One Brit Out-Kerrys Kerry
How ya gonna reduce terrorism to a "nuisance" when only "just a fantasy" in the first place?!? The Brits have been particularly worried about terrorists planting a dirty bomb in one of their cities. In fact, last week three men were arrested for doing just that. Silly buggers! According to the BBC2 filim,"The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear," that's just a waste of time! Oh, and an evil plot by the powerful elite to scare the"I don't think it would kill anybody," says Dr Theodore Rockwell, an authority on radiation, in an interview for the series. "You'll have trouble finding a serious report that would claim otherwise." The American department of energy, Rockwell continues, has simulated a dirty bomb explosion, "and they calculated that the most exposed individual would get a fairly high dose [of radiation], not life-threatening." And even this minor threat is open to question. The test assumed that no one fled the explosion for one year.
Given that, Adam Curtis decided to make his three-part documentary *ahem* series for the Beeb.
...the central theme of The Power of Nightmares is riskily counter-intuitive and provocative. Much of the currently perceived threat from international terrorism, the series argues, "is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services, and the international media."
You Bastards! Well, fool me once, shame on me -- fool me twice *BOOM* .......oops
The series' explanation for this is even bolder: "In an age when all the grand ideas have lost credibility, fear of a phantom enemy is all the politicians have left to maintain their power."
Ok, let's speculate. What "grand ideas" could they be referring to? Things like intellectual honesty? Or maybe loyalty? Honor? Duty? Values?
Adam Curtis, who wrote and produced the series, acknowledges the difficulty of saying such things now. "If a bomb goes off, the fear I have is that everyone will say, 'You're completely wrong,' even if the incident doesn't touch my argument. This shows the way we have all become trapped, the way even I have become trapped by a fear that is completely irrational."
Oh, yeah -- I forgot Rational Thinking, the "grand idea" of the Renaissance... Ok, I gotta run through this one more time: Adam's contention is that terrorism is Bullshit - a method of maintaining power for politicians. m'kay. Adam worries about a bomb going off. As there aren't any terrorists, after all, who would do such a thing? Girl Guides working on a badge? The Royal Society of Spam Haters? Ok -- let's pretend Adam does get his arse blasted off by a bomb planted by rabid Spam Haters. His biggest fear is that "everyone will say, 'You're wrong'" ?!?!?!? Oddly sensitive fellow, that.
So controversial is the tone of his series, that trailers for it were not broadcast last weekend because of the killing of Kenneth Bigley. [the British man beheaded by
terroristsSpam Haters in Iraq]
Avoiding controversy, were they? Or is it simply the BBC's preternatural fear of being laughed straight out of the British Isles....
"The Power of Nightmares" seeks to overturn much of what is widely believed about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida [which] it argues, is not an organised international network...does not have members or a leader.. does not have "sleeper cells"... does not have an overall strategy... barely exists at all...
My don't we feel silly! Here we've been fighting all those.... say, who have we been fighting? Whoinhell izzat shootin' back?!?
[Adam] tells the story of Islamism, or the desire to establish Islam as an unbreakable political framework, as half a century of mostly failed, short-lived revolutions and spectacular but politically ineffective terrorism
Half a century?!? He goes back all of half a century?!?! Quite the little historian, there. oooh -- 'cept half a century doesn't even cover the Balfour Declaration, never mind the Christian "theft" of the Iberian Peninsula that Osama seems so het up over. oh, and those pesky Crusades... But, Shirley that's not important now....
[one of Adam's fellow travelers points out] "The reality [of the al-Qaida threat to the west] has been essentially a one-off. There has been one incident in the developed world since 9/11 [the Madrid bombings].
oh. My... For all Adam's assumptions of an audience ignorant of history, his justifications call upon a relatively obscure bit of -- shocked, I tell you -- American philosophical history. The political philosophy of Leo Strauss is often seen as the underpinning for the rise of 'modern' American conservatism. It is inherent in the shape of Strauss' philosophy that it be misunderstood -- Strauss, himself, even talks about that certainty. This filim is a particularly astute demonstration of that phenomenon. More on Strauss A Leftie take on Strauss which, in itself, contains strong argument for the validity of parts of Straussian theories...
Make note of this, a socialist is acknowleging that there’s such a thing as non-lethal radiation exposure! Meanwhile, if you look at asbestos, you’ll get cancer.
