What is WikiLeaks?

in Current Affairs | July 26th, 2010

Wik­iLeaks has done it again. This week­end, the whis­tle-blow­ing web­site released 92,000 mil­i­tary doc­u­ments that vivid­ly illus­trate why the US mil­i­tary cam­paign in Afghanistan has achieved so lit­tle suc­cess. Among oth­er things, the release shines a light on Pak­istan’s intel­li­gence appa­ra­tus, which has pro­vid­ed strate­gic sup­port to the Tal­iban, help­ing it coor­di­nate attacks against US troops and assas­si­nate Afghani lead­ers. (Mean­while, Pak­istan offi­cial­ly claims to be an ally of the US.) The founder of Wik­iLeaks, Julian Assange, called this release “the near­est ana­logue to the Pen­ta­gon Papers” pub­lished dur­ing the Viet­nam War. “It pro­vides a whole map, if you like, through time, of what has hap­pened dur­ing this war.”

This is not the first time that Wik­iLeaks has made news late­ly. In April, the site released footage show­ing US troops launch­ing a seem­ing­ly unjus­ti­fied air strike in Iraq, killing 12 peo­ple, includ­ing 2 Reuters jour­nal­ists. (Click here and scroll to bot­tom for video.) And last year, Wik­iLeaks helped get “Cli­mate­gate” rolling when it pub­lished mem­os from cli­mate sci­en­tists – mem­os that gave con­ser­v­a­tives ammo to argue that glob­al warm­ing is a fic­tion.

So what is Wik­iLeaks all about? On July 14, NPR’s Fresh Air inter­viewed Philip Shenon, an inves­tiga­tive reporter pre­vi­ous­ly at the New York Times, and now con­tribut­ing to The Dai­ly Beast. Dur­ing the 35 minute con­ver­sa­tion, they enter the secret world of Wik­iLeaks and answer your ques­tions. You can stream the inter­view here, grab it on iTunes, or lis­ten below.

[gplay­er href=“http://public.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/fa/2010/07/20100714_fa_01.mp3” ] [/gplayer]

Sources for this post: The New York Times, The Wash­ing­ton Post, and The Guardian

The Rolling Stones in Exile (Win a Free DVD)

in Music | July 25th, 2010

In 1971, The Rolling Stones went into vol­un­tary exile. They left Britain and its 93% tax­es (applied to the super wealthy) and head­ed to a big vil­la on the French Riv­iera, where they hun­kered down with fam­i­ly, friends and intox­i­cants and began record­ing their 10th stu­dio album, Exile on Main Street. (Kei­th Richards talks more about that stint here.) Crit­ics were ini­tial­ly cool to the album. But, with 40 years’ hind­sight, it’s now wide­ly con­sid­ered their mas­ter­piece.

This past spring, the band issued a remas­tered ver­sion of Exile on Main Street (CD — MP3), and, along with it, came a new doc­u­men­tary Stones in Exile, which uses archival mate­r­i­al and inter­views with band mem­bers to revis­it the band’s sojourn in France and the mak­ing of their land­mark album. Stones in Exile is now avail­able on DVD, and hap­pi­ly I have one review copy to give away. It will go to the first read­er who sends us a piece of open/intelligent media that we post on the site. If you spot some great audio or video (they type of thing we usu­al­ly post here) send it our way with this form. We’ll announce the win­ner when we share your great find.

(Note: this DVD prob­a­bly does­n’t work on DVD play­ers out­side of North Amer­i­ca.)

Criterion Films 50% Off

in Deals, Film | July 22nd, 2010

Not a bad deal. Right now, Barnes and Noble is run­ning a big sale on films in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion. They’re offer­ing 50% off of hun­dreds of clas­sic and con­tem­po­rary films, includ­ing Fellini’s 8 1/2, John Ford’s Stage­coach, Howards End with Antho­ny Hop­kins, Jim Jar­musch’s Mys­tery Train, Wim Wen­ders’ Wings of Desire, Steven Soder­bergh’s Che and many more. Films are avail­able in DVD and Blu-ray. Dig into the sale here.

