Saturday, January 21, 2006

It's 2006... Happier New Year! :-) "I am lost in the shadows of my own death."





I am lost in the shadows of my own death.

A figment of my imagination?

The cold slap of shared reality.

Death shall not be in vain, but the vanity in thinking so almost reassures one of a paradox: work ‘til you die, suffer ‘til you die, work ‘til you suffer and die, shut-down a perfect paroxysm of fear and impotence, a primal passion of fate and importance, a desire to be closer to the creator by creating, a child will reveal the depths of your humanity, unconditional love with nothing to lose but fear of love itself.

There are few rules to the game, only principles, and of them only certain ones are limiting to any actions that are not malicious. Inaction is malice when it becomes lies, and lies become truths only when they are malicious. Sacrifice is a joke, a word sodomized by sports and salvaged by sensationalism. One knows not the meaning unless one is serviced by it, Sacrifice: The Cheap Whore of Self-Importance.

Unless regular in ones sacrifice, then the fluke remains a vision in resplendent red: showy, braggadocious, whorish, angry, and a beacon of failed consistency. One may Reach The Mountaintop, but only if one has left or stepped-on the dreams of others dreaming for you, and can service their own needs for hubristic validation.

Dreams are dark for a reason: allegorical actions agitate, stories revelate, and the beatific pleasance of existential solitude and peace in a safe-place to place ones head is interrupted by the clarion call of dangers foreseen that can be foreshadowed or forewarning-friendly: learn from danger, learn from the stranger with a faded face and hollow taste for vengeance, learn from the victim, learn from the sinner, learn from the Lord of All Things when He pays attention.

Dreams of My Father, Dreams of My Fatherhood, Dreams of My Fate… do they gratiate? Is every sperm sacred? Surely four billion a day would disagree on a planet with a pace-setting total of 6 billion people in total. The gold-standard for excellence as a species is set by a speciation that leads to tribal deviation from any true success: the territorial pissings of madmen and false Gods leads to us reeking of failure at the sight of a Small World After All.

After all, a small place takes but a minit to clean.

A minit to mean what you say and say what you do as true to you as you can be true, but in failing to do see what they say and do and if it isn’t bad to you or you or you then what is really true?

See… it ain’t my fault, it ain’t your fault, it ain’t the fault of the faulty, the hopeless sinner, the Godless heathens who breath the air of the pure and eat the food of the noble and wise, for they were put here to be seen as rats and mice and slain for rice, or they were put here to make us think twice.

Penitence serves the wise man best, for in his wisdom his foolishness is easily displayed and his foollowers easily dismayed: speak only of the evil of your own, the death of conscience among the conscious, the dearth of the damned who don’t give a damn. The Gift and The Curse is the Blueprint for success: play the hand who dealt you, play the hand who felt you, and in doing so play the success or failure of feeling and finding and faking and fucking and fooling the flipside of your morality. A morass of more asses awaits, yours, his, hers, an ism weighting to collapse under the weight of it’s own importance. There is nothing here for us, only the chance to appreciate nothing in the alchemy of achievement.

When confronted with the strange days and strange ways of fearful men of fearless fraudulence, the temptation to join in the power circle-jerk is tempting: let me in, for I shall not cum last, I shall not cum fast, I shall not cum slow, I shall not cum faux, I shall moderate my strokes to follow the leader, and lead the followers into being lead. I shall worship at the dark forces of my libidinous rage, my Secret Santa is Satan, my soul is saved. Let’s trade gifts of grab and grow an empire that feeds into our hatred of the hell we’ve seen by seeing the hell we’ve been seeking, after all, there’s cowardice cravenly seeking courage in the madness of mercantile mercenarianism. Justified and Stripped of all meaning, the World is a ripe place for deceit and false profits, and the clouds mask any desire to search for a truth when one is being sold so smoothly as to mask it’s need for inherent difficulty.

This is your life.

Happy yet?

No?

Oh well… guess you’re fucked.

Time to fuck with life itself and not give a fuck.

