The Power Of Nightmares/Adam Curtis

The Soviet Union also provided training for certain terrorist
groups on its homeland, as well as spearheaded training in the territory of its Warsaw Pact allies. The Soviets sponsored terrorism
as part of an overall strategy designed to destabilize Western
Europe/NATO by supporting international and Western revolutionary
movements whose insurrectional activities would have helped
expand the communist block and further Soviet aims. In fact, a
former senior officer of Soviet Military Intelligence stated that
"ideological sympathy with the Soviet Union is unnecessary: anyone
who helps destabilize the west is our friend."

"A typical member of the Palestine Liberation Army (PLO) selected
for training behind the Iron Curtain received an orientation brief on
expected conduct while undergoing instruction, as well as ideological
orientation prior to departing for Moscow. Upon arrival he was
greeted by the PLO representative there and arrangements were
made for further travel to the individual's ultimate training
destination."

"Pipes, perhaps the world's leading expert on Kremlin ideology, is left looking an amiable dunce. British viewers, unaware of his distinguished career, will be none the wiser". Oh, please, what misleading and condescending rubbish. I like that the article paints Britain as a nation of uninformed roobs, being propagandized by Moore and Chomsky.

First of all, the question of ideas. That is, is there anything at all, we talked about this a little off the record, is there anything at all to the Straussian Connection ?

Wolfowitz : It's a product of fevered minds who seem incapable of understanding that September 11th changed a lot of things and changed the way we need to approach the world. Since they refused to confront that, they looked for some kind of conspiracy theory to explain it. I mean I took two terrific courses from Leo Strauss as a graduate student. One was on Montesquieu's spirit of the laws, which did help me understand our Constitution better. And one was on Plato's laws. The idea that this has anything to do with U.S. foreign policy is just laughable.

Listening to the snippets on the Amazon page for 'Another Green World', it sounds more like 'Big Ship' to me.

Tuesday 23.20 BBC2

Wednesday 23.20 BBC2

Thursday 23.20 BBC2

Q&A from the series producer Adam Curtis here - note: Will the programme be shown internationally, in America or online?

We are very keen that the programmes are made widely available including in America and although the main networks have shown little interest

-- Stevem On X (stevem7...), January 20th, 2005.

Answers
no DVD release planned because of the range of footage required to clear. a great shame as it seems that this is something everyone should see.
-- Stevem On X (stevem7...), January 20th, 2005.

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the musical choices are really good, he (and his team) just knows his shit. i have no idea how they pull that kind of thing together -- how much footage has to be gone through to find the 'right' bit -- if you think about how many diift news orgs cover the same stuff. it's the avalanches of facumentary!
-- Miles Finch (poptha...), January 20th, 2005.

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i need the torrents, and bad
-- Stevem On X (stevem7...), January 20th, 2005.

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Here y'go:
The Power Of Nightmares/Adam Curtis

-- Richard C (avoid8...), January 20th, 2005. (tracklink)

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I've been taping it.
playing brian eno throughout - classik!

It overlaps a bit with his other series on freud. that theme of society and its control reappears.

x-post

the bit I couldn't figue out was in the first part where that neocon wz trying to distort the threat of the soviets: "if there is no evidence for weapons doesn't mean it isn't there" like it was really logical, sensible thing to say. The conviction he had in that. It wasn't like he wz trying to concoiusly create a myth to fool the people so much just that he wz really paranoid but i need to watch it again.

-- Julio Desouza (juli...), January 20th, 2005.

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why that didn't show up in searching i don't know
-- Stevem On X (stevem7...), January 20th, 2005.

Is Century of the Self available anywhere? I only saw the first ep.

Adam Curtis on Cannes and "Last Days

I still feel that Curtis didn't spend enough time talking about who benefits from these official nightmares, and how.

Music

* Title theme: "The Big Ship" on Another Green World by Brian Eno
* Incidental: "Becalmed" and "In Dark Trees" on Another Green World by Brian Eno
* Incidental: Soundtrack from "Citizen Kane", film score by Bernard Herrmann, 1941.
* Incidental: Soundtrack from "The Ipcress File", by John Barry
* Incidental: Soundtrack from "Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion", by Ennio Morricone
* Part 1 credits: "Baby, It's Cold Outside" by Margaret Whiting and Johnny Mercer
* Part 2 opening: "Also Sprach Zarathustra"
* "I've Got Spurs That Jingle Jangle Jingle" (possibly by Singer-Gene Autry; Music-Joseph Lilley;Lyrics-Ranke Loesser, c1942)
* Afghan war: "Colours" by Donovan
* Part 3 credits: "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head" by B.J. Thomas

Living in no TV land, I have never seen it.

i haveta say, the 'AQ doesn't exist' line looks a bit thin now. i was never sure why leo strauss was such a big figure in the show. is he more important than, i dunno, hayek or milton friedman?

or

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050620&s=bergen

It still amazed me about Kissinger, how rational and beacon-like he was presented as being, but then I don't know that much about him and so the 'convenience' of this series results in one wanting it to consist of twelve hour-long parts or something.

Neocon motto: "Occam's Razor is booooolsheeeet, plus Occam sounds suspiciously Arabic"

"In fact, the Islamist terrorist threat to the United States today largely emanates from Europe, not from domestic sleeper cells or, as is popularly imagined, the graduates of Middle Eastern madrasas, functional idiots who can do little more than read the Koran. Reid is British, Al Qaeda member Zacarias Moussaoui is French and the 9/11 pilots became militant in Hamburg. The attacks in Madrid last year that killed 191, and the assassination of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, demonstrate that men animated by Al Qaeda's worldview have recently conducted significant acts of terrorism in Europe, a trend that is likely to accelerate as continued heavy Muslim immigration into Europe collides with widespread racism to create a population of alienated Muslims who often feel that no matter how much money they make, or how long their families have been in the country, as Pakistanis in London they are never quite British, or as Algerians in Paris they are not quite French, or as Moroccans in Madrid they can never be really Spanish. These are not powerful nightmares; they are a reality, a view that Curtis may finally come around to when a significant terrorist attack is carried out in London, which British authorities regard as inevitable."

maybe but with so much to condense into under 3 hours there's only so much you can mention, and considering how contrived Qubt's and Strauss's ideas were or rather how badly they were put into practice...

I should hold off until I see the final episode though clearly.

Why does this thesis now look thinner than it did before? Because bombings have happened on British soil?