A drive through the occupied West Bank

A drive through the occupied territories from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

During my trip to Israel in April 2008 I took a solo journey into the Israeli-occupied city of Hebron. My tour guide was Mikhael Manekin of Breaking the Silence, an extraordinary human rights organization founded by veterans of the Israeli military. Mikhael himself served as a lieutenant during the second intifada. The organization chiefly focuses on documenting testimonial accounts of the occupation by 20something Israeli ex-soldiers themselves.

Manekin usually takes a busload of 30 Israelis through Hebron for the tour, but he gave me a personal tour alongside Naomi Schacter, Development Director of Shatil. 

In this 19-minute video, the first of a two-part documentary, we began our trip in Jerusalem, drove through the West Bank on Route 60 past Bethlehem and the astonishing Separation Barrier being erected, into the settlement of Kiriath Arba/Qiriat Arba, and into Hebron, a city of 166,000 Palestinians and the only Palestinian city with a Jewish settlement in the city center.  

A quick note: I did not have the proper equipment — just a small handheld Samsung camcorder with no remote mike and no lighting — so you'll notice some production lapses. But the 19-minute video still came out well.

Watch video in H.264 QuickTime on Ourmedia

Watch video in Flash on Vimeo

See my full report here on Socialmedia.biz.

John McCain on the US relationship with China

John McCain: U.S. as a debtor nation not a big priority from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Here's footage I shot of Sen. John McCain at Stanford University on Aug. 1, 2007, when he was still a longshot for the Republican nomination for president.

In this 3-minute clip, McCain says of the United States' dependence on China to finance our national debt: "It's not as important as it would have been some years ago." He then listed other aspects of our relationship with China that he found more troubling.

Watch video in MPEG-4 on Ourmedia
Watch video in Flash on Vimeo

Previously:

McCain on Saudi Arabia and Pakistan's role in terrorism

Cross-posted to SocialMedia.biz

'Why John Edwards is the most electable progressive'

Also at the   Good Ol' Girls gathering in San Francisco last Thursday night, Jeff Soukup, California co-chair of the John Edwards campaign, gave a short talk about why John Edwards is the most progressive and most electable candidate running for president.

Watch MPEG-4 video
Watch Flash version on Internet Archive

A question for the presidential candidates

This is videoblogging week. Pretty simple concept: Post a video each day and tag your video videobloggingweek2007. You can see what others have done at MeFeedia.

Here's my first video of the week. Jeff Jarvis invited people to make videos of questions we should put to the presidential candidates, so I took Jeff up on it. (He asks people to tag it prezconference.)

In this 50-second video I made with Lisa Padilla of road | productions, I ask the candidates what sacrifices they plan to ask of the American people. (Watch MPEG-4 on Internet Archive, or watch grainier YouTube version.

Irina Slutsky has this nice little entry: Yet Another Lonely Girl.

I'm a little bummed because I spent several hours this morning doing a remix of the Stephen Colbert-Gwen Ifill spoof interview for the Colbert Report, but my new MacBook Pro couldn't handle the 100 video snippets resulting from edits to the 4-minute footage. Kept freezing, so I won't be able to finish it.