A Very Heavy Agenda Oakland, CA Screening + Release Dates Pt 2 & 3

Historic Palace Theatre Oakland, CA 

A few updates...

- The release dates for A Very Heavy Agenda Parts 2 & 3 have been pushed back slightly. Due to the overwhelming positive response to Part 1, I wanted to make sure Parts 2 & 3 were even stronger and needed a couple more weeks to add some new material.

The new release dates are

 1/15/16 - Part 2 2/01/16 - Part 3

- A new Oakland, CA screening for A Very Heavy Agenda Part 1 : A Catalyzing Event is happening tomorrow evening (7pm Thurs, Nov 5th) @ The Palace Theatre. We are asking for a $5-10 donation at the door. Details including location and times can be found on the Facebook event page here

A Very Heavy Agenda Pt 1 DVDs Shipping Now

A Very Heavy Agenda Pt1 DVD incl shipping

Inside the US $20.00 USD Outside the US $27.00 USD Canada $23.00 USD

VOD / Digital Downloads of A Very Heavy Agenda Out Now

Click the icon on the top right of the Vimeo window to watch A Very Heavy Agenda now....


A Very Heavy Agenda Part 1 : A Catalyzing Event from Robert Martin on Vimeo.

A Very Heavy Agenda Part 1 DVD & Streaming Options

A Very Heavy Agenda Part 1 on  DVD. Comes with white plastic DVD case in shrink wrap

Shipping DVDs Now

A Very Heavy Agenda Pt1 DVD incl shipping

Inside the US $20.00 USD Outside the US $27.00 USD Canada $23.00 USD

Video on Demand / Digital Download  here

The DVD includes 19 chapters:

1 - 0:00 - The Iraq, 9/11, Anthrax Connection

2 - 10:31 - A New Set of Intellectual Parameters

3 - 18:11 - Bill Kristol is Speechless

4 - 22:03 - PNAC: Project For The New American Century 

5 - 27:19 - We Neoconservatives Have Brainwashed the American Public

6 - 30:31 - Bremer's Voice, Dan Senor

7 - 37:09 - Why Did You Want A New American Century?

8 - 41:25 - Meet Robert & the Kagan Family

9 - 46:28 - Paris is Burning 

10 - 50:25 - Neoconservatism is a Mainstream American View

11 - 54:22 - Why Russia is a Threat Even When They Aren't

12 - 59:39 - American Interests Don't Change Overnight

13 - 1:02:54 - 4 Years of Obama the Neocon

14 - 1:09:30 - Cowboy Diplomacy Mr. Putin

15 - 1:14:36 - Déjà Vu WMD

16 - 1:16:41 - Do What You Mean & Mean What You Say

17 - 1:21:19 - The Foreign Policy Initiative: PNAC 2.0 

18 - 1:25:17 - END Credits

19 - 1:26:23 - BONUS: Trailer for A Very Heavy Agenda Parts 2 & 3

Meet Robert Kagan, Project for the New American Century co-founder

Clip taken from A Very Heavy Agenda Part 1: A Catalyzing Event

More information/how to watch the full documentary here

Porkins Policy Radio episode 36: An Interview about A Very Heavy Agenda

Interview conducted by Pearse Redmond of Porkins Policy Review

Download PPR episode 36

Stream from Porkins Policy

[from Porkins Policy Review] On this episode we are joined by musician, radio host, and film maker Robbie Martin.  The two of us discuss Robbie’s soon to be released film, A Very Heavy Agenda: A Catalyzing Event.  The first of a three part film series, A Very Heavy Agenda  deals with the neo-conservative movement and the impact that it has had on American politics and world events.  Beginning with the 9/11 and anthrax attacks Robbie brings us through the powerful intellectual group that has altered geopolitical history.  We explore the neocons as an intellectual force in America and how their premier group, Project for a New American Century, acts as the political arm for the Deep State.  We pay particular attention to the Kagan family, which is deeply enmeshed within the American Deep State.   We also discuss how the neocon agenda has destroyed much of the anti-war movement.  Robbie and I also dive into how the real agenda behind this intellectual movement is about destroying Russia and maintaining perpetual warfare, and not about Islamic Terrorism, oil or anything else.  Later we discuss the resurgence of the neocons and the rise of the “hipster neocons.”  Robbie explains where they went and how they have come back with a vengeance.
follow @PorkinsPolicy on Twitter

[Updated] Digital downloads and streaming A Very Heavy Agenda

Update: Video on Demand streaming and Digital Downloads available on 10/15/15 using this link : https://vimeo.com/ondemand/averyheavyagenda

Quick update to let people know that you will be able to purchase a digital download and stream in full A Very Heavy Agenda Part 1, 2 and 3 as they are released for a low price. We're still working out the details but they will be posted before the release date of Part 1 on 10/15/15.

click here to order a hard copy of A Very Heavy Agenda

Trailer for A Very Heavy Agenda Part 1 : A Catalyzing Event

[warning: do not watch if you are offended by profanity or footage of war]



click here to order a copy of A Very Heavy Agenda

[streaming and digital downloads will be available also on the release date]

Did presidential candidate Lincoln Chafee flush his 'no war in Iraq' legacy down the toilet?

