Adam Curtis - Power of Nightmares

8/8/2019 Adam Curtis - Power of Nightmares

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Alex Fraser:

POWER OF NIGHTMARES

The Best "war on terror" DocumentaryNever Released Here


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Pros: An electrifying argument; facts and characters you may nevercome across. Perhaps the most important documentary for Americans inthe 21st Century.

Cons: 180 minutes long. Several questionable "facts." A three hourmini-series strung together.

The Bottom Line: THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES arguespersuasively, manipulated by our leaders, Islam and the West are set todestroy us. IF WE CAN'T STOP THEM.


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Among the rarely privileged few to see, in a theatrical presentation, BBCWriter/Producer Adam Curtis's brilliantly controversial documentary,THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES, I was surprised by the number ofquestions about our involvement in "the war on terror" for which this 180minute mini-series provides answers.

Startlingly unconventional and unexpected answers.

Certainly new answers, even to me, and in a compelling context.For instance:

Question: Who started "The War on Terror"?

Answer: A pair of innocents (at the time, at least): A shy, middle-agedEgyptian engineer named Sayyed Qutb, and a reclusive refugee Germanphilosopher of classical philosophy named Leo Strauss. For the samereason, but from very different points of view, these solitary intellectualsset in motion, during the 1940's, seemingly small and inconsequentialforces which have been exploited into the madness now spiraling out ofcontrol in the Middle East, and if not stopped, throughout the entireWorld.

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Question: Who started "al-Quaeda (translated, "The Foundation"); theevil terrorist network dedicated to destroying the seats of Americanpower in the World?

Answer: Why, a strike force of Federal Attorneys in the SouthernDistrict of New York, United States of America, during January 2001,about nine months before 9/11.

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Question: When did Osama bin Laden become the leader of "al-Quaeda"?

Answer: Surprisingly -- if "al-Quaeda" existed initially (which seemsunlikely, in the form it has been promoted), and if indeed, he has everbeen anything more than a front man, a venture capitalist banker forterror -- Osama bin Laden adopted the position of supreme leadership, orwas elevated to it, sometime after the group's title was publicized by theBush Administration, following September 11, 2001.

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Question: What is the most compelling evidence that "al-Quaeda" hasorganized and fielded insidious, all encompassing plots against Americasince 9/11?

Answer: When the BBC broadcast THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES inOctober-November 2005, in response to what Producer Curtis considersthe generally isolated criminal acts of 19 Saudi and Egyptian thugs on9/11, the evidence for a widespread coordinated Islamic conspiracy tocreate terror within the United States had essentially dwindled down to 1)

the announcement of a young man's wedding plans to his friends; and 2)a video tape of a group of Buffalo teenagers going for a trip toDisneyland.

[New charges surface daily, of course, but a careful eye on them usuallysuggests that, even the efforts of the 180,000 member Homeland Securityforce have not produced much evidence that would legally put more thana few away for anything but illegal entry into the U.S. But, critics willrespond, it only takes a few, and we are redefining "legality" today in

ways at odds with our accepted Constitutional interpretations. Curtis'spoint is that there was no worldwide conspiracy until we invented it.


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Even the slightly more scrupulous British now report that the two Londontransit bombing "cells" appear to have been isolated, not part of the"worldwide conspiracy" -- though that made them no less deadly.]

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Question: Should a "dirty [atom] bomb" be exploded in a large Americancity, how many people would die directly and immediately as a result?

Answer: Hundreds of thous -- No, say Curtis and his scientific witnesses.Only a relative handful would die as the direct result of such a terroristact. As one expert explains, those killed or wounded in the immediateproximity would be a result of the explosive charge used to disperse the

atomic material. Radiation might kill a person, an expert notes, if she orhe stood on the site of the bomb blast "for a solid year." Another expert(from the Society of Atomic Scientists) observes that many more peoplewould likely die or be injured from being trampled, or engaging inmayhem, or suffering in car crashes, during the panic ensuing from "adirty bomb blast," a result of sensationally overblown announcements onRadio and TV.

