Soviet Active Measures (1984) KGB

Reviews the various measures, including disinformation, bribery, forgery and overall dirty tricks employed abroad by the Soviet Union to further its aims. Includes interviews with Newsweek's former chief correspondent Arnaud de Borchgrave, State Department Official Dennis Kux, French journalist/author Jean Francois Revel, Former KGB officer Stanislav Levchenko and former Chechoslovak Intelligence officer Ladislav Bittman (The later two defectors who had direct, personal experience in the field of active measures). Documents communist actions and intentions

MP4 - 63MB - 23m31s - Youtube rip

http://www.multiupload.com/R6W6HR1YCM

Arnaud de Borchgrave (born 1926) is an American journalist who specializes in international politics.

As a correspondent for Newsweek, de Borchgrave secured numerous interviews with world leaders. In 1969 he interviewed both President Nasser of Egypt and Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. In October 1972, during the Vietnam War, he was accorded his most famous interview, travelling to Hanoi to speak with North Vietnamese Prime Minister and Politburo member Pham Van Dong. In that interview, Dong described a provision of a proposed peace deal as a "coalition of transition," which raised fears with the South Vietnamese that the deal involved a coalition government, possibly playing a role in South Vietnam's rejection of the deal.

Appointed Editor-in-Chief for The Washington Times on March 20, 1985, de Borchgrave is currently Editor-at-Large of The Washington Times and United Press International, as well as Project Director for Transnational Threats (TNT) and Senior Advisor for The Center for Strategic and International Studies.

De Borchgrave is co-author with Robert Moss of the best-selling novel The Spike (1980). He is also a pundit for NewsMax for which he writes articles from time to time. He married his wife, Alexandra Villard de Borchgrave, great-granddaughter of Henry Villard, in 1969, following two earlier marriages. Alexandra Villard is also a published author.

Stanislav Alexandrovich Levchenko (born July 28, 1941) is a former Russian KGB major who defected to the United States in 1979. He obtained U.S. citizenship in 1989.

Levchenko was born in Moscow, obtained an education at the Institute of Asia and Africa of Lomonosov Moscow State University, and pursued graduate studies at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences. His first KGB work came in 1968, after he worked for the GRU for two years. He became fully employed by the agency in 1971. In 1975, he was sent undercover abroad, as a journalist working for the Russian magazine New Times (Novoye Vremya) in Tokyo, Japan.

Levchenko defected to the United States in October 1979, and was instrumental in detailing the KGB's Japanese spy network to the U.S government, including Congressional testimony in the early 1980s.

After his defection, Levchenko supplied the names of about 200 Japanese agents who had been used by the KGB. Included in his list were a former labour minister for the Liberal Democratic Party, Hirohide Ishida, and Socialist Party leader Seiichi Katsumata. Takuji Yamane of the newspaper Sankei Shimbun was also mentioned. The code name "Krasnov" was Ryuzo Sejima, and was also a KGB official agent. Levchenko testified that Ryuzo Sejima was intimate with Ivan Kovalenko who was a boss of the agent activities in the Soviet Union against Japan. Yuri Rastvorov who defected from the Soviet Union to the United States by way of Japan as well as Levchenko had trained Ryuzo Sejima as an espionage agent in the Soviet Union. Ivan Ivanovich (Ivanović) Kovalenko(Russian: Иван Иванович(Ивановић) Коваленко; February 13, 1919 -- July 27, 2005) was born in Vladivostok, RSFSR (now in Vladivostok, Russia), in charge of a secretary and the interpreter of Aleksandr Vasilevsky who was Marshal of the Soviet Union during World War II, and deputy director of the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee and a firm proponent of dealing with Japan from a position of strength during the Cold War(1945--91). Ivan Kovalenko made friends with Japanese of Akira Kato, Yohei Sasakawa and Buntarou Kuroi, etc. in Japan, and has left the report about Ryuzo Sejima's secret. Kovalenko severely criticized the ability as the espionage agent of Rastvorov and Levchenko for their defections to the United States, and helped Japanese who had come in contact with the Soviet Union side from the suspicion that was the espionage agent in the Soviet Union. Kovalenko died of chronic diseases such as gangrene and diabetes mellitus at his home in Moscow, Russia. Kovalenko published (Kovalenko), (Ivan) (1996). (Bungeishunju).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnaud_de_borchgrave
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Levchenko