While working on the documentary A Very Heavy Agenda I combed through 1,000+ hours of CSPAN video archives. I looked closely at anything Paul Wolfowitz appeared in because inside of the Bush administration, Paul seemed to be the most instrumental in making sure the Project For the New American Century plans went forward without any problems.

For those unfamiliar with PNAC/Project For a New American Century, think of it as the 'civilian formed' ideological engine that drove the George W Bush administration's foreign policy and propaganda. Wolfowitz is not only a co-signer (as were many others in the Bush admin including Cheney and Rumsfeld) he's also credited as one of the creators of PNAC's most infamous paper: 'Rebuilding America's Defenses'.



Before I get to Lincoln Chafee, let's talk a bit more about 'Rebuilding America's Defenses' which was written in September 2000. It laid out extraordinary US foreign policy goals, in essence building up our military and posture to a greater level than during the Cold War because as one of PNAC's co-founders Robert Kagan said 'the world has descended into some form of chaos since the end of the bipolar world'. To the neoconservatives behind PNAC, the Cold War gave them some level of 'safety' wherein the world was more predictable and thus more 'manageable'.  Probably the most shocking passage from Rebuilding America's Defenses is that to accomplish these goals in a short period of time 'some catastrophic and catalyzing event like a new pearl harbor' would have to occur. Right after 9/11 of course, the same neocons who were behind PNAC started referring to the attacks as 'our pearl harbor' and you probably already know the rest.

Lincoln Chafee eventually came on my radar when I found video of Paul Wolfowitz explaining the rationale for the war in Iraq at a hearing. In the hearing Chafee seems to actually upset Wolfowitz during his semi-aggressive line of questioning.



The only reason this stood out to me is because Lincoln Chafee was a GOP senator who was using language not commonly heard among even the most left-wing anti war factions of the house or senate. After some quick searching I found out he was the only Republican senator to vote against the Iraq war in 2003.

Fast-forward six months later I see that Lincoln Chafee announced he will be running for president in 2016 under the Democratic party ticket. According to Wikipedia his positions on current US foreign policy actually sound pretty reasonable (far more anti-intervention than the current iteration of Rand Paul). Knowing already that Bernie Sanders had successfully navigated around taking on any meaningful foreign policy issue (last time I checked his website omitted any stance) and that Hillary was pretty much a neocon I got a bit excited at the prospect of someone like Lincoln getting into the race and playing the Kucinich role in the televised debates. 

Since A Very Heavy Agenda mostly centers around the founders of PNAC,  I signed up for the newsletter of the cleverly rebranded version of PNAC called 'The Foreign Policy Initiative'. I get the newsletter so I can see among other things, who is on my 'shit list' now. Most of the time I'm not surprised by the journalists they promote or the politicians that decide to speak at their events. People like Marco Rubio, John McCain, Tom Cotton and Joe Lieberman are regular guests.

This morning however was an exception:



To my horror the upcoming 2015 Foreign Policy Initiative forum is hosting as speaker none other than anti-Iraq war Republican senator Lincoln Chafee. My first thought was maybe the re-branding by PNAC was so clever that Chafee isn't aware the forum is hosted by the same organization that blatantly propagandized the American public into the Iraq war. This delusion of mine quickly fell apart once I remembered that the Foreign Policy Initiative makes no effort to hide the fact they were co-founded by Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol (who wrote extremely deceptive articles trying to tie the 2001 anthrax attacks to Saddam Hussein).

Lincoln doesn't seem like the type of person to get hoodwinked into shilling for neocons, so why is he speaking at a PNAC 2.0 event ? Does he have the balls required to publicly push back against the main neoconservative policy makers on their own turf ?

Of course this would be a best case scenario reason for his scheduled talk and I personally have a very hard time believing that would happen even after knowing his history of excommunicating himself from the GOP.

I posed the question to the official Lincoln Chafee twitter account but received no response.

It still remains to be seen why the only Republican senator to vote against the Iraq war is linking up with the neoconservatives who were directly responsible for the Iraq war in the first place. 