Licking the lamp-post of hell frozen over, the End of Days is nigh Sympathy for the Devil, for if it is indeed his due, then in due time render unto Satan what is Satan’s, and leave the mark of the beast with two backs as a sacrifice. The child grows up to hate their childhood, the grown up hates their child, the cycle of violence continues to breed based on a need that cannot be forsaken for rationality and reality, as the class war will be won with soldiers raised as cannon fodder. To die in this battle is not glorious, for no death in battle is glorious without recognizing that battle itself ought not result in death. The mourning in recognition of the obvious drive for self-aggrandizement through conflict and violence and homicide is dirty chess by deadly oil, or deadly chess by dirty oil, depending on the day. There is but profit in prophecy of pain as perpetuity, and planning to pare it down to it’s public spectacle, a naked Emperor with clothes made of the finest bullshit, a grotesque spectacle of a small penis and massive gunships, the ideation of Bombs Over Baghdad benignly impressive in it’s sizeable abstraction, and the belief that serving power makes one powerful only complicate the contrarian impulses of clandestine conscience: stay angry, or you may accidentally figure it out.

There is only madness at the end of the rainbow, a pot of gold serves worse then just the pot, and in a haze of greed and gripping gash’s in morality the tears in the fabric of ones own personal reality bleed selfish demons who play in the world, returning to feast on their host. One gets out of life what one puts into it, death the same, and Hell is a place on earth that stands side by side with Heaven. In a rush to jump the queue we’ll take the shorter line, and in a rush to bud in the even shorter line we’ll see our divine right to worship in houses of gilt and gold as paramount, and what God put here for us to see is that God put what here for us to see. A monopoly on humility is the most precious commodity in the world, for it can lead to the ultimate service of private morality writ-large. Find a few fakirs and you’re in business, and find yourself by finding something strong to find yourself clinging to as the tides of discontent and dreams wash over your bobbing soul. Humanity is an ocean of change and challenge, and the will to power will overpower the willing unless there is a willingness to empower, for it is only in the service of Satan that you can sell a soul that is not yours.

God is watching.

Or is He?

It matters not.

What matters is you are.

The tribunal awaits, and the demon days precede the demon knights, all wrapped up in sheer love and hate and ready for war. After all, demonstration needs demons, demonstrable is damn near monstrous, and demagoguery will have us agog like a fine egg-nogg. It isn’t a question of choices made and choices staid, as boredom comes from the best sources of fate: righteous action. Evil loves too, it just loves Evil, Power… and will evolve faster to dominate the Good in Good Patterns. Walk the Line until you’re fine, will it be enough? Will the world cease to cease and desist? What resistance befalls the damned? What assistance falls over the chaste and chases us with solutions? What absolution is absolutely guaranteed? How have we co-opted selfishness as self-help nobility?

A fool and his honey are soon parted.

Goodbye my love, and good luck…


BK – end hour stream 21/Jan/06, 6:48 am.




Wednesday, January 18, 2006

It's 2006... Happier New Year! :-) "The Most Cowardly War in History" by Arundhati Roy

"I'm, in love,
With Arundhati Roy,
And you're not! You're not!

I'm, in love,
With Arundhati Roy,
Why are you not? You not?"


- Black Krishna, "I'm In Love With Arundhati Roy"








The Most Cowardly War in History
By Arundhati Roy
World Tribunal on Iraq


Friday 24 June 2005

Opening Statement of Arundhati Roy on behalf of the jury of conscience of the world tribunal of Iraq.

Istanbul, Turkey - This is the culminating session of the World Tribunal on Iraq. It is of particular significance that it is being held here in Turkey where the United States used Turkish air bases to launch numerous bombing missions to degrade Iraqs defenses before the March 2003 invasion and has sought and continues to seek political support from the Turkish government, which it regards as an ally. All this was done in the face of enormous popular opposition by the Turkish people. As a spokesperson for the jury of conscience, it would make me uneasy if I did not mention that the government of India is also, like the government of Turkey, positioning itself as a ally of the United States in its economic policies and the so-called War on Terror.

The testimonies at the previous sessions of the World Tribunal on Iraq in Brussels and New York have demonstrated that even those of us who have tried to follow the war in Iraq closely are not aware of a fraction of the horrors that have been unleashed in Iraq.

The Jury of Conscience at this tribunal is not here to deliver a simple verdict of guilty or not guilty against the United States and its allies. We are here to examine a vast spectrum of evidence about the motivations and consequences of the US invasion and occupation, evidence that has been deliberately marginalized or suppressed. Every aspect of the war will be examined - its legality, the role of international institutions and major corporations in the occupation, the role of the media, the impact of weapons such as depleted uranium munitions, napalm, and cluster bombs, the use of and legitimation of torture, the ecological impacts of the war, the responsibility of Arab governments, the impact of Iraqs occupation on Palestine, and the history of US and British military interventions in Iraq. This tribunal is an attempt to correct the record. To document the history of the war not from the point of view of the victors but of the temporarily - and I repeat the word temporarily - anquished.

