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With a population of 1.4 billion, the People’s Republic of China is vitally important to the planet. China’s rapid growth impacts the environment locally and globally. In a world affected by globalization, China embodies the phenomenon in both positive and negative ways. China’s modern society provides a better life for many but also brings with it a loss of cultural tradition and natural resources.

To uncover some of the mysteries of China, Charles Annenberg Weingarten and the Explore team set out on a three-week fact-finding mission through Beijing, Shanghai, Tibet, Wolong, Xi’an and beyond. Each stop brings them closer to grasping the complexities of the country’s ancient culture and the implications of modernization. Meeting with some of the most innovative minds and leading non-profit organizations across the country, the Explore team delves into issues such as the environment, human rights, public health, social change, philosophy and education.

When white women flock to Jamaica for a little fun in the sun, the R&R they’re often looking for is not “Rest and Relaxation” but to “Rent a Rasta” according to director J. Michael Seyfert. His eye-opening expose’ of the same name sheds light on a barely acknowledged form of sex tourism, namely, white women who visit the Caribbean Islands to get their groove back with the help of black locals. This documentary claims that, each year, as many as 80,000 females from a variety of relatively-wealthy Western nations descend on Jamaica alone.

Most of those inclined to indulge their Island Fever with wanton abandon are apparently middle-aged and/or overweight spinsters. Ignored by white men, and afraid to date blacks openly due to the social taboo, they look for satisfaction at remote resorts amidst the anonymity offered by a virtual paradise. These decadent dames safely lure their boy toys with money, electronic gadgets, designer clothes, baubles, or whatever material item it takes to get uncomplicated sexual favors in return along with the strict understanding that like in Las Vegas, “What happens in Jamaica, stays in Jamaica.” As one satisfied customer, a 45 year-old spinster from the Midwest explains her addiction to her hedonistic getaway, “A girl who no one looks at twice gets hit on all the time here.

All these guys are paying her attention, telling her she’s really beautiful, and they really want her. It is like a secret, a fantasy, and then you go home.” While this glimpse of the lucky ladies’ rationale for their no-strings liaisons is certainly informative, the picture is actually far more interesting when chronicling the history of Jamaica, winding its way from the slave days through the rise of the Rastafari to the present. Framed from this perspective, we suddenly see a persistent pattern of utter subjugation and economic inequality, with islanders providing stud service only being the latest form of exploitation.

The Australian heroine from start, when she carried the Olympic torch into the stadium, to finish, as she crossed the line to take 400m gold, was the indigenous athlete Cathy Freeman. Against the will of many of her still oppressed people, she came to represent the symbol, albeit shallow, of reconciliation between White and Aboriginal Australia. But the frenzy of flames and fireworks surrounding the Games blinded the rest of the world to the darker side of a land down under.

In 1999, John Pilger returned home to find that the elaborate preparations for the Games overshadowed a hidden world where Aborigines continue to live in Third World conditions. He revealed that some of the greatest sportsmen and women in the world were in fact Aboriginal. Many of them, like blacks in South Africa under Apartheid, were until recently denied a place in their country’s Olympic teams.

He also found that the Australian Government was in the process of overturning the landmark legislation of 1992 which finally recognised Aborigines as people with common law rights before the English colonised the country. ‘Welcome to Australia: The Secret Shame Behind the Sydney Olympics’ was the third film Pilger made on the Aboriginal struggle alongside fellow Australian, Alan Lowery.

Religion aside for a moment, there’s a terrible addiction that has swept across this country, and it’s one of the nation’s best kept secrets. Mostly everyone will tell you that it’s a really bad thing, but nobody can seem to stop doing it. And it doesn’t come cheap, nearly sixty percent of us are in long term debt because of it. No, we’re not talking booze, drugs or overeating. It’s shopping. And over 15 million Americans may in fact be addicted to it.

Rob VanAlkemade’s ‘What Would Jesus Buy?’ is a rousing, irreverent and simultaneously sobering documentary about the year round destructive shopaholic obsession that spins into an out of control buying and spending orgy by the time Christmas rolls around. The movie follows performance activist Reverend Billy and his ragtag cross country caravan, The Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir, to bring the voice of reason a few holiday seasons ago, to compulsive consumers everywhere. The intent of this countdown to Christmas is to save the holiday from what Reverend Billy has dubbed only slightly in jest, the Shopocalypse. Ironically, many of his group are injured when one of their buses collides on a highway with a truck rushing to deliver Christmas merchandise to stores. Meanwhile, the Reverend muses, ‘everyone in a car is driving to a television.

The What Would Jesus Buy? project is the brainchild of Morgan Spurlock, the same guy who in a less spiritual frame of mind, lost the junk food battle of the bulge against McDonald’s with his Academy Award nominated high calorie investigative doc, Super Size Me, and is now hitting the plexes with Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden. The concerns of What Would Jesus Buy are broader than digestion issues, as Reverend Billy and entourage put out a wakeup call to mall junkies everywhere, exorcising the demons from assorted cash registers and credit cards as he urges consumers to return to a more authentic relationship with Christmas.

The winner of the 2001 International Emmy award for Best Documentary, Welcome to North Korea is a grotesquely surreal look at the all-too-real conditions in modern-day North Korea.

Dutch filmmaker Peter Tetteroo and his associate Raymond Feddema spent a week in and around the North Korean capital of Pyongyang — ample time to represent the starvation and deprivation afflicting a good portion of the population, and to offset such “contemporary” imagery as cars and public facilities with the conspicuous nonuse of these trappings.

