Letters to the Editor
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Who needs old media when there is bittorrent?
I checked torrentreactor.net for this film and there were at least 5 possible downloads.
Torrentspy.com had 11 files some with more than 100 people sharing it.
Get azureus from azureus.com for the bittorrent client, then download the film, you'll be dead before PBS gets the guts to broadcast it.
Time for some viral propagation here, get the file, burn the DVD and pass it around. You could give it away at $.50 for a blank.
I saw it on CBC, us Canadians are all commies don't you know, Americans will have to rely on the net to get any truth.
Richard
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the Power of Nightmares
I would love to see this movie, but I doubt much in it will surprise me. Governments, including tribal governments ruling small bands of primitive people, have always relied on fear to corral the energies of the masses for one purpose alone: to create a ruling class that doesn't have to work. Fear is the driving force behind all life. Fear of not having enough food, of being cold, of being eaten. Just because we have consciousness doesn't mean we're any freer of fear than a nervous bird at a feeder or a wary coyote or a darting fish. Life loves life and fears anything that threatens it; that's evolution at work.
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The Power of Nightmares
Sounds interesting. I guess no one outside of New York will get to see it. Unless, of course, they live in Columbia, MO, where the movie was screened in February. Or if they live in Canada, where it was aired on CBC. Or if they have the internet, where the movie is pretty widely available for download.
How do I know this? Well, I googled on the name of the movie. This would be known as 'doing a minimal amount of research on a topic before you write an article'. It's something you might want to consider in the future.
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Availability of movie
And it's available for purchase on Amazon.com. See http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/9568355812/qid=1134058249/sr=11-1/ref=sr_11_1/002-3127380-4084833?n=130
Bob
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On the wink-wink, nudge-nudge distribution channels
I appreciate the superior attitude, Madeline. That's very Internet of you. I was indeed aware of the facts you relate. (Well, OK, I didn't know about Columbia, Mo. Nice town!) While I have no personal objection to individuals acquiring "The Power of Nightmares" via the methods you and another correspondent describe, I certainly can't speak for Adam Curtis or the BBC on this question. And it isn't my place, or Salon's, to encourage copyright violation, whatever our private philosophies may be. The fact remains that for the vast majority of potential American viewers, who live outside the New York area and are either unwilling to download bootleg video or lack the knowledge and resources to do so, this film remains unavailable and is likely to stay that way.
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A New York State of Mind
Mr. O'Hehir's article reflects some of the hubris that characterizes the American Left and Right. While I don't condemn him for mistakenly presuming no one outside New York has seen, or will see, The Power of Nightmares, I must say his sense of shock and awe over the revelations in the documentary reveal something of how insular segments of America can be, whatever their politics. Keep in mind that the story contained in the documentary was reported in the British press upon its release in Britain. This is how I heard about its argument, through an online British newspaper.
The Power of Nightmares aired in Canada on CBC in April 2005 (http://www.cbc.ca/passionateeye/powerofnightmares/one.html). In September 2005 I was speaking with a very prominent and left-leaning American academic, explaining the findings of the documentary, and he had not heard of it. In fact, he still believed Al Qaeda was more than just a few lunatics transformed by the US government into a collaborative global network of ideologues bent on destroying America. I was surprised to see such an astute observer unaware of the fundamental lie of the "war on terror" -- that there is an enemy of coordinated size and strength, and not simply an idea of resistance being adopted by disparate parties -- and it made me feel like the center of the political spectrum in America was so far to the right that even the left couldn't see the horizon anymore.
But this is, of course, just one documentary, and once some Americans get a chance to see it they will understand yet another quality of the terms by which they have been hoodwinked.
Mr. O'Hehir's comments on the film are better late than never. He concludes, quite rightly, "As long as these two quasi-religious ideologies are locked in Manichaean combat, playing the endless game of devils and angels, their devotees will reap the benefits -- and the rest of us will remain prisoners to their nightmares."
Along those lines, I recommend LSE professor John Gray's book "Heresies", which contains some of his essays on Iraq and his post-humanist critique of ideologies like neoconservatism and liberal humanism.
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Stress On Strauss
You refer to Strauss (as presentec in the film) as a "German-Jewish Intellectual who fled Hitler."
It may be important to note (especially given the fascist tendencies of his disciples) that although nominally a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany (he actually left for a better position abroad, on the warm recommendation of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt), Strauss was an unabashed proponent of the three most notorious shapers of the Nazi philosophy: Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt. Recent biographies have revealed the depth of Heidegger's enthusiasm for Hitler and Nazism, while he served as the Chancellor of Freiburg University, throughout the epoch of National Socialism, and was the leader of a Nietzschean revival. Carl Schmitt, the leading Nazi philosopher of law, was personally responsible, in 1934, for arranging a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship for Strauss, which enabled him to leave Germany, to study in England and France, before coming to the United States to teach at the New School for Social Research, and then, the University of Chicago. Strauss, in his long academic career, never abandoned his fealty to Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Schmitt.
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Available at archive.org
This amazing and horrifyingly scary documentary is available for streaming or download at
http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares