Point 2 should read:

2) point out that each side demonizes the other as a major tactic to further its own agends, while the main event for each has nothing to do with the other.

Very good thoughts related to Adam Curtis’ film. Thanks for the correction and links.

I agree with you completely; I knew i was condensing wildly (there’s been a campaign of sorts here to encourage keeping posts short) and I did fear I had conflated the two systems without meaning to.

My points were to

1) alert people to the film which is making its way around the film festivals and art houses as decent overview for putting some context to the bewildering barrage of press which impedes popular understanding of the geo-politics, and

2) point out that each side demonizes

I agree with you completely; I knew i was condensing wildly (there’s been a campaign of sorts here to encourage keeping posts short) and feared I had conflated the two systems without meaning to.

the other as a major tactic to further its own agenda, while the main event for each has nothing to do with the other.

# DrDan Says:

June 19th, 2006 at 5:56 pm

Sorry about that, Brendan… I forgot about the guidelines there.

Scribe5, I supplied some items I considered facts to back up my reports of propaganda (in the form of lots of news coverage thereof). Can you supply more than simple denials of that coverage? …

===== unquote =====

I also apologize for my [i]ad hominem[/i] comments, Scribe5. If you read this and still retain any interest in the discussion, it would be good of you to respond to my above-quoted request, if possible. Thanks in advance.

Here is an interview with the author:

http://www.democratiya.com/interview.asp?issueid=5

That would be Leo Strauss, babu.

“Adam Curtis, a filmmaker for the BBC, in his riveting film/essay, â€? The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fearâ€? distills fifty years of parallel history in the Middle East and the U.S.”

The comparison in the article isn’t very convincing. The idea that the neocons and the Islamicists have similar socio political values is laughable.

Two socio political views can be wrong without being similar to one another.

Many other thinkers have critiqued consumerist culture, Marcuse, the Frankfurt school, Christopher Lasch, etc, that hardly makes them similar to the Islamicists.

On the other hand, some hard core leftists have endorsed and allied themselves to the Islamicists,especially in Europe. There you have a real affinity.

“btw, scribe5, good to meet you, I think we share common politics.”

Looks like it, Jon.

both sides against the advance of permissive, consumer-oriented lifestyles and the destruction of ‘moral values’.

Curtis shows that this so-called movement was failing in the Arab world, that there was/is no real organization, that al Quaida as an organized enemy was a construct of US (secret) politics. Yes there are martyrs who are trying to shock the world into seeing the evil of our ways. On our side, it’s a smoke screen to keep us from noticing the advance of conservative ideals.

Bush is the perfect patsy clone, except that he can’t give deliver his lines convincingly. It’s a shell game, with two fundamentalist movements historically linked in a curious parallelism and synchonicity.

To debate the details and personalities is to miss the large print. On both sides a generation is being manipulated into accepting the wholesale destruction of a half-century of social progress.