The Trap: What Happened To Our Dream of Freedom?
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Category Archives: documentary
The Rising of Latin America – The Genesis of ‘The War On Democracy’
By John Pilger
13 Jun 2007
In the 1960s, when I first went to Latin America, I travelled up the cone of the continent from Chile across the Altiplano to Peru, mostly in rickety buses and single-carriage trains. Continue reading
Taking Liberties
Cuba! Africa! Revolution!
[***Please note: Jihan El-Tahri’s film has been removed and replaced with a short related film***]
“CUBA! AFRICA! REVOLUTION!”
Jihan El Tahri’s 2007 documentary “CUBA! AFRICA! REVOLUTION!” (aka “Cuba, an African Odyssey”) tells the previously untold story of Cuba’s support for African revolutions. This documentary unravels the story of the so-called Cold War,through the prism of its least known arena: Africa. Against colonialism, capitalism, and communism, the newly independent nations attempted for the first time to gain real control of their own countries. From Che Guevara’s military campaign to avenge Lumumba in the Congo, up to the fall of apartheid in South Africa, 300,000 Cubans fought alongside African revolutionaries.
Patrice Lumumba was an African anti-colonial leader, and the first legally elected Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo, after he assisted it achieve independence from Belgium in June 1960. Only ten weeks later, Lumumba’s government was deposed in a coup. He was subsequently imprisoned and assassinated. President Colonel Mobutu, the key figure in the coup, supported by the Congo’s former colonial power, Belgium, and the CIA, became the Congo’s ruler. Cuba shared Africa’s revolutionary quest for independence.
Fidel Castro decided that Cuba could not stand idly by, so he sent Che Guevara to Africa to assess how they could aid local liberation movements. In 1965, Guevara went to the Congo in an attempt to spark a revolution against the pro-Western regime, which had emerged after the assassination of Lumumba. The problem was, Guevara was without formal military training, and was up against the Congolese, who were aided by US Army Special Forces. So he returned to Cuba and recruited 120 soldiers, taking them back to the Congo. Still, Guevara’s army was no match, and they eventually withdrew in August, 1965.
From the tragicomic epic of Che Guevara in Congo, to the triumph at the battle of Cuito Carnavale in Angola, Cuba: An African Odyssey attempts to understand the world today through the saga of these internationalists who won every battle, but finally lost the war.
Update: The documentary “Cuba, an African Odyssey” is due for general release on 21/01/2008
The Century of the Self – Adam Curtis
The Century of the Self is an acclaimed documentary by filmmaker Adam Curtis released in 2002.
“The series (below) is about how those in power have used Freud’s theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy.” – Adam Curtis Continue reading
The Power of Nightmares by Adam Curtis
The following 3 part film explores the origins in the 1940s and 50s of Islamic Fundamentalism in the Middle East, and Neoconservatism in America, parallels between these movements, and their effect on the world today. The parallel suggested by The Power of Nightmares is that both, Islamism in the Arab world and Neoconservatism in the United States, needed to inflate a myth of a dangerous enemy in order to draw people to support them. Continue reading
Democracy Now!
“Today’s world, as we all know, is faced with multiple threats. From whichever angle I look at this menace, I always come to the conclusion that salvation can only come through a profound awakening of man to his own personal responsibility, which is at the same time a global responsibility. Continue reading
Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times
The following film premiered in Tokyo on September 11, 2002 on the first anniversary of the 9.11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
The film chronicles the thinking and activism, at that time, of the noted linguist Noam Chomsky, who since the Vietnam War era has been a vocal and consistent critic of the way the United States exercises state power in the world arena. Continue reading
The Orchestrated Attacks on Chávez are a Travesty
The chilling Oliver Stone film Salvador got a rare airing on television this week. It was a reminder of a time when, for those on the left, little victories were increasingly dwarfed by big defeats – not least in a Latin America which became synonymous with death squads and juntas. How different things seem now. Yesterday US Vice-President Dick Cheney came uncomfortably close to the reality of Afghan resistance to foreign occupation. On the same day Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez delivered a mightier blow to the neocon dream of US domination, announcing an extension of public ownership of his country’s oil fields Continue reading
Paradise Stolen
Once upon a time, an entire people were exiled from their own country by a mighty foreign power. They were taken a thousand miles across the sea and left on strange shores. They lost their homes and their traditional livelihood and were not wanted by the people of the land they had been brought to. Continue reading
The Rise of the Modern Day Corporation
The film you are about to watch charts the development of the corporation as a legal entity from its genesis to unprecedented legal protection stemming from creative interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, that is from its origins as an institution chartered by governments to carry out specific public functions, to the rise of the vast modern institutions entitled to some of the legal rights of a “person.” Continue reading
Stealing A Nation
By John Pilger
There are times when one tragedy, one crime tells us how a whole system works behind its democratic facade and helps us to understand how much of the world is run for the benefit of the powerful and how governments lie. To understand the catastrophe of Iraq, and all the other Iraqs along imperial history’s trail of blood and tears, one need look no further than Diego Garcia. Continue reading
The Other September 11th
Coup d’Etat Chile 1973
On September 11, 1973, Augusto Pinochet lead a bloody military coup, backed by the US, to overthrow the democratically elected President Salvador Allende. Allende was a socialist who believed in equality for all people and rights for the poor.
On that horrific September 11th, Pinochet’s troops marched the streets of Santiago, Chile to bomb the Moneda presidential palace (Palacio de La Moneda.) The country’s president Allende delivered a passionate final radio address to his people – before taking his own life as the troops moved in. Continue reading
The Truth Game
John Pilger‘s penetrating documentary which looks at world-wide propaganda surrounding the nuclear arms race. Continue reading
Back in the USSR
Part 1 of a 4 DVD Set – Animated Soviet Propaganda
From 1924 to perestroika the USSR produced more than 4 dozen animated propaganda films. They weren’t for export. Their target was the new nation and their goal was to win over the hearts and minds of the Soviet people. Continue reading
Venezuela Bolivariana: People and the Struggle of the IV World War
A 2004 documentary on the impact of financial neo-liberalism on Latin America and other parts of the world and what Hugo Chavez is doing to stop its spread in Venezuela.
All Rights Reserved Calle Y Media 2004
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