Wednesday, February 22 at 7:30 pm

The Shock Doctrine

by Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross

This shocking film is the Directors’ interpretation of Naomi Klein‘s ground-breaking book, The Shock Doctrine.  The film focuses on Milton Friedman‘s philosophy of capitalism and shows how insidious it is.  With the strategies of war, economic upheaval, and the overthrow of foreign governments, the U.S. molds the rest of the world in its image.  And the rest of the world is beginning to look a lot like the predatory underhanded nations that the U.S. and Britain have become.  The film argues that big corporations in search of new markets benefit when foreign governments import the neoliberal economic system, often as a result of pressure from the U.S., — and this often has catastrophic consequences for ordinary people.  It contends that political leaders have turned to brutality and repression to crush protests against their ideologically inspired programmes of privatization, deregulation, and tax cuts.  This film is based on Naomi Klein’s breakthrough historical research and four years of her on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones.  It vividly shows how disaster capitalism — the rapid-fire corporate re-engineering of societies still reeling from shock — did not begin with September 11, 2001.  The film traces the origins of disaster capitalism back fifty years to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman.  He and his Chicago school of economics produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today, where lagging behind the times and being out of sync with ordinary people is de rigueur.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/shock-doctrine/

To learn more about Film Series held

at Humanist Hall

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Sunday Meeting

Sunday, February 5 at 10:30 am

Darwinism and Spirituality

Presented by Sterling Bunnell

Darwin Day, the anniversary of Darwin’s birthday in 1809, is coming up February 12.  In honor of Darwin Day, Sterling’s talk this morning will be about Darwinism and spirituality.  Sterling will break out of the myopic bonds that usually hamper discussions on this subject.

All of Sterling’s talks manifest his brilliant command of both abstract explanations and historical examples — both theory and fact — and they exhibit the amazing broad scope of his mind, encompassing so many fields: the hard and soft sciences and earth and biological sciences, spirituality, psychology, philosophy, history, at alia. Sterling is a rare generalist, a philosopher, freely sharing his thoughts in our world of guarded specialists. Hear Sterling talk, participate in the group discussion, and get the education you might have missed in the course of your life!

Our Sunday talks are accompanied by optional pot luck refreshments. Please feel free to bring scrumptious food, organic and local, suitable for brunch. Our doors open at 10:00 am and talks begin at 10:30 am.

by

Joel Nakamura

To learn more about Sunday Programs held

at Humanist Hall

click here

Wednesday, February 29 at 7:30 pm

Flamingos

An outlaw romance noir

by Antero Alli

~~ appearing in person

!WORLD PREMIER!    !WORLD PREMIER!

The Film

Twin sisters, Beatrice and Zoe, are in love with Ray, a philosopher and bank robber driven by visions of the end the world.  Though Beatrice and Ray are married, Ray elopes with free-spirited Zoe and hides out in a motel after a bank heist.  Meanwhile, Beatrice files for divorce as two enigmatic entities from the Bardo interzones take interest in their fates.  This heady and funny film is a cocktail chaser of crime, metaphysics, and obsessive passion.

The Filmmaker

Antero Alli is a Finnish-born, local underground filmmaker with ten feature fiction full-length movies and numerous shorts to his credit.  He personally screens his films in rare, limited runs — usually in west coast art houses (“I don’t have a mainstream bone in my body”).  Though his films have not yet seen widespread theatrical release, they continue to garner high critical praise in, for example, the renegade film review website, “filmthreat.com,” which is far out on the sharpest cutting edge of the film community.  Antero is the founder/director of ParaTheatrical ReSearch (since 1977), a center for group paratheatre work in Berkeley, California, where he resides with his wife, the singer/composer Sylvi Alli.

the website:

http://verticalpool.com/flamingos.html

an excerpt:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zbPnrkm9NQ

$10 Donation Requested

Please DO make a meaningful contribution this evening

so that this world premier screening of the film

can offset production costs that went into making it!

To learn more about Film Series held

at Humanist Hall

click here

Wednesday, February 22 at 7:30 pm

The End of Poverty?

by Philippe Diaz

This phenomenal documentary is breathtaking to watch, beautifully photographed with eloquent speakers — academics, activists, and poor workers.  It may be the best exposition on economics in film.  Everyone should see it to understand the history and intention behind our current economic debacle.  The film turns inside out the global economic system, capitalism — tracing its roots 500 years back and following it up to the present — as one that causes, enables, and preserves poverty.  Global poverty does not just happen.  It began with military conquest, slavery, and colonization that resulted in the seizure of land, minerals, and forced labor.  Today, the problem persists because of unfair debt, trade, and tax policies — in other words, wealthy countries taking advantage of poor, developing countries.  The film explains how today’s financial crisis is a direct consequence of these unchallenged policies that have lasted centuries.  Consider that 20% of the planet’s population uses 80% of its resources and consumes 30% more than the planet can regenerate.  At this rate, to maintain our lifestyle means more and more people will sink below the poverty line. 

