Shadow World

Shadow World is an eye-opening look at the international arms trade. It makes for pretty worrying viewing and suggests that this trade is not only endemically corrupt but also works alongside governments to perpetuate warfare. This film casts a light on some of the sordid goings-on behind the scenes and particularly highlights the actions of certain high profile individuals and arms companies. One of the central scandals that underpin the narrative is the illegal dealings that went on between the Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan and British arms company BAE Systems, the latter controlled a slush fund which was used to pay off high ranking officials around the world as well as Bandar himself who even received a huge private jet as a gift. Others such as Mark Thatcher are alleged to have received 12 million pounds for their work in enabling deals. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair comes off looking very poorly indeed, and seems to be a man engulfed in corruption, blocking investigations into corruption in the arms trade, taking huge sums from arms related companies as a representative in his post Prime Minister capacity, as well as most damningly lying to Parliament and the public in order to allow the country to enter the Iraq War, the repercussions of which we endure to this day; including the rise of ISIS as a direct reaction to this.

The film looks at how much of the Islamic extremist groups we have today were actively enabled by foreign policy that sometimes backed them, such as the Afghan mujahedeen receiving military assistance from the USA when they fought the USSR in the 80's, this ultimately led to al Qaeda and the Taliban of course. Moreover, the film looks at the way that the arms trade is inextricably linked to governments to the point that they are part of the establishment who dictate what goes down. The money involved is so massive that what they say goes and politicians often meekly obey. This has led to a scenario where we have self-fuelling endless wars in which supply will never lose sight of demand. A perfect example of this is the 'war on terror', which as Clare Short describes here is a ludicrous concept when you think of it. It's a war against what exactly? It is so vague to be meaningless but can be used to encompass a continual conflict that will never effectively end. How do you ultimately declare victory in a war against 'terror'? The truth is that you can't and so the war goes on. Overall, this is chilling stuff and does not bode well for the future.

I stumbled upon this by mere coincidence during channel surfing PBS Thanks-Giving morning.

Being politically aware, I already knew most of what this production entails. However, it didn't take away from the sick feeling I felt in the pit of my stomach - the opposite. It confirmed everything and brought it home in full color, no filters. Things you won't see on American news outlets. They'd rather report on The Kardashians and American Idol than show you what's going on in the world. It's part of the dumbing down and conditioning of the American populace.

Since this goes back in time and ends in today's world, it is sure to offend people on both sides of the political spectrum. Which is why you see 1 star reviews criticizing this production.

I'm beyond that, having left "my" party last year. To me, it's two sides of the same coin which is another truth you get out of watching this.

It was available for free streaming online on the PBS website, until... today. Wow. I wonder why it was taken down... Not.

Anyway, watch it. And then be honest with yourself.

I started watching this, but gave up after twenty minutes after having lost belief something interesting was still being kept from me.

Going back to the initial promise, it claims to be a) a documentary, and b) to give an insight into international arms trade. But it does neither.

A documentary gives you facts. Laid out in a sequential or chronological order, so one can form its own opinion on the data being presented. Alas, that's not happening here. On arms trade, you get little or no info. Instead, you get a rather idiosyncratic collection of news snippets and interviews with self-declared investigative journalists, mixed with footage of world leaders, retrieved from their context, with a clear intention of blackening them. It makes you wonder if the documentary maker understands how the world works, and the tough choices its leaders need to make.

Clearly the intention was not to make a factual documentary. It's the usual leftish rubbish by that class who believes the people need to be told on what they are allowed to think, because they can definitely not be trusted to think for themselves.

If you do want to get a good insight into arms trade, I'd rather recommend the 'How Rolls- Royce Bribed Its Way Around the World' episode of BBC Panorama. Factual and concise, it will tell you ten times more on the topic, in five times less time.

I just saw this truthful expose on Danish television (DR2 March 18) and thought of how all these wars the US and UK conduct in large part for the gouging profit of their war weaponry capitalist firms just doesn't happen in Russia. How Putin is so clearly working assiduously for world peace while his counterparts in the USA/UK are doing what they can to find excuses to war against Russia. It matters little what anyone in the West thinks of "democracy", "free speech", "free press", "honest elections" that occur or do not occur in Russia or anywhere else--what about the UK/USAs great friends in Saudi Arabia and all the Gulf States and, of course, Israel. What really matters to West citizens as well as all of the planets peoples is whether the US/UK will blow up the world to please war industry's profits. Maybe they have plans to fly to the moon with their cash. When will the Western people wake up and stop this war industry, the military-corporate consort from killing and killing, torturing and torturing? When will the media do its job of watching over the powerful and informing real news to the citizenry? When will we demand such and let Putin win all the elections that clearly the majority of Russians want him to? Can one say the same for any US/UK president or prime minister, can one say they have the vast majority of the citizenry behind them?

This is a compelling and interesting film but also a worthy and ultimately disappointing one. Like an Adam Curtis documentary it creates an atmospheric and morbid mood with poetry readings, synth-music and distorted images which aren't always directly related to the story. The opening twenty minutes establishes its calm-but-furious tone as the film reflects on a century of cyclical conflict ruminated on by interviewees. A pretty good start. But as the film continues it drifts more and more away from its central subject which is surely about the arms trade.

If one is being generous, you can argue that it's also about the behind-the-scenes 'diplomacy' and kickbacks which grease the wheels of the military-industrial complex, in which leaders claim to be trying to solve the world's problems but really just perpetuate them. This argument is nothing new, though, and deflects away from directly addressing the key subject: weapons, and why the arms trade is more immoral than, say, oil, food, drugs, water, shipping etc.

The film-makers line-up an interesting array of subjects including a roistering arms-salesman who you love-to-hate. That salesman sticks out because he's the only one who talks in-depth about corruption relating to gunrunning. The rest discuss the West's suppression of freedom in favour of its own interests. I had a lot of sympathy for them, especially Chris Hedges, but because of the way they are interviewed (the film-maker's fault) they only contribute to the documentary's sprawl. The producers should have spoken to people from H&K, FN Herstal, BAE, Rolls-Royce, Raytheon and so on. But apart from the afore-mentioned arms-dealer, the interviewees all support the film's point-of-view. An opening quote states humans aren't made of atoms, but of stories. This credo carries throughout the film and means we hear stories which have a specific place in history but do not add up to precise, focused documentary and make instead a vague anti-war philosophy.

In the end, the film looks are though it was overwhelmed by its own depression and broods on the horror created by the arms trade, not the trade itself. It also fails to make an important point: what can be done to make the arms trade more ethical and its agents more accountable? I don't know and although this film is worth watching, it won't help you understand better.