Obama's America - 2 episodes (2010) BBC

Ep1 NFO:
Obama's America ep01 The Price of Freedom
Tue 12 Jan 2010 21:00 BBC Two

A year on from Barack Obama's inauguration, Simon Schama examines the issue that
more than any other will determine the fate of his presidency: Afghanistan. It's a
war which Obama inherited but which he has pledged to continue fighting - a
conflict that will cost many more American and British lives.

As Simon Schama explains, it wasn't just a political miscalculation which landed
the US and its allies in military crisis, but a historical miscalculation - a
refusal to learn from the conflicts of the past. By committing America and its
allies to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, George Bush and the neocons allowed the
battle against the Taliban to slide. The neocons were obsessed with World War Two,
and persuaded themselves that both wars would - like the Second World War - be
glorious liberations; decisive military victories.

However, as Schama discovers, it's not to World War II, but to America's forgotten
war in Korea, that US policymakers should have looked if they wanted to understand
the thorny reality of America's twentieth-century conflicts. The president who
took America into Korea was Harry Truman. As Simon Schama explains, in Truman's
handling of this bloody war, and in his statesmanship at a time of international
crisis, there are profound lessons for Obama today.

AVI File Details
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Filesize.....: 549 MB (or 563,076 KB or 576,589,824 bytes)
Runtime......: 00:59:31 (89,275 fr)

http://rapidshare.com/files/336830549/Obamas.America.ep01.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/336831832/Obamas.America.ep01.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/336832445/Obamas.America.ep01.part3.rar

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Ep2 NFO:
Obama's America ep02 The End of the Dream?
Thu 14 Jan 2010 21:00 BBC Two

In the second of two films to mark the anniversary of Barack Obama's inauguration,
Simon Schama asks what has happened to the fabled American Dream - the promise of
prosperity for all.

At the start of 2009, Obama took office in the midst of an economic and financial
crisis unparalleled since the Great Depression. One of his key election pledges
was to make the American money machine work for everyone. To many, the United
States is synonymous with freebooting capitalism, but, as Schama discovers, since
the birth of the republic there's been confusion over the role of banks. Are they
the creators or the destroyers of the American Dream?

President Obama now finds himself confronting what is not just a historical but
also a political dilemma. Will he act decisively to rein in Wall Street and end
the cycle of boom and bust which has destroyed the lives of ordinary Americans, or
is he too timid to tamper with the goose which lays golden eggs? It's a question
which will determine whether the President is a political radical or a cautious
pragmatist, and how he responds will shape America - and the face of capitalism -
for years to come.

AVI File Details
========================================
Name.........: Obama's America ep02 The End of the Dream.WnA.avi
Filesize.....: 550 MB (or 563,206 KB or 576,722,944 bytes)
Runtime......: 00:59:32 (89,289 fr)

http://rapidshare.com/files/336836482/Obamas.America.ep02.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/336837174/Obamas.America.ep02.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/336837725/Obamas.America.ep02.part3.rar