[Of course, a population already conditioned to a traumatic state by ourpoliticians, and our fragile, over-extended economy, if one followsCurtis's general line, might sink into a much greater malaise than it didafter 9/11. More ominous, in four years since 9/11, we still have notsecured our ports. The great tragedy, if and when it comes, will be a full-sized atom bomb brought in the hold of a merchant vessel to New York,New Orleans, Los Angeles or . . . San Francisco.]


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Without minimizing how serious, due to incompetence of the CoalitionPowers and zeal of contending forces, our situation has become, THEPOWER OF NIGHTMARES: THE RISE OF THE POLITICS OF FEAR(Adam Curtis's full title) provides detailed, often provocatively accurate

answers to these questions, and dozens of others.

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Adam Curtis, a former professor of Political Science (Political Economy,as the British say) -- a jack of all trades and master of most -- structureshis documentary like three well-illustrated, entertainingly scored, andpowerfully narrated lectures: 1) "Baby, It's Cold Outside; 2) "ThePhantom Menace"; 3) "Shadows in the Cave."

[A more concise version of the mini-series, integrating and trimmingintroductions to the three episodes, was prepared for showing at Cannes,but because at this date, the BBC has no intentions of distributing themini-series in general release, or upon a DVD, and because no AmericanTV network has agreed to show the picture in any form, the severalshowings I've seen at the SF Film Festival and at San Francisco's RoxieTheater, with minor variations, have been projected in three one-hour,stand alone, episodes.]

Aside from a transmission by the Canadian Broadcasting Company, and ashowing at Tribeca, if you were not able to make your way to SanFrancisco's Roxie Theater, you will not see this documentary in a theateror on TV for some time to come.

Which is a pity.

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Opening Montage: Young Don Rumsfeld, young Osama bin Ladenlooking benignly into the camera; squinty-eyed President George W.Bush, guilty looking Prime Minister Tony Blair; a glimpse of MaxSchreck behind a door in NOSFERATU (1922); the cold green eyes of

Conrad Veidt as Jaffar in THE THIEF OF BAGDAD 1939); Sabu, thelittle thief, and Rex Ingram as the Genie escaping from the bottle in thesame picture.

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THE POWER OF NIGHTMARE's extraordinary argument, and evidencein support for the above thesis, begins with these words written andnarrated by Adam Curtis:

"Those with the darkest fears became the most powerful."

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PART ONE: "Baby It's Cold Outside": [Cue Frank Loesser's 1949 smashhit, sung by Johnny Mercer (who did the words) and Margaret Whiting.]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTNheCEUP_A

In the year 1949, Truman is President of the United States; we have

the Atom Bomb; and though the World has not quite recognized it

yet, God is an American.

In rustic Greeley, Colorado, at Colorado State, a meek Egyptian

engineer, an intellectual named Sayyed Qutb, age 29 that year, is

studying American educational methods on a scholarship. But he

abandons his studies and returns to Egypt after recognizing what he

perceives as evil tendrils beneath the surface of American Society:materialism, conspicuous consumption, racism, and godless sexual

practices. For instance, as he later reflects, residents of Greeley use

an inordinate amount of water to care for their lawns. Coming from

a land where grass is scarce, and water is more precious than gold, he

sees this practice as a sin of elemental proportions. He will pass on

news of this and other heresies; eventually, the news will reach one

Osama bin Laden.

At the same moment, Professor Leo Strauss, a philosophy professor

from Germany, is lecturing his students at the University of Chicago

on the corrupting flaws in American Liberalism; the creation of a

society, which he sees, as more and more believing in nothing but

material goods and hedonism. His students and the students of his

students will eventually produce the 91 page Project for a New

American Century, the blueprint for American World Domination, a

puritan Mein Kampf for the 21st Century.

Absurd?

It doesn't sound quite so wild as it would have, say, ten years ago.

Crazy, then?

The documentary? or "[Our] Struggle"? The documentary is very sane, ifoccasionally a bit overstated. "Our Struggle" may be the ultimatemadness, which mankind has been working toward for millions of years.

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Yes, it was around the late summer of 1949, at a Christian church hallnear his college, that Sayyed Qutb took a break from his diligentscholarship to attend a "church social," where even then, liberal churcheswere "trying to reach" the new Teenage Class created by American Post

War advertising.

