NOT Seen on TV is a short campaign video from around 2013 that argues mainstream news leaves out the business side of war: who builds the weapons, who finances them and which governments were pushed aside when they stood in the way. Below you can watch it, then read what each of its main claims rests on. Some points hold up well, some are exaggerated, and a few are simply opinion.
The film opens with a line widely attributed to Malcolm X, that "the media's the most powerful entity on earth." Whether or not you agree, it sets the tone: the video wants you to question what you are shown, and that is a fair test to apply to the video itself.
What the video covers
The clip was shared by the YouTube channel Ink of Scholars and moves quickly through six themes:
- the weapons used in Iraq, especially white phosphorus and depleted uranium;
- links between the defence firms BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin and Rolls-Royce;
- the fall of three leaders who were not friendly to Washington: Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran, Salvador Allende of Chile and Patrice Lumumba of Congo;
- who, beyond Muslim-majority countries, criticises US foreign policy;
- two commentators, the Chicago pastor Jeremiah Wright and the writer Ali Abunimah;
- the lobbying group AIPAC and the question of who influences a US president.
That is a lot for a few minutes of footage. The sections below take the factual claims one at a time.
White phosphorus and depleted uranium in Iraq
White phosphorus is a substance that ignites on contact with air and burns at roughly 800°C. Armies use it mainly for smoke screens and for marking targets, but when it lands on people it sticks to skin and can burn down to the bone, and fragments can reignite after first aid. It is not banned outright. Protocol III of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons restricts incendiary weapons, and attacking civilians with them is prohibited.
In Iraq the question is not hypothetical. During the Second Battle of Fallujah in November 2004, US forces used white phosphorus shells, and in November 2005 the Pentagon confirmed it had been used as an incendiary against fighters in dug-in positions, after earlier denials.
Depleted uranium is the dense metal left after uranium is enriched for reactors; it is used in armour-piercing rounds. Hundreds of tonnes were fired in Iraq in 1991 and again after 2003. Its main danger is chemical: inhaled or swallowed, it is toxic to the kidneys, while its radioactivity is lower than that of natural uranium. Doctors in Basra and Fallujah have reported rises in birth defects and childhood cancers, and these reports deserve serious attention. However, a clear causal link to depleted uranium has not been proven, and large studies of Gulf War and Balkans veterans have not found a consistent excess of cancer. The honest summary is "a real concern, unresolved," not "proven poison."
Banks, insurers and arms makers
The video's text lists a series of figures about British financial firms and the arms trade. In brief, it says:
- Barclays held about £7.3 billion in arms-company shares and ranked among the ten biggest investors in US arms firms;
- HSBC held around £450 million in shares and had lent some £27 billion to the industry;
- Lloyds held about £717 million in shares and acted as main banker to BAE Systems;
- insurers and pension providers such as Aviva, AXA and Standard Life also had money in the sector.
These numbers come from campaign research of that period and reflect holdings at one moment, often including shares managed for clients rather than owned by the bank itself. We could not check them against current filings, so treat them as a snapshot from around 2008 to 2013, not as today's picture. The broader point, that ordinary savings and pensions are often invested in weapons makers through funds, remains true, and anyone curious can ask their bank or pension provider for its defence-sector policy.
On Rolls-Royce, the video says the company is a major military engine maker and powers Britain's nuclear submarines. The core is accurate: Rolls-Royce designs and builds the reactors for Royal Navy submarines and has made engines for aircraft such as the Tornado and Eurofighter Typhoon. Exact rankings vary by year and by who is counting; Defense News placed it 16th among defence contractors by revenue in 2018, close to the "17th" in the film.
The clip below shows activists from the "NATO Game Over" campaign, which organised protests around NATO's 2012 summit in Chicago.
Mossadegh, Allende and Lumumba: three different stories
The original post described all three as presidents killed with CIA involvement. That compresses three very different events, and none of the three was a president killed by the CIA. Here is what the record shows.
Mohammad Mossadegh, Iran, 1953
Mossadegh was Iran's prime minister, not president. After he nationalised the oil industry, British intelligence and the CIA organised a coup that removed him on 19 August 1953 and strengthened the Shah. He was not killed: he was tried, jailed for three years and then kept under house arrest until his death in 1967. In 2013 declassified US documents acknowledged that the coup was carried out "under CIA direction."
Salvador Allende, Chile, 1973
Allende was Chile's elected president. Declassified records show the US spent millions trying to block his rise and to weaken his government, including a 1970 effort to encourage a military coup. He died on 11 September 1973 inside the presidential palace as the armed forces seized power. A 2011 international forensic team concluded he took his own life, and Chilean courts upheld that finding. US pressure helped create the conditions for the coup, but how directly the CIA took part in the day itself is still debated.
Patrice Lumumba, Congo, 1961
Lumumba, Congo's first prime minister, came closest to the video's claim. The CIA did plan to kill him in 1960, even preparing poison, but abandoned the plan. He was eventually shot by a firing squad in Katanga on 17 January 1961, under Katangan leaders and with Belgian officers present. A Belgian parliamentary inquiry led Belgium to apologise and accept moral responsibility in 2002, and in 2022 Belgium returned one of his teeth, the only remains left, to his family.
The people and groups the film names
Jeremiah Wright is the former pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, best known for sermons that became a campaign controversy for Barack Obama in 2008. Ali Abunimah is a Palestinian-American journalist and co-founder of the news site The Electronic Intifada. Both are critics of US policy in the Middle East, which is why the film features them alongside its point that opposition to American wars is not limited to Muslims.
AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, is one of the best-known lobbying groups in Washington and is open about its goal of supporting the US-Israel relationship. Lobbies of many kinds influence policy, and that is a legitimate subject for debate. The suggestion that any group "owns" a president is a rhetorical claim, not something the video demonstrates, and it is best read as opinion.
How to watch films like this well
Short activist videos are good at raising questions and bad at nuance. A useful habit is to separate three kinds of statement as you watch: documented facts (the 1953 coup, white phosphorus at Fallujah), contested findings (health effects of depleted uranium) and opinion (who "really" runs a government). Each deserves a different level of trust.
Check dates, because numbers about investments or rankings age quickly. Look for the primary record where it exists: declassified files, parliamentary inquiries and court rulings often say more, and say it more carefully, than any montage. And notice when a video joins separate events into one pattern, as this one does with three leaders whose fates were quite different.
The film closes on a line often attributed to Nelson Mandela: "When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw." It is a reminder that the people at the receiving end of these decisions are the real subject, and that getting the facts right is part of taking them seriously.
Sources: Ink of Scholars (YouTube channel, video creator); Wikipedia: 1953 Iranian coup d'état; Wikipedia: Salvador Allende; Wikipedia: Patrice Lumumba; Wikipedia: White phosphorus munitions; Wikipedia: Depleted uranium; Wikipedia: Rolls-Royce Holdings.
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