WAR ON WHISTLEBLOWERS: Robert Greenwald's doc hits hard--and hits home

What a shame that our first black (more properly, mixed-race) President would turn out to be a closet fascist, albeit it one who pushes health care (so long as it keeps the insurance companies in clover). But them's the breaks. Is anyone really surprised? Really? In these days when money courts power and the two of them march down the aisle with literally every American elected public official eventually following hard and fast behind?

Among the most disastrous and disappointing aspects of the Obama regime is how thoroughly and disgustingly this man -- who claimed he would provide a transparent government -- and his chief underling, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder (below), have gone after -- of all things -- whistleblowers who are trying to call to the attention of the American people (and the rest of the world) wrongs that need to be righted and suppressed information that should see the light of day. And this, on top of nearly zero prosecution of the bankers and Wall Street criminals, whose sleaze has left so much of the U.S.population in dire financial and employment straits, all the while spying illegally on the America public (and anyone else they could manage), pushing us all the closer to the ultimate "Big Brother" state. No, children, I am not referring to that "TV show."

In his newest film dedicated to unveiling the veiled, WAR ON WHISTLEBLOWERS: FREE PRESS AND THE NATIOMNAL; SECURITY STATE, filmmaker Robert Greenwald (shown below) offers for our delectation all this in sharp detail, especially concerning the work of four important whistleblowers: what they did and why they did it, and why their "blowing" is so important to our freedom.

Greenwald also links this war against whistleblowers with other current activity designed to remove more and more of our supposed freedoms. (I say supposed because I am not at all sure they remain with us.) Greenwald has long been a muckraker, with muck imminently worthy of raking. The bigger question is whether the Ameri-can people care to listen and understand, and then to act on what they know. It appears that the answer is no, and so, as usual, we deserve the politicians we elect to serve -- not us, but the powerful and monied who actually funded them.

We hear the stories of the quartet of current men who've blown the whistle in four very different areas (plus an ex-whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg of The Pentagon Papers), and these tales are all shocking, moving and more-than-a-little anger-making. That's Thomas Tamm, above, who outed the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping, and Franz Gayle, below, who first blew the whistle on the U.S. military during the Iraq War for its crappy Humvees that were defenseless against roadside IEDs.

Some stories have relatively happy endings for the problems, but few do for the whistleblower himself (Gayle, who got his security clearance and his job back, is a rare exception). Michael DeKort, below, who blew the whistle on the U.S. Coast Guard's Deepwater Program, now works nowhere near the capacity or salary he had.

The story of Thomas Drake, below, is perhaps the oddest because, though a whistleblower, he did nothing that was illegal, and yet the government seemed to want to use him as a case study to scare any and all future whistleblowers. And this, from people whose illegal wiretapping and torture still goes on.

The men themselves can only be seen as heroes who cared enough to actually do something. The movie was made too soon to say much about Bradley Manning, and well before Edward Snowden, shown below, made his fateful decision. But you'll better understand at least some of their motivating factors after seeing this fine film.

War on Whistleblowers, via The Disinformation Company and running 67 minutes, after a limited theatrical release earlier this year, makes its DVD debut tomorrow, Tuesday, July 30, and will be available for sale or rental, from your usual sources (though Netflix, I see, does not offer it. Bad!). To watch a trailer for the film, click.