While chatting with the pastor, Qutb observed young dewy white

girls, displaying themselves in their newly invented strapless evening

dresses, dancing to Frank Loesser's sensuous pop ballad, listening to

what he interpreted as Johnny Mercer's seductively pornographic

lyrics.

He wrote: ". . . chests met chests, arms circled waists, and the hall was

full of lust and love."

He tried to avert his eyes, perhaps, from a rose pinned to a prominentbosom; avoided efforts by friends to get him to approach one of thesehouris for a close-dance, a fox trot which plaid jacketed, bow-tiedlothario-undergraduates were practicing.

The social conversation, even in those days, was beginning to be of

celebrity and material possessions: of movie stars and automobiles,

the insatiable lure of consumer goods. These luminously attractive

young Americans were, to Qutb, corrupted and lost. What could be

more sinful?

And of course, in 1949, the slightly built, owl-eyed Qutb would havebeen regarded a rare black man at a Greeley Christian Social.

Qutb, meditating over time on his Colorado experience, concluded

that this kind of American culture would spread around the Earth,

challenging the one and only Book -- not the Bible -- the Quran;

polluting the holiness of the sacred Islamic shrines and customs.Upon his return home to Egypt, he joined the new Muslim

Brotherhood, dedicated himself to banishing from Holy Lands the

Western colonial powers, who were already bringing practices he

had witnessed to befoul ancient traditions and the culture from

which he came.

What was desecrating beautiful young Americans must not infect devoutMuslims!


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Sayyed Qutb wrote a highly influential book which many think helpedcrystallize modern Islamic thought. It described the jahilliyah, a state ofbarbarous ignorance existing before the coming of Mohammed -- whichWestern culture would spread anew across Arabic countries. He began a

quest for purity that would lead to Osama bin Laden, and according toAdam Curtis, to a realization of the "al-Quaeda Myth": the unquestioningacceptance of "the politics of fear" among Western governments -- hence,their peoples -- security agencies and International media.

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Meanwhile, in 1949, at the University of Chicago . . . another idealist,

Dr. Leo Strauss, from a much different culture, had come to a similar

conclusion as Qutb. Strauss inadvertently would create a group ofadherents who would pervert his ideas and his legacy. Leo Strauss

(1899-1973), now considered a significant American philosopher, a

refugee from Nazi persecution, deeply believed in classical thought.

Reclusive, never interviewed on radio or film, seldom photographed,

Strauss urged his students to reject both individualist and

conventional liberal values, which he believed led only to

directionless nihilism.

As Harvard Straussian Professor Harvey Mansfield notes, for a UnitedStates lacking two thousand years of inbred classical philosophy, Straussbelieved two unifying factors for our Nation would be found in ourReligious roots and in the original ideas which had created and preservedthe American State.

Strauss stressed that his followers must go back to the radical premises ofWestern Philosophy. They must learn classical Greek in order tounderstand what Plato and Aristotle really meant; read the history ofRome in Latin; pore over Aramaic and Hebrew Texts to know the radical

beginnings of the Judeo-Christian Tradition; study medieval Italian tofully understand what Machiavelli meant in The Prince. In Americanpolitical philosophy classes, he had his students learn of theunderpinnings of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitutionfrom the essays of Englishmen: John Locke, Edmund Burke; from thework of Frenchmen: Jean Jacques Rousseau and Charles de Montesquieu.

Quixotically, according to Professor Stanley Rosen, a student of

Strauss in 1949, the intellectually demanding Philosopher saw his

ideas embodied in two popular TV series of the age: GUNSMOKEand PERRY MASON. He used lecture-lightening examples of the


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former to show how America represented a clear-cut force for Good

against Evil in the World, but cited the latter to illustrate how men of

superior intellect might legitimately, as in the Law, say one thing

professionally while thinking quite another in their own minds.

[Cue James Arness in his White Hat blasting a Black Hatted villain at

high noon into the desert dust of . . . Old Dodge City. Cue Raymond Burr,

in an eternal "present," smiling enigmatically after delivering a

persuasive legal argument in court.]

