Before and after the films, everyone’s invited to indulge
in our Humanist Vegetarian Tea House.
Wednesday, August 6 at 7:30 pm the power of Nightmares -- Part
I
This first
part of the eye-opening BBC documentary, The
Power of Nightmares, is entitled "Baby it's
Cold Outside," referring to the failure of
Western society through individualism and
corruption. Adam Curtis, director of
the film, compares the rise of the American
Neo-Conservative movement and the radical Islamist
movement, making comparisons on their origins and
noting strong similarities between the two. It
argues that radical Islamism
--
supposedly a massive, sinister organized force of
destruction, specifically in the form of al-Qaeda
--
is in fact a myth perpetrated mostly by American
Neo-Conservatives in an attempt to unite and inspire
their people following the failure of earlier, more
utopian ideologies. Fear is used to manipulate
the public into giving up civil liberties and
turning power over to elite groups. The
nightmare of a powerful, united terrorist
organization waiting to strike is a monstrous and
cynical illusion. The BBC looked for al-Qaeda,
from the mountains of Afghanistan to the sleeper
cells in America, but they found they were chasing a
phantom enemy.
Wednesday, August
13 at 7:30 pm the power of Nightmares -- Part II
The second
episode of this alarming BBC documentary is entitled
"The Phantom Victory." Now we learn
that Islamist factions, falling under the more
radical influence of Zawahiri and his rich Saudi
acolyte Osama bin Laden, join the
Neo-Conservative-influenced Reagan Administration to
combat the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan.
This coalition of extremists is successful in
repulsing the Soviet armies. However, BOTH
extremist groups believe they are the primary
architects of the defeat of the "Evil Empire."
But the Director of this historic documentary,
Adam Curtis, argues that the Soviets were on
their last legs and were doomed to collapse without
intervention. The Islamists, in their triumph,
believe that they can create "pure" Islamic states
in Egypt and Algeria. But they are prevented
from doing this by force. So they use
terrorism to scare the people into rising up.
But the people are terrified by the violence and the
Algerian government uses their fear as a way to
maintain power. In the end, the Islamists
declare these countries inherently contaminated by
Western values, and finally in Algeria turn on each
other, each believing that other terrorist groups
are not pure enough Muslims either.
In America, the Neo-Conservatives' aspirations to
use the U.S. military power for further destruction
of evil are thrown off track by the ascent of George
HW Bush to the presidency, followed by the 1992
election of Bill Clinton leaving them out of power.
The Neo-Conservatives, with their conservative
Christian allies, attempt to demonize Clinton
throughout his presidency with various stories of
corruption and immorality. To their
disappointment, however, the American people do not
turn against Clinton.
The Islamists declare a new strategy:
to fight Western-inspired moral decay they must deal
a blow to its source --
the United States.
The
Neo-Conservatives use the 9/11 attacks to
launch the War on Terror. This final
episode, "The Shadows in the Cave,"
addresses the actual rise of Al-Qaeda.
The director, Adam Curtis, argues
that, after their failed revolutions, bin
Laden and Zawahiri had little or no popular
support, let alone a serious complex
organization of terrorists, and were
dependent upon independent operatives to
carry out their new call for Jihad.
The film instead argues that in order to
prosecute bin Laden in absentia for the 1998
U.S. embassy bombings, U.S. prosecutors had
to prove he was the head of a criminal
organization responsible for the bombings.
They find a former associate of bin Laden's,
Jamal al-Fadl, and pay him to testify that
bin Laden was the head of a massive
terrorist organization called "Al-Qaeda."
With the 9/11 attacks, Neo-Conservatives in
Bush's new Republican government use this
created concept of an organization to
justify another crusade against a new evil
enemy, leading to the launch of the War on
Terrorism.
After the American invasion of Afghanistan
fails to uproot the alleged terrorist
network, the Neo-Conservatives focus
inwards, searching unsuccessfully for
terrorist sleeper cells in America.
They then extend their war on "terror" to a
war against general perceived evils with the
invasion of Iraq in 2003. The
repercussions of the Neo-Conservative
strategy are explored with an investigation
of indefinitely-detained terrorist suspects
in Guantanamo Bay, many allegedly taken on
the word of the anti-Taliban Northern
Alliance without actual investigation on the
part of the U.S. military, and other forms
of "preemption" against non-existent and
unlikely threats made simply on the grounds
that the parties involved could later become
a threat. Adam Curtis also makes a
specific attempt to allay fears of a dirty
bomb attack, and reassures viewers that
politicians will eventually have to concede
that some threats are exaggerated and others
altogether devoid of reality.