Posted by Dave Munger on 10/16/04 at 08:15 AMYour comments about the documentary ‘The Power of Nightmares’ miss or ignore it’s main point; that the current administration (and others) use the fear of terrorism to further their own aims. To do this they have magnified the existing terrorist threat to the point where it can be used as an unquestioned excuse for any policy. It’s a sore point to think that you might have been taken in by a confidence trick, but it’s worth thinking about.
Posted by on 10/20/04 at 03:48 AMI did not “miss” the point, Bob—I mocked it.
Try to keep up with the rest of the kids…
Posted by Claire on 10/20/04 at 04:26 AMPerhaps a classical misdirect. Not to the masses but to the enemy. “Oh please Baer Bear, please don’t throw me in dat der briar patch”. And with that Baer Bear took Baer Rabbit and he........... Well you know the rest.
Posted by on 10/20/04 at 09:13 AMI have just had the chance to actually watch the first episode, which i doubt you actually managed to get round to. Nowhere did i see or hear any of what you claimed about this programme. I did see Donald Rumsfeld giving a speech nearly thirty years ago that sounded exactly like some he gave recently regarding Iraq and its threat to the west. Uncanny. Then there was TeamB, set up to prove the soviets had weapons they never actually had. Am i being really stoopid here or does familiarity just breed contempt ?
Posted by on 10/20/04 at 09:26 AMHi, I’m a gatecrasher and found your site on google but I’d like to say a few things about “The power of nightmares” having just watched the first episode.
The program looked at the origins of the Islamic militant movement and the Neo conservative movement which, ironically were both triggered by the belief that 1950’s America was in the grip of liberal attitudes that would lead to the collapse of social structures and family values. What I found interesting was that Leo Strauss, the creator of Neo conservatism, decided that what needed to be done was to convince the American people of the rightousness of its mission to spread democracy, and that an evil elsewhere needed to be crushed. Crucially however Strauss stated that this need only be belived by the masses while the elite could know the truth. Former students of Strauss, including Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney set up think tanks such as “Team B” and “Committee on the Present Danger” (http://www.fightingterror.org/) in the mid 70’s which decided that because they couldn’t find any evidence of advanced Soviet Weapons, the new soviet weapons must be undetectable. This was in direct opposition to the CIA stance at the time. They then used this report to lobby for increased rhetoric against the USSR at a time when the cold war may possibly have been ended by negotiation.
Later, during the Regan administration, a book was written which gathered evidence from European newspaper stories about the wave of terrorist attacks by groups such as the bader meinhof gang and the PIRA to draw the conclusion that virtually all terrorism in western nations was supported and directed by the USSR. This book was then used to demonise the USSR and justify the huge arms race that took place in the 1980’s. However, much of the information on which the book was based was in fact black propaganda placed by the CIA against the USSR, and when CIA operatives brought this to the attention of the new neo-conservative head of the CIA, a fan of the global terrorist network theory, they were all dimissed from government service.
I’m thouroughly looking forward to next weeks episode when hopefully there will be more revelations about how and why we are being manipulated into being afraid of a global terrorist network that has only really managed one serious act of terrorism and only got a name in 2001 because of the need to name some organisation in order that a legal case be brought.
Posted by on 10/20/04 at 09:55 AMThe “militant Islamic” movement arose out of the Pan Arab movement and is based in 1,400 years of their struggle to gain supremacy in the world going back to the destruction of the Caliphate. They don’t care in the least about America being in the grip of liberal attitudes, Western social structures or so called “family values.” Their Values are damn near diametrically opposed to ours. [see treatment of women and willingness to blowing up their own children for a start] They are not interested in us other than for conversion. Do you *get* any of this?
The USSR was interested only in burying us. That is what totalitarianism does—it does not create, like Western economies, so it must expand or die. The USSR was prevented from expanding and it died.
Do you not consider the Madrid train bombings to be a “serious” act of terror? or the Rhiad bombings? or the first WTC attack? or the Achillie Lauro? or the USS Cole? or the Chechnyan school? What could possibly be your definition of a “serious terror attack?!?” Howa about the writings of OBL? Read his book?
“They” will not be able to manipulate you so easily if you read your history and read widely. As it is, with your apparent belief in these Moonbat theories, Strauss seems to have been right: you can’t handle the truth. You can’t even grasp it.
Posted by Claire on 10/20/04 at 10:27 AM
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