On ITV last night, at 11pm, was a program entitled: "The War on Democracy"by John Pilger. It was one of the best pieces of television I have seen in a long time.It dealt with the various regimes the USA has helped install in South America since 1945 and how, by and large, these were undemocratic regimes, which installed puppet dictators, such as General Pinochet, in power at the expense of leaders who had originally been democratically elected - Salvador Allende - by the peoples of the country.
The program also highlighted the USA's support of the failed coup d'etat which took place in Venezuela in 2002, during which Hugo Chavez (interviewed in the documentary) was over-thrown, but then re-instated when the population of Caracas marched on the presidential building and demanded his return. Chavez is a man who, despite unrelenting media criticism (likening him to Hitler on many occasions), has overseen the setting up of a constitution for the first time ever in the country - something which those ordinary civilians interviewed by Pilger made clear was something they held to be highly important for them, and their children, if the future of Venezuela was to be secure.
The coup sought to remove this security and the US government went on record - a clip was shown from the press conference - claiming to be in support of this new government. Presumably because the new government was full of business tycoons who would ensure good business for the USA.
The most shocking part of the entire program was when a former CIA chief Duane Clarridge not only ignored Pilger's hard evidence, that thousands of people had been tortured and executed in Chile after the coup, by many men trained in the USA, but when he then claimed Chile was better off for this in the long run (i.e. Life's Cheap for Oriental / Latin American): Pilger then interviewed a woman who had been kidnapped and tortured, and known pregnant friends to be murdered, a man who was 18 at the time and had been beaten, alongside hundreds of other prisoners of politics at Chile's national stadium, and then a couple living in poverty on the outskirts of Santiago who saw little benefit from the regime of Pinochet.
The whole point of this program was to show that America is no "Champion of Democracy" at all. It is infact a champion of it's own interests. Democracy / Dictatorship - which ever suits the US government best is what will be looked for. So if Cuba turns Communist they launch the Bay of Pigs invasion. If Chile elects a man who doesn't conform to their ideals - who sets about introducing land reforms that could damage US imports, then they remove him, through a puppet, and then either ignore the problem or deny it ever happened - or even worse, claim it was for the best anyway.
I suppose the length of this post underlines how frustrated I felt that this type of history goes so unreported and unknown in the western world. I also felt the documentary should have been shown a lot earlier, with far more advertising, and with the premise of the show stated clearly. If they repeat this show, or release it on DVD, I urge you to see it. If Michael Moore can make documentaries that people rent out, then this is also worth your time.
Posts
4 comments:
think you can really compare the attempted invasion of Cuba with any of the other interference in Latin American countries' affairs. When you're fighting a global war against communism, it's never going to be a Good Thing to have a communist nation 90 miles off your coast -- as the missile crisis subsequently proved.
Successive American governments (ie the interests of a powerful elite, as opposed to 'America') would probably have got away with a lot more if it wasn't for the fact military expeditions abroad very rarely get popular support at home. Until The War Against Terror (T.W.A.T.) it was still largely true that American foreign policy was domestic politics with an accent: the other reason they bothered intervening in Cuba, repeatedly, was the vested interests of thousands of Cuban exiles living in southern Florida.
And I missed the programme, but I'll bet that Pilger neglected to mention that when Chávez was elected his opponents boycotted the elections, and that since his first election he amended the constitution to give himself more power and remove the pre-existing term limit, and that isn't an obvious precursor to a dictatorship I don't know what is.
Ok, I missed the "I don't" off the start of that comment.
I'm a pillock.
Yeah I agree with most of that. I didn't go fully into Chavez and the various things he has done as I wanted to just highlight the point the program was making that America ( the governments of America) have instigated wars / propaganda campaigns against countries who had democratically elected leaders - with Chile being a prime example.
No program ever made about this sort of thing will cover every single angle and please everyone from liberal to fascist but this was a very well put together program and some of the interviews with both ordinary people from the countries, people who had been persecuted, Chavez and that CIA bloke I linked were very illuminating.
Aye. And someone was suggesting that they overthrow the Iraqi PM just the other week. The one that they put there.
Post a Comment