THE POWER PRINCIPLE DOCUMENTARY SERIES CONCORDANCE COLLECTION

One of the goals I have for Useless Eater Blog is that it serve as something like an ongoing undergraduate-level course in parapolitical science. Obviously, not every post or article is going to be in keeping with this lofty ambition - I'm only human after all, and am not above using my tiny platform to launch the occasional editorial cheap-shot, or pick on the odd easy target for a laugh - but my resolution for the New Year is to make sure the substance/bullshit ratio becomes a little less embarrassing to me.

In order to separate the wheat from the chaff, I will be creating a new Useless Eater Blog sub-section called ParaPolitical Science 101. In this section, I will be warehousing those posts and articles that I feel meet a certain standard and serve to increase my regular readers' knowledge and awareness about everything from forgotten chapters in ancient history, to in depth analysis of contemporary "conspiracy culture" developments... for better or worse.

Having said that, my study guides, or "concordances", for Scott Noble's excellent documentary series The Power Principle represent exactly the kind of work that I'm going to be doing more of in the coming years. In these three articles, I attempt to summarize - and, in certain respects, expand upon - the information presented in these insightful, thought-provoking documentary films, which Information Clearing House called "probably the best documentary ever made about American foreign policy."

I'll be using Metanoia Films' own summaries to describe the contents of each film in the series.

The Power Principle I: EMPIRE 

An Introduction to the Empire; Iran – Oil and Geopolitics; Guatemala – the “merger of state and corporate power”; The Congo – Neocolonialism; Grenada – “The Mafia Doctrine”; Chile – “libertarianism with a small l"; Globalization: Consequences. 1945: Grand Area Strategy; Fascism: a “rational system of the plutocracy”; Case Studies: the Greek Communists; The Italian Communists; the Spanish Anarchists; Fascism’s Western backers; Trading with the Enemy; Fascism as “preservation of civilization”; the Cold War and “A Century of Fear”.

The Power Principle II: PROPAGANDA 

The Soviet Menace?; Case Studies: El Salvador, Nicaragua; Propaganda: Self-Deception and blowback; The “International Communist Conspiracy”; Declassified Documents; NSC 68; The Pentagon as Keynsian Mechanism; The Military Industrial Complex; The War against the Third World; Shifting rationales; What is imperialism?; Case Study: Haiti; “War is a racket”. Fear-based conditioning - The War of the Worlds, The Triumph of the Will; World view Warfare; The Russians are coming; Television: The “perfect propaganda medium”; Soviet vs. American propaganda; Hollywood and the Pentagon; Psywarriors and the media; Operation Mockingbird; The Pentagon Pundits; Project Revere; The Bomber Gap; “scare the hell out of them”.

The Power Principle III: APOCALYPSE

Mutually Assured Destruction; MAD men - Curtis Lemay and the super hawks; MAD men - Hermann Kahn and the Rand Corporation; Over flights as provocation; Cuba: the “danger of a good example”; terrorism against Cuba; “Unconventional warfare”; the Cuban Missile Crisis and the “man who saved the world”. Why did the Soviet Union collapse?; Gorbachev: a “more violent, less stable world”; the Pentagon’s New Map; Did Ronald Reagan end the Cold War?; The Brink of Apocalypse: Able Archer; The betrayal of Russia; The expansion of NATO; Yugoslavia and Libya; the Yeltsin coup; Living standards in the former Soviet Union; A third way?

Ideally, I would urge you to watch each of these three films from beginning to end, in the proper order, with my study guides open in another browser should you require clarification or more information about all the various historical events, individuals, or contributors therein. However, for the parapolitical seeker who is short on time, my concordances can also serve as a handy summary of these three feature-length films, in a format that shouldn't take you much more than twenty minutes to read, total. Hence my suggestion that you "clip and save" them somewhere for future reference.

***

If you enjoyed my concordances for The Power Principle series, then you might also enjoy a similar piece I wrote a couple years ago for Lutz Dammbeck's 2003 documentary The Net: The Unabomber, LSD and the Internet. As with the above films, I guarantee that you will encounter a bunch of new, mind-blowing information that you've never come across before... all of it impeccably sourced and researched.

THE POWER PRINCIPLE III: APOCALYPSE ~ A CONCORDANCE

CLIP AND SAVE FOR FUTURE REFERENCE

A CONCORDANCE 

or a series of notes and thoughts on 

THE POWER PRINCIPLE III - APOCALYPSE

a documentary by Scott Noble and Metanoia Films

The following notes were taken by myself during viewings of the film. The text presented includes some direct references to statements made on camera (indicated by quotation marks), as well as a number of observations, side references and potential avenues for further inquiry that came to mind as I watched. I do this because I believe this film to be an important document in the field of parapolitics, and anything I can do to help get it seen by more people - and, in particular, the RIGHT people - I see as worth doing. Secondly, I wanted to create an easy-to-use text and image based "study guide" that both documents and compliments the information presented in the film. As always, I leave it for you readers to decide whether or not I have succeeded on that count. - YOPJ 15/22/2014

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE AND FOLLOW 

THE CONCORDANCE BELOW!

