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GRITtv: Ethan McCord: Maintaining Humanity at War
"The one thing I couldn't live without in Iraq was my own humanity," says Iraq veteran Ethan McCord, who came home from dropping his children off at school to find a video of himself rescuing an child from a bombed-out van. That was the now-infamous Wikileaks video, and McCord has been collecting his own video and stories from his fellow veterans, speaking out about what he saw at war and what his friends lived through. McCord joins Laura in studio for a discussion of the suppression of more video from WikiLeaks, the supposed end of the war in Iraq, and the way talking about the war helps him to heal.
Email this pageGRITtv: Farai Chideya: Really Talking about Race
It's nearly the homestretch for the 2010 midterm elections, and unsurprisingly, race remains a hot topic. From a new ad in Nevada urging Latinos not to vote to Sharron Angle's latest comments about Latino youth looking Asian, and ongoing concern that black voters will not turn out in numbers like they did in 2008, it's clear that no matter how much candidates deny it, race is this season's hot button. Farai Chideya, of the public radio and multimedia news program Pop and Politics, has been traveling the country putting together a three-part public radio/multimedia series on "Race, Rage and Reconciliation in the 2010 Midterm Elections," and she joins Laura in studio to discuss what she's seen and learned.
GRITtv: Danny Schechter: Foreclosure Fraud and Bank Bailouts
The controversy over home foreclosures is spreading--today, the White House blog and twitter announced that President Obama would not sign a bill that could have an impact on foreclosure documents because of the ongoing problems. In a nutshell, huge numbers of Americans have found themselves foreclosed on by banks that had faulty or incomplete documents. Three major firms have actually declared freezes on foreclosures, and Congress is calling for an investigation. But what does all this mean for most of us? Danny Schechter joins Laura in studio to explain the situation, why it's more complicated than a few mortgages, and why it could lead to another major banking crisis. He also weighs in on the privatization of fire departments, and notes that in the U.S., "Property rights trumps human rights."
GRITtv: Violence, Video Games, and the Supreme Court
When the WikiLeaks video hit, the video game comparisons came fast and furious, including on this show, where we looked at a report that video games might help overcome people's natural resistance to shooting at one another. Now the Supreme Court is going to look at whether the a ban on sale of violent video games to minors is constitutional. If they support the ban, it would be the first time that the obscenity rule has been applied to violent images rather than sexual ones. To discuss video games, violence, and the shrinking difference between gaming and military technology, we have Joel Johnson of Gizmodo and Seth Schiesel of the New York Times, two technology and games reporters. And since we had a Gizmodo reporter on the line, we just had to ask about the iPhone. . .
GRITtv: Collateral Murder
Warning: Graphic Content
On Monday, the independent site Wikileaks.org released a video of a shooting in Iraq that had been covered up for years. Among the victims of the U.S. soldiers in an Apache helicopter were two children and a Reuters photographer, whose telephoto lens was apparently taken for a weapon. We bring you a selection from the video.
GRITtv: The F Word: Impossible to Ignore Wikileaks Tape
"Well, it's their fault bringing their kids to a battle."
Those words, spoken by a faceless soldier, echo from a classified US military video released by the site Wikileaks.org. The release comes on the heels of the revelation of a cover-up in Afghanistan—and the anniversary of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, as well as the anniversary of his “Beyond Vietnam” speech.
King spoke to the Clergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam, saying “It should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam."
Hearing allegations that special forces troops in Afghanistan may have dug the bullets out of their pregnant victims bodies to hide evidence, hearing airmen on the Wikileaks tape begging “Come on, let us shoot!”, reminds me of Rev. King's other words when he said, "War is horrible and it does poison the soul."
GRITtv: Can You Sue The Internet?
Google has gone from being a search engine to emerging as a world power: it has been pitted against governments and, as Clay Shirky notes, has its own foreign policy. In Italy, on February 24, three Google employees were convicted--with suspended jail sentences--of violating Italy's privacy statutes in relation to a video posted on YouTube, owned by the Web giant.
Shirky rejoins us at GRITtv along with Juan Carlos de Martin, founder and co-director of the Nexa Center for Internet & Society at Italy's Polytechnic University. They discuss the case, the implications for Google and YouTube, and how the Web continues to change and shape our understanding of the world.
GRITtv: Tactical Technology Collective: Witness and Record
From our friends at Tactical Technology Collective, this second video in the series shows how ordinary citizens from around the world used basic video technology to record events and corrupt actions and effect change.
GRITtv: Tactical Technology Collective: Mobilize People
From our friends at Tactical Technology Collective, this video explains how activists around the world can use video and new media to organize people in new and exciting ways.
GRITtv: Cine Institute: The Students
We've been proud to feature content from the Cine Institute over the last couple of weeks from Jacmel, Hait i-- you've seen their incredible work in many clips. Here, some of the students who shot that footage tell their personal stories from the earthquake. You can support them here.
