Join Croydon TUC for a screening of ‘Shadow World’, an incredible documentary about the global arms trade.
This important documentary feature film, directed by Johan Grimonprez, exposes the appalling human cost of international arms dealing. It is in part based on the acclaimed book The Shadow World - Inside the Global ArmsTrade (Penguin books, 2012) written by Andrew Feinstein, founder of Corruption Watch UK. Having investigated the global arms trade for over fifteen years, Andrew has kindly agreed to give a Q&A session after the screening.
Contributors to the film include whistleblowers, investigative journalists, prosecutors, military and industry insiders, along with interviews given by senior politicians. It explains how the international trade in weapons fosters corruption, undermines democracy, determines economic and foreign policies and spreads suffering around the world. Complicit in all this are government elites, military and intelligence agencies, defence contractors, arms dealers and agents.
Examining some of the largest corrupt arms deals, it shows they account for almost 40% of all corruption in world trade. Shadow World highlights the real costs of war; how the arms trade drives it; and how weapons are turned against citizens of liberal democracies, reducing security for us all.
Positive alternatives are presented through the experience of a peace activist and war correspondent, as well as the voice of Eduardo Galeano reading selections from his stories.
In 1961, US President Dwight Eisenhower issued a prescient warning in his farewell address, broadcast to the nation: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist."
Shadow World is about big corporations involving players at the highest levels of government. The defence industry claims to bolster our security but instead, it has created a more dangerous world.