Before Gaga…

in Music | July 22nd, 2010

Imi­ta­tion is the sin­cer­est form of flat­tery…

(The Bowie clip is from 1973.)

Ingmar Bergman Visits The Dick Cavett Show, 1971

in Film, Television | July 21st, 2010

Run­ning from 1968 to 1982, “The Dick Cavett Show” some­times brought heady cul­ture to the Amer­i­can air­waves. In this par­tic­u­lar case, Cavett gave Amer­i­cans a close up view of Ing­mar Bergman, the influ­en­tial Swedish direc­tor so admired by Woody Allen. (Allen once called Bergman “prob­a­bly the great­est film artist, all things con­sid­ered, since the inven­tion of the motion pic­ture cam­era.”) Cavet­t’s wide-rang­ing, 60 minute inter­view appears above. Thanks Rober­ta for the lead on this one.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

The Who by Tracks

in Music | July 21st, 2010

Take The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” from 1971. Now break it down, sep­a­rat­ing out the tracks instru­ment by instru­ment, and you get some insight into how rock ‘n roll anthems come togeth­er. Above, we have Kei­th Moon’s dri­ving drum track. Then Pete Town­shend play­ing the pow­er chords on gui­tar (plus some syn­the­siz­er); John Entwistle thump­ing out the bass; and Roger Dal­trey on vocals. Put them back togeth­er and the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts.

via metafil­ter

Oppenheimer: The Man Behind the Bomb

in History, Science | July 20th, 2010

In July 1945, J. Robert Oppen­heimer, a the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist from UC Berke­ley, saw his work on the Man­hat­tan Project cul­mi­nate with the test of the first nuclear bomb. The genie was let out of the bot­tle, and, ever since then, world lead­ers have been try­ing to put the genie back in … with great dif­fi­cul­ty. The new doc­u­men­tary Count­down to Zero, which pre­miered at Sun­dance ear­li­er this year, traces the his­to­ry of the atom­ic bomb and makes the case for world­wide nuclear dis­ar­ma­ment – a time­ly issue giv­en that the US Sen­ate has been debat­ing the New Strate­gic Arms Reduc­tion Treaty (aka New START). The “fea­turette” above, excerpt­ed from the film, gives you a quick and some­what haunt­ing intro­duc­tion to Oppen­heimer, the man behind the bomb.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Snagging Free Hitchcock and Fritz Lang Movies Online

in Film | July 14th, 2010

Yes­ter­day, we told you where to find Andrei Tarkovsky’s great films online. Mean­while, over at Brain Pick­ings, we wrote a guest piece high­light­ing where you can watch 15 films (all free, of course) direct­ed by Alfred Hitch­cock and Fritz Lang, two great direc­tors whose careers moved in par­al­lel from the silent era, to sound movies, and from Europe to Hol­ly­wood. Along the way you will encounter some land­mark films – Metrop­o­lis, The 39 Steps, The Lodger, and M, to name a few. These movies (all in the pub­lic domain) and near­ly 200 oth­ers reside in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies.

Roman Polanski on Making Chinatown

in Current Affairs, Film | July 12th, 2010

This morn­ing, the Swiss reject­ed US requests to extra­dite Roman Polanksi. This deci­sion effec­tive­ly brings to a close a rather dark chap­ter in his per­son­al life and lets the con­ver­sa­tion return to his film­mak­ing. Enter our video above, which fea­tures Polan­s­ki talk­ing about the mak­ing of Chi­na­town, his 1974 neo-noir film, star­ring Jack Nichol­son, Faye Dun­away, and John Hus­ton, that land­ed eleven Acad­e­my Award nom­i­na­tions. Thanks Mike for send­ing this our way…

John Wayne Recites the Pledge of Allegiance

in Random | July 9th, 2010

This week, the US cel­e­brat­ed its inde­pen­dence. And so it’s per­haps fit­ting to head into the week­end with John Wayne, an Amer­i­can icon, recit­ing and inter­pret­ing the Pledge of Alle­giance. Long live the Duke…

Find more vin­tage audio and video in our col­lec­tion of Cul­tur­al Icons.