The director of Syriana just scared the shit out of me.

If you missed his interview with Charlie Rose, you should try and see it. You can download it from here if you have broadband and a bittorrent client (utorrent.com)

Basically, he's been privy to many conversations with big-wigs in our political culture. He even travelled to Lebanon where he was invited to meet with Hezbollah's spiritual leader, due to his close relationship with one of the Mid-level CIA operatives he based one of the characters in the movie on.

Just to sum up some of the scary parts:
1.) There is a lawyer in DC who, due to representing many Middle Eastern clients, has more access to information than our own CIA.
2.) The CIA operative made him paranoid about flying in small planes, saying he will never do it, because he's heard too many stories about it and how easy it is to make it look like an accident.
3.) He sat in on a meeting with powerful people where they played a game predicting which nation will next fall to a coup. After others made there guesses, The guy holding a meeting said "You're all wrong, it's Nigeria, and I have 50 million invested in it". Asked what the money was for, he said he to buy off the media, officials, and to pay for mobs to protest. After this meeting, the http://www.chomskytorrents.org/TorrentDetails.php?TorrentID=112">2002 Venezuelan coup took place.
4.) Some of what he heard he couldn't put in the movie without people thinking it was satire. That's how boldly and shamelessly people in these important positions talked about power.

Also interesting, he screened the film in DC three times. Only three or four people from rightwing thinktanks walked out.

So just how corrupt is our government and our media? I know corporation don't hold anything sacred other than profit, as required by our current laws, but do Politicians hold anything sacred, other than staying in power? How many "lone nuts" have there actually been?

Now with Bush and the NSA... I'm very disturbed, to say the least. I was already pretty cynical about our government, but... jesus... :-(

seriously. I'm scared.