Important Anti-War Films You Can Watch On-Line

By Frank Dorrel, January 26, 2020

Bill Moyer’s The Secret Government: The Constitution In Crisis – PBS – 1987
This is the full length 90 minute version of Bill Moyer’s 1987 scathing critique of the criminal subterfuge carried out by the Executive Branch of the United States Government to carry out operations which are clearly contrary to the wishes and values of the American people. The ability to exercise this power with impunity is facilitated by the National Security Act of 1947. The thrust of the exposé is the Iran-Contra arms and drug-running operations which flooded the streets of our nation with crack cocaine. – www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJldun440Sk – www.youtube.com/watch?v=75XwKaDanPk

Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky & The Media – Produced & Directed by Mark Achbar – Directed by Peter Wintonick – 1993 – www.zeitgeistfilms.com
This film showcases Noam Chomsky, one of America’s leading linguists & political dissidents. It also illustrates his message of how government and big media businesses cooperate to produce an effective propaganda machine in order to manipulate the opinions of the United States populous. – www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnrBQEAM3rE – www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vZ151btVhs

The Panama Deception – Won Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1992 – Narrated by Elizabeth Montgomery – Directed by Barbara Trent – Produced by The Empowerment Project
This Academy Award Winning film documents the untold story of the December 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama; the events which led to it; the excessive force used; the enormity of the death and destruction; and the devastating aftermath. The Panama Deception uncovers the real reasons for this internationally condemned attack, presenting a view of the invasion which widely differs from that portrayed by the U.S. media & exposes how the U.S. government & the mainstream media suppressed information about this foreign policy disaster. – www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo6yVNWcGCo – www.documentarystorm.com/the-panama-deception – www.empowermentproject.org/films.html

HEARTS AND MINDS – Directed by Peter Davis – Won Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1975.
Peter Davis created one of the most moving accounts of the Vietnam War and the attitudes at home when he produced “Hearts and Minds”. The film looks unflinchingly at the nature of power and horrible consequences of war. It is very much a pro-peace film, but uses the people who were there to speak for themselves. It also seeks to probe deeper underneath the American psyche of the times and evolves into a historical document about the violent social rupture that happened between the fifties and the sixties. www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGbC3gUlqz0 – www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdJcOWVLmmU – https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/hearts-and-minds

WAR MADE EASY: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us To Death – Narrated by Sean Penn – By The Media Education Foundation – 2007 –
Based on Book by Norman Solomon titled: WAR MADE EASY – www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPJs8x-BKYA – www.warmadeeasythemovie.org – www.mediaed.org
War Made Easy reaches into the Orwellian memory hole to expose a 50-year pattern of government deception & media spin that has dragged the United States into one war after another from Vietnam to Iraq. This film exhumes remarkable archival footage of official distortion & exaggeration from LBJ to George W. Bush, revealing in stunning detail how the American news media have uncritically disseminated the pro-war messages of successive presidential administrations. War Made Easy gives special attention to parallels between the Vietnam war and the war in Iraq. Guided by media critic Norman Solomon’s meticulous research and tough-minded analysis, the film presents disturbing examples of propaganda and media complicity from the present alongside rare footage of political leaders and leading journalists from the past, including Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, dissident Senator Wayne Morse and news correspondents Walter Cronkite and Morley Safer.

Cover-Up: Behind The Iran-Contra Affair – Narrated by Elizabeth Montgomery – Directed by Barbara Trent – Produced by The Empowerment Project – 1988
COVER-UP is the only film which presents a comprehensive overview of the most important stories suppressed during the Iran Contra hearings. It is the only film that puts the entire Iran Contra affair into a meaningful political and historical context. The shadow government of assassins, arms dealers, drug smugglers, former CIA operatives and top US military personnel who were running foreign policy unaccountable to the public, revealing the Reagan/Bush administration’s plan to use FEMA to institute martial law and ultimately suspend the Constitution. Strikingly relevant to current events. – www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDdItm-PDeM – www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOlMo9dAATw www.empowermentproject.org/films.html