Appointment with Adventure (1955) Espionage Techniques - CIA Archive

This documentary film explores the many facets of espionage - personal meetings, agent activities, clandestine communications, and surveillance.

MP4 - 80,1MB - 24m04s - Youtube rip

http://www.multiupload.com/NPXB1XTR5V

Clandestine HUMINT (HUMan INTelligence) includes a wide range of espionage sources. This includes the classic spy (called, by professionals, asset or agent) who collects intelligence, but also couriers and other personnel, who handle their secure communications. Other support personnel include access agents who may arrange the contact between the potential spy, and the case officer who recruits them. In some cases, the recruiter and the continuing supervision of the agent may be different people. Large espionage networks may be composed of multiple levels of spies, support personnel, and supervisors. Espionage networks are usually organized on a cell system, where each clandestine operator knows the people in his own cell, perhaps the external case officer, and an emergency method, not necessarily a person, to contact higher levels if the case officer or cell leader is captured, but has no knowledge of people in other cells.

Espionage involves a human being obtaining (i.e., using human intelligence (HUMINT) methods) information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, and the legitimate holder of the information may change plans or take other countermeasures once it is known that the information is in unauthorized hands. See the articles such Clandestine HUMINT operational techniques and Clandestine HUMINT asset recruiting for discussions of the "tradecraft" used to collect this information.

HUMINT is in a constant battle with counterintelligence, and the relationship can become very blurry, as one side tries to "turn" agents of the other into reporting to the other side. Recruiters can run false flag operations, where a citizen of country A believes they are providing intelligence to country B, when they are actually providing it to country C.

Unlike other forms of intelligence collection disciplines, espionage usually involves accessing the place where the desired information is stored, or accessing the people who know the information and will divulge it through some kind of subterfuge. There are exceptions to physical meetings, such as the Oslo Report, or the insistence of Robert Hanssen in never meeting the people to whom he was selling information.

This article does not cover military units that penetrate deep between enemy lines, but generally in uniform, to conduct special reconnaissance. Such military units can be on the border of the line, in international law, which defines them as spies, if they conduct information in civilian clothes. In some circumstances, the uniformed personnel may act in support to the actual agents, providing communications, transportation, financial, and other support. Yet another discipline is covert operations, where personnel, uniformed or not, may conduct raids, sabotage, assassinations, propaganda (i.e., psychological operations), etc.

The Clandestine HUMINT page deals with the functions of that discipline, including espionage and active counterintelligence. This page deals with Clandestine HUMINT operational techniques, also called "tradecraft". It applies to clandestine operations for espionage, and for a clandestine phase prior to direct action (DA) or unconventional warfare (UW). Clandestine HUMINT sources may also act as local guides for special reconnaissance (SR).

Many of the techniques here are important in counterintelligence. Defensive counterintelligence personnel need to know them to recognize espionage, sabotage, etc. in process. Offensive counterintelligence specialists may actually use them against foreign intelligence services (FIS). While DA and UW can be conducted by national military or paramilitary organizations, al-Qaeda and similar non-state militant groups appear to use considerably different clandestine cell system structure, for command, control, and operations, than do national forces. Cell systems are evolving to more decentralized models, sometimes because they are enabled by new forms of electronic communications.

The Big Picture - King of Battle

From the U.S. Army's "The Big Picture" television series, 1950-1975.

