By Bob McAdams and Susan Oberman

The Salon Committee mission is:

To create a series of informal events to discuss, disseminate and analyze information about critical political issues that impact us. Through dialogue and social interaction we seek to promote peace and justice, strengthen community, and inspire individual and collective action.

At our next CCPJ Salon on October 20th at 7:30 PM (see below for contact information), we will watch and discuss the Robert Greenwald film Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers. The mainstream media is finally picking up the story of unaccountable private contractors wreaking havoc among Iraqi civilians and gouging the public treasury. Congress is finally investigating some of the contractors’ abuses and the president of Blackwater has testified before by Congress.

Robert Greenwald’s documentary reveals the depth and the scale to which the war in Iraq has
been waged by private contractors. The film begins with the killing of four Blackwater guards in Fallujah, then explores the effects of profit motives on the people employed by the contractors, on our military personnel working beside the contractors, on taxpayers who are paying and will pay the bills and on the Iraqi people. Besides Blackwater, other companies including Titan, CACI, Halliburton and KBR have grown wealthy from no-bid and cost-plus contracts. Their power has expanded around the world. Robert Greenwald has taken on powerful, international corporations in his earlier documentaries including Wal-mart in Walmart: The High Cost of Low Prices and Fox News in Outfoxed. In Uncovered, released in November of 2003, Greenwald was among the earliest to document the false statements of the Bush Administration leading up to the war in Iraq. In all of these films Greenwald has given the public what we most need – accurate information upon which we can base real decisions for our future. The challenge for each of us is to learn the facts about the war profiteers, spread the word to other people and direct our legislators toward steps to correct and prevent these abuses. See you at the Salon.

The next salon is December 1, 2007. The film and topic will be about immigration and racial
justice. Film TBA.

Call Susan at 244-0374 or e-mail susan.oberman@gmail.com [1] for location and directions.