Power Principle III - Apocalypse from S DN on Vimeo.

CAVEATS AND SUCH (00:00)

“This film contains controversial subject matter. Interview subjects and creators of some source material may not agree with certain views presented. The Power Principle is a non-profit documentary and has been released online for free.”

PREAMBLE

"It is essential to release humanity from the false fixations of yesterday, which seem now to bind it to a rationale of action leading only to extinction."

- R. Buckminster Fuller

PART ONE - THE GREAT GOD "M.A.D." (00:00)

KEEP READING AT THE USELESS EATER BLOG!

THE POWER PRINCIPLE II - PROPAGANDA ~ A CONCORDANCE

A CONCORDANCE 

or a series of notes and thoughts on 

THE POWER PRINCIPLE II - PROPAGANDA

a documentary by Scott Noble and Metanoia Films

The following notes were taken by myself during viewings of the film. The text presented includes some direct references to statements made on camera (indicated by quotation marks), as well as a number of observations, side references and potential avenues for further inquiry that came to mind as I watched. I do this because I believe this film to be an important document in the field of parapolitics, and anything I can do to help get it seen by more people - and, in particular, the RIGHT people - I see as worth doing. Secondly, I wanted to create an easy-to-use text and image based "study guide" that both documents and compliments the information presented in the film. As always, I leave it for you readers to decide whether or not I have succeeded on that count. - YOPJ 15/16/2014

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE AND FOLLOW 

THE CONCORDANCE BELOW!

The Power Principle II - Propaganda from S DN on Vimeo.

CAVEATS AND SUCH (00:00)

“This film contains controversial subject matter. Interview subjects and creators of some source material may not agree with certain views presented. The Power Principle is a non-profit documentary and has been released online for free.”

PREAMBLE

"The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the grotwh of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy."

- Alex Carey

PART ONE - SETTING THE STAGE (00:00)

- We kick things off with a typically ham-fisted clip from an anti-Communist "educational" film from the 1950's...

CONTINUE READING AT USELESS EATER BLOG!

MEDIAVORE:CINEMA ~ RUN RUN IT'S HIM

In the first few minutes of the autobiographical documentary Run Run It’s Him, a female friend attempts to put director Matt Pollack’s early lack of luck with the opposite sex into perspective.

“I think the major problem”, she explains, “was that, whatever investment you had in the idea of yourself as being not that kind of a guy… actually blinded you to the attentions that were being paid to you.”

Nonplussed, Pollack insists that the apparently overnight blossoming of girls into women that took place during junior high – not to mention his own suddenly rampaging hormones – caught him totally off guard. Why was he suddenly sinking when swimming came so naturally to everyone around him? Why did it feel as though his friends and classmates were all reading from a rule book to which he did not have access?

“What was the move?” he asks, a desperate edge in his voice. “What move was I missing?”

Her response is blunt: “Any move, I think, is the answer.”

Too little, too late, as the saying goes. By the time Pollack worked up the courage to quiz his female friends about the facts of life on camera, he’d long since made a strategic retreat into the fantasy world of pornography. Did an early introduction to its easy pleasures play a role in his delayed sexual development? Pollack decided to make Run Run It’s Him as an attempt to understand the negative impact that this addiction has had on his life.

At this early point, the unsympathetic viewer might be tempted to grumble that Pollack’s complaints serve as relatively thin grist for his documentarian’s mill. So he didn’t get laid until his early 20’s… so what? A healthy, handsome, intelligent young man from a relatively happy, middle class family, he appears to have been dealt a rather generous hand in life. There are people starving in Africa, you know, so what right does Pollack – with his First World problems – have to gripe?

The answer, of course, is that he has every right, just so long as the end result is worth watching. And Run Run It’s Him – this hand-crafted, ultra-low-fi, painfully honest and genuinely hilarious slice of cinematic self-vivisection - is a film well worth watching.

Shot over a seven-year span by Pollack and his cinematic wingman, Jamie Popowich, Run Run It’s Him is a sprawling epic that succeeds in achieving an almost microscopic intimacy. This is, at times, squirm inducing… especially for the friends, exes, and family members that Pollack buttonholes into being interviewed onscreen.

From Pollack’s suburban school days, to his university years on the East Coast, to his ceaseless quest for pornographic novelty in the seediest corners of Toronto, vast spans of time and territory are covered – much of it on foot. Former girlfriends provide occasionally bewildering accounts about their time together. A sympathetic porn shop clerk offers surprisingly heartfelt and philosophical advice. Pollack’s parents, clueless and grim, seem like they’d rather be anywhere but on camera being interrogated by their over-sharing son.

In one of the film’s comedic high points, Pollack decides to deal with the unwieldy stacks of VHS tapes that have accumulated in every corner of his modest bachelor flat by keeping a “porn log” so that he might easily find his favorite scenes. In another, some of Pollack’s platonic female friends are made to watch a selection of these scenes, and the resulting footage is absolutely priceless.