HISTORY OF FIREPOWER FROM CANNON TO ATOMIC MISSILE TOLD ON "THE BIG PICTURE" -- The thing you remember about the Field Artillery is the tremendous noise that a fire mission creates. "King of Battle," the newest release in the Army's TV series THE BIG PICTURE, portrays dramatically the development of artillery in the Army from 1776 to 1957. Viewers will see the cannon that fought with Washington, a primitive weapon but good enough to pound the British at Bunker Hill, support the successful attack at Trenton, and aid in the defeat of Cornwallis at Yorktown. They will learn how artillery played a decisive part in winning the Battle of Gettysburg. Crammed into 28 minutes are stock shots of the allied Meuse-Argonne offensive that finally broke the back of the German Army in 1918; the Pacific campaign of World War II where artillery became the most effective weapon against the Banzai charge of the Japanese; and finally, Korea -- where American commanders traded manpower for firepower and once again artillery came to dominate the battlefield. Since artillery can never rest on past performances, THE BIG PICTURE examines pictorially the new concept of today for American artillery -- mobility. The camera lens follows a battery commander and his unit as they move from one position to another by means of helicopter, ready for action again 20 miles away in a matter of minutes.

MP4 - 107MB - 27m01s - Youtube rip


http://www.multiupload.com/S08XCPDDVY

Field artillery is a category of mobile artillery used to support armies in the field. These weapons are specialized for mobility, tactical proficiency, long range, short range and extremely long range target engagement.

Until the early 20th century, field artillery were also known as foot artillery, for while the guns were pulled by beasts of burden (often horses), the gun crews would usually march on foot, thus providing fire support mainly to the infantry. This was in contrast to horse artillery, whose emphasis on speed while supporting cavalry units necessitated lighter guns and crews riding on horseback.

Whereas horse artillery has been superseded by self-propelled artillery, field artillery has survived to this day both in name and mission, albeit with motor vehicles towing the guns, carrying the crews and transporting the ammunition. Modern artillery has also advanced to rapidly deployable wheeled and tracked vehicles and precision delivered munitions capable of striking tarkets at ranges between 15 and 300 kilometers. There exists to date no other singularly effective all weather fires delivery system which rivals the modern field artillery.

Types * Field guns - capable of long range fire * Gun howitzers - capable of high or low angle fire with a long barrel * Howitzers - capable of high angle fire * Infantry support guns - directly support infantry units (mostly obsolete) * Mortars - lightweight weapons that fire projectiles at an angle of over 45 degrees to the horizontal * Mountain guns - lightweight weapons that can be moved through difficult terrain * Multiple rocket launchers - Mobile rocket artillery Launchers

Early artillery was unsuited to the battlefield, as the extremely massive pieces could not be moved except in areas that were already controlled by the combatant. Thus, their role was limited to such functions as breaking sieges. Later, the first field artilleries came into function as metallurgy allowed thinner barrels to withstand the explosive forces without bursting. However, there was still a serious risk of the constant changes of the battlefield conspriring to leave behind slow-moving artillery units - either on the advance, or more dangerously, in retreat. In fact, many cavalry units became tasked with destroying artillery units as one of their main functions.

Only with a number of further inventions (such as the limber, hitched to the trail of a wheeled artillery piece equipped with trunnions), did the concept of field artillery really take off.

Before the first World War, field artillery batteries generally fired directly at visible targets measured in distances of meters and yards. Today, modern field batteries measure targets in kilometers and miles and often do not directly engage the enemy with observed direct fire. This hundredfold increase in the range of artillery guns in the 20th century has been the result of development of rifled cannons, improvements in propellants, better communications between observer and gunner and technical improvements in gunnery computational abilities.

Most field artillery situations require indirect fire due to weather, terrain, night-time conditions, distance or other obstacles. These gunners can also rely upon a trained artillery observer, also called a forward observer who sees the target, relays the coordinates of the target to their fire direction center which, in turn translates those coordinates into: a left-right aiming direction; an elevation angle; a calculated number of bags of propellant and finally a fuze with a determined waiting time before exploding, (if necessary) to be set, which is then mated to the artillery projectile now ready to be fired.

