The Films That Converted Me to Dr Paul [w/links to each]

The Films That Converted Me to Dr Paul
 
A brief list of documentary films that fundamentally changed me, with links to where you can watch them in their entirety.  
Truly great documentaries require no narration to guide the viewer's opinion. No music to evoke emotion. A truly great documentary overwhelms its viewers by the sheer weight of its footage.  
So, without further adieu, here they are:   

Why We Fight (2005)
The one that started it all. When I was introduce to Dr Paul in 2007 I liked what I was hearing, but as a Savage fan, I had trouble buying his foreign policy. Why We Fight changed all that. I suddenly understood that I suffered from a deep deficit of knowledge and it sparked a glut of studying that hasn't ended since. The most thorough assessment of the military-industrial complex and its impact on American society & the world, ever put on film. It immediately grips you with Eisenhower's famous farewell speech and holds you throughout.  

Hearts & Minds (1974)
An examination of the Vietnam War produced in 1974, as the war was drawing to a close and Americans were struggling over what the war was ever about. So powerful it won the Oscar for Best Documentary in 1975, despite the intense controversy it incited. In one of its most shocking scenes, General Westmoreland states in interview, that "the Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient..." The director juxtaposes this statement with a scene from a funeral of a vietnamese soldier and his grieving family - his mother, sobbing uncontrollably, has to be restrained from climbing into the grave with the coffin. Perspectives of all parties are displayed. I'm not a crier but teared up more than once. You can never look at war the same again once viewed. It remains the most powerful film I've ever seen.

Bombies (2002)
Between 1964 and 1973, the United States conducted a secret air war, dropping over 2 million tons of bombs, and making tiny Laos the most heavily bombed country in history. Around 70 million bomblets (from cluster bombs) remain undetonated and lie in the ground, in trees, and bushes throughout the country. To this day, they continue to kill hundreds of Laotians every year. This is a history of that war, and how it continues to extiguish lives to this day.

Waco: The Rules of Engagement (1997)
A shocking exposé of the tragic series of events that unfolded outside Waco, Texas that killed four federal agents and 76 men, women, and children of the Branch Davidian religious sect in 1993. One of the early films in my Ron Paul awakening and it's powerful, revealing how federal authorities, and finally, even Delta Force, provoked an unnecessary situation that spiraled out of control. Expert analysts demostrate how Davidians indeed did not set fire to their own building as reported by the Clinton administration and that special forces even machine gunned Davidians trying to escape the inferno. The film presents such an overwhelming case that it received an Oscar nomination in 1997.

Radio Bikini (1988)
A fantastic documentary of America's Cold War nuclear testing, but particularly, its forced evacuation of the native population of Bikini Island so it could be blown up by a hydrogen bomb. It's a chilling film on this whole era and its ramifications, both on American society and the entire world. Again, has no fluffy music, no narration, just strict footage with a few interviews. It's the kind of film thatchanges you and the way you look at the world - like the others I've posted here.

The Atomic Cafe (1982)
At times horrifying and others a darkly comical look at the dawn of the era of nuclear warfare. It collects archival footage from the 40s, 50s, and early 60s of everything from newsreels to advertising, to US Military training films to look at the way our culture and world changed. The footage that got me right off was the bombs dropped on Japan and the images of burned children, playgrounds, schools, old women, and what a burned shadow in the pavement looks like. Seldom have we seen such a graphic confrontation of the immense suffering the bombs caused hundreds of thousands of innocent lives - how war is nothing but mass murder of innocents who have nothing to do with the squables of the elites who start them.  


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