Films: Arms For the Poor & In Whose Interest

Arms for the Poor
Experts explore how the arms industry in America influences our Congress to encourage and expand the sale of high tech weapons across the globe. This destabilizes entire regions and impoverishes countries where "the poor cry out for food and doctors, not guns and Generals." 25 min, 1998

In Whose Interest
Leads us on an eye-opening journey, questioning the effects of U.S. foreign policy over the past 50 years, revealing a pattern of intervention, the film focuses on Guatemala, Vietnam, East Timor, El Salvador, and Palestine/Israel. Archival footage, photographs and media tidbits are dynamically interwoven with personal eye-witness accounts and commentary from academics -- such as Noam Chomsky -- religious leaders and politicians. 27 min, 2002

Singer Terry Bradford (http://www.terrybradford.com) will sing few peace songs before/after the film screening.

Rush Rehm, professor of Classics and Drama at Stanford will speak and lead a discussion after the films. Rush Rehm is an author of many books and articles and an activist in the peace and justice movement, particularly in US relations with Nicaragua and Cuba. He teaches courses on Antigone & Contemporary Dissent, Performance & Politics, and a seminar titled "Noam Chomsky: The Drama of Résistance" which presets information and analysis to encourage action and activism. Last year, he directed the play "Sex for Peace: Lysistrata" - the world's best antiwar comedy in which the women are antiwar activists who achieve peace by offering the combatants, their husbands, an ultimatum: Put down your arms or no more sex. Rush also spent a week in jail, last spring for anti-war protests at Lockheed Martin.