The Death of a Black Panther - The Fred Hampton Story, 1969-70

NEWS REPORT: Presents the accounts of police officers who made raid, Fred Hampton's wife Debora, who was in the bed with Hampton when he was slain, and Illinois State Attorney General Edward V. Hanrahan of what occurred at the raid of Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton's apartment, Chicago, Ill., on December fourth, 1969. Reviews charges and counter charges made by both sides and shows the apartment where the raid occurred. Interviews with "Doc" Sachel, who was injured in the raid, and Black Panther Minister of Defense Bobby Rush. Two Chicago area councilmen condemn raid. Black Panther attorney reads from the Grand Jury of the Federal District Court, which questions testimony given by officers.

This partially edited footage was shot for, and used, in the 1971 documentary film "The Murder of Fred Hampton." The footage was also used as evidence in the civil suit filed by the Hampton and Clark families against the city of Chicago, the state of Illinois, and the federal government.

MP4 - 76MB - 26m28s - Youtube rip

http://www.multiupload.com/D6SJA2JBPI

Fred Hampton (August 30, 1948 -- December 4, 1969) was an African-American activist and deputy chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP). He was killed as he lay in bed in his apartment by a tactical unit of the Cook County, Illinois State's Attorney's Office (SAO), in conjunction with the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Hampton's death was chronicled in the 1971 documentary film The Murder of Fred Hampton, as well as an episode of the critically acclaimed documentary series Eyes on the Prize.

Hampton was born on August 30, 1948, in Chicago, Illinois and grew up in Maywood, a suburb to the west of the city. His parents had moved north from Louisiana, and both worked at the Argo Starch Company. As a youth, Hampton was gifted both in the classroom and on the athletic field, having a strong desire to play center field for the New York Yankees, and graduating from Proviso East High School with honors in 1966.

Following his graduation Hampton enrolled at Triton Junior College in nearby River Grove, Illinois, majoring in pre-law. He studied law to become more familiar with the law, using it as a defense against police. He and fellow Black Panthers would follow police, watching out for police brutality using this knowledge of law as a defense. He also became active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), assuming leadership of the Youth Council of the organization's West Suburban Branch. In his capacity as an NAACP youth organizer, Hampton began to show signs of his natural leadership abilities; from a community of 27,000, he was able to muster a youth group 500-members strong. He worked to get more and better recreational facilities established in the neighborhoods, and to improve educational resources for Maywood's impoverished black community. Through his involvement with the NAACP, Hampton hoped to achieve social change through nonviolent activism and community organizing.

About the same time that Hampton was successfully organizing young African Americans for the NAACP, the Black Panther Party (BPP) started rising to national prominence. Hampton was quickly attracted to the Black Panthers' approach, which was based on a ten-point program of a mix of black self-determination and certain elements of Maoism. Hampton joined the Party and relocated to downtown Chicago, and in November 1968 he joined the Party's nascent Illinois chapter — founded by Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizer Bob Brown in late 1967.

Over the next year, Hampton and his associates made a number of significant achievements in Chicago. Perhaps his most important accomplishment was his brokering of a nonaggression pact between Chicago's most powerful street gangs. Emphasizing that racial and ethnic conflict between gangs would only keep its members entrenched in poverty, Hampton strove to forge a class-conscious, multi-racial alliance between the BPP, Students for a Democratic Society, the Blackstone Rangers, the National Young Lords in Chicago, the Young Patriots, the Brown Berets and the Red Guard Party. In May 1969, Hampton called a press conference to announce that a truce had been declared among this "rainbow coalition," a phrase coined by Hampton and made popular over the years by Rev. Jesse Jackson, who eventually appropriated the name in forming his own unrelated coalition, Rainbow PUSH.