Some Strauss adherents garnered from this rigorous but eclectic mix

that occasionally the "noble lie" of Plato, as applied by Machiavelli

in a need to unify the Italian states, was justified, to create and

consolidate the power necessary to combat Liberalism and SecularHumanism.

As others put it later, a Straussian leader might advance a myth to

give confidence to the people, but without himself necessarily

believing in his own "noble lie." Karl Rove, Chief Advisor to George

W. Bush, is said to have put it more simply:

"We shall create our own reality"

[Whether or not the above formulations were accurate interpretations ofLeo Strauss's thought is still debated. Now more than ever!]

In any case, it was a philosophical stance open to hypocrisy, fraud,

and deception.

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By the late 1960's, with the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy,former Attorney Robert F. Kennedy, the Reverend Martin Luther King,with the growing Vietnam War (which hardly anyone could justifycoherently), with race riots and drug addiction enflaming America, andPresident Lyndon Baines Johnson's "War on Poverty" not a real panaceafor forty million Americans suffering under the poverty line, Liberalismwas becoming a dirty word to a majority of Americans -- for the first

time since 1932.

Also in the 1960's, the American Cold War Foreign Policy firstengineered by Secretary John Foster Dulles and carried out by CIA Chief


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Alan Dulles (the Bush Family's early brotherly lawyer team), wassupporting the overthrow of governments around the Globe.

In this pragmatic situation, the studious members of the Strauss School of

Philosophy were often not able to find positions in the burgeoningAmerican economy, which was pushing tired European Colonialpractices aside. The Straussians, as they became known, tended togravitate to lesser policy posts in Washington, or to Academia.

Obsessed with their take on Strauss's theories, often deeply religious

-- believing in such fundamentalist ideas as Armageddon, the Second

Coming of Christ, the Rapture -- the students of these men, often

Christian converts or former Marxists, turned out to be, among

others, Irving Kristol, William Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard

Pearle, David Frume, John Bolton, Richard Pipes, Michael Ledeenand Douglas Fithe.

They developed a quasi-religious mission which aimed to make

America the dominant, God-ordained Empire in the World, to bring

about the triumph of Good over Evil.

[They wrote it down in the early 1990's, and developed it over time asThe Project for a New American Century, which became even before9/11 the blue print for "the war on terror." In fact, as if by God's hand,9/11 provided "the new Pearl Harbor" they believed necessary in

order to carry out their plan in the Middle East and Central Asia.]

These were the men who, to a greater or lesser degree, became highlyinfluential behind the scenes, from the Nixon Administration down to thepresent. During the Reagan Years, they enlisted other talents, such asDonald Rumsfeld, Dick Chaney, and William Casey, who were

willing to exploit "the noble lie" to ensure the "Victory of

Democracy" over our enemies. They manned the ramparts of the

Cold War against the "cells" (everywhere!) of Godless Communism,and when the Soviet Russia collapsed, they turned to find a new Enemy,the latest representative of Satan on the planet.

In "The Wake of Watergate," the Straussian ideologues, few in numberbut increasingly influential, had moved with the American publicsteadily to the Right, financed by plutocratic institutions like the

Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society; fulminating more

and more loudly at the Communist influence on Liberalism, Secular

Humanism, the Unions, in our Public Schools, and in the Media.


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They were so pure that they believed that Henry Kissinger was too

far to the Left.

America was rotting from within, but first, "The Neocon Cabal," as they

came to see, indeed call themselves, was occupied in defeating theshadowy minions of "Godless Communism" abroad, by any meansnecessary.

The now forgotten "Irangate" employed American industry, theAgriculture Department [under Elliot Abrams, now in charge of ourwhole Middle Eastern Policy], and "off the shelf" secret military plans, tosupport one of our many totalitarian heroes of the time, Saddam Hussein,with materials to manufacture poison gas to slaughter Soviet-supported

Iranians and Kurds. And then, "the noble lie" was extended to our CIAsecret war in Afghanistan (which also trained Osama bin Laden and,eventually, gave us the Taliban).

[We might remember that the forebears of these people were The JohnBirch Society of the 1950's. Robert Welch, a candy manufacturer ("SugarDaddys," "Junior Mints") who founded that Society, came to believenear the end of his life that the secret master behind the "Communist

Conspiracy" in the United States was the Chairman of the Board of

General Motors!]

