The Power of Nightmares.

[reprehensor]

Have you seen this amazing British documentary?

You owe it to yourself if you have not.

Part 1: http://tinyurl.com/6kya9
"Baby It's Cold Outside"
Description: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/3755686.stm

Part 2: http://tinyurl.com/4kuet
"The Phantom Victory"
Description: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/3951615.stm

Part 3: http://tinyurl.com/42mzr
"The Shadows in the Cave"
Description: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/3970901.stm

[stop the bleeding]

1. bookmarked - thank you - I have been waiting for someone to post

links to this series. I have not been able to watch it yet, but I will ASAP!

Thank you again :yourock:

[BlueEyedSon]

2. you can also get a 'torrent if you look around.... nt

[stop the bleeding]

3. I don't quite follow what you mean n/t

[BlueEyedSon]

5. google "bittorrent"

[twaddler01]

9. The "napster" of today

[H2O Man]

4. Peter Bergen

claims that "The Power of Nightmares" has serious errors, which he details with interesting documentation on pages 75-6 (and throughout Chapter 4) of "The Osama bin Laden I Know." Are you familiar with his position, and what do you think of it?

[reprehensor]

7. I know that he is used as a reference by serious researchers.

Notably, Peter Dale Scott.

Do you mind listing these errors, I would say that this falls under fair use, or would you please PM them to me?

I would like to know what he has taken issue with.

However, I think that Curtis' overall thesis is broadly speaking true. I think that that "Al Qaeda" as packaged and marketed to us by our intelligence agencies, media, and by well-meaning researchers, fails to connect longstanding sponsorship, that continued (continues?) through the 1990's, to Western Intel shops.

And more and more research is coming out to lend credence to that argument everyday.

[H2O Man]

12. Sure.

This is in the context of Chapter 4, "The Birth of al Qaeda." On pages 75 and 76, he quotes Curtis's film as stating, "Beyond his small group, bin Laden had no formal organization, until the Americans invented one for him." He states that Curtis believes the US "invented" al Qaeda in 2001, apparently for the case of four men involved in the 1998 plot to blow up a couple embassies in East Africa. He quotes Curtis as saying, "There is no evidence that bin Laden used the term al Qaeda to refer to the name of a group until after 11th September, when he realized that this was the term the Americans had given it."

Bergen writes, "All of these assertions are nonsense. There is overwhelming evidence that al Qaeda was founded in 1988 by bin Laden and a small group of like-minded militants, and that the group would eventually mushroom into a secretive, disciplined, global organization dominated by bin Laden .... That evidence can be found in the documents in this chapter, which were recovered in Bosnia in 2002, and can also be found in the interviews throughout this book."

The Bosnian documents are those seized in the Sarajevo offices of Benevolence International Foundation, "a Muslim charity long supportive of jihads around the world." He also quotes extensively from Jihad magazine, from the 1980s; from the West Point copy of the "Enclyclopedia of Jihad," the al Qaeda training manual produced largely in the 1990s; and interviews including those that Bergen and Peter Arnett did with Usama bin Laden.

[reprehensor]

14. Thank you.

So, in the documents, (are they scans of supposed originals, or what?), do the words Al Qaeda appear anywhere?

Did you know that the relationship with "Al Qaeda" and Western intel was a "working one" in the Balkans? Specifically through KLA, (these two paragraphs are somewhat out of context, I recommend reading the whole article);

-------------------------------------------------

http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~pdscott/AAAChap8REVAlQaedaEstablishmentOct15.htm

The U.S., Al Qaeda and oil company interests converged again in Kosovo. Though the origins of the Kosovo tragedy were rooted in local enmities, oil became a prominent aspect of the outcome. There the al Qaeda-backed UCK or “Kosovo Liberation Army” (KLA) was directly supported and politically empowered by NATO, beginning in 1998. But according to a source of Tim Judah, KLA representatives had already met with American, British, and Swiss intelligence agencies in 1996, and possibly “several years earlier.” This would presumably have been back when Arab Afghan members of the KLA, like Abdul-Wahid al-Qahtani, were fighting in Bosnia.

Mainstream accounts of the Kosovo War are silent about the role of al Qaeda in training and financing the UCK/KLA, yet this fact has been recognized by experts and to my knowledge never contested by them. For example, James Bissett, former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia, said “Many members of the Kosovo Liberation Army were sent for training in terrorist camps in Afghanistan…. Milosevic is right. There is no question of their participation in conflicts in the Balkans. It is very well documented." In March 2002, Michael Steiner, the United Nations administrator in Kosovo, warned of "importing the Afghan danger to Europe" because several cells trained and financed by al-Qaeda remained in the region.