Hampton's organizing skills, substantial oratorical gifts, and personal charisma allowed him to rise quickly in the Black Panthers. Once he became leader of the Chicago chapter, he organized weekly rallies, worked closely with the BPP's local People's Clinic, taught political education classes every morning at 6am, and launched a project for community supervision of the police. Hampton was also instrumental in the BPP's Free Breakfast Program. When Brown left the Party with Stokely Carmichael in the FBI-fomented SNCC/Panther split, Hampton assumed chairmanship of the Illinois state BPP, automatically making him a national BPP deputy chairman. As the Panther leadership across the country began to be decimated by the impact of the FBI's COINTELPRO, Hampton's prominence in the national hierarchy increased rapidly and dramatically. Eventually, Hampton was in line to be appointed to the Party's Central Committee's Chief of Staff. He would have achieved this position had it not been for his death on the morning of December 4, 1969.

Unconventional Warfare - Special Operations Forces (SOF) - PSYOPS (1984)

 

MP4 - 156MB - 51m52s - Youtube rip

http://www.multiupload.com/R6WM2TDT98

Special forces, or Special Operations forces are terms used to describe elite military tactical teams trained to perform high-risk dangerous missions that conventional units cannot perform. Special Forces soldiers need to be physically and mentally robust and have the confidence, courage and skill to operate individually or in small teams, often in isolation and in a hostile environment. They are high value assets, commanded at the strategic level that deliver effects disproportionately to their size.

Special forces have played an important role throughout the history of warfare whenever the aim has been to achieve disruption by "hit and run" and sabotage, rather than more traditional conventional army combat using large formations of troops and motorized armor groups. Other significant roles lay in reconnaissance, providing essential intelligence from close to or among the enemy, and increasingly in combating terrorists, their infrastructure and activities.

In antiquity, Hamilcar Barca in Sicily had specialized troops trained to launch several offensives per day. Later, during the Crusade wars, small, highly trained units of Knights Templar attacked individual Muslim units attempting to forage or seize booty. Muslim armies had several naval special operations units, including one which used camouflaged ships to gather intelligence and launch raids, and another which consisted of soldiers who could pass for Crusaders who would use ruses to board enemy ships and then capture and destroy them.

In Tang Dynasty ancient China and later feudal Japan, members of various clans or organizations of mercenary Special Forces operators, called Ninja, were highly trained in the various forms of combat martial arts (e.g., Ninjutsu) and tactics for special reconnaissance, direct action, unconventional warfare and guerilla warfare utilizing the most technologically advanced weapons (e.g., firearms & explosives, poisons, snow shoes, climbing and door breaching tools, water floatation devices etc.) and special tactics (e.g., camouflage, stealth, meteorology, geography, psychological warfare) available at the time. They were usually hired by rival leaders for covert operations and black operations such as reconnaissance, espionage, assassination, sabotage, security details, and destabilizing the political, social, economic and military infrastructure of a rival country or territory.

The United States formed the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during WWII under the Medal of Honor recipient William J. Donovan. This organization was the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and was responsible for both intelligence and Special Forces missions. The CIA's elite Special Activities Division is the direct descendant of the OSS. In mid-1942, the United States formed the Rangers.

Throughout the latter half of the 20th century and into the 21st century, special forces have come to higher prominence, as governments have found objectives can sometimes be better achieved by a small team of anonymous specialists than a larger and much more politically controversial conventional deployment. In both Kosovo and Afghanistan, special forces were used to co-ordinate activities between local guerrilla fighters and air power. Typically, guerrilla fighters would engage enemy soldiers and tanks causing them to move, where they could be seen and attacked from the air.

