The War on Democracy by John Pilger

is available in 10 segments on YouTube, beginning here. I've also posted the videos in order below this paragraph. The documentary serves as a much needed reality check, reminding the viewer that what Bush is doing to Iraq is merely a continuation of a decades-long tradition in US foreign policy. The American government's primary interest lies in protecting empire. The War on Democracy shows that the principles of democracy can be found more readily among the poorest people of Latin America than anywhere near the corridors of the White House. It features an exclusive interview with Hugo Chávez and Pilger also speaks to former US government officials who claim the CIA waged covert wars in Latin America. Secret prisons, kidnappings, torture and corruption are not new 'investments' for the United States. Invasion, bloody coups, exploitation and take over is an old, painful, and bitter reality for many countries in Latin and South America, one that continues today. Canadians would do well to pay attention to what is going on there and elsewhere as the US extends its reach for precious natural resources. We'd be idiots to think the US gives a rat's ass about our sovereignty, our social programs, our policies and institutions.

YouTube limits the length of videos so the film is in 10 segments below.

Part 1.


Part 2.


Part 3.


Part 4.


Part 5.


Part 6.


Part 7.


Part 8.


Part9.


Part 10.


Hats off to This Old Brit for providing info about the film earlier this year.

when confronted with wrongdoing: lie, 'forget', and smirk like the smug tool who hired you

The top ten Gonzales moments from Talking Points Memo.

John Pilger's War on Democracy opens in Britain June 21st

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.

The trailer:


Let's hope and pray this film wends its way here soon.

John Pilger is a world-renowned journalist, author and documentary filmmaker, who began his career in 1958 in his homeland, Australia, before moving to London in the 1960s.

He regards eye-witness as the essence of good journalism. He has been a foreign correspondent and a front-line war reporter, beginning with the Vietnam war in 1967. He is an impassioned critic of foreign military and economic adventures by Western governments.

"It is too easy," he says, "for Western journalists to see humanity in terms of its usefulness to 'our' interests and to follow government agendas that ordain good and bad tyrants, worthy and unworthy victims and present 'our' policies as always benign when the opposite is usually true. It's the journalist's job, first of all, to look in the mirror of his own society."

He believes a journalist also ought to be a guardian of the public memory and often quotes Milan Kundera: "The struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

John Pilger's web page.

Credit: This Old Brit, a very fine blogger.

Zebigniew Brzezinski nails it on The Daily Show

His name may require a Ph.D. in linguistics to pronounce but his message about BushCo's foreign policy is easy to grasp. Have a listen:



[snip]

In August 2002...Mr. Brzezinski cautioned that war "is too serious a business and too unpredictable in its dynamic consequences - especially in a highly flammable region - to be undertaken because of a personal peeve, demagogically articulated fears or vague factual assertions."

In February 2003, just weeks before the invasion, he added that "an America that decides to act essentially on its own regarding Iraq" could "find itself quite alone in having to cope with the costs and burdens of the war's aftermath, not to mention widespread and rising hostility abroad."

He was right then and he's right now.