The film should be understood in the context of dealing with two distinct historical periods:  European colonialism and today’s repackaged form of neocolonialism in the guise of a “neoliberal” model based on so-called “free market” principles.  The European empires were built on the riches stolen from the colonies and on cheap or fee labor provided by the slave.  In Kenya, at the end of colonial times, the white 1% owned about 50% of the arable land.  One of the legacies of colonialism has been that the poor countries of the third world export raw materials and the countries of Europe and North America produce and export finished products.  This stems from a practice that was developed long ago and the intention was that the countries of the Third World would remain backwards and dependent and would never be able to develop.  In the post World War II period, American economists conceived the “neoliberal” economic model which forced all economies to let the market govern everything.  This, our chosen economic model has created a global situation in which today less than 25 percent of the world’s population uses more than 80 percent of the planet’s resources while creating 70 percent of its pollution.  Can we really end poverty within our current economic system?  Think again.

http://www.theendofpoverty.com/

To learn more about Film Series held

at Humanist Hall

click here

Wednesday, February 15 at 7:30 pm

Chinatown

by Ronja Yu

The Chinese global machine was invited to revitalize the ailing Swedish town of Kalmar.  The town’s mayor invited a Chinese company to build a trade center and 300 homes there.  So the Chinese corporation Fanerdun Group invested millions in Kalmar, Sweden.  The hub of this venture is the construction of the Sweden China Commodity Wholesale Market, an international trade center with an exhibition hall with premises for 1100 companies.  The center is expected to generate the interest of wholesale companies all over Europe who will be sending their representatives to Kalmar to view and purchase Chinese products.  There will also be the housing promised in connection with the trade center as well as a hotel.

But all does not go according to plan.  In fact, the project goes disastrously wrong, with everyone losing out.  An amusing and deeply relevant film, which shows the fault lines that emerge when the tigers of the developing world try to expand into Europe. 

http://www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=1377

To learn more about Film Series held

at Humanist Hall

click here

Wednesday, February 8 at 7:30 pm

Capitalism Hits the Fan

by Richard Wolff

Richard Wolff breaks down the root causes of today’s economic crisis in the clearest terms that everyone can understand  He shows how the crisis has been decades in the making and in fact reflects seismic failures within the structures of American-style capitalism itself.  He traces the source of the economic crisis to the 1970s when wages began to stagnate and American workers were forced into a dysfunctional spiral of borrowing and debt that ultimately exploded in the mortgage meltdown.  By placing the crisis within this larger historical and systemic frame, Richard argues convincingly that the proposed government bailouts, stimulus packages, and calls for increased market regulation will not be enough to address the real causes of the crisis, in the end suggesting that far more fundamental change will be necessary to avoid future catastrophes.

Richard Wolff is not only a brilliant expositor of our country’s economic reality but he has a great sense of humor and viewers will be enlightened, informed, and amused about what global market capitalism has brought to the world — who has benefited and who has gotten hurt.  You will see why the game of growth and debt is over and will not be cured by a stimulus to create one more bubble that will get us back to the same economy that produced the economic meltdown.  He is concise in summarizing the end of capitalism world wide.  It cannot sustain itself anymore.  There is no way out other than to restructure!  You can’t buy your way out;  you can’t borrow your way out;  you cannot stimulate your way out.  The problem is unsolvable in its current structure.  The only way to solve it is to change the structure.  Corporate capitalism has done this to itself.  We have benefited as a nation from fortunate events where for three decades we were the world’s producer.  No more.  The rest of the world has caught up after WWII destroyed their economies and means of production.  The entire world is now in for a lingering depression if we do not change the structure of our economy.  And if certain unpredictable events happen, it could be catastrophic for humanity!

http://www.capitalismhitsthefan.com/

To learn more about Film Series held

at Humanist Hall

click here

Wednesday, February 1 at 7:30 pm

Inside Job

by Charles Ferguson

This priceless documentary exposes the shocking truth behind the economic crisis of 2008.  The global financial meltdown, at a cost of $20 trillion, resulted in 30 million people losing their jobs, their homes, and/or their savings.  The film traces the rise of the rogue financial industry and unveils the corrosive relationships which have corrupted politics, regulation, and academia.  It presents a devastating expose of the staggering Wall Street swindle that caused the economic meltdown of 2008.