The US-led invasion of Afghanistan involved coalition special forces from several nations, who played a major role in removing the Taliban from power in 2001-2002. Coalition special forces have continued to play a role in combating the Taliban in subsequent operations. Special forces involved in these operations, occasionally working together, included US Special Operations Forces, UK Special Forces, the Australian Special Air Service Regiment, the French Commandement des Opérations Spéciales, the Canadian Joint Task Force 2, the Danish Jægerkorpset, the Polish GROM, the German KSK, the New Zealand Special Air Service, the Netherlands Korps Commandotroepen and the Norwegian Forsvarets Spesialkommando and Marinejegerkommandoen. Special forces from other nations have supported the parallel NATO mission in Afghanistan.

Special Forces have been used in both wartime and peacetime military operations such as the 1971 Indo-Pak War,Vietnam War, Portuguese Colonial War, Falklands War, The Troubles in Northern Ireland, the first and second Gulf Wars, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia, first Chechen War and second Chechen War, the Iranian Embassy siege (London), the Air France Flight 8969 (Marseille), Operation Defensive Shield,Operation Khukri, Moscow theater hostage crisis, Operation Orchard, 2006 Lebanon War, Japanese Embassy hostage crisis (Lima) and in Sri Lanka against the LTTE.

Mohamed Hassanein Heikal Interview on the Arab-Israeli Conflict (1972)

 

 

 

Mohamed Hassanein Heikal is an accomplished politician and writer from Egypt, whose legacy has included working as a war correspondent and serving as the editor-in-chief of the Cairo newspaper Al-Ahram. In, "Interview with Mohamed Hassanein Heikal," Heikal discusses policies, politics and journalism, commenting on how he believes the United States policy towards the Middle East to be misguided. He also breaks down the Arab-Israeli conflict as only a political journalist can. It serves as an interesting glimpse into Middle East politics of the 1970s.

MP4 - 266MB - 58m32s - Youtube rip

http://www.multiupload.com/EGBF2CW9IK

Mohamed Hassanein Heikal (Arabic: محمد حسنين هيكل‎, born 23 September 1923) is a leading Egyptian journalist. For 17 years (1957--1974) he was editor-in-chief of the Cairo newspaper Al-Ahram and has been a respected commentator on Arab affairs for more than 50 years.

The Arab--Israeli conflict (Arabic: الصراع العربي الإسرائيلي‎, Hebrew: הסכסוך הישראלי-ערבי‎) refers to the political tensions and open hostilities between the Arab peoples and the Jewish community of the Middle East that have lasted for over a century. Some trace the beginning of the conflict to large-scale Jewish return to Palestine, especially after the establishment of the Zionist movement, which intensified with the creation of the modern State of Israel in 1948. Others see it as a part of Arab nationalism, whose central premise is that the peoples of the Arab world, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Sea, constitute one nation bound together by common linguistic, cultural, religious, and historical heritage. Territory regarded by the Jewish people as their historical homeland is regarded by the Pan-Arab movement as belonging to the Palestinian Arabs, and in the Pan-Islamic context, in territory regarded as Muslim lands.

The conflict, which started as a political and nationalist conflict over competing territorial ambitions following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, has shifted over the years from the large scale regional Arab--Israeli conflict to a more local Israeli--Palestinian conflict, though the Arab world and Israel generally remain at odds with each other over specific territory.

Heikal articulated the thoughts of President Gamal Abdel Nasser earlier in his career. The reasons for his fall with president Anwar El-Sadat, who succeeded Nasser, remain under great speculation.

Heikal has been a member of the Central Committee of the Arab Socialist Union.

In 1983, Heikal published many books: Sphinx and Commissar, Cutting the Lion's Tale: Suez Through Egyptian Eyes, The Road to Ramadan and a bombshell titled Khareef Al-Ghadab (Autumn of Fury), in which he analyzed the reasons behind Sadat's assassination and the rise of political Islam.