Because Run Run It’s Him was so long in the making, it gives us a chance to observe a young filmmaker finding his voice. What starts out as a somewhat crude and lewd exercise in willfully obdurate self-denigration evolves into a moving, incisive document of self-exploration worthy of Pollack’s literary hero, Frederick Exley, author of the cult classic autobiographical novel A Fan’s Notes.

Run Run It’s Him isn't just the story of one man’s porn addiction. That’s the stuff of DVD cover blurbs and bullet reviews. This is a film about universal problems, such as the need for physical intimacy and the fear of rejection. It’s about spending so much time and mental energy worrying about not living up to your potential that it actually becomes one of the main reasons why you fail to live up to your potential.

It’s also about the inherent dangers lurking behind the deceptively benign façade of escapist procrastination, illustrating how easy it is to get lost in the labyrinths of minutia that make up our culture’s obsessions, whether it be video games, Star Trek fandom, collecting records, or comic books, or yes, even keeping detailed logs of one’s favorite masturbation fodder. In this respect, Pollack’s notebooks are like Jack Torrance’s repetitive manuscript in The Shining. “All wank and no game makes Matt a lonely boy.”

It’s all escapism, living the life of the mind at the cost of living life, itself. It’s a trap and a poor substitute, creating feedback loops of loneliness and alienation that lead you to habits that can only serve to further isolate and alienate you from your peers. Thankfully, Run Run It’s Him picks up steam, and a defiant head of optimism, as it builds towards its gloriously upbeat – and completely unexpected – climax.

You can purchase a digital copy of Run Run It’s Him from Pollack’s website for a measly ten bucks. It would be a steal at twice the price.

THREE EXCELLENT, HORIZON-EXPANDING BBC MUSIC DOCUMENTARIES

First up, PROG BRITANNIA, an Anglo-centric (and thus, necessarily incomplete) history of Progressive Rock, which recently aired on BBC4. Absolutely essential viewing for one and all.

Not quite so mandatory but still quite instructive and illuminating is KRAUTROCK: THE REBIRTH OF GERMANY, which goes to great lengths to fit this particularly viral and enduring strain of prog into a holistic political and socio-cultural context. Very well done.

And, finally, SYNTH BRITANNIA, a revealing and encyclopedic examination of the history of electronic British music. I was, of course, very satisfied to see that Stanley Kubrick was given his proper due as a ground-breaking trend-setter in this case, having hired electro-musical maverick Wendy/Walter Carlos to produce the haunting, blazing score for his version of Clockwork Orange.

PARAPOLITICAL CALENDAR FOR MAY 7

On this day in 1794, French Revolutionary Robespierre proposes that the new state religion of the French First Republic be the Illuminati-inspired "Cult of the Supreme Being". It fails to catch on.

On this day in the year 1824, composer Ludwig von Beethoven's magnificent 9th (and final) Symphony - one of the only world-historic pieces of music - is performed for first time in front of an audience. The vocal section uses Freidrich Schiller's poem Ode To Joy, which is jam-packed with esoteric allusions that are ripe for exploitation as an expression of the beauties and charms of collectivism, which makes its eventual use as the "national anthem" of the European Union both amusing and somewhat troubling. Stanley Kubrick proved that he understood the essential duality of this piece of music - as well as the double-edged nature of genius in general - by highlighting it in an incredibly ironic way in his satirical sf masterpiece Clockwork Orange. 

On this day in 1896, one of the first and most prolific and inventive serial killers of all time is put to death for only a handful of the crimes he committed over a lifetime of almost unbelievable wickedness. His name was Herman Webster Mudgett, alias Doctor Henry Howard Holmes, and he built his own private "Murder Castle" in Chicago during the 1893 World Columbian Exposition - itself an event rife with parapolitical and paracultural over-and-undertones.

On this day in 1952, the concept of the integrated circuit, also known as the "monolithic integrated circuit" and the "microchip" - the basis for all modern computing technology - is first presented to the public by Geoffrey W.A. Dummer. Culturally, economically and historically, it's a game-changer on pretty much every imaginable level.

On this day in 1999, the British Antarctic Survey reports that the sky fell by no less than five miles over the preceding forty year period, as the upper limit of the ionosphere - beyond which lies the vacuum of space - collapsed from 190 to 185 miles altitude. Researchers at the time pointed to this startling phenomenon as "an important environmental warning sign," but yer old pal Jerky hasn't heard any more about it since the report was released. What gives?!

On this day in 2004, in one of the most heinous of many heinous landmarks that we collectively had to endure in the 'naughties, the sadistic and brutal beheading of American businessman Nick Berg is recorded on videotape and released on the Internet for all the world to see. I present to you an editorial that I wrote on the subject of the Berg conspiracy theories, reprinted now at my Useless Eater blog for archival purposes. Also reprinted is one of my best editorials (if I do say so myself), titled The Paradox of Polar Bears. It also touches on Berg's murder, but for much different reasons. I'd suggest you "enjoy", but somehow that just doesn't seem right in this case.

EVIDENCE OF REVISION, PART SIX OF SIX