZP Heller, Brave New Films on February 13, 2009 at 7:00 AM.
Michael Moore is about to uncover “the biggest swindle in American history,” and he needs your help. In an e-mail yesterday, Moore asked for anyone connected to Wall Street or the financial industry to contact him at bailout@michaelmoore.com with information about the economic meltdown. All correspondence with him will be kept confidential.
The activist filmmaker’s previous documentaries like SiCKO, Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, Roger & Me, and last year’s free release of Slacker Uprising revealed, ripped, and ridiculed gross injustices in the health-care industry, gun violence, the 9/11 attacks and aftermath, General Motors, and youth voter turnout, respectively. You can only imagine what he’ll do to the bailed out bank CEOs whose excessive greed and impropriety resulted in millions of Americans facing foreclosure, soaring unemployment, and $1.1 trillion in economic loss.
As Howard Rubenstein, president of a New York-based public-relations firms that advises hedge funds, private-equity firms and banks, told Bloomberg, “Moore’s reputation is locked in. Whatever he touches gets gored.” But this time around, Moore needs your help to tell “the greatest crime story ever told.”
‘Death of a Prisoner’ at Obama’s Guantánamo January 11, 2013
Posted by rogerhollander in Barack Obama, Civil Liberties, Criminal Justice, Human Rights, Torture.Tags: adnan latif, death of a prisoner, documentary, documentary film, Guantanamo, human rights, kill list, laura poitras, Obama Guantanamo, president obama, roger hollander, solitary confinement, torture
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Roger’s note: WATCH THE VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IO2gwKLKHOo
When President Obama pledged to close the Guantánamo Bay prison on his first day in office as president in 2009, I believed the country had shifted direction. I was wrong. Four years later, President Obama has not only institutionalized Guantánamo and all the horrors it symbolizes, but he has initiated new extrajudicial programs, like the president’s secret kill list.
In September 2012 I read the news that another prisoner at Guantánamo had died, and I knew I had probably met his family. I traveled to Yemen in 2007 with the idea of making a film about a Guantánamo prisoner. I went there with the Guantánamo lawyer David Remes. He met with families and delivered the news of their sons, brothers, fathers and husbands. I had hoped to film the journey of someone being released from Guantánamo and returning home. Five years later, I find myself making that film, but under tragic circumstances.
Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif recently died in solitary confinement at Guantánamo at age 36, after nearly 11 years of imprisonment there, despite never having been charged with a crime. Last month his body was returned to his family in Yemen, but we are left with many unanswered questions about his imprisonment and death.
Mr. Latif’s death is under investigation by the United States military, which claims he committed suicide from an overdose of prescription medication complicated by acute pneumonia. But that’s hard to take at face value. Why was he placed in solitary confinement when he was suffering from acute pneumonia? How could he have overdosed on medication, given the strict protocols at Guantánamo? Why did it take three months for the body to be returned to Yemen? And finally, why are his autopsy and toxicology report classified and being withheld from his family?
These questions are not just about Adnan Latif. They also address the injustices that our government has instituted and normalized in the war on terror.
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Laura Poitras is an Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker. She is currently working on a trilogy of films about post-9/11 America. She is the recipient of a 2012 MacArthur Fellowship and is on the board of the Freedom of the Press Foundation.