Shock Jocks: Hate Speech and Talk Radio
by Rory O'Connor with Aaron Cutler

Written by veteran media critic and Emmy winner Rory O'Connor, Shock Jocks features unsparing profiles of the ten worst conservative radio talkers in America, including Michael Savage, Bill O' Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Don Imus and the rest. Shock Jocks highlights the politicized and often factually challenged world of talk radio that dominates a sizable portion of America's airwaves, and shows how misogyny, racism, and utter contempt for other human beings is disguised as “free speech”. This scathing account also details the progressive alternatives fighting for airtime, and what you can do to help. For more info, visit the Shock Jocks page.

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MANDELA FIVE PACK
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NELSON MANDELA: FREE AT LAST, 1990
This 80 minute documentary is the definitive primer on Nelson Mandela's struggle against Apartheid, with rare footage, interviews with principal players, and the first speech Mandela gave upon his release from prison. PBS national broadcast and JCI home video release.
DVD: $30.00

MANDELA IN AMERICA, 1990
90 minute documentary of Nelson Mandela's triumphant visit to the United States, including memorable public and private moments of his trip from Yankee Stadium to the White House. Released on home video by Time Warner. National Association of Black Journalists Award for Best Documentary, 1991; CEBA Award for Pioneering Efforts, 1991.
DVD: $30.00

COUNTDOWN TO FREEDOM: TEN DAYS THAT CHANGED SOUTH AFRICA, 1994
Narrated by James Earl Jones, this 90 minute independent documentary chronicles the behind the scenes rebirth of a nation and Nelson Mandela's triumph in South Africa's first free elections. Released on home video.
DVD: $30.00

PRISONERS OF HOPE, 1995
One hour documentary about the return of 1250 former political prisoners to the notorious Robben Island prison in South Africa -- led by President Nelson Mandela.
DVD: $30.00

A HERO FOR ALL: NELSON MANDELA'S FAREWELL, 1999
Independent one hour documentary broadcast on M-NET in South Africa which chronicles Nelson Mandela's 1998 farewell tour through the United States and Canada before he stepped down as President.
DVD: $30.00

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RARE Keith Haring original poster prints: FREE SOUTH AFRICA!

A four-foot by four-foot black, white and red original collectible poster. This special commemorative item is yours free as a premium for a tax-deductible donation of $100 or more to The Global Center.

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Poster: $100.00

Nkosi: A Voice of Africa's Aids Orphans, 2001

This documentary presents a poignant tribute to the life and work of Nkosi Johnson -- one of the world's youngest AIDS advocates. Orphaned by AIDS in South Africa, twelve year old Nkosi's potent advocacy for tens of millions of other AIDS affected children put a human face on the crisis and brought attention to this under-examined aspect of the AIDS pandemic in Africa.

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DVD: $30.00

The Hole in the Wall
Directed by Rory O'Connor & Gil Rossellini

When Indian researcher Sugata Mitra embedded a high-speed computer in a wall separating his firm's New Delhi headquarters from an adjacent slum, he discovered that slum children quickly taught themselves how to surf the net, read the news, and download games and music. Mitra then replicated the experiment in other locations. Each time the results were similar: within hours, and without instruction, the children began browsing the Internet.

Can children -- given only access and opportunity -- really teach themselves the rudiments of computer literacy with no instruction? "The Hole in the Wall" experiment, and the documentary film that chronicles it, show the answer to be a "Yes!" Mitra estimates that, given access to one hundred thousand computers, one hundred million Indian children could teach themselves computer literacy within five years.

The film concludes by noting that the spread of information technology is changing societies around the world, and the implications of Mitra's experiment are profound -- particularly for poor people.

Running Time: 58:30.

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DVD: $30.00

9/11 Press For Truth

Following the attacks of September 11th, a small group of grieving families waged a tenacious battle against those who sought to bury the truth about the event—including, to their amazement, President Bush. In ‘9/11 PRESS FOR TRUTH’, six of them, including three of the famous “Jersey Girls”, tell for the first time the powerful story of how they took on the greatest powers in Washington—and won!—compelling an investigation, only to subsequently watch the 9/11 Commission fail in answering most of their questions.

Adapting Paul Thompson’s definitive Complete 9/11 Timeline (published by HarperCollins as ‘The Terror Timeline’), the filmmakers collaborate with documentary veterans Globalvision (‘WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception’, ‘Beyond JFK’) to stitch together rare overlooked news clips, buried stories, and government press conferences, revealing a pattern of official lies, deception and spin. As a result, a very different picture of 9/11 emerges, one that raises new and more pressing questions.

What actions were taken by top government officials who received dozens of specific warnings before the attack? Was Osama Bin Laden and his top al Qaeda leadership allowed to escape U.S. forces in Afghanistan? And what has been the reason for the deliberate obscuring of evidence for state sponsorship? Perhaps the most important one of all: Why, five years later, are so many of the families’ questions still unanswered?

It was only due to pressure from the 9/11 families, led by a particular twelve calling themselves the Family Steering Committee, that, fourteen months after the attacks, the first hearing finally began. These twelve remained active in monitoring the Commission’s investigation, providing a list of hundreds of specific, well-researched questions to the Commissioners. In the end, the Final Report failed to answer seventy percent of them.

