A DVD of one guy sitting in a chair and talking for 53 minutes isn’t what most people would call entertainment. But the Speaking Freely series, inaugurated by an interview with author/activist John Perkins, is an enlightening exercise in the power of the medium.
While radio and cable news are the refuge of conservatives, film and newspapers (longer, more revealing sources) are where progressive ideas thrive. With Speaking Freely, Perkins, the author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman and The Secret History of the American Empire, delivers a dissertation on the state of the global corporate empire that would make even the most liberal American cringe.
Of course, shocking truths make the Speaking Freely DVD series a revolutionary change of pace from even the Dan Rather/Ted Koppel hour-longs that exist on cable TV. Featuring interviews with authors mostly speaking on the global economy, Speaking Freely combines expert knowledge with a social consciousness that is regularly absent from news today.
Perkins, in fact, is able to easily connect the problems that are at the forefront of the American consciousness (illegal immigration, terrorism, and the Iraq War) to the unstable, greedy global corporatocracy. He establishes the World Bank as a major arm in keeping developing countries in debt to the world’s major powers, while providing major corporations with profits from infrastructure projects.
Of course, watching Michael Moore’s Sicko and Perkins in Speaking Freely so close together also makes it easy to see the connection to debt (health care and education for individual Americans and infrastructure for developing countries) and the creation of a slave class.
I know right now most people will be inclined to discredit or disregard the claims, but consider the rhetoric the major media uses in describing democratically elected South American presidents like Hugo Chavez or Evo Morales. As Perkins describes them, such leaders are only there to take back the resources of their countrymen, making them enemies of the corporatocracy and thus “dictators” in the media.
Most leaders cave to the bribes of “economic hit men” (paid professionals who extort profits through international aid packages and development loans). If that doesn’t work, they become enemies who are set up for assassination or overthrow. If that doesn’t work, well, you know what happened in Iraq.
On the DVD, Perkins adds depth to the topics I mention here and he does it articulately and logically. For anyone looking for news that’s not fit to print, Speaking Freely volume one is a great place to start investigating.
