You can click on this BBC link to read the full article, or download the BBC article in PDF form Leaders condemn US-Colombia deal

The even is free, but no outside food or drinks please.

The War on Democracy is a thorough documentary where John Pilger goes on location to interview the people of Chile, Venezuela, and Bolivia.  Pilger also interviews Former CIA agent and Watergate scandal conspirator Howard Hunt, as well as Duane Clarridge, former head of CIA operations in South America.  The Clarridge interview is truly reveling.

From Pilger’s own account:

The rising of Latin America – the genesis of ‘The War On Democracy’

The War On Democracy examines the false democracy that comes with western corporations and financial institutions and a war waged, materially and as propaganda, against popular democracy. It is the story of the people [John Pilger] first saw 40 years ago; but they are no longer invisible; they are a mighty political movement, reclaiming noble concepts distorted by corporatism and they are defending the most basic human rights in a war being waged against all of us.

We filmed in the National Stadium in Santiago, Chile, where Jara was taken along with thousands of other political prisoners. By all accounts, he was a source of strength for his comrades, singing for them until soldiers beat him to the ground and smashed his hands. He wrote his last song there and it was smuggled out on scraps of paper. These are the words:

What horror the face of fascism

creates

They carry out their plans with

knife-like precision …

For them, blood equals medals …

How hard it is to sing

When I must sing of horror …

In which silence and screams

Are the end of my song.

After two days of torture, they killed him. The War On Democracy is about such courage and a warning to us all that “for them” nothing has changed, that “blood equals medals”.

Hollywood’s new censors

The War on Democracy, which inverted the “war on terror” in Latin America, was distributed in Britain, Australia and other countries but not in the United States. “You will need to make structural and political changes,” said a major New York distributor. “Maybe get a star like Sean Penn to host it – he likes liberal causes – and tame those anti-Bush sequences.”

A detailed list of the content of the film can be found at mrxfromplanetx.com/the-war-on-democracy

The one thing Pilger does miss is US intervention is not about taking away people’s freedom.  In Chile for example Salvador Allende planned to nationalize the copper mines.  This was not to take them away from Chilean companies, but to take them away from foreign companies who were luting the countries resources.  Today Rio Tinto (an Australian Welsh company) owns Chile’s Escondida copper mine.

The protection of US and multinational corporate revenue is a component of every US and British backed coup, without exception.

Another example is the US backed coup against Hugo Chavez covered in the film.  Hugo Chavez did not nationalize the oil fields of Venezuela to take them away from Venezuelan companies, he did that to take them away from Exxon Mobile, Chevron, and British Petroleum (responsible for the 1953 coup in Iran).

If you have any questions, or would like to sponsor a screening of The Wan on Democracy feel free to contact us.