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This program focuses the spotlight on a region that crackles with both aboriginal and linguistic nationalism. The politics of language is at the heart of the battle for a unilingual French-speaking society; at the same time, a different yet similar battle is going on in the icy north, where the Cree people are fighting the Quebec government over territory the Cree claim-an example of an aboriginal group using the language of European nationalism to...
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The starting point of this program is the concept that your nation is where your graves are. Michael Ignatieff, the series presenter, stands by his great-grandfather's grave, whose marble top still bears marks from when it was used as a butcher's block in Stalin's time. This program examines the emotional effects of the establishment-or re-establishment-of an independent Ukraine: the looming ghost of Stalin, the fear of clashes between the Church...
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This program focuses on the Loyalists of Northern Ireland: Protestant, anti-Catholic, anti-European, anti-Irish, monarchist, they clearly belong to a nation-state-the United Kingdom-but feel abandoned by the British people, who no longer share their devotion to traditional values. They are, of course, at home in the northern part of Ireland; but they seem most at home when invoking the past to justify their present opinions and singing the kind of...
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Welcome to Forms of Government: What's the Score?, also known as "the world's longest running game show. Today's contestants: Absolute Monarchy, Representative Democracy, Communism, Socialism, and Fascism. The categories are Power, Law and Order, Liberty and Personal Freedom, Social Contract, and Pix and Nix. Who will be the winner? It's up to the viewers to decide, as they judge the merits of the various contestants. As the "contestants" (each representing...
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Until I knew I was a Kurd, I didn't know who I was. Now I know who I am and I am willing to die for it.-the words, not of a battle-hardened guerrilla, but of a teenage girl from Australia. This program shows little children singing that the Kurds will live forever as jets roar overhead; it introduces us to warlords and guerrilla camps; and it demonstrates how people who are threatened by genocide feel that a state of their own is their only protection....
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Defining "European" is one of the main challenges facing the EU Parliament. This program outlines the history of the governing body and assesses the actions it has taken to shape and organize the EU. Shedding light on electoral and procedural methods adopted by the Parliament, the film documents political fanfare and maneuvering accompanying the eastward expansion of the union with the entry of Bulgaria and Romania. The program also shows how these...
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A neo-Nazi skinhead thinks democracy is unnatural; a typical liberal prefers to be a citizen of the world; a far-right office holder fantasizes about his hard-working, disciplined, Aryan fatherland. This program looks at Germany reunified: while there was an East/West, communist/capitalist split, Germans could forget about nationalism, which is now back with a vengeance. The liberals, we discover, don't like the Germany they have, while the neo-Nazis...
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They might be described as a throwback to the Middle Ages, but this current crop of warlords constitute the big figures of the new world order. This program examines these people, whose power derives from the barrel of a gun, and the rhetoric with which they justify themselves and motivate one another: the rhetoric of nationalism. The story of Yugoslavia is the story of the country's first highway, the Highway of Brotherhood and Unity; today it is...
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"In the face of the most perilous challenges of our time--climate change, terrorism, poverty, and trafficking of drugs, guns, and people--the nations of the world seem paralyzed. The problems are too big for governments to deal with. Benjamin Barber contends that cities, and the mayors who run them, can do and are doing a better job than nations. He cites the unique qualities cities worldwide share: pragmatism, civic trust, participation, indifference...
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In the Cold War era, democratic values of equality, liberty, and tolerance sustained the countries of Western Europe and North America. With the fall of communism, the question becomes, can democracy survive without a clear-cut enemy? Internal pressures have begun to emerge: voting and other forms of democratic expression are in steady decline; the middle class is disappearing; answers to difficult moral questions seem to elude us; and government...
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As the movement begun in the 1970s to decentralize and deregulate continues, economies around the world are being reshaped. In this program, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Daniel Yergin, Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, and John Kenneth Galbraith explore the dynamic tension between free markets and managed economies with Ben Wattenberg, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. The demise of European communist and socialist...
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Two Communist Party officials cruise the dusty streets of Ma Bei village in a new Cadillac. Welcome to China at the end of the 20th century. Fueled by profits from private businesses, the town is booming, while at a plant up the road thousands of workers, formerly protected under the communist system, may lose their jobs under privatization. Similar situations are developing all over China, and officials are worried that workers may revolt. So they've...
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This program chronicles the rise and fall of the concept that government does a better job of providing transportation, power, or even employment, than does private enterprise. Case by case and country by country, it explains the philosophy of governmental involvement in business and examines the consistent results. The viewpoint is skewed in favor of private ownership and the privatization of government-owned or run industry; but the facts adduced...
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It's been suggested that Americans would be better off if the United States was more like Sweden. Do Swedes know something we don't? This documentary delves into the economic and social landscape of the Swedish scholar's homeland illuminating key ideas and enterprises that sparked reform and help Sweden maintain its economic strength.
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Burma, also known as Myanmar, has long been closed to the scrutiny of journalists and camera crews, and its only real ally and investor has been neighboring China. But, following the dubious elections of 2010, things began to change. The government released dissenter Aung San Suu Kyi, suspended a dam project with China, freed thousands of prisoners, and signed peace pacts with a number of warring ethnic groups. This report on the country was produced...
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For militant followers of Islam, the highest honor is to be dubbed al-shahid al-hai-"the living martyr," one who has irrevocably committed himself to dying in a suicide attack against the organization's enemies. Why do boys and young men so readily embrace this ideal? And how do the mothers, sisters, and daughters feel about it and the honor that it confers upon them? Filled with exclusive interviews with Lebanon's Hezbollah resistance fighters and...
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After being ravaged by more than a quarter century of war, Afghanistan then became the epicenter of America’s war on terrorism. Now, with the defeat of the Taliban, the United States and its allies are seeking to rebuild that shattered country. This program looks at the massive obstacles hindering outside efforts to help Afghanistan gain stability, such as widespread corruption, lack of centralized authority, and anarchy outside of the capital,...