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01/15/2006:

"United States of Fear"

How can an open society best balance demands for security with democracy?

That question is at the heart of a stunning new documentary appropriately entitled "State of Fear." The film chronicles awful events that took place in late-20th-century Peru, where nearly 70,000 civilians perished in a crossfire between a crazed revolutionary-turned-terrorist group known as the Shining Path and a Peruvian military that didn't differentiate between enemies of the state and ordinary citizens.

In focusing on the human and societal costs Peruvian democracy faced when it embarked on a war against terror, however, the film also implies much about our own. In the wake of America's ongoing struggle against terror -- and what is looking more and more like a creeping constitutional crisis -- this cautionary tale could not be more relevant to the 21st-century United States and its citizenry.
alternet.org