UK film at Cannes says terror fears exaggerated (Barf Alert)

At a screening late on Friday ahead of its gala on Saturday, "The Power of Nightmares" by filmmaker and senior BBC producer Adam Curtis kept an audience of journalists and film buyers glued to their seats and taking notes for a full 2-1/2 hours.

The film, a non-competition entry, argues that the fear of terrorism has come to pervade politics in the United States and Britain even though much of that angst is based on carefully nurtured illusions.

It says Bush and U.S. neo-conservatives, as well as British Prime Minister Tony Blair, are exaggerating the terror threat in a manner similar to the way earlier generations of leaders inflated the danger of communism and the Soviet Union.

It also draws especially controversial symmetries between the history of the U.S. movement that led to the neo-cons and the roots of the ideas that led to radical Islamism -- two conservative movements that have shaped geopolitics since 1945.

Curtis's film portrays neo-cons Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Donald Rumsfeld as counterparts to Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri in the two respective movements.

"During the Cold War conservatives exaggerated the threat of the Soviet Union," the narrator says. "In reality it was collapsing from within. Now they're doing the same with Islamic extremists because it fits the American vision of an epic battle."

ILLUSORY FEAR OF TERROR

In his film, Curtis argues that Bush and Blair have used what he says is the largely illusory fear of terror and hidden webs of organized evil following the September 11, 2001, attacks to reinforce their authority and rally their nations.

In Bush's government, those underlings who put forth the darkest scenarios of the phantom threat have the most influence, says Curtis, who also devotes segments of his film to criticize unquestioning media and zealous security agencies.

He says al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has a far less powerful organization than feared. But he is careful to avoid suggestions that terror attacks won't happen again. Included are experts who dismiss fears of a "dirty bomb" as exaggerated.

"It was an attempt at historical explanation for September 11," Curtis said, describing his film in the Guardian newspaper recently. "Up to this point, nobody had done a proper history of the ideas and groups that have created our modern world."

But Curtis said there were worlds of difference between his film and Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," which won the "Golden Palm" and gave the festival a charged political atmosphere that prompted this year's return to a more conservative program.

"Moore is a political agitprop filmmaker," he said. "I am not. You'd be hard pushed to tell my politics from watching it."

"The Power of Nightmares" was a three-part documentary aired in Britain and won a British film and television industry award (Bafta) this year.

I was scared of terrorists before 9/11. Exaggerated?? Did they not see the beheadings in Iraq? Good against Evil has never been exaggerated in my mind. Those who choose to look the other way instead of facing the evil are living in a dream world.

"Moore is a political agitprop filmmaker," he said. "I am not. You'd be hard pushed to tell my politics from watching it."

Uhhhhhhm....OK.

Yep. Exaggerated.

Here is a related news article. It looks like the current strategy is to emulate the ostrich.

The Power of Nightmares: Baby It's Cold Outside
UK Prime Minister and US President George W Bush stand behind a picture of Osama Bin Laden
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?

Click here to send us your comments

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.

Those with the darkest fears became the most powerful
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.

You know what's REALLY exaggerated? The fear The Left has of Religious Conservatives.

The chattering classes have become satires of themselves.

People are still in denial about that war. An article on a Kazakhstani site I translated:

Witness to the Fuhrer's death
(SNIP)
...Rohus Misch tends to idealize his boss. In his stories, Hitler almost never raises his voice and calmly utilizes the services of his Jewish cook: 'That she wasn't a representative of the Aryan race did not seem to bother him."
Misch does not regret that he worked for Hitler, and allegedly never heard about the existance of Nazi concentration camps, mass annihilation of Jews, and other horrors. Misch insists that he found out about these much later, in the 1950s, when he returned from prison.

Thanks for posting the picture. I don't think we see it enough. How is it so easy for some people to tuck these images away and pretend it didn't really happen (or that we just don't understand the crazy terrorists had their reasons and are justified)?

Sometimes I am just sick to my stomach when I read these things.

I guess 35 plus years of terror attacks worldwide has passed them by. Where are we now, I think just about every country has been hit including China. Yes, terrorism is exaggerated, but I guess the French will give this film a "23 minute standing ovation" as well like they did Fatinweight 911 pounds.

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