Before the testimonies begin, I would like to briefly address as straightforwardly as I can a few questions that have been raised about this tribunal.

The first is that this tribunal is a Kangaroo Court. That it represents only one point of view. That it is a prosecution without a defense. That the verdict is a foregone conclusion.

Now this view seems to suggest a touching concern that in this harsh world, the views of the US government and the so-called Coalition of the Willing headed by President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair have somehow gone unrepresented. That the World Tribunal on Iraq isn't aware of the arguments in support of the war and is unwilling to consider the point of view of the invaders. If in the era of the multinational corporate media and embedded journalism anybody can seriously hold this view, then we truly do live in the Age of Irony, in an age when satire has become meaningless because real life is more satirical than satire can ever be.


Let me say categorically that this tribunal is the defense. It is an act of resistance in itself. It is a defense mounted against one of the most cowardly wars ever fought in history, a war in which international institutions were used to force a country to disarm and then stood by while it was attacked with a greater array of weapons than has ever been used in the history of war.

Second, this tribunal is not in any way a defense of Saddam Hussein. His crimes against Iraqis, Kurds, Iranians, Kuwaitis, and others cannot be written off in the process of bringing to light Iraqs more recent and still unfolding tragedy. However, we must not forget that when Saddam Hussein was committing his worst crimes, the US government was supporting him politically and materially. When he was gassing Kurdish people, the US government financed him, armed him, and stood by silently.

Saddam Hussein is being tried as a war criminal even as we speak. But what about those who helped to install him in power, who armed him, who supported him - and who are now setting up a tribunal to try him and absolve themselves completely? And what about other friends of the United States in the region that have suppressed Kurdish peoples and other peoples rights, including the government of Turkey?

There are remarkable people gathered here who in the face of this relentless and brutal aggression and propaganda have doggedly worked to compile a comprehensive spectrum of evidence and information that should serve as a weapon in the hands of those who wish to participate in the resistance against the occupation of Iraq. It should become a weapon in the hands of soldiers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Australia, and elsewhere who do not wish to fight, who do not wish to lay down their lives - or to take the lives of others - for a pack of lies. It should become a weapon in the hands of journalists, writers, poets, singers, teachers, plumbers, taxi drivers, car mechanics, painters, lawyers - anybody who wishes to participate in the resistance.

The evidence collated in this tribunal should, for instance, be used by the International Criminal Court (whose jurisdiction the United States does not recognize) to try as war criminals George Bush, Tony Blair, John Howard, Silvio Berlusconi, and all those government officials, army generals, and corporate CEOs who participated in this war and now profit from it.


The assault on Iraq is an assault on all of us: on our dignity, our intelligence, and our future.

We recognize that the judgment of the World Tribunal on Iraq is not binding in international law. However, our ambitions far surpass that. The World Tribunal on Iraq places its faith in the consciences of millions of people across the world who do not wish to stand by and watch while the people of Iraq are being slaughtered, subjugated, and humiliated.


Arundhati Roy received the Booker Prize for literature in 1997. Presently, one of the most eloquent voices for the global justice and anti-war movement, she was also awarded, among many others, the Sydney Peace Prize in 2004, and the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize in 2002.

SOURCE - http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/062505Y.shtml







More lovin'...


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arundhati_Roy

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/19/1449239

http://www.alternativeradio.org/speakers/ROYA.shtml

http://www.cryaboutit.com/deaddog/GreatThinkers/arundhati_roy.htm

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

It's 2006... Happier New Year! :-) "Bush Has Crossed the Rubicon" by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

The Rubicon

The Rubicon (Rubico, in Italian Rubicone) is an ancient Latin name for a small river in northern Italy. In Roman times it flowed into the Adriatic Sea between Ariminum and Caesena. The actual modern identity of the water-course is uncertain, it is usually identified as the Pisciatello in its upper reaches and then the Fiumicino to the sea.

The river is notable as Roman law forbade any general from crossing it with a standing army. The river was considered to mark the boundary between the Roman province of Cisalpine Gaul to the north and the Roman heartland to the south; the law thus protected the republic from internal military threat.

When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 BC, supposedly on January 10 of the Roman calendar, in pursuit of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus he broke that law and made armed conflict inevitable. According to Suetonius he uttered the famous phrase alea iacta est ("the die is cast").1 Suetonius also described how Caesar was apparently still undecided as he approached the river, and the author gave credit for the actual moment of crossing to a supernatural apparition.