Once they had influenced President Ronald Reagan to retreat from

Detente with the Soviet Union, and the Communist Empire had

collapsed largely of its own inefficient weight, what the Straussians

needed for their future plans were foot soldiers, and as the

consummate politician Richard Nixon found an appeal to racists in

his "Southern Strategy," the Straussians gravitated toward finding a

New Enemy by courting Evangelical Christianity and its fears of

another foreign damnation, the dark things that hid in the forest

beyond the edge of an older America, a 17th Century America:

Satan's Hordes: The Muslim Extremists.

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PART TWO: "The Phantom Victory" -- Back in Egypt, Sayyed Qutbwas not faring so well. He and his Muslim Brothers had applauded theend of King Faruk's puppet rule, and the humbling of the British, Frenchand Israelis at Suez in 1956 (facilitated by President Dwight Eisenhower

and the Dulles Brothers). They hoped that General Abdel Gamal Nasser,as well as other revolutions sweeping the area, would return the holylands to Fundamentalist Islamic principles. Instead, Nasser and the newrulers of Middle Eastern nations, set out to take Western aid, to createmodern secular states; and/or, worst of all, at the same time, to adoptMarxist principles, to cooperate with the "Godless Communists." Qutbwas among protesters thrown in jail for their criticism of Nasser.

Two dozen of Qutb's fellow Muslim Brotherhood were murdered by

the Egyptian Secret Police, scores injured using torture techniques

learned from CIA experts (who had gleaned them from old Nazi ColdWar "retreads," and by studying manuals stolen from the Soviet Gulags.)

A training film for Egyptian police interrogators shows men strippednaked, humiliated, and beaten. Qutb himself was smeared with pig fatand had dogs set upon him (sound familiar?), after which he suffered

a heart attack. This experience is said to have truly radicalized him,embittered the little man, and he redoubled his vitriolic critiques ofNasser's regime, in writings smuggled from jail, until he was executed in1966.

According to Curtis, the day after Qutb's death, a teenage hero-

worshipper named Aiman Al-Zawaheri started a student chapter of

the Muslim Brotherhood. In time, Al-Zawaheri was a leader of the plotwhich assassinated Nasser's successor, Anwar Saddat, for making peacewith Israel, and for offering asylum to the Shah of Iran following hisdeposal and replacement by the Islamic Fundamentalist, AyatollahKhomeini. Defiant, Al-Zawaheri acted as a spokesman for theBrotherhood, screaming in English a declaration of "Islamic Freedom" on

behalf of his fellow conspirators from his cage in an Egyptian courtroom.After being spared and released, Al-Zawaheri gained a new pupil andadherent named Osama bin Laden, scion to thirtieth part of a great Saudiconstruction family fortune, whose late half-brother was a close associateof a young Texas chip-kicker, George W. Bush. (Thus, the devout binLaden already knew how perfidious the West could be.) Al-Zawaheritaught the tall, shy Saudi businessman all he knew of revolutionarypractices, and made great use of bin Laden's finances.

This string of coincidences was capped when followers of bothSayyed Qutb and Leo Strauss united successfully to defeat "The


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Godless Communist Menace" in Afghanistan. By that time, the Islamicrevolutionary movements, which had set up training camps there, werebeing destroyed back in their own countries (such as Algeria); werecannibalizing themselves; and declaring, in one case, at least, that the

average Muslim "on the street" had become so corrupted by liberal ideasthat he was a traitor and did not deserve to remain alive with purefollowers of Islam. (Given a change in nomenclature, and slight change intone, does that also not sound familiar?) And, at home, the Straussianswere already looking around for a way to create what President GeorgeH.W. Bush, at the beginning of the Gulf War, called, "The New WorldOrder." His failure to take their advice and press on to Baghdad in 1991enraged and humiliated them.

Given a chance, the Straussians would make it right.

The defeat of the Russians by Islam and the United States in Afghanistan,and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, proved to be "ThePhantom Victory." Liberalism, which they both so hated, still infected"the Masses" in the lands they held so dear.

