Wat On Democracy

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny. Anyone who has declared violence his method certainly must choose dishonest as his principle. Democracy has become the most extensive political form of government during the past decade, after the fall of all its alternatives. The War on democracy by John Pilger is about the power of empire and of people. It was shot in Venezuela, Bolivia, Chile, United States, etc. It traces the struggle of indigenous people first against the Spanish, then against European immigrants who reinforced the old elite. A process of globalization is rapidly turning the world as we know it into economic opportunity waiting to be oppressed. A large factor in this process is due to the advent of technology which is becoming more and more readily available to lesser developed countries. Countries such as Jamaica and other LDC’s are primary targets of economic globalization. In the film Life and Debt by Stephanie Black, we see the effects globalization has on Jamaican culture, industry, and agriculture. Life and Debt is focusing on the stories of individual Jamaicans whose strategies for survival and parameters of everyday existence are determined by the U.S. and other foreign economic agendas.

War on Democracy was concentrated in the barrios where the continent’s “invisible people” live in hillside shanties. The film investigates the 2002 coup d’etat against Chavez and casts it in a current background. It also describes the differences between Venezuela and Cuba, and the shift in economic and political power since Chavez was first elected. We can see that American foreign policies towards Third World and Latin American countries serve to constitute “war on democracy” rather than “spread” it. In result Having “War on democracy” very well timed people might see it as another way of seeing the world: as a metaphor for understanding a wider war on democracy and the universal struggle of ordinary people, from Venezuela to Vietnam, Palestine to Guatemala.

Life and Debt focuses on Jamaica as a typical example of a small developing country that has taken the IMF medicine. On the road towards self-reliance during the first decade of independence, Jamaica was suddenly pushed into deep financial crisis by the rise in the price of oil in 1973. Jamaica's continuing financial crises, high unemployment, lawlessness and social turmoil have to be seen against the background of IMF/World Bank policies that governments of both the left and the right have been forced to pursue for well over two decades. Life and Debt illustrates how those policies have impacted on workers, small businesses, farmers and Jamaican society in general. What Black's film shows is the spectacular failure of the IMF "remedy". After the structural adjustments, the cuts in public expenditure, the removal of tariffs on imports, the privatizations and devaluations, Jamaica is still plagued by financial crisis. Development plans have been abandoned as the vision of independence recedes. Life and Debt is a very powerful weapon in the arsenal of the global movement for a more equitable economic order.

Going back to the War on Democracy, John Pilger takes us through the attempted coup in Venezuela, the actual coup in Chile, the resistance of the people in Bolivia to their country being asset-stripped by the corporations, the killings by the army, the huge demonstrations at La Paz. And he describes the United States’ deterioration of Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador. Pilger’s film brings out the bias of the established media in facilitating what the US has done. And he successfully links the events in the film to present day human rights violations, such as Guantanamo Bay. But The War on Democracy does not really explain who the US is and why they want to control people and resources.

The US government may well be surprised and concerned by the new

...