By Paul Atkin
Earth’s Greatest Enemy, the second feature film project by Abby Martin, is a brilliant anti-imperialist environmental documentary that should be seen and discussed by as many people as possible. You could watch it yourself, but better still, organise a showing, with and or through anti war, climate or labour movement groups, or just get other campaigners and activists round to watch it where you live.
At a packed showing at the Rio Cinema in Dalston on 18th September Abby Martin got a standing ovation when she came out for a post film discussion with Jeremy Corbyn. Her impassioned argument that we have to resist, that resistance in the US to the unprecedented attack from the Trump administration is on an unprecedented scale and that the destruction of Gaza has caused a huge shift in the political tectonic plates hammered home the point that the US is a global empire, with over 800 bases, and access to the 147 still held by the UK. By contrast, Russia has 9. China has 1. As she put it “the problem isn’t Russia or China, its us”.
With military impacts exempted from even being counted in the UN climate assessments, the US Armed forces stand out as the biggest single institutional polluter on the planet because it is not only the immensely destructive sinews of a global empire, but also the world’s busiest military force, with constant deployments and interventions. Of the 250 years of the USAs existence, it has been at war for 230 of them. Just this year, we’ve had Venezuela, Nigeria, Iran. And this month the US has taken control of Greenland as a military protectorate, preparing to desecrate it by monopolising its resources and building military bases to control Arctic shipping.
This film is a brain stimulating “gut punch” of breathtaking images – check out the trailer – with graphic montages worthy of Eisenstein.
This is punctuated with personal witness and revealing interviews with military personnel, arms dealers and politicians, whose eyes glaze over and smiles freeze into grotesque masks when confronted by the sort of questions the tame media doesn’t ask, or shut down the filming. The weirdness of the military and their apologists is captured in many images, but two that stand out for me are the Marine singing the US national anthem with eyes worthy of Kash Patel and Nancy Pelosi’s stuttering staccato stilettos on the stage at COP26.
The contrast with the humanity of the people resisting them, from Okinawa to the US itself is striking.
The retelling of 34 years of baby stillbirths from contaminated water at Marine training camp Lejeune in North Carolina from 1953 to 1987shows how the US ruling class doesn’t just have contempt for the people around the world that they unleash their military on, but also are completely careless about the well being of the service personnel that they send too.
This film tells terrible truths that the mainstream media does not. Lets help get them, and it, around as many people as possible.
It is available on:
IMBD
Vimeo
and Abby Martin’s Empire Files Channel