Includes the 84 min. film, trailer, and special Congressional testimonies by the “Jersey Girls” and Paul Thompson.

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DVD: $30.00

We Are Family, 2002

Produced after 9/11 as a call for global understanding and tolerance featuring 200 prominent show business personalities for Tommy Boy Records and the We Are Family Foundation. The film was shown at the Sundance Film Festival, in theatrical release in New York and on the TRIO channel.

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DVD: $30.00

COMBO DEAL: Buy 9/11 PRESS FOR TRUTH & WE ARE FAMILY together and save 25%.

Both DVDs: $45.00

Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal
by Danny Schechter

How did the American economy go from boom to gloom in less than a year with markets melting down, banks writing off billions with regulators standing by or slashing interest rates and spurring unchecked inflation?

“This didn’t just happen in the course of a usual business cycle,” insists investigative journalist and media analyst Schechter. In Plunder he offers an in-depth investigation into the decline of the economy that’s causing millions to lose jobs and face foreclosures and across-the-board price hikes.

“You wouldn’t know it by relying on our media, but the subprime scandal masks massing looting by Wall Street firms using carefully calculated predatory lending schemes enabled by regulators who don’t regulate and a media that looked the other way. We have lost trillions and dislocated millions with no relief in sight. Every American is paying for the greed of our financiers in the grocery store, gas pump and unemployment line. Bank robberies are not new — but banks doing the robbing is.”

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Book: $15.00

In Debt We Trust: America Before the Bubble Bursts -- The Documentary that Predicted the Current Financial Crisis
Directed by Danny Schechter

Why are so many Americans are being strangled by debt? In Debt We Trust is a journalistic confrontation with the debt and credit industry.

IN DEBT WE TRUST shows how the mall replaced the factory as America's dominant economic engine and how big banks and credit card companies buy our Congress and drive us into what a former major bank economist calls modern serfdom. Americans and our government owe trillions in consumer debt and the national debt, a large amount of it to big banks and billions to Communist China.

ROBIN HOOD OR ROBBING THE HOOD: A real estate expert reports that tens of billions of dollars, are being transferred from the pockets of the poor into the vaults of big banks which use front groups and subsidiaries to camouflage their association with rip-off loans charging exorbitant interest rates.

SCAMMING SOLDIERS: We visit a military base to learn that soldiers just back from Iraq are being victimized en masse by payday lenders.

CONGRESS: BOUGHT AND SOLD: In Washington we learn how big money and lobbying stops government and political leaders from regulating usurious interest rates or stopping the gentrification of poor neighborhoods in which thousands of families are losing their homes through predatory mortgage, home-improvement and foreclosure scams.

COLLEGE CREDIT: We visit a campus where college students are being forced to pay higher interest rates for loans while a majority graduate with more than $20,000 in loans. Credit Card Nation author Robert Manning explains the crisis.

BANKRUPTCY BILL BLUES: And then we hear about the shame and pain of bankruptcy as the Congress passes a bill to make it harder for Americans to get a second chance and disqualifies Hurricane Katrina victims from filing for relief.

A CALL TO ACTION: Economics is called "the dismal science," yet this film is anything but; it exposes practices we can all relate to because they effect us all, adds Schechter. The film also talks about how we can fight back.

Deeper than the news, fast-paced, musically charged and deeply informative, IN DEBT WE TRUST is call to action: film-making with an angry edge and a broad well-reported scope.

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DVD: $20.00

COMBO DEAL: Buy IN DEBT WE TRUST & PLUNDER together and save 25%.

DVD & Book: $26.25

When News Lies: Media Complicity and The Iraq War
by Danny Schechter

Danny Schechter offers up an indictment of the role media played in promoting and misreporting the war on Iraq. It is an analysis of how and why the media got it wrong that pinpoints the failures of journalism and the collusion of media companies with the Bush Administration. The author of EMBEDDED: Weapons of Mass Deception (Prometheus 2003), an account of the TV coverage of the US invasion, returns with a more comprehensive, updated and insider look at the media complicity that Schechter argues "made the war possible."

"Most of the anti-war movement focused on the crimes of the Bush Administration ignoring the mainstream media, its far more effective accomplice," says former network producer Danny Schechter (ABC, CNN). "The government orchestrated the war while the media marketed it. You couldn't have one without the other."

WHEN NEWS LIES includes the feature-length DVD of the prize-winning film WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception). The book also includes the complete script as well as a discussion of the challenges of exposing media with media. It chronicles the media war fought alongside the military campaign and the struggle to stand up for truth.

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Book with WMD DVD: $30.00

Counting On Democracy Update, 2004
Directed by Danny Schechter

Here is the 2004 update of the award winning film that features interviews with Greg Palast, Michael Moore, and Florida representative Corrine Brown.

Forget the hanging chads and butterfly ballots. The Presidential election drama of 2000 is still a mystery to most Americans. COUNTING ON DEMOCRACY investigates charges of disenfranchisement and 180,000 uncounted Florida votes cast largely by the working poor and people of color, uncovering racial exclusion, voting rights violations and the subverting of a recount in the most contested and controversial election in U.S. history.

Running Time: 74 min.

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DVD: $20.00