I’ve heard a lot of people talking about this book and a good friend finally tipped the scales when she insisted I read it. I’m glad I did, it’s very interesting and I learnt a lot, but I have to say it was frustrating. When you read about all these things going on, blatant abuses of people who can’t defend themselves, you want to do something but there’s very little you can do.

I watched The Bourne Ultimatum this last weekend. When you watch a movie like that, they always unfold some top secret government plot involving assassins and other highly illegal and immoral activites. In the movies, the good guys always manage to break the story to the press and the baddies end up in court or ‘off’ themselves.

This book, is a true story about those highly illegal and immoral activities, but there is no happy ending. The perpetrators have gotten away with it and continue to get away with it. It’s very frustrating.

Fast Food NationFast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser is a great book. I know it is now a documentary, but I find the book has a lot more information than a documentary generally does. I wouldn't mind watching the documentary as well, actually. My expectation of the book was very different from the reality, but I much preferred the reality (not that I wouldn't have enjoyed having my expectations met, otherwise I wouldn't have bought the book, obviously). I expected the book to focus on the usual anti-fast food themes, ie. damage to the environment, promoting unhealthy food, exploiting workers, etc. While the book does cover some of the usual issues, it spends more time addressing other issues and does a very good job of it.

The book is not an emotive tirade against the evils of fast food. It is more a well researched and factual representation of the effect of fast food on the country (America), its people and the World. The first section of the book looks at how fast food started. It's well researched and he seems to be trying to demonstrate that the intentions of the 'founding fathers' of fast food were good.

I've been reading quite a lot of books lately, as with the documentaries I choose to watch, they are mostly about globalisation, consumerism and the abuse of corporate power. These things underlie most of the problems we face today, eg. poverty, pollution, hunger, climate change and waste.

While each of these books is interesting and informative, seldom do you find one book that is brilliantly written, engrossingly interesting and thoroughly researched. The Shock Doctrine is that book. I read Naomi Klein's first book, No Logo, a while ago. No Logo is widely considered to be the activist's bible and it whet my appetite for more material on the topic of the effect of corporations on our lives, as well as other related topics. No Logo is the reason I have 10 books in a pile next to my bed, waiting eagerly for their turn to be read.

What has been really interesting is how the books that I have been reading have tied into each other. Through reading books like Confessions of an Economic Hitman and Globalisation and its Discontents, I had developed an idea of what has been happening around the world in the last 50 or 60 years. However, it was The Shock Doctrine that spelled it all out plainly and simply. In fact, Naomi Klein quotes from several of the other books I have read, that is how closely linked they are.

World according to MonsantoI have watched a lot of documentaries on GM foods and Monsanto and although they each have their own style and there is always some new information, they generally cover a lot of the same material. This recently released documentary is not like that. It takes a very different angle, looking at the history of Monsanto and the way it operates, rather than focusing specifically on GM foods.

Proponents of GM foods are always suggesting that GM foods are rigorously tested. In fact, an article in the September 2008 issue of Shape magazine said exactly that (read my thoughts here). The testing that they are referring to is done by the Biotech companies themselves. This documentary tries to establish whether we can trust the Biotech companies or not. It looks mainly at Monsanto, which is the biggest Biotech company of them all...

This was an amazingly uplifting documentary to watch. A Convenient Truth is about a city in Brazil called Curitiba, which is one of the most livable cities in the world. They look at various aspects of the city and show how they made them not only environmentally friendly and people friendly but also without using much money. Their ideas have since been used in various cities around the world.

I won't go into great detail but here is summary of some of the things I remember. The public transport system uses buses, which have their own dedicated lanes. This results in a bus stopping at the bus stops every minute (in the CBD). It's the quickest way to get around so 60% of the people travel only by public transport. The municipality pays people who live in the favelas (like our townships) for their (separated into recyclable and non) refuse with bus tickets. This has resulted in the whole city being cleaned up by people collecting refuse to hand in for bus tickets. They also employ homeless people to sort the recyclables which are then compacted and sold. The money is used to pay the homeless people and provide them with education and training so that they can find proper employment.

I never get round to reviewing Hollywood movies I see, not that I watch many of them any way. There just doesn't seem to be much point. Basically all you need to know is the basic plot, who is in it and whether it is worth watching or not. But I love reviewing documentaries, they always provide new information and get one thinking.

Last night I watched The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil and it was very interesting. Peak Oil refers to the time when oil will become scarce and expensive and we will have to change the way we live because of that. When you realise how much of our lifestyle (food, transport, agriculture, etc) relies on oil, you understand the massive changes that will have to take place.

It's hard for us to predict how this will happen, but Cuba has already experienced it because of the embargo against it. In previous years they relied on the USSR, but when that fell, they had nothing except some Latin American countries to trade with. They had to deal with having almost no oil. It was very interesting to see what happened.

This documentary has affected me. I am torn between telling people to watch Earthlings because it's important for them to know this stuff, and telling people not to watch it because it is genuinely disturbing. I closed my eyes during many scenes in the movies and I wish I had closed them more because I am haunted by the images I saw.

This movie looks at the five things we use animals for: Pets, food, clothes, medical reseach and entertainment. It then goes on to show how each of these aspects causes massive amounts of suffering for the animals which have done nothing to deserve being treated like that.

We think that keeping animals as pets is good because the animals have a good life, but for every pet that has a good life, there are many more that suffer tremendously. The conditions which puppies, etc are 'manufactured' for pet shops are appalling. Many pets are badly treated by their owners, others are abandoned. The lucky ones are euthanised, the rest are killed in less humane ways or suffer along until they die from exposure, accident or illness.