"Wisdom begins with calling a thing by its proper name."

"Wisdom begins with calling a thing by its proper name."
- Ancient Chinese Proverb

Friday, April 16, 2010

Invisible Empire: Ignore it at Your Children's Peril
by Regan Straley

Yesterday, April 15, Tax Day here in the U.S.A., saw the release of "Invisible Empire: A New World Order Defined," the latest film by young cinematographer Jason Bermas, who was responsible for "Fabled Enemies" and what is perhaps the most virally successful documentary in YouTube history, "Loose Change." That film explored the myriad, and to this day, unanswered questions surrounding the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. "Invisible Empire" delves even deeper, sifting through mountains of official and mainstream media sources to support the possibility that the U.S. and the nations of the European Union are really being run by a shadow government consisting of an exclusive core network of financial, corporate, military, and intelligence elite.

What's more, the film contends that the elite-owned corporate media--represented by major TV news and entertainment outlets, leading "independent" newspapers like The New York Times and Washington Post, and the thousands of daily hometown rags owned by a handful of corporate chains--has for decades been promoting a vapid celebrity- and sports-obsessed culture in order to distract us from this fact. In addition, the mass media has used both its journalistic and entertainment output to foster the public's incremental acceptance of a uniform, regimented, global, and permanent war-based economy. That all sounds like a mouthful, and the prospect of having to absorb such a colossal thesis makes "American Idol" seem even more puzzlingly attractive as an alternative. Nevertheless, whether you agree with him or not, Bermas actually manages to corral this sprawling hypothesis into a coherent message that should be comprehensible to anyone who regards themselves as
at least as smart as a fifth-grader.

[Before I go any further, I just stepped outside to partake in one of my vices, and saw nine doe run across my backyard, cross the road, line up in single file, and, one by one, leap over a fence and into the woods. Cool, and real. Unlike the faces and noises on my TV.]

"Invisible Empire" is available for purchase on a high-quality DVD containing 30 minutes of additional material, but can be viewed for now in six lower-quality YouTube segments. The first two parts amount to a primer on the history of the New World Order, the world events that can be attributed to it, and the financial, corporate, and government elite who have been pushing for it since before World War I.

While these introductory segments do confirm the existence of the New World Order in the actual words of those who fund and philosophize for it as an alternative to national sovereignty, they remain rather light on empirical data and seem to be mainly devoted to attracting and holding the interest of the average uninitiated viewer. Creaky old shadow government watchers like me, who cut their teeth on the Iran-Contra affair, will find them somewhat redundant and boring. Those who are determined not to believe any of it before even watching the documentary will use the skin-deep projections of the first two parts as an excuse to abort the viewing experience and discredit the entire film among family, friends, and coworkers.

That would be a shame. Because it's in Part 3 that Bermas suddenly, even jarringly, opens up the turbos, presenting his audience with media clip after media clip of NWO proponents exposing their own ignoble intentions, and official document after official document confirming that the adoption of their dubious goals is well underway in America and throughout the entire geopolitical arena. And whatever else you think of Bermas's ideas, you cannot accuse him of an ideological or political motivation. This film is equally damning of both our Democratic and Republican leadership, and draws no distinction between what the media likes to call "liberals" and "conservatives." Apart from their divisive and manipulative rhetoric, there are no substantial differences in the policies they ultimately pursue.

As a whole, "Invisible Empire" does a fairly effective job of supporting its central premise: what most of us think we know about how the world operates is a pathetic and suicidal fantasy, and that those institutions that publicly present themselves as "our government" are not at all what we've been led to believe. So, love it, hate it. Let it motivate you to further research, or dismiss it as wacky conspiracy theorism. If you choose, let it drive you faster and further into the protective arms of "American Idol." But ignore it at your own, your children's, and their children's risk.