Hijacking Catastrophe: 911, Fear & The Selling of the American Empire – Narrated by Julian Bond – The Media Education Foundation – 2004 – www.mediaed.org
The 9/11 terror attacks continue to send shock waves through the American political system. Continuing fears about American vulnerability alternate with images of American military prowess and patriotic bravado in a transformed media landscape charged with emotion and starved for information. The result is that we have had little detailed debate about the radical turn US policy has taken since 9/11. Hijacking Catastrophe places the Bush Administration’s original justifications for war in Iraq within the larger context of a two-decade struggle by neo-conservatives to dramatically increase military spending while projecting American power and influence globally by means of force.
www.filmsforaction.org/watch/hijacking-catastrophe-911-fear-and-the-selling-of-american-empire-2004/

Occupation 101: Voices of the Silenced Majority – Directed By Sufyan & Abdallah Omeish -2006 – Best Film I’ve Seen about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict –
A thought-provoking and powerful documentary film on the current and historical root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unlike any other film ever produced on the conflict — ‘Occupation 101’ presents a comprehensive analysis of the facts and hidden truths surrounding the never ending controversy and dispels many of its long-perceived myths and misconceptions. The film also details life under Israeli military rule, the role of the United States in the conflict, and the major obstacles that stand in the way of a lasting and viable peace. The roots of the conflict are explained through first-hand on-the-ground experiences from leading Middle East scholars, peace activists, journalists, religious leaders and humanitarian workers whose voices have too often been suppressed in American media outlets. – www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDK6IfZK0a0 – www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuI5GP2LJAs – http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/occupation-101 – www.occupation101.com

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land: US Media & the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict – The Media Education Foundation – 2003 – www.mediaed.org
Peace, Propaganda & The Promised Land provides a striking comparison of U.S. and international media coverage of the crisis in the Middle East, zeroing in on how structural distortions in U.S. coverage have reinforced false perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This pivotal documentary exposes how the foreign policy interests of American political elites–oil, and a need to have a secure military base in the region, among others–work in combination with Israeli public relations strategies to exercise a powerful influence over how news from the region is reported. – www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiiQI7QMJ8w

Paying The Price – Killing the Children of Iraq – John Pilger – 2000 – This documentary by John Pilger shows the appalling reality of what happens to a country under economic sanctions. It’s about the punishment of a whole nation—the killing of hundreds of thousands of people, including many young children. They are all the nameless and faceless victims of their own government and of an endless war that Western nations have waged against them: – http://johnpilger.com/videos/paying-the-price-killing-the-children-of-iraq – www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjkcePc2moQ

Guns, Drugs & The CIA – Original Air Date: May 17th, 1988 – On PBS Frontline – Produced & Written by Andrew and Leslie Cockburn – Directed by Leslie Cockburn – Frontline investigation into CIA drug running to fund foreign operations. Introduced by Judy Woodruff. – www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYIC98261-Y

“What I’ve Learned About US Foreign Policy: The War Against The 3rd World” – By Frank Dorrel – www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gMGhrkoncA
A 2-Hour 28-Minute Video Compilation by Frank Dorrel
Featuring the Following 13 Segments:
1. Martin Luther King Jr. (02:55)
2. John Stockwell, Ex-CIA Station Chief (06:14)
3. Coverup: Behind The Iran-Contra Affair (19:34)
4. School of Assassins (13:25)
5. Genocide by Sanctions (12:58)
6. Philip Agee, Former CIA Case Officer (22:08)
7. Amy Goodman, Host of Democracy Now! (5:12)
8. The Panama Deception (22:10)
9. Crisis In The Congo (14:11)
10. Dr. Dahlia Wasfi, Peace Activist (04:32)
11. Jimmy Carter, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (04:35)
12. Ramsey Clark, Former U.S. Attorney General (07:58)
13. S. Brian Willson, Vietnam Veteran for Peace (08:45)

Arsenal of Hypocrisy: The Space Program & The Military Industrial Complex – With Bruce Gagnon & Noam Chomsky – 2004 –
Today the Military Industrial Complex is marching towards world dominance through Space technology on behalf of global corporate interest. To understand how and why the space program will be used to fight all future wars on earth from space, it’s important to understand how the public has been misled about the origins and true purpose of the Space Program. Arsenal of Hypocrisy features Bruce Gagnon: Coordinator: Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, Noam Chomsky and Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell talking about the dangers of moving the arms race into space. The one-hour production features archival footage, Pentagon documents, and clearly outlines the U.S. plan to “control and dominate” space and the Earth below. – www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf7apNEASPk – www.space4peace.org