With Communism vanquished, Donald Wolfowitz, Richard Pearle,

and their champions Dick Chaney and Donald Rumsfeld, turned to

the Middle East. According to Adam Curtis, Aiman Al-Zawaheri andOsama bin Laden, with British, French and Russian Colonialism banishedfrom their Holy Lands, focused on the one great colonial powerremaining: The United States of America. Osama hired a mule, somewarriors (who were required to bring their own weapons), made a video,and held a press conference. Islam had gingerly entered the ModernWorld. From that "reality show" what became known as "al-Quaeda" wasborn.

Among the proposals presented to Al-Zwaheri and bin Laden for

financial support was one preposterous sounding scheme: to hijackairliners and fly them into American skyscrapers.

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PART THREE: "Shadows in the Cave." This part, after the standardopening, begins with the terrible events of September 11, 2001, and

goes back to recapitulate what forces brought them about, but more

importantly, explores to what use the event was put, both in the far

reaches of the Hindu Kush, in the cellar of the Defense Department,and on Downing Street. Though punctuated with humorous squawksand snorts from a band known as The Skinny, a good many funny clipsfrom old movies, this segment is truly tragic in its implications.

We listen to Richard Pipes, a veteran American Political Science guru,explain in a confidential tone "The Predictive Theory" with which heinculcated several White Houses: That, when faced with an enemy likeCommunism or Islamic Extremism, we must act against what the

enemy might do. In fact, when there is no evidence for wrong doing,that is when we must act most decisively and harshly. In other words,

we must act on our fears of what the enemy might do, and give no

quarter.

Paul Weyrich, the chief strategist ofThe Heritage Foundation,creditedby those in the know with having facilitated the new Russian Post-Sovietsystem, leans against the front of his desk to describe how the neoconstriumphed.

Curtis describes how the same methods which worked against theCommunists were applied by figures like those above, and SpecialProsecutor Ken Starr (a member of the Federalist Society), against thefolksy, slightly right of center William Jefferson Clinton and hisintellectually arrogant wife, Hillary Rodam Clinton.

In an equally convincing way, Curtis shows how all these disparateelements dovetailed in "the war on terror" with the political ambitions ofPrime Minister Tony Blair and his Laborites, reeling under the disasters

of "Thatcherism." He shows us Jason Burke, an expert on "The al-Quaeda." It's his belief that al-Quaeda began as a legalistic convenienceand fiction, created by Federal prosecutors when they invoked the RicoAnti-Organized Crime Laws to bolster their case against the original car-bombers of the World Trade Center, and to help extradite a number of binLaden financed terrorists who pulled off attacks on our embassies inAfrica. It then became an even more convenient romantic myth andexplanation for 9/11, the excuse to invade Afghanistan, and finallyanother fiction justifying the Attack on Iraq by the Coalition of the

Willing. Curtis pictures President George W. Bush speaking of "60


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nations" we may wage preemptive war against, but he has the goodmanners not to suggest that Iran is obviously first (next) on the list.

Curtis also comments on a bored looking Saddam Hussein. The

dictator was, as many should know by now, originally put into powerand encouraged with our help. When our interference in Iran

backfired and brought Islamic Extremists to leadership in Teheran,

Saddam was encouraged to attack Iran, supplied by us with poison

gas and armaments to slaughter Iranians and Kurds, in order to

curtail their power. After that war, Saddam appears to have been set

up as a fall guy, like "assets" before him such as Bautista in Cuba

and Noriega in Panama. The "evidence" against him was fabricated, or"just made up," by the Neocons. For instance, Saddam, grandiosely

dreaming of becoming a hero to Arabic peoples, in a brutally sentimentalway, laid the equivalent of $25,000 on the family of EVERY Palestinianyoung person who died in the Infitada against Israel. The Neocons, after9/11, used these gestures, tasteless to many devout Muslims as well, asevidence that Saddam was behind "the war on terror," a partner of Osamabin Laden (who hated him as an Unbeliever), and even the mastermindbehind 9/11 itself. Little of this was true, but as both Straussian formerUnder Secretary of State Richard Pearle and crooked informant AchmidChalabi (creator of the WMD myth, and later Iraqi Minister of Oil) noted,in slightly different fashions: "We're in Baghdad, aren't we?"

