TV Programs Worth Watching
Sun September 15 -- Sat September 21

Taken as a whole, the most superstitious country on Earth would have to 
be the USA. Yanks may be adept at handling modern technology, but at the 
same time they are surely (taken as a whole) the most unscientific people 
on the planet.

Watch any of that vast army of TV evangelists that grace US cable networks 
and marvel as they routinely cure cancer among the viewers by a few seconds 
of prayer. Definitely a case of the ignorant but shrewd leading the 
ignorant but desperate or thick.

Some months ago I had occasion to watch quite a few hours of this material, 
fascinated by the parade of hucksters designated as "pastors". A couple of 
generations ago they would have been selling snake oil to the gullible as a 
cure for everything.

They would be a sad but laughable commentary on the deficiencies in the US 
education system if they were not so rich and powerful, and did not have a 
say in the government of the world's most powerful and aggressive country.

Compass (ABC 9.40pm Sunday) this week follows one of these modern 
day snake oil salesmen, Preacher Man Mike Walters and his two boys Shaun 
and Jake, as they travel across the US mid-west "Bible Belt" selling their 
particular brand of circus-tent Christian evangelism.

The USA, world's most vocal campaigner for a "war on drugs", has never had 
any problem reaching an accommodation with regimes that profited big-time 
from drug trafficking, as long as the regimes were strategically and 
internally friendly towards US interests.

Whether in Thailand or Cambodia, Panama or the Nicaraguan Contras, Kosovo 
or Chechnya, the US has connived at, or actively aided and abetted, the 
production, transportation and distribution of drugs. A sizeable chunk of 
the US economy depends on the laundering of drug money for its continued 
well-being.

It is not a surprise then, that in Afghanistan, source of around 80 percent 
of the heroin sold in Western Europe, the arrival of US (and Australian) 
forces has not been allowed to interfere with what is after all the 
rightful province of big business.

In Cutting Edge: Afghanistan: Drugs, Guns And Money (SBS 8.30pm 
Tuesday), Chris Hilton, who previously made the three-hour series on the 
opium trade, Dealing With The Demon, seems to assume that the "war 
on drugs" and the "war on terrorism" are both fair dinkum, to be taken at 
face value.

If you believe that hypothesis, it makes the revelations of his program -- 
that the drug trade from Afghanistan is flourishing -- all the more 
startling. But the war on drugs is transparently bogus and it would be of 
more use to us if, instead of tracking down and revealing the corrupt 
frontier guard who lets shipments through, Hilton gave more attention to 
exposing the economic power players behind the trade.

Nevertheless, Hilton's documentaries are always worth watching. Just be 
sure to read between the lines.

Give a photographer (in this case Ron Fricke) a 70 mm movie camera and let 
him shoot whatever beautiful image takes his eye, add in sequences showing 
religious celebrations, funerals, etc to give it deep meaning and 
significance, ignore any concept of logical progression or development of 
an idea, and you have Baraka (ABC 10:55pm Tuesday).

Sight & Sound likened it to "an animated National Geographic",
and that's about right, except that on a big cinema screen, especially
if shown in 70 mm, the images were often stunning. Nevertheless, there was
considerable truth to the notion that the movie was best seen stoned.

Unless you have an 80 cm TV, this is not a movie that will work well in 
your living room.

The ABC is advertising the re-runs of The Vicar Of Dibley (ABC 
8:00pm Friday) as "from the writer of Four Weddings and a Funeral". 
I had forgotten that, although the series, like the movie, is a mixed bag: 
some of it very funny and some of it downright embarrassing.

Dawn French stars, of course, but it is the supporting cast of character 
actors (some of whom were also in Four Weddings And A Funeral) that 
makes the series enjoyable.

The excellent ABC series Frontier (ABC 5:00pm Saturday) returns this 
week. Its three episodes are probably the strongest statements yet seen on 
Australian television showing the deliberate policy of extermination of the 
Aboriginal population and the latter's valiant, determined armed struggle 
in defence of its independence. Highly recommended.

After the liberation of Germany from the Nazis, the Allies divided the 
occupied country into four zones, one for each Allied Power. Berlin was 
also partitioned into four zones.

The Soviet authorities soon found that US Intelligence used the Allies' 
right of access to all the city as an excuse to carry out intelligence 
gathering forays. Far from co-operating to eliminate fascist remnants and 
foster an anti-fascist alternative administration in Germany, the Western 
Allies (most prominently the US) were more interested in opposing 
Communism.

There was sabotage of the city's public transport system (operated from 
East Berlin), anti-Soviet provocations, even riots, dissemination of forged 
currency, and withholding of promised aid for the war-ravaged Eastern 
sector of the country.

In 1946, Churchill made his "iron curtain" speech, lifting a phrase from 
Goebell's anti-Communist vocabulary. In 1947, US Secretary of State George 
Marshall proposed saving Europe from Communism by giving financial aid 
(with strings).

In March of 1948, the US Congress ratified this Plan. In complete disregard 
of the intentions of the Potsdam Agreement on Germany's future, the Western 
powers merged their zones into a single entity, the "Trizone". Then they 
carried out a currency reform to complete the de facto splitting of the 
country.

In the face of these provocative acts (and others, like the war in Greece 
and the development of new types of Atom bombs, etc) the USSR moved to 
drive home the point that Berlin was not part of Western Germany, but was 
situated in the Eastern zone.

Soviet forces stopped all traffic in and out of the city. Instead of taking 
this rather strong hint to sit down and resolve the city's status once and 
for all, the Western powers chose to use it as another possible opportunity 
for provoking the war that would "roll back Communism".

Greece, Berlin, the Philippines, Malaya, the smashing of the Japanese 
unions, were all part of the same overall masterplan: to "roll back 
Communism".

In Berlin, the Western powers used a very provocative airlift (effectively 
daring the USSR to shoot down their planes) for 12 months, at great 
expense, to maintain the "independence" of the Western sector of the city. 
Eventually, the Soviet Union yielded. The next year the war against 
Communism moved to Korea.

As It Happened: The Berlin Airlift (SBS 7.30pm Saturday) on the 
other hand views the Berlin Airlift, predictably, as "the first and 
perhaps, barring Cuba, the most dangerous crisis of the Cold War".