Beyond Treason – Written & Narrated by Joyce Riley – Directed by William Lewis – 2005 – www.beyondtreason.com
Is the United States knowingly using a dangerous battlefield weapon banned by the United Nations because of its long-term effects on the local inhabitants and the environment? Explore the illegal worldwide sale and use of one of the deadliest weapons ever invented. Beyond the disclosure of black-ops projects spanning the past 6 decades, Beyond Treason also addresses the complex subject of Gulf War Illness. It includes interviews with experts, both civilian and military, who say that the government is hiding the truth from the public and they can prove it. UNMASKING SECRET MILITARY PROJECTS: Chemical & Biological Exposures, Radioactive Poisoning, Mind Control Projects, Experimental Vaccines, Gulf War Illness & Depleted Uranium www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iGsSYEB0bA – www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRG8nUDbVXU – www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViUtjA1ImQc

The Friendship Village – Directed & Produced by Michelle Mason – 2002 – www.cultureunplugged.com/play/8438/The-Friendship-Village – www.cypress-park.m-bient.com/projects/distribution.htm
A timely, inspiring film about our ability to transcend war, ‘The Friendship Village’ tells the story of George Mizo, a war hero-turned-peace activist after losing his entire platoon in an opening salvo of the 1968 Tet Offensive of the Vietnam War. George’s journey to heal the wounds of war leads him back to Vietnam where he befriends the Vietnamese General responsible for killing his entire platoon. Through their friendship, the seeds of the Vietnam Friendship Village Project are sewn: a reconciliation project near Hanoi that treats children with Agent Orange-related illnesses. One man could build a village; one village could change the world.

Breaking The Silence: Truth and Lies in The War On Terror – A Special Report by John Pilger – 2003 – www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/break.html
The documentary investigates George W Bush’s “war on terror”. In “liberated” Afghanistan, America has its military base & pipeline access, while the people have the warlords who are, says one women, “in many ways worse than the Taliban”. In Washington, a series of remarkable interviews includes senior Bush officials & former intelligence officers. A former senior CIA official tells Pilger that the whole issue of weapons of mass destruction was “95 per cent charade”.
https://vimeo.com/17632795 – www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJZxir00xjA – www.johnpilger.com

The War On Democracy – by John Pilger – 2007 – – www.johnpilger.com/videos/the-war-on-democracy – www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/wdem.html – www.johnpilger.com
This film shows how US intervention, overt and covert, has toppled a series of legitimate governments in the Latin American region since the 1950s. The democratically elected Chilean government of Salvador Allende, for example, was ousted by a US backed coup in 1973 and replaced by the military dictatorship of General Pinochet. Guatemala, Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador have all been invaded by the United States. Pilger interviews several ex-CIA agents who took part in secret campaigns against democratic countries in the region. He investigates the School of the Americas in the US state of Georgia, where Pinochet’s torture squads were trained along with tyrants and death squad leaders in Haiti, El Salvador, Brazil and Argentina. The film unearths the real story behind the attempted overthrow of Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez in 2002 and how the people of the barrios of Caracas rose up to force his return to power

CIA Documentary: On Company Business – 1980 – www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyRUlnSayQE
Rare award winning CIA documentary, On Company Business painfully restored from VHS. Inside the CIA: On Company Business” PARTS I, II & III (1980) is a gripping and penetrating look inside the world’s most powerful secret institutionalized conspiracy organization. This rare, long suppressed, award-winning documentary series by the late Great American Allan Francovich is an absolute must for anyone studying the truly loathsome and nauseating activities of the CIA 1950-1980. This Complete Series Includes: PART I: THE HISTORY; PART II: ASSASSINATION; PART III: SUBVERSION. Ex-CIA Spies Phillip Agee and John Stockwell risk all to expose the CIA Frankenstein in full relief, its perfidy and anti-democratic, anti-union methodologies. Understand how elite New York-London financiers were able to successfully subvert the American System by using the CIA as one in a bag of fascist, bloody tools to transform the USA into a tyrannical Empire the Founding Fathers flatly rejected. Don’t expect any stands for human rights or one man one vote from these amoral operatives. See Richard Helms, William Colby, David Atlee Phillips, James Wilcott, Victor Marchetti, Joseph B. Smith, and other key players in a uniquely American tragedy of truly historic proportions. “Inside the CIA: On Company Business, one of the most important American films ever made, is a vital and dramatic examination of the CIA and US foreign policy.

