From Alternet: http://www.alternet.org/media/americas-spiritual-death-its-time-learn-dark-history-us-you-were-robbed-and-oliver-stone-will
Stone’s TV series, “Untold History of the United States,” digs deep into American atrocities the mainstream media doesn’t spend much time on.
By Fred Branfman
February 21, 2013
“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” –Martin Luther King Jr. “Beyond Vietnam” speech, April 4, 1967
I recently watched all 10 episodes of Oliver Stone’s “Untold History of the United States” (on Showtime). I strongly recommend it to everyone, but particularly to America’s young people who have been robbed of a most precious legacy: an understanding of their true history, and thus their future. I can’t think of a more meaningful gift to young people for, as Stone says, “history must be remembered or it will be remembered until the meanings are clear.” The same U.S. Executive Branch mentality that produced Vietnam is today illegally and inhumanly murdering and weakening U.S. national security interests throughout the Muslim world, and threatening its own citizens as never before. It has never been more urgent to learn from America’s real history.
I am not ashamed to say this series moved me to tears. First, by its depiction of the millions of lives the U.S. Executive Branch has ruined all over the world. This includes over 21 million — officially estimated — killed, wounded and made homeless in Indochina and Iraq alone, bring back the most painful memories of my life: my interviews with over 1,000 Lao refugees who reported seeing beloved parents, spouses and children burned alive, buried alive, and shredded to pieces by years of secret, illegal and inhuman U.S. Executive Branch bombing. [Showtime has made available some of the episodes free to watch over the internet.]
Second, I was touched by the awful beauty of simply seeing the truth told so clearly and vividly. The combination of the information, the imagery and Stone’s narration touched levels far deeper than the mind.
Continue reading at: http://www.alternet.org/media/americas-spiritual-death-its-time-learn-dark-history-us-you-were-robbed-and-oliver-stone-will
