Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past eight years, it’s hard to ignore the dismal human rights record of George W. Bush. Where can one begin when you reflect on the human rights abuses, violations of international agreements and government-sanctified torture policies of the Bush Administration? By intimately exploring the stories attached to the infamous photos from Abu Ghraib, our film, Standard Operating Procedure, helped to give us a clearer understanding of the prison which cemented our country’s anti-human rights record and image to the world. Human rights were systematically violated and our global leadership was marginalized because of our policies during the past eight years.

However, since the election, the tide has turned and things are finally looking brighter. President-elect Obama has already indicated a desire to reshape our human rights policies, including closing Guantanamo.

However, for many of the policies changes to occur, the new president and Congress needs to hear from citizens like you and me.  Human Rights First is has made the following a priority for the Obama Administration : the closure of Guantanamo, protection for Iraqi refugees, stop the flow of arms to Darfur and end torture of prisoners in US custody.  Help to make these important goals a reality by signing their letter which will be published in newspapers worldwide.  We voted against torture on November 4th. Let’s help to show the world that we can help to change our policies and have our country return to being the visionary beacon for human rights that we once were. takepart today to sign Human Rights First’s letter.

(photo by habacuc_1988)

The race for the Best Documentary Oscar just got a bit more official as the shortlist of nominees was released.  The lucky (and well made) docs are:

“At the Death House Door“
“The Betrayal“ (Nerakhoon)
“Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh“
“Encounters at the End of the World“
“Fuel“
“The Garden“
“Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts“
“I.O.U.S.A.“
“In a Dream“
“Made in America“
“Man on Wire“
“Pray the Devil Back to Hell“
“Standard Operating Procedure“
“They Killed Sister Dorothy“
“Trouble the Water“

My personal favorites of the bunch (I’ve admittedly only seen 4) are Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World and Errol Morris’ Standard Operating Procedure.

Click on any of the titles above to learn more about the films and be sure to takepart with TakePart’s social action for Standard Operating Procedure because not only is it an awesome doc, it also encourages you to get involved and make the world a better place!

If you weren’t already feeling good about President-Elect Barack Obama, the below video should change that.  If you were already feeling good about President-Elect Barack Obama than the video below should make you happier.

In the weeks before the election the economy became the main focus but it’s important to remember what else an Obama presidency could and should mean when it comes to torture, genocide, poverty and war:

takepart with Human Rights First and remember that we won the vote and now we have to make that change mean something!

And takepart with our social action for Standard Operating Procedure and learn how you can fight torture

Now bear with me, because this is a strange notion but the courts are holding the government accountable.   Fascinating, right? The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has stated that the US cannot conceal photos that feature abusive treatment of detainees and prisoners by US soldiers that are working in Iraq and Afghanistan. Previously the US claimed they needed to conceal photos because they feared enemies might hurt someone (did the US forget we’re in the middle of a war? and the goal of our enemies is usually to hurt someone? it doesn’t have anything to do with a photo, the enemy knows what we’re doing to them)

But I digress, the court agreed with a 2006 decision and ordered the pictures be released to the ACLU as the threat of the photos is unspecific:

The Freedom of Information Act allows restrictions when images could reasonably be expected to endanger someone’s life or safety, but the appeals court said that exemption was meant for instances where threats were specific.

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What I loved most about Errol Morris’ Standard Operating Procedure was that it was in many ways a “woman’s picture.” That is, the women, and their experience in the military, albeit in some very specific circumstances, was at the heart of the film. Their villianization, from Janis Karpinski to Lynndie England, from high rank to low, was one of the major crimes of Abu Ghraib and of course almost no one reported on it.

It was with little surprise then that I sat down to read Paul Rieckhoff’s piece in the Huffington Post entitled Sexual Assault and the Military: When Will the Pentagon Take Action?.

Rieckhoff, founder of IAVA (Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans of America), writes:

Almost one-third of women veterans say they were sexually assaulted while in the military. (In the general population, one out of every six American women has been a victim of a sexual assault.) Already, 15 percent of female Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who have gone to the VA for care have screened positive for Military Sexual Trauma. But even these troubling figures may not be telling the whole story; experts estimate that half of all sexual assaults go unreported. [HuffingtonPost]

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When you’re a blogger you have a certain amount of freedom from bosses looking over your shoulder and criticizing your work, which is nice. The flip side to that is that the entire world can read your work and criticize you if they so desire. Comments are part of a bloggers life, both the nice ones and the really mean ones. Sometimes you reply to the comments - I try to respond to the nice ones and the ones that are critical but not mean (I don’t respond to the mean) when I can - but usually it’s just a sentence or two to let the reader know I appreciated their taking the time to read my piece.