Crisis In The Congo: Uncovering The Truth – By The Friends of the Congo – 2011 – 27 Minutes – www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLV9szEu9Ag – www.congojustice.org
Millions of Congolese have lost their lives in a conflict that the United Nations describes as the deadliest in the world since World War Two. United States allies, Rwanda and Uganda, invaded in 1996 the Congo (then Zaire) and again in 1998, which triggered the enormous loss of lives, systemic sexual violence and rape, and widespread looting of Congo’s spectacular natural wealth. The ongoing conflict, instability, weak institutions, dependency and impoverishment in the Congo are a product of a 125 year tragic experience of enslavement, forced labor, colonial rule, assassinations, dictatorship, wars, external intervention and corrupt rule. Analysts in the film examine whether U.S. corporate and government policies that support strongmen and prioritize profit over the people have contributed to and exacerbated the tragic instability in the heart of Africa. Crisis in the Congo: Uncovering The Truth explores the role that the United States and its allies, Rwanda and Uganda, have played in triggering the greatest humanitarian crisis at the dawn of the 21st century. The film is a short version of a feature length production to be released in the near future. It locates the Congo crisis in a historical, social and political context. It unveils analysis and prescriptions by leading experts, practitioners, activists and intellectuals that are not normally available to the general public. The film is a call to conscience and action.

NO MORE VICTIMS – Videos of 4 War-Injured Iraqi Children NMV Brought to the US for Medical Treatments: www.nomorevictims.org
What American Missiles Did to 9-Year Old Salee Allawi in Iraq – www.nomorevictims.org/?page_id=95
In this video, Salee Allawi & her father tell the harrowing story of the American air strike that blew off her legs while she was playing outside her home in Iraq. Her brother & best friend were killed.

Nora, A 5-Year Old Iraqi Girl: Who Was Shot in the Head by a US Sniper – www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft49-zlQ1V4 – www.nomorevictims.org/children-2/noora
As her father writes, “On October 23, 2006 at 4:00 in the afternoon, American snipers positioned on a rooftop in my neighborhood started firing toward my car. My daughter Nora, a five-year-old child, was hit in the head. Since 2003 No More Victims has secured treatment for children injured by US forces.

Abdul Hakeem’s Story – Narrated by Peter Coyote – www.nomorevictims.org/?page_id=107 – On April 9, 2004 at 11:00 PM, during the First Siege of Fallujah, Abdul Hakeem & his family were asleep at home when mortar rounds fired by US forces rained down on their home, destroying one side of his face. His mother suffered abdominal & chest injuries & has undergone 5 major operations. His older brother & sister were injured and his unborn sister killed. US forces did not permit ambulances to transport civilian casualties to the hospital. In fact, they fired on ambulances, one of many violations of international law committed by US forces in the April assault. A neighbor volunteered to take the family to the hospital, where doctors assessed Hakeem’s chances of survival at five percent. They laid his limp body aside & treated other civilian casualties whose chances of survival appeared higher.

Agustin Aguayo: A Man of Conscience – A Short Film by Peter Dudar & Sally Marr – www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAFH6QGPxQk
Iraq War Veteran Agustin Aguayo served his country for four years in the Army but was repeatedly denied Conscientious Objector status. His Press Conference never made the NEWS!

Jesus…A Soldier Without A Country – A Short Film by Peter Dudar & Sally Marr – www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYeNyJFJOf4
Fernando Suarez, whose only son Jesus was the first Marine from Mexico to be killed in the Iraq War, marches for Peace from Tijuana to San Francisco.