As the filmmakers reveal, the North Koreans have no opportunity to compare their existence with that of the outside world, due to the near-total cutoff of news and free transportation. The one predominant feature of this oppressed nation is manifested in the scores of statues, sculptures, and iconic paintings of North Korea’s Communist dictator Kim Jong II, who has gone to great and sometimes ruthless lengths to convince his subjects that he has inherited godlike powers from his equally “divine” father, the late Kim II Sung (whose mummified body still lies in state, à la Lenin).

Were this not all too painfully true, Welcome to North Korea could easily pass as a grotesque fairy tale, out Grimm-ing anything found in Grimm. The film made its American TV debut via the Cinemax cable network on March 18, 2003.

Diamonds are symbols of wealth, elegance and love around the world. But in several African nations, they have been a means to power, a reason to terrorize millions of innocent civilians, and may have even helped finance some of the world’s most brutal terrorists. The human cost of the illicit global diamond trade is examined in the provocative documentary.

Because they are portable, easily concealed, and untraceable, diamonds lend themselves to smuggling and corruption. In several underdeveloped African nations, warlords have used diamonds to help finance wars, while the rest of the world has turned a blind eye. Rebel armies have forced tens of thousands of people to mine diamonds in brutal, dangerous conditions under the threat of death, their pay as paltry as a cup of rice per day. In Sierra Leone, rebels chopped off people’s hands, arms, feet, lips, and ears indiscriminately for years during a civil war financed in part by the trade of illicit diamonds.

BLOOD DIAMONDS looks to some of the world’s foremost experts for the facts of the history of the diamond trade, and goes to the heart of the matter, interviewing both the victims and perpetrators of diamond-fueled atrocities in countries like Sierra Leone. One such victim is Usman Conteh. Captured by rebels in Sierra Leone’s Kono district, Usman was forced to mine diamonds for rebels – diamonds the rebels then sold or traded for arms. After months in captivity, Usman escaped only to find rebels had murdered his family.

The documentary explores the factors that led to the violence, tells the vivid details of the suffering, and speaks with the organizations that eventually exposed the link between diamonds and several brutal African conflicts. BLOOD DIAMONDS also looks at the steps eventually taken by advocacy organizations and the diamond industry to combat the problem.

Mark Thomas puts the arms trade under the spotlight in this special edition of Dispatches, asking how easy it is to broker arms. Working his way through a spider’s web of vast and, in some cases, archaic legislation, Thomas unearths a series of dangerous loopholes, inconsistencies and, even more shocking, simple omissions that would have the most avaricious arms broker salivating with glee.

The programme highlights the international trade route that runs from Eastern Europe to the Far East and the twists and turns that make it possible to broker equipment like thumb cuffs, wall cuffs and the particularly menacing sting stick (two-foot metals bars covered with sharp spikes) within the existing UK guidelines.

In his inimitable style, Thomas highlights the shocking impact of this trade route not just in war-torn countries like Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia and Sierra Leone, but also in our own backyard. But nothing prepares Thomas for the possibilities that open up when he discovers a neighbouring European country with no brokerage laws.

Zhongshan, Guangdong Province: Many young off-farm workers are busy working for orders of next year. They work day after night, repeating monotonous tasks just like machines, they have to finish their tasks at the highest speed, since maximum output per unit time means that they will earn as much money as possible; but in fact, even that is rather slim. While they make numerous numbers of umbrellas in various colors and styles, they have no idea how much an umbrella earns for others.

Yiwu, Zhejiang Province: Advantaged geographic location gives this city an opportunity to become the foreland connecting World Factory and World Market. Local farmers’ lands were expropriated for enhancing economic development. A few lucky local inhabitants were compensated considerably for their land loss. Some of them are engaging in umbrella wholesale business in the newly constructed gigantic building, the so-called World’s Largest Small Commodity Market. Now they are nouveaux riches, and their lifestyle has almost changed completely, there seems no longer any relationship between the term farmers and their current status.

In the last 10 years, corporations have doubled what they spend marketing to your children. It’s no wonder. Children influence 62% of family purchases – everything from snack food to cameras to cars. Kids under twelve are at the epicentre of consumer culture.

There is gold in the hills, and marketers know your children will lead the way. So, they spend billions of dollars every year, on the premise that a tug of your heartstrings will mobilize your purse strings. And they’ve unleashed an army of market researchers to help them accomplish their mission. The kids have taken over.

It’s all been made possible through a dramatic shift in parenting style, which has parents dictating less and listening more, and ageneration of under twelve’s that is more numerous and more affluent than the Baby Boomers. This is a marketing culture where companies are moving far beyond traditional boundaries, coining terms like “the infant niche market” and “cradle-to-grave brand loyalty.” Psychologists and anti-marketers have been waving a red flag for years, and now they’re dressing for battle. Meet the players who have helped the kids take over.

By knowing and exercising your rights, you become a better citizen. In addition, you’ll be more prepared to balance the power between yourself and police, who often try to get you to wave your rights.

Although you’re generally better off respectfully asserting your rights, doing so is no guarantee against police misconduct, but showing the police that you know your rights can make them cautious about violating your rights.

Created by Flex Your Rights and narrated by retired ACLU director Ira Glasser, BUSTED realistically depicts the pressure and confusion of common police encounters.

In an entertaining and revealing manner, BUSTED illustrates the right and wrong ways to handle different police encounters and pays special attention to demonstrating how you, the viewer, can courteously and confidently refuse police searches.