The phrase "crossing the Rubicon" has survived to refer to any person committing himself irrevocably to a risky course of action, another way of saying crossing the point of no return. It is also in limited usage as to its original meaning of using military power in the homeland.


SOURCE - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubicon







About Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts is the John M. Olin fellow at the Institute for Political Economy, research fellow at the Independent Institute and senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. A former editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal, he writes a political commentary column for Creators Syndicate. He also writes a monthly economics column for Investors Business Daily . In 1992, he received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 1993, he was ranked as one of the top seven journalists by the Forbes Media Guide .

He was distinguished fellow at the Cato Institute from 1993 to 1996. From 1982 through 1993, he held the William E. Simon chair in political economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. From 1981 to 1982, he served as assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy. President Reagan and Treasury Secretary Regan credited him with a major role in the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, and he was awarded the Treasury Department's Meritorious Service Award for "his outstanding contributions to the formulation of United States economic policy." From 1975 to 1978, Dr. Roberts served on the congressional staff where he drafted the Kemp-Roth bill and played a leading role in developing bipartisan support for a supply-side economic policy.

In 1987, the French government recognized him as "the artisan of a renewal in economic science and policy after half a century of state interventionism" and inducted him into the Legion of Honor.


SOURCE - http://www.townhall.com/opinion/contributors/paulcraigroberts.html







Infowars.com

Bush Has Crossed the Rubicon

Paul Craig Roberts | January 16 2006


Dictatorships seldom appear full-fledged but emerge piecemeal. When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon with one Roman legion he broke the tradition that protected the civilian government from victorious generals and launched the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. Fearing that Caesar would become a king, the Senate assassinated him. From the civil wars that followed, Caesar’s grandnephew, Octavian, emerged as the first Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus.

Two thousand years later in Germany, Adolf Hitler’s rise to dictator from his appointment as chancellor was rapid. Hitler used the Reichstag fire to create an atmosphere of crisis. Both the judicial and legislative branches of government collapsed, and Hitler’s decrees became law. The Decree for the Protection of People and State (Feb. 28, 1933) suspended guarantees of personal liberty and permitted arrest and incarceration without trial. The Enabling Act (March 23, 1933) transferred legislative power to Hitler, permitting him to decree laws, laws moreover that "may deviate from the Constitution."

The dictatorship of the Roman emperors was not based on an ideology. The Nazis had an ideology of sorts, but Hitler’s dictatorship was largely personal and agenda-based. The dictatorship that emerged from the Bolshevik Revolution was based in ideology. Lenin declared that the Communist Party’s dictatorship over the Russian people rests "directly on force, not limited by anything, not restricted by any laws, nor any absolute rules." Stalin’s dictatorship over the Communist Party was based on coercion alone, unrestrained by any limitations or inhibitions.

In this first decade of the 21st century the United States regards itself as a land of democracy and civil liberty but, in fact, is an incipient dictatorship. Ideology plays only a limited role in the emerging dictatorship. The demise of American democracy is largely the result of historical developments.

Lincoln was the first American tyrant. Lincoln justified his tyranny in the name of preserving the Union. His extra-legal, extra-constitutional methods were tolerated in order to suppress Northern opposition to Lincoln’s war against the Southern secession.

The first major lasting assault on the US Constitution’s separation of powers, which is the basis for our political system, came with the response of the Roosevelt administration to the crisis of the Great Depression. The New Deal resulted in Congress delegating its legislative powers to the executive branch. Today when Congress passes a statute it is little more than an authorization for an executive agency to make the law by writing the regulations that implement it.

Prior to the New Deal, legislation was tightly written to minimize any executive branch interpretation. Only in this way can law be accountable to the people. If the executive branch that enforces the law also writes the law, "all legislative powers" are no longer vested in elected representatives in Congress. The Constitution is violated, and the separation of powers is breached.

The principle that power delegated to Congress by the people cannot be delegated by Congress to the executive branch is the mainstay of our political system. Until President Roosevelt overturned this principle by threatening to pack the Supreme Court, the executive branch had no role in interpreting the law. As Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote: "That congress cannot delegate legislative power to the president is a principle universally recognized as vital to the integrity and maintenance of the system of government ordained by the Constitution."