Pre-order links for DVD & Blu-ray of A Very Heavy Agenda Part 1 now up

You can now pre-order A Very Heavy Agenda Part 1 on regular DVD.
The different prices include shipping for 3 different territories [US, Canada and elsewhere].
All pre-orders will be shipped on the release date of 10/15/15 but credit cards will be processed on the date the pre-order is placed. Links below...

[note: the movie was rendered in HD 720p but most of the clips used are from pre-HD television, it still looks fine on standard DVD]

 standard DVD

shipping destination

Inside the US $20.00 USD Outside the US $27.00 USD Canada $23.00 USD

A Very Heavy Agenda

Post-9/11, the War on Terror had outlived its usefulness.

The minds behind the think tanks that drive America’s interventionist foreign policy decided that the U.S. needed a new enemy, so they chose an old one -- Russia.

Part 1:  A Catalyzing Event 1hr 25mins

Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld were ubiquitous in the news media as they took every available opportunity to market to America an aggressive preemptive war policy. But from where did their ideas originate? The answer is a tightly knit and eminently well placed group of neoconservative thought leaders, chief among them Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan. Part 1 begins in the panicked weeks after 9/11, as Kagan et al. seized upon the hysteria surrounding the anthrax letter attacks to further shape America’s perception of reality, planting the seeds for endless future military engagements. George W. Bush may have been understandably perceived as an idiot, but watching these wonks and academics drive the ideological engine for his administration belies a much more sophisticated strategy at play.

Part 2:  How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The New Neocons  1hr 35mins

After the Cold War, the US-NATO reach expanded significantly to take in most of the old Soviet Union clients in the Warsaw pact. Neoconservative darling Robert Kagan and his diplomat wife Victoria Nuland played key roles inside and out of various administrations and think tanks as they greased the skids for a US-sponsored coup in Ukraine. Part 2 shows the resurrection of old cold warriors from beltway depths to deliver blatant propaganda with techniques reminiscent of a red scare era that had only just faded from memory. US-funded outfits like Radio Free Liberty are pitted against Russia’s RT as each nation accuses the other of waging an ever more desperate and transparent "Information War".

Part 3:  Maintaining the World Order  1hr 30mins

"When the Berlin wall fell, our work wasn't finished".  -- Victoria Nuland, November 2013

“Fuck the EU” -- Victoria Nuland, February 2014

While stage managing the American empire has undoubtedly proved to be a more difficult task now than in the bipolar world of the cold war era, it is not for lack of greed or hubris that the Kagans and others continue to sell their vision.

Did they create these ideas because they truly believe in America's right to be the dominant force in the world? Or, do these ideas help sell weapons and control resources like oil and rare minerals?  Part 3 shows interview footage of an obscure PNAC member (Thomas Donnelly) taking credit for the ominous “New Pearl Harbor” phrasing in the notorious 'Rebuilding America’s Defenses' document. But the evidence shows the genesis of the concept to be patriarch Don Kagan, in conjunction with his son Fred, in prior op-eds that call for ‘a catalyzing event’. Other newly sourced footage shows the pair advocating for a US military ground invasion of Palestine on September 12th, 2001 and displaying an unnerving prescience about the 9/11 attacks themselves.

"We're an empire now and when we act we create our own reality, and while you're studying that reality—we'll act again, creating other new realities which you can study too. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do" - Karl Rove

When you take stock of the mindset of people who not only have access to the nexuses of power, but who trade in forming and widely disseminating arguments that justify bringing America closer to a potential nuclear confrontation with Russia, it shows something more plainly Machiavellian at work, with an aim ultimately much more sinister than simply spin.

Produced/Edited/Created by: Robbie Martin

Original Score by: Fluorescent Grey

A Very Heavy Agenda is a joint production between Media Roots & RecordLabelRecords MediaRoots.org RecordLabelRecords.org

Part 1, 2 and 3 art

Project Censored : 9/11 and the Rise of Neoconservative Foreign Policy

I went on Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff's Project Censored show to talk about A Very Heavy Agenda.

9/11 and the Rise of Neoconservative Foreign Policy. For this 14th anniversary 9/11 special program, co-hosts Mickey Huff and Peter Phillips speak with Media Roots journalist and filmmaker Robbie Martin about his new film “A Very Heavy Agenda.” The film looks in depth at the Kagan family and the rise of neoconservative foreign policy prior to and since the events of 9/11. Tune in for a detailed discussion about the development of the US policy driving American Empire.
[from the KPFA website]

stream here

or download the 1 hour segment here