With that in mind, readers should much appreciate Errol Morris‘ tenacity in responding to comments he received for a blog post he wrote the use of reenactments in his films.

His last blog post on his NYTimes blog Zoom, Cartesian Blogging, Part Two, is all about answering questions and concerns his readers had about his original posts. His response to an inquiry about his use of Burger King in the The Thin Blue Line is nothing short of amazing.

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It’s almost X-Files time again - the new trailer is out!

I have always been a big X-Files fan, I even went to the first the screening on opening day of the first movie back in high school. It may not be the most overt show about social action - but one thing is for sure, The X-Files (while being fun, creepy and entertaining) does encourage folks to look beyond the obvious and to seek out the truth. And more often then not, the first step in political action is to look past what’s in front of you to see the reality of a situation. So watch the new trailer below:

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The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Mother’s Day is this Sunday (don’t forget!), so be sure to take a look at some of the great posts we’ve put together in celebration of moms everywhere! Check out some of our most popular stories of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites!

Katie Halper:

Top 10 Mother’s Day E-Cards

Hillary Andrews Will Not Lick Bob Stokes’ Swizzle Stick

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Nicole Hughes:

Top 10 Green Gift Wrap Ideas For Mothers Day

Peak Oil Strip Tease

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Andy Kondrat:

Tornado Devestated Town Rebuilds As Green Model Community

Radiohead Attempts An Eco-Friendly World Tour

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Jon Popham:

Nepalese Art Photography: Rubin Museum of Art

America’s First Wind-Powered City

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Giulia Rozzi:

Women For Women International Celebrates Mothers Day

Even More on the Kentucky Derby

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Gina Telaroli:

Video Blog: The Week In Social Action

The War Now Tomorrow and Forever

Tom Engelhardt has a great piece up on his site TomDisptach in which he examines what “the present American offensive in Baghdad’s vast Shiite slum, Sadr City, tells us about America’s no-exit future wars.” Engelhardt, author of The End of Victory Culture, begins his essay,
The Last War and the Next One : Descending into Madness in Iraq — and Beyond with a rather simple fact and follows it with the all too sad facts:

The last war won’t end, but in the Pentagon they’re already arguing about the next one.

Let’s start with that “last war” and see if we can get things straight. Just over five years ago, American troops entered Baghdad in battle mode, felling the Sunni-dominated government of dictator Saddam Hussein and declaring Iraq “liberated.” In the wake of the city’s fall, after widespread looting, the new American administrators dismantled the remains of Saddam’s government in its hollowed out, trashed ministries; disassembled the Sunni-dominated Baathist Party which had ruled Iraq since the 1960s, sending its members home with news that there was no coming back; dismantled Saddam’s 400,000 man army; and began to denationalize the economy. Soon, an insurgency of outraged Sunnis was raging against the American occupation.

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Last week, after hearing that Errol Morris paid some of the subjects in his new documentary Standard Operating Procedure, The New York Times published an article about the integrity of paying interview subjects in documentary film. Even though the article does explore the complexity of the issue, it also seems to me that the article is fairly against Mr. Morris and his film - the last paragraph and line of the article is very telling:

My own position, he added, is that it shouldn’t be done.(David Paletz) [New York Times]

This article angered me quite a bit. Documentary subjects have been paid for years, in fact I was at an interview with Michael Apted 2 years ago where he admitted that he paid the folks in his 7-Up series. It was the same exact situation as the interview where Morris freely spoke of paying his subjects, the difference being that nobody in the press picked up the story. To decide to publish a story like this in direct connection to a film (instead of as a general study on the topic) immediately starts to discredit the film - and when you’re dealing with a controversial film and something that is a commonplace practice of documentary filmmaking, I can’t help but find the article to be irresponsible.

But enough of me, even though I’m being objective, I obviously write for the company that has helped to release SOP - so I’ll share some from other folks in the blogosphere:

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