Tommy Peters' Bicycles

Courtesy of The History Channel (used without permission). The attack on Pearl Harbor shocked the US. To many, the official explanations of misguided assumptions and missed clues did not account for the enormity of the catastrophe. This film examines "alternative" theories that arose soon after the attack. Was a plot hatched in Washington to solve FDR's "problem"--convincing a reluctant country to fight the Nazis?  Did FDR send a secret cable just days before the attack ordering Pearl Harbor chiefs to stand down? Did U.S. intelligence intercept a message from Tokyo asking its spies in Hawaii to map the harbor for an imminent air attack? More than six decades later, the controversy boils under the surface of recent U.S. history, igniting heated debates over collusion, intrigue, and thousands of American dead. (Advanced appreciation is rendered for materials used without express permission of copyright owners. Tommy Peters – April 19th 2011)

Courtesy of Channel4 (used without permission). In a 12-month undercover investigation, Sue Turton infiltrates criminal networks which trade British consumers' bank and other confidential information for huge profits in India, the world's new call centre capital.  Uncovering the methods used to thieve confidential data ranging from credit card numbers to passport details, Turton exposes the alarming security failures in a number of commercial call centres which allow detailed financial data on individuals to be gathered and sold on with ease.  She discovers shocking data protection breaches and a new phenomenon known as 'data farming' – the unauthorised 'harvesting' of personal data to be sold on or exchanged for profit. This investigation also reveals the scale of some of the call centre scams as Turton is offered hundreds of thousands of 'hot leads', full banking and financial profiles, to purchase. In the UK, she meets a former data thief and peop...

Courtesy of FRONTLINE (used without permission). FRONTLINE and The New York Times join forces to investigate an industry few fully understand. In this one-hour report, correspondent Lowell Bergman uncovers the techniques used by the industry to earn record profits and get consumers to take on more debt. "The almost magical convenience of plastic money is critical to our famously compulsive consumer economy," Bergman says. "With more than 641 million credit cards in circulation and accounting for an estimated $1.5 trillion of consumer spending, the U.S. economy has clearly gone plastic." Millions use their personal, general-purpose credit cards such as Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover to make ends meet; credit cards have been a discreet lifeline for families in financial straits. But other consumers, like actor and author Ben Stein, use plastic purely for convenience. While it would appear that Stein -- who says he charges a small fortune every mo...

Courtesy of Yad Vashem (used without permission):- The Auschwitz Album is the only surviving visual evidence of the process of mass murder at Auschwitz-Birkenau.  It is a unique document and was donated to Yad Vashem by Lily Jacob-Zelmanovic Meier. The photos were taken at the end of May or beginning of June 1944, either by Ernst Hofmann or by Bernhard Walter, two SS men whose task was to take ID photos and fingerprints of the inmates (not of the Jews who were sent directly to the gas chambers). The photos show the arrival of Hungarian Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia. Many of them came from the Berehovo Ghetto, which itself was a collecting point for Jews from several other small towns. Early summer 1944 was the apex of the deportation of Hungarian Jewry. For this purpose a special rail line was extended from the railway station outside the camp to a ramp inside Auschwitz. Many of the photos in the album were taken on the ramp. The Jews then went through a selection process, carr...

"In April 1915 the Ottoman government embarked upon the systematic decimation of its civilian Armenian population. The persecutions continued with varying intensity until 1923 when the Ottoman Empire ceased to exist and was replaced by the Republic of Turkey. The Armenian population of the Ottoman state was reported at about two million in 1915. An estimated one million had perished by 1918, while hundreds of thousands had become homeless and stateless refugees. By 1923 virtually the entire Armenian population of Anatolian Turkey had disappeared." – Armenian National Institute.  Fergal Patrick Keane investigates, for Correspondent, how the holocaust returns to haunt the relationship between Turkey and its western allies. For decades Armenians campaigned to have the killings of their forefathers in Ottoman Turkey recognized as genocide but there has been an equally determined campaign by Turkey to this day to deny the ‘genocide’ with threats of reprisals against any coun...

If Originality is a powerful nationalist - Usurpation is a lowly traitor. How long did it take before the origins of Al-Khwarizmi’s algebraic notations and Shah Jahan’s Agra 'mausoleum' came to the fore. Hitler's ruse would have succeeded but not on Paul Schilperoord’s watch. The feisty journalist and Diter Piepfel, the adopted nephew who lived with the originator of the VW Beetle, have awoken up a sleeping dog that ought to make the automobile giant and its customers, strident in the notion that one Dr. Ferdinand Porsche designed their car, uncomfortable. A fascist usurps everything – Art, Integrity, Pride, Property and Intelligent Design – in that order. Josef Ganz was the Intelligent Design in a fascist regime and a proud Jew at that, but Aryan and blue blood Ferdinand Porsche did the next best thing. He usurped cutting edge Jewish science of the day and blinded the automobile world with his 'Classical Gas' for seven decades. Ganz unfortunately lived ...

After the destruction of the Towers, The History Channel produced a documentary on the Prophet to balance the view of radical Islamists attributing the deed to his example at Badr and the furtherance of jihad.   Although it was a timely and calming balm, in particular for those eager to gain traction on Islamic history, the commentary was remiss on issues too sensitive to be discussed in this forum. Suffice to say The History Channel diplomatically avoided issues to the point of dereliction of its duty to highlight historical evidence, such as a defining event of 627 that preceded the Prophet's marriage to Saffiya Huyayy.   Another example of its dereliction is the founding of the Kaaba itself. Although Arabic history has lost trace of the origins of the shrine, an inscription on a gold dish hung inside bears evidence that it was built in the name of one King Vikramaditya, a revered Hindu who ruled Arabia before the advent of Islam. Vikramaditya ruled more th...

"We don't smoke the shit, we just sell them" - RJ. Reynolds.  Nadia Collot exposes the conspiracy of a criminally negligent industry that conquers new markets through corruption and manipulation. The French-Canadaian production goes behind the scenes of the huge tobacco industry whose economic power has been expanding for five decades at the expense of public health. A gripping investigation covering three continents.  To confront the tobacco cartel, anti-smoking groups are organizing and scoring points, but the fight remains fierce. With its diverse viewpoints, shocking interviews and riveting images, The Tobacco Conspiracy deftly defines the issues in a complex situation where private interests and the public good collide. Enlightening and engrossing, this documentary is a hard-hitting critique of an industry gone mad.  Courtesy of FreeDocumentaries.com.  (Advanced appreciation is rendered for materials used without express permission of copyright owners)