"The film US TV networks dare not show"

[mr blur]

"The Power of Nightmares" at the Cannes Film Festival:

http://film.guardian.co.uk/cannes2005/story/0,15927,1481970,00.html

[Swamp Rat]

1. kick

[Nothing Without Hope]

2. Interesting! I can think of a LOT of films he US TV networks dare not

show. I'm still shaking from watching Part I of the documentary of corporate/political control of the media and its abolute corruption. Good documentary, but the media themselves would never show it. You can watch it online here:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8560.htm

Sounds like "The Power of Nightmares" will be available at least in local indy movie theaters. I'll watch for it.

Excerpt from the site you link to about "The Power of Nightmares::

But the film is even more incendiary for its analysis of what Curtis controversially insists is the largely illusory fear of terrorism in the west since 9/11. Curtis argues that politicians such as Bush and Blair have stumbled on a new force that can restore their power and authority - the fear of a hidden and organised web of evil from which they can protect their people. In a still-traumatised US, those with the darkest nightmares have become the most powerful and Curtis's film castigates the media, security forces and the Bush administration for extending their power in this way. "It has really touched a nerve with people who realise something is not quite right with the way terrorism has been reported."

[leftchick]

3. Holy Crap! He does Leo Strauss!!

:woohoo:

I have NEVER seen his mention outside of left-leaning publications...

<snip>

His documentary took as its starting point the year 1949, when two men who would prove massively influential to the establishment of Islamic terror groups and to the neo-Conservative American tendency that now dominates Washington were both in the US. One was an Egyptian school inspector called Sayyid Qutb whose ideas would directly inspire those who flew the planes on the attacks of September 11. Qutb's summer visit to Colorado revolted him so much - he could see nothing there but decadent materialism - that he went home thinking that modern liberal freedoms were eroding society's bonds and that only a radical Islam could prevent its destruction. Meanwhile, in Chicago, an obscure political philosopher called Leo Strauss was developing a similar critique of western liberalism (though without the Islamic answer to individualism's purported ills). He called on conservative politicians to invent national myths to hold society together and stop America in particular from collapsing into degraded individualism. It was from such Straussian reflections that the idea that the US's national destiny was to tilt against seeming foreign evils - be they the Soviet bloc or, later, fundamentalist Islam - was born.

But the film is even more incendiary for its analysis of what Curtis controversially insists is the largely illusory fear of terrorism in the west since 9/11. Curtis argues that politicians such as Bush and Blair have stumbled on a new force that can restore their power and authority - the fear of a hidden and organised web of evil from which they can protect their people. In a still-traumatised US, those with the darkest nightmares have become the most powerful and Curtis's film castigates the media, security forces and the Bush administration for extending their power in this way. "It has really touched a nerve with people who realise something is not quite right with the way terrorism has been reported."

For these reasons, one might well think that The Power of Nightmares would provide a usefully chastening corrective to the prevailing orthodoxy if it were shown on US television. But it seems extremely unlikely that it will be. While a two-and-a-half -hour film version is to be given a prime-time Cannes screening, and while the original three-hour series will be shown tonight on al-Jazeera along with a live interview with the director, US telly has run scared from showing it. "Something extraordinary has happened to American TV since September 11," says Curtis. "A head of the leading networks who had better remain nameless said to me that there was no way they could show it. He said, 'Who are you to say this?' and then he added, 'We would get slaughtered if we put this out.'" Surely a relatively enlightened broadcaster like HBO would show it? "When I was in New York I took a DVD to the head of documentaries at HBO. I still haven't heard from him." He has little hope that he will.


... I GUARENTEE The Sundance Channel will play this! Thanks for the link!

[w13rd0]

4. It's a pretty good series...

...and startling in how it draws parallels in the genesis and philosophies of these two groups (neocons and alqaeda).

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

5. Link to view "The Power Of Nightmares" online.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/video1037.htm

[noonwitch]

6. I wonder if it will be on the CBC or BBC America?

I live in Detroit and get the CBC. If Comcast was to block it out, I can get the Windsor channel on broadcast.

I got most of my 9-11 coverage from the CBC that day. I couldn't deal with the american reporters and anchors.