The search for terrorists at home and abroad is examined in some detail,emphasizing how little "the Coalition to the Willing" has accomplishedunder President Bush and Prime Minister Blair. Most telling is a clip ofSecretary of Defense Rumsfeld describing -- with elaborate diagrams ofgenerators, garages, arsenals, barracks -- Osama bin Laden's vastcomplex built into the caves of Afghanistan's Tora Bora. Then, we seedogged American Special Forces being sold scruffy al Quaeda suspectsby our proxy army, the Northern Alliance; and blowing up tiny caves, to

no profit. Then, to the stirring tempo of "The Dam Busters March," theBritish arrive in great personnel helicopters "to show the Americans howto do it properly." A bluff brigadier, Guards mustache bristling, promisesto find the huge hideout (capable of accommodating tanks, Rumsfeldsays) that has been described to him. "Six Weeks Later": the brigadier isasked how many al-Quaeda he has found. He replies just as proudly: "Notone. They weren't there."

[To which "Predictive Theory Strategist" Pipes no doubt would have

replied: "That's it! That you didn't find them is the greatest, most


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compelling evidence that they must be there!" A similar defense wasmade for claims of WMD in Iraq.]

But huge numbers of Americans and British live, according to

Writer/Producer Curtis, in fear of Straussian Platonic shadows cast ontheir own cave walls by the fires in their Televison sets. And of course,we are paying for the show in hundreds of billions of dollars andthousands of lives.

And so, according to the logic of THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES:THE RISE OF THE POLITICS OF FEAR, following the bloody modelof The Crusades, despondent Islamic Jihadists and disappointed old ColdWarriors of extreme religious or philosophical persuasion were exploited

by opportunistic leaders like Aiman Al-Zawaheri, Osama bin Laden,George Bush and Tony Blair and certain individuals around them. TheMagic Fire of "The Project for a New American Century" would lead usinto madness and destruction

[It is not by accident, perhaps, given the intrigue which led to two WorldWars, that the elegiac theme which dominates Part Three of THEPOWER OF NIGHTMARES comes to my mind as the music for theBBC Television series, SIDNEY RILEY, ACE OF SPIES!]

And what of today?

Please try to find some way to see Adam Curtis's BBC documentary,

THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES: THE RISE OF THE POLITICS

OF FEAR.

It's essential thesis is that two groups of narrow idealists -- devout Islamicintellectuals or clerics vs misguided followers of the teachings of LeoStrauss in the United States -- saw an evil outside threat to the core values

of their societies. For the Islamists it was U.S. culture; for the neo-Straussians, it was the moral decay of American Liberal Thought, fromwithin and from without, destroying the bedrock principles of theRepublic. The two groups became mirror images of each other. Almostinadvertently, they created "the war on terror" together -- which has beenexploited by political and economic forces in terrible and unexpectedways.

THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES represents a magnificent if flawed

work (180 minutes, in three parts), shown in Britain, France [Cannes],


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Canada, and two places in America -- New York and San Francisco. NoAmerican network has so far agreed to show it.

Email your Cable and Network TV Companies, and ask them:

WHY NOT?

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UPDATE: April 16, 2007 -- If you have not seen and downloaded THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES;THE RISE OF THE POLITICS OF FEAR through Google, I urge you to do so. Such opportunitiessometimes do not last forever on the Internet. [See details in the Bottom Line above.] You will have toinstall a Google player, but it is free. [Note: Being able to view the whole three hours by this method isno longer so certain today as it was then.]

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For a review of THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1939), one of the films used to illustrate Curtis's thesis, goto the following URL:

http://www.epinions.com/content_23139552900

And here is a review of the first great film nightmare, NOSFERATU (1922), which Curtis uses as avisual cue in his Introductions:

http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-4F2E-56CFE2-38BEC376-bd3

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[RED ROOM Update: You may now download the original three one hour documentary episodes of

THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES: THE RISE OF THE POLITICS OF FEAR, as broadcast by theBBC, at Vruze. The original mini-series is a little more laid back than the version which I saw first atthe San Francisco International Film Festival.]

Documents

Adam Curtis - Power of Nightmares