As mentioned in yesterday’s post, the full Mark Thomas/Coca-Cola Dispatches programme is now available for download here (via Couchtripper – rename the CTR file to WMV). I have yet to watch it myself.

Also, last night I had the misfortune to catch some of BBC’s This World program about the Venezuelan Revolution. The Jon Sweeney presented ‘documentary’ was entitled “Chavez: The Trillion Dollar Revolutionary“, and boasted as one of its selling points an interview with the Bolivarian president. To be fair, I didn’t catch it all – but from what I saw the interview consisted of Sweeney asking Chavez one idiotic question – about money Chavez gave to London Transport in exchange for transport advice – at a press conference.

From the moment I flipped over to it, I could see the tone was entirely hostile to the Bolivarian project as a whole – and what good things Sweeney had to say about the revolution were through (metaphorically, and perharps literally) gritted teeth. Children get free meals in schools – “aah a cunning plan to indoctrinate them!”, peasants collectivise agricultural land – “ahh but look, there’s some dirt on the farm!”, Bolivarian Circles are armed and trained in case of Imperialist intervention and/or counter-revolution – “ahh, they might use weapons against those who refuse to vote for Chavez (even though ballots are secret and there’s been no evidence of this ever happening)!”, people in the barrios seem genuinely happy with their President – “ahh, but there’s still gang violence which is obviously all Chavez’s fault!”, and so on.

Now I’m not going to argue that the Bolivarian revolution is perfect – it’s not – nor that Chavez is some kind of saintly superhero – he’s not – but this program was farcical. And I’m going to stop talking about it now – though there is some dicussion over on the MediaLens board.

However, here are some good documentaries about the ongoing processes in Venezulea, and a link to the Hands Off Venezuela website.

John Pilger: The War on Democracy (2007)

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (2000, aka Chavez: Inside the Coup)

No Volveran: The Venezuelan Revolution Now (2007 – Incidentally, this is getting a screening in Connolly Books, Dublin on Monday 26th November – see here for full details)

Venezuela Bolivariana: People and the Struggle of the Fourth World War (2004)

Venezuela From Below (2007)

UPDATE: A download of this film is now available here.

TV Tonight (Mon 29th Nov): Dispatches – Mark Thomas on Coca-Cola, 8pm, Channel 4.

Following on from his expose of the arms trade (Dispatches: The After School Arms Club, Channel 4, 2006), and his one man crusade against New Labour’s idiotic anti-Parliament protest law (My Life In Serious Organised Crime, BBC Radio 4 2007), the activist-comedian trains his sights on the everyone’s favourite trade unionist murdering soft drink peddlers, the Coca-Cola corporation. In the film he travels to South America, India and the US to investigate the way in which Coca-Cola and its suppliers operate and the extent to which they uphold moral and ethical obligations (or to be more precise, the ways in which they don’t). No doubt unmissable telly. What a shame I don’t have Channel 4. Thank fuck for torrent sites!

Check out Mark’s site here, and a couple of articles he has written about Coke in the past.

By way of introduction, here are a few audio interviews I stumbled across featuring two of my favourite Kens (Loach and MacLeod), and China Mieville.

The first is an October 2007 interview with famed socialist film director Ken Loach. In the interview he talks both about his latest film It’s A Free World… and more generally about his past work. He’s promoting his two new DVD box sets which feature many of his films such as Land & Freedom (1995), Hidden Agenda (1990), Carla’s Song (1996), The Wind That Shakes The Barley (2006), Kes (1969), Cathy Come Home (1966), My Name Is Joe (1998), Bread & Roses (2000) and many more – including lots of commentaries. I just bought both so that’s my Xmas viewing sorted. We can only hope that one day his and the late Jim Allen’s epic mini-series Days of Hope (1975) along with their various Play For Today collaborations will one day surface from the BBC archives and get proper DVD releases – they would make fine companions to this collection.

The 11 minute interview can be heard here (via Film Detail). There’s also a very in depth profile of Loach that can be read here (via Senses of Cinema).

The second interview is actually a lecture given by socialist sci-fi author Ken MacLeod at the British SWP’s annual ‘Marxism’ event in 2006. The topic of the lecture is ‘Science Fiction and Historical Materialism’. Despite the perhaps dry title, it’s a very informative and often witty talk. I’ve only recently discovered MacLeod – by accidentally reading his latest novel The Execution Channel (2007) – but am now moving on to my fourth book of his, Learning the World (2005). As someone who rarely reads fiction – let alone science fiction – these days, this must be an indication of… something. I’ve also included a link to a more recent interview (February 2007) featuring MacLeod – along with Charlie Stross and Farah Mendlesohn – talking about his short story contribution to the Glorifying Terrorism (2007) anthology. The authors talk about their fears for free speech under New Labour’s draconian Terrorism Act of 2006. As the blurb says: “[This book] is, technically, illegal – because every SF/F story in this anthology breaks the current UK law that bans the glorification of terrorism. Whatever that is, of course.” Indeed.

The lecture can be downloaded here (via Resistance MP3) and the interview can be heard here (via Archive.org).

Finally, here are a couple of lectures given by the SWP’s resident ‘fantastic fiction’ author/International Law expert China Mieville – again at the SWP’s ‘Marxism’ event. The first from 2003 is entitled ‘Blockbusters and Boy Wizards’, and the second from 2005 is called ‘Marxism and Monsters’. I’ve yet to read any of Mieville’s works, but the talks are pretty interesting and tread some of the same ground as MacLeod’s speech above. Mieville has also produced a list (I love lists!) of ‘Fifty fantasy and science fiction works that socialists should read‘ – one day I’ll finally complete the list. I’ve also included a couple of other interviews where Mieville discusses his own work, socialism, ‘world building’, terrorism, his criticism of other genre authors, and many other subjects.

The lectures can be downloaded here [Blockbusters] and here [Monsters] [part 2] [part 3] (via Resistance MP3). Further interviews can be listened to here (via SciFi Audio, from 2002), and here (via The Bat Segundo Show, from 2007). There’s also a couple of interviews linked to on his Wikipedia page.