Despite seven decades of an imperial presidency that has risen from the New Deal’s breach of the separation of powers, Republican attorneys, who constitute the membership of the quarter-century-old Federalist Society, the candidate group for Republican nominees to federal judgeships, write tracts about the Imperial Congress and the Imperial Judiciary that are briefs for concentrating more power in the executive. Federalist Society members pretend that Congress and the Judiciary have stolen all the power and run away with it.

The Republican interest in strengthening executive power has its origin in frustration from the constraints placed on Republican administrations by Democratic congresses. The thrust to enlarge the President’s powers predates the Bush administration but is being furthered to a dangerous extent during Bush’s second term. The confirmation of Bush’s nominee, Samuel Alito, a member of the Federalist Society, to the Supreme Court will provide five votes in favor of enlarged presidential powers.

President Bush has used "signing statements" hundreds of times to vitiate the meaning of statutes passed by Congress. In effect, Bush is vetoing the bills he signs into law by asserting unilateral authority as commander-in-chief to bypass or set aside the laws he signs. For example, Bush has asserted that he has the power to ignore the McCain amendment against torture, to ignore the law that requires a warrant to spy on Americans, to ignore the prohibition against indefinite detention without charges or trial, and to ignore the Geneva Conventions to which the US is signatory.

In effect, Bush is asserting the powers that accrued to Hitler in 1933. His Federalist Society apologists and Department of Justice appointees claim that President Bush has the same power to interpret the Constitution as the Supreme Court. An Alito Court is likely to agree with this false claim.


This is the great issue that is before the country. But it is pushed into the background by political battles over abortion and homosexual rights. Many people fighting to strengthen the executive think they are fighting against legitimizing sodomy and murder in the womb. They are unaware that the real issue is that America is on the verge of elevating its president above the law.

Bush Justice Department official and Berkeley law professor John Yoo argues that no law can restrict the president in his role as commander-in-chief. Thus, once the president is at war – even a vague open-ended "war on terror" – Bush’s Justice Department says the president is free to undertake any action in pursuit of war, including the torture of children and indefinite detention of American citizens.

The commander-in-chief role is probably sufficiently elastic to expand to any crisis, whether real or fabricated. Thus has the US arrived at the verge of dictatorship.

This development has little to do with Bush, who is unlikely to be aware that the Constitution is experiencing its final rending on his watch. America’s descent into dictatorship is the result of historical developments and of old political battles dating back to President Nixon being driven from office by a Democratic Congress.

There is today no constitutional party. Both political parties, most constitutional lawyers, and the bar associations are willing to set aside the Constitution whenever it interferes with their agendas. Americans have forgotten the prerequisites for freedom, and those pursuing power have forgotten what it means when it falls into other hands. Americans are very close to losing their constitutional system and civil liberties. It is paradoxical that American democracy is the likely casualty of a "war on terror" that is being justified in the name of the expansion of democracy.


REAL SOURCE - http://www.infowars.com/articles/ps/roberts_bush_crossed_rubicon.htm







Download a pair of documentaries to help understand and Save The World...



911: The Road to Tyranny (2002)

http://www.archive.org/details/911theRoadtoTyranny






Martial Law 9/11: Rise Of The Police State (2005)

http://www.archive.org/details.php?identifier=MartialLaw911






Infowars.com

'Only a matter of time before terrorists use weapons of mass destruction'

Con Coughlin / London Telegraph | January 17 2006


Biological weapons pose a far more serious long-term terrorist threat to the West than nuclear weapons, according to Washington's leading counter-terrorism expert.

And Henry "Hank" Crumpton, the newly-appointed head of counter-terrorism at the US State Department, believes that it is simply a matter of time before international terrorist groups such as al-Qa'eda acquire weapons of mass destruction and use them in attacks.

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Telegraph, Mr Crumpton, who previously spent 20 years working for the Central Intelligence Agency, warned yesterday that the "war on terror" was likely to last for decades.


"This threat has changed the way we will fight wars in the future," he said.

"We are talking about micro targets such as al-Qa'eda which, when combined with WMD, have a macro impact. I rate the probability of terror groups using WMD [to attack Western targets] as very high. It is simply a question of time.

"And it is not just the nuclear threat that bothers me. I think, if anything, the biological threat is going to grow.

"As catastrophic as a nuclear attack would be, it would be self-contained. But if you look at a worst-case scenario for a biological attack, it would be difficult to determine whether or not it was a terrorist attack, and it would be far more difficult to contain."

After the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001, Mr Crumpton, who was then a senior CIA officer, played a leading role in the campaign to overthrow the Taliban and destroy al-Qa'eda's operational infrastructure in Afghanistan, which relied heavily on covert operations.