He wrote many other books, such as: Nasser: The Cairo Documents, The Sphinx and the Commissar: The Rise and Fall of Soviet Influence in the Middle East, The Cairo Documents: The Inside Story of Nasser and His Relationship with World Leaders, Rebels, and Statesmen, Secret Channels: The Inside Story of Arab-Israeli Peace Negotiations, Illusions of Triumph: An Arab View of The Gulf War, Iran: The Untold Story, The Return of the Ayatollah, The Iranian Revolution from Mossadeq to Khomeini, and October War.

In September 2003, and upon reaching the age of 80, Heikal wrote an article in the monthly magazine Wajhat Nazar (where he has been writing for some time) that the time has come for an "old warrior" to put down his pen and take to the sidelines. Heikal stressed that his decision to stop writing does not mean that he will disappear, but rather take to the sidelines to observe more thoroughly. In the article he also recounted a lot of the events that occurred in his life and formed his experience including his first mission as a reporter in the battle of Al Alamein in 1942, his friendship with Nasser and his relationship with Sadat. In addition, he opened his financial records stating the salaries he has received in all the jobs and posts he has been assigned to.

In an audience with Robert Fisk, Heikal openly spoke about the current situation in Egypt and strongly criticized the Egyptian president Mubarak, saying that Mubarak lives in a "world of fantasy" in Sharm al Sheikh. These comments stirred an uproar within the Egyptian community, both for and against Heikal. Heikal did not comment on this criticism except later on Al Jazeera where he said that he stands by what he has said earlier, adding that Mubarak had not entered political life until very late, which means he lacks necessary experience.

Booked for Safekeeping - Police Training Video for the Management of Mentally Ill Persons (1960)

MP4 - 111MB - 31m22s - Youtube rip

http://www.multiupload.com/UDW1EY152N

A mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern generally associated with subjective distress or disability that occurs in an individual, and which is not a part of normal development or culture. The recognition and understanding of mental health conditions has changed over time and across cultures, and there are still variations in the definition, assessment, and classification of mental disorders, although standard guideline criteria are widely accepted. A few mental disorders are diagnosed based on the harm to others, regardless of the subject's perception of distress. Over a third of people in most countries report meeting criteria for the major categories at some point in their lives.

The causes are often explained in terms of a diathesis-stress model or biopsychosocial model. In biological psychiatry, mental disorders are conceptualized as disorders of brain circuits likely caused by developmental processes shaped by a complex interplay of genetics and experience.

Services are based in psychiatric hospitals or in the community. Diagnoses are made by psychiatrists or clinical psychologists using various methods, often relying on observation and questioning in interviews. Treatments are provided by various mental health professionals. Psychotherapy and psychiatric medication are two major treatment options, as are social interventions, peer support and self-help. In some cases there may be involuntary detention and involuntary treatment where legislation allows.

Stigma and discrimination add to the suffering associated with the disorders, and have led to various social movements attempting to increase acceptance.

George C. Stoney (born 1916) is a professor of film and cinema studies at New York University, and a pioneer in the field of documentary film. Stoney directed several influential films including All My Babies and How the Myth Was Made. He is considered as the father of public access television.

George Stoney studied journalism at NYU and the University of North Carolina. He has worked as a photo intelligence officer in World War II, for the Farm Security Administration an information officer, and as a freelance journalist. In 1946, he joined the Southern Educational Film Service as writer and director. He started his own production company in 1950, and has made over 40 documentary films on wide ranging subjects. All My Babies, one of his first films, received numerous awards and was inducted into the National Film Registry in 2002.

Stoney was also the director of the Challenge for Change project, a socially active documentary production wing of the National Film Board of Canada from 1966-70.

With Red Burns, Stoney co-founded the Alternate Media Center in 1972, which trained citizens in the tools of video production for a brand new medium, public access television. An early advocate of democratic media, Stoney is often cited as being the Father of Public Access Television. Today, Stoney sits on the Board of Directors for the Manhattan Neighborhood Network and is active in the Alliance for Community Media. Each year, the ACM presents "The George Stoney Award" to an organization or individual who has made an outstanding contribution to championing the growth and experience of humanistic community communications.