-------------------------------------------------

Adam Curtis is not the only person to make the assertion that "Al Qaeda" is not an entirely autonomous entity:

"Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians."
- Robin Cook, July 8, 2005.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1523838,00.html

-------------------------------------
I noticed this quote by Bergen;

"Excellent....Gunaratna has taken a great deal of information from around the world--marshalling together police and intelligence sources, his own interviews with al Qaeda associates and the group's own documents--to create a comprehensive examination of the terrorist network."
–Peter Bergen Washington Post

In reference to this book;

Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror - By Rohan Gunaratna

The only problem is... Gunaratna is a "hack".
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/aug2003/guna-a08.shtml

This book has come under so much fire for its poor research, that in Britain the book is published with this Caveat:

“A wide range of organisations—banks, governmental and non-governmental bodies, financial enterprises, religious and educational institutions, commercial entities, transport companies and charitable bodies are referred to in this book as having had contact or dealings with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Unless such references specifically state otherwise, they should be treated as nothing other than a suggestion that the organisations concerned were the unwitting tools of those who attempted, successfully or otherwise, to infiltrate, use or manipulate them for terrorist purposes.”

I'm a little unconvinced by Bergen at this point, and I think I'll have to forward his ringing endorsement of Hackaratna to Prof. Scott.

In fact, every Al Qaeda rock that gets turned over has Covert Ops, Patsies and Double or Triple agents scurrying from the sunlight for cover.

I will scan Bergen's book next time I am in a bookstore.

[H2O Man]

15. I'm not familiar with Gunaratna.

There is no reference to Gunaratna in the bin Laden book by Bergen. It's a well written book, in my opinion, that presents the most accurate biography of Usama bin Laden available. I realize that others will believe differently.

[Benhurst]

6. Recommended NT

[seabeyond]

8. i only watched the first. about an hour. that was excellent.

thank you. will check the others later

[twaddler01]

10. So far

Good videos, thanks for post.....I LOVE the link between then and now. Learned so much I didn't know before! ALL Americans should watch this!

[IndyOp]

11. MUST SEE!! Also available at The Dossier --

Look for the 8th video down - with the picture of Osama...

[iconoclastNYC]

13. Yes. It's amazing!

[autorank]

16. I knew it, a Power of Nightmares person...hence the name...

We're all looking at the shadows but there's no light at the top to lead us to truth, and if there were such a light and exit from the cave, we're so brain addled, we probably wouldn't recognize it; just reach for a pair of sunglasses...but that might not be a bad thing.

Because sometimes a good pair of shades can help you see all you need to see to get the big picture;)

Nice one. Recommended.

[Wilms]

17. K&R n/t

[Peter Frank]

18. The Nightmares of Power... n/t

[kliljedahl]

19. Downloadable here

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=The%20Power%20of%20Nightmares



Keith’s Barbeque Central

[reprehensor]

20. Cool!

This was pulled for a while from the archive, but now it's back. I guess that means Curtis never got a distribution deal in North America.

The MPEG2 version is the one to download. You can make a very watchable DVD from it.

The footage about "Team B" and the Neocons first attempt at disinformation during the Cold War is alone well worth the price of admission.

[freedom_please]

21. The Power of Nightmares FREE

The new Google Video service currently features The Power of Nightmares FREE at:
http://snipurl.com/Power_Nightmares

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

24. I notice archive.org also has Curtis' "Century of the Self"

which I highly recommend:

"Adam Curtis' acclaimed series examines the rise of the all-consuming self against the backdrop of the Freud dynasty.

To many in both politics and business, the triumph of the self is the ultimate expression of democracy, where power has finally moved to the people. Certainly the people may feel they are in charge, but are they really? The Century of the Self tells the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society in Britain and the United States. How was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interests?"

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=century%20of%20the%20self%20curtis

BBC link with episode guides:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/century_of_the_self.shtml

[killbotfactory]

25. Definately check out Century of the Self!

great stuff...

I didn't know it was at the archive. awesome.

[reprehensor]

27. Yup. Brilliant as well.

Get 'em while they're up.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

22. It's absolutely brilliant.

And I want the sound track. By the way, this is available on Google Video, as well. I've got it on my iPod. :)

[go west young man]

23. Great documentary series!

Thanks for the thumbs up. No one tells it better than a BBC documentary. I'm glad to see England and the world getting the realscoop on the NeoConservatives and radical fundamentalism on both sides.

[flyingflyn]

26. I was disappointed with the final part of the series

I thought that it wasn't as good as part 1 and part 2. I guess Adan Curtis just felt that PNAC wasn't worth mentioning.

[newyawker99]

29. Hi flyingflyn!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[girl gone mad]

28. Recommended..

You gave me a copy last year. Thanks! It was excellent.