After the war, allied forces found that al-Qa'eda had been working on anthrax programmes that it intended to use on western targets.

"They had hired a very experienced biologist to work on this. They were very serious about it and there is no reason to believe they have given up on their interest."

The fear that terrorist groups might be able to acquire WMD from rogue states such as Iran or Syria explains Washington's determination to confront Iran over its nuclear programme.

"If we look at the threat posed by Iran, they have links with Hizbollah [the Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim militia], which is a terrorist organisation with global reach, and they are actively pursuing WMD. And the leadership has made a conscious decision to defy international treaties. I am deeply troubled by this."

As for taking action to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, Mr Crumpton insisted that "every option is on the table" - including military action.

"I would not rule out anything because of the particularly grave threat that we are facing," he said.


In a distinguished career with the CIA, during which he won four of the agency's highest awards, Mr Crumpton was a key figure in its covert operations against al-Qa'eda pre-September 11.

Referred to simply as "Henry" in the 9/11 Commission Report, Mr Crumpton tried to persuade the CIA to do more in Afghanistan to hunt down Osama bin Laden before the attacks, but two key proposals to tackle al-Qa'eda were turned down.

After the September 11 attacks, in which he lost many close friends, he was initially overwhelmed by sorrow.

"But that sorrow was soon replaced by anger, anger that al-Qa'eda could do this to innocent people - and the anger lasted for more than a year."

Mr Crumpton stresses the coalition's achievements in disrupting bin Laden's network. In his view, al-Qa'eda's infrastructure has been so badly damaged that it is now struggling to control the groups that would like to support it.

"They can't communicate with their supporters unless the odd courier breaks through. They can't get access to money and things like that. We have made life very difficult for them."

But despite the initial success achieved during the Afghan war in 2001, he expressed disappointment with the support Washington had received from its European allies since hostilities ended. "The job was not finished and it is not finished now." Bin Laden, who escaped to Pakistan, was "in all probability" still alive, he said.

The regime of President Assad in Syria also seriously threatens western security, he says. "The regime continues to support terror organisations. And we know that the Baathist leadership fled to Damascus taking with them money and terrorist expertise, and we cannot rule out the fact that some of that expertise related to WMD."

REAL SOURCE - http://www.infowars.com/articles/terror/only_matter_of_time_before_terrorists_use_wmd.htm







The Power of Nightmares...








BBC News

The Power of Nightmares: Baby It's Cold Outside

Should we be worried about the threat from organised terrorism or is it simply a phantom menace being used to stop society from falling apart?


In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares.

The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams were not true, neither are these nightmares.

In a new series, the Power of Nightmares explores how the idea that we are threatened by a hidden and organised terrorist network is an illusion.

It is a myth that has spread unquestioned through politics, the security services and the international media.



THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES
Three part series
Tuesday, 18 January, 2005
2320 GMT on BBC Two

I: Baby It's Cold Outside
II: The Phantom Victory
III: The Shadows In The Cave



At the heart of the story are two groups: the American neo-conservatives and the radical Islamists.

Both were idealists who were born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world.

These two groups have changed the world but not in the way either intended.

Together they created today's nightmare vision of an organised terror network.

A fantasy that politicians then found restored their power and authority in a disillusioned age. Those with the darkest fears became the most powerful.

The rise of the politics of fear begins in 1949 with two men whose radical ideas would inspire the attack of 9/11 and influence the neo-conservative movement that dominates Washington.

Both these men believed that modern liberal freedoms were eroding the bonds that held society together.

The two movements they inspired set out, in their different ways, to rescue their societies from this decay. But in an age of growing disillusion with politics, the neo-conservatives turned to fear in order to pursue their vision.

They would create a hidden network of evil run by the Soviet Union that only they could see.

The Islamists were faced by the refusal of the masses to follow their dream and began to turn to terror to force the people to "see the truth"'.


The Power of Nightmares will be broadcast over three nights from Tuesday 18 to Thursday, 20 January, 2005 at 2320 GMT on BBC Two. The final part has been updated in the wake of the Law Lords ruling in December that detaining foreign terrorist suspects without trial was illegal.

SOURCE - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/3755686.stm







WATCH - http://www.thedossier.ukonline.co.uk/video_september11.htm

WATCH - http://www.documentary-film.net/search/video-listings.php?e=7

WATCH - http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares

WATCH - http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/10/24/115621/52

WATCH - http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=461187809452836609