Saturday, May 9, 2009

The War On Democracy

Set both in Latin America and the United States, the film explores the historic and current relationship of Washington with countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Chile. Pilger claims that the film "...tells a universal story... analysing and revealing, through vivid testimony, the story of great power behind its venerable myths. It allows us to understand the true nature of the so-called "war on terror". According to Pilger, the film’s message is that the greed and power of empire is not invincible and that people power is always the "seed beneath the snow".




Pilger interviews several ex-CIA agents who purportedly took part in secret campaigns against democratic countries and who he claims are profiting from the war in Iraq. He investigates the School of the Americas in the U.S. state of Georgia, where General Pinochet’s torture squads were reportedly trained along with tyrants and death-squad leaders in Haiti, El Salvador, Brazil and Argentina.





The film uses archive footage to support its claim that democracy has been wiped out in country after country in Latin America since the 1950s. Testimonies from those who fought for democracy in Chile and Bolivia are also used.

3 comments:

rondinara said...

Chavez at the end quotes Victor Hugo: "There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come."

Thank you, John Pilger, for a moving documentary with an epic scope.

Anonymous said...

Profiting from war is nothing new, that's what war is usually for. War is a Racket by Major General Smedley Butler might be of interest here.

Anonymous said...

If you liked this documentary, I highly recommend reading Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine. It's a very revealing look at the history of the CIA's continuing effort to suppress democracy and anything that smells of economic regulation in Latin America and around the world.