The interview with Martin Feldstein brought back to mind the hoopla of his appointment as chief economic adviser to President Reagan.  The movie points out that Feldstein initiated the financial deregulation follies that led to the looting of the Savings and Loans and culminated with the passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, the lead sponsor of which was Senator Phil Gramm.  It was truly depressing to see how this massive swindle was pulled off through the collusion of the economic advisers, politicians, high-flown professors of economics with scandalous and highly unethical conflicts-of-interest, investment banks, and ratings agencies.  The elements leading to the housing bubble and the financial meltdown were deregulation of the banking industry, securitization of the mortgage industry through the creation of mortgage derivatives, excessive bank leverage creating excessive risk, and failure of the bond rating houses to accurately assess the risk brought about by securitization of subprime mortgages.  At the end of the film, Robert Gnaizda lists various groups that should be prosecuted.  When asked why this has not been done, he answered: “It’s a Wall Street government!”

http://www.sonyclassics.com/insidejob/

To learn more about Film Series held

at Humanist Hall

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Thursday, January 19 at 6:30 pm

Community Democracy Forum

with Occupy Oakland

Presented by Shawn McDougal

It’s time for us progressives to take our work to the next level — from agitation and defense to shifting the terrain of struggle altogether.  We’re looking for people interested in participatory democracy and building an effective, broad, high-impact movement for progressive change.  Let’s create a social life beyond the rat-race competition for scarce resources;  a broadly-shared sense of our interdependence, based on concrete experience and not just good intentions;  synergy between the hard-won wisdom of elders and the bold ideas of youth;  community that emerges from dialog across differences rather than static assumptions about “us vs. them;”   a politics of participation, interaction, and conversation, instead of the elite-driven politics of personality, performance, and spectacle;  an informed and vigilant public that will hold leaders accountable;  and a working model of collective power  emphasizing the regular actions of many over the extraordinary actions of a few.

Community forums, i.e., neighborhood assemblies, would not merely make recommendations to officials but they would actually make fundamental decisions.  They would decide the city budget:  what percentage of it should go to police, to youth programs, parks, transit, and so on.  How much of it do we provide for new programs;  which progams do we phase out?  Should we change our revenue stream?  And so on.  We would have strong participatory democracy  at the local level.  The neighborhood assemblies could be a scalable model for deepening democracy at the county, state, and national level.  Bringing people together to discuss, debate, and decide on concrete issues that affect our lives — this is exactly the kind of culture shift our society needs.

Tuesday, February 7 at 7:30 pm

Earth Awareness

and Climate Change Reality

for Science Fans

Presented by the Fellowship of Humanity

Our meeting this evening will feature a film of a talk by Alder Stone. It is the introduction to his Story of Gaia, an amazingly clear and basic, yet sophisticated exposition on the science of Gaia and the climate change that’s upon us.  Alder Stone is able to facilitate our learning the fundamentals of systems science and geophysiology by way of his clear exposition and memorable pictures and graphs — which everyone can understand.  Over time, in future meetings, we will show films of other filmmakers about climate change and we will show films about other authors in the field of Gaia science.  You don’t have to be a scientist to love science! All you need to understand the Earth in this new systems science way is to have enthusiasm for science!

Our meetings have three goals:

1) To understand the nature of the living Earth, and, in general, gain a deeper, intuitive, and awe-inspiring understanding for how nature works, including the nature of Life itself. This is not an intellectual exercise, but relevant to the survival of humankind.

2) To understand the abrupt, chaotic, extreme, and unstoppable 1-in-50-million-year climate-change event that has begun and will force a significant revision of civilization as we have known it no later than mid-century.

3) To discuss how we integrate our awareness of Earth and climate change reality into our own lives; to support one another around sacrifices we make and hardships we endure for the sake of our awareness; and to celebrate our successes in harmonizing with the Earth.

$5 donation

http://alderstone3.com/?p=1847

To learn more about Sunday Programs held

at Humanist Hall

click here

Sunday Meeting

Sunday, January 1 at 10:30 am

How Might We Save Knowledge and Culture

Over the Forthcoming Centuries?

Presented by Sterling Bunnell

Sterling’s talk this morning will be about how to save knowledge and culture over the forthcoming centuries when we and they may be threatened with extinction?

All of Sterling’s talks manifest his brilliant command of both abstract explanations and historical examples — both theory and fact — and they exhibit the amazing broad scope of his mind, encompassing so many fields: the hard and soft sciences and earth and biological sciences, spirituality, psychology, philosophy, history, at alia. Sterling is a rare generalist, a philosopher, freely sharing his thoughts in our world of guarded specialists. Hear Sterling talk, participate in the group discussion, and get the education you might have missed in the course of your life!

Our Sunday talks are accompanied by optional pot luck refreshments. Please feel free to bring scrumptious food, organic and local, suitable for brunch. Our doors open at 10:00 am and talks begin at 10:30 am.

by

Joel Nakamura

To learn more about Sunday Programs held

at Humanist Hall

click here