Islam and Neo-Conservatism in unholy allliance…once again……apparently…
We have another of the BBC’s favoured sons, Adam Curtis, who once told us that Al Qaeda didn’t exist, purely an invention of the government to keep us frightened and obedient, again given a platform on the BBC to spout his obsessive conspiracy theories and anti-Western rhetoric.
He has now produced a continuation of that theme first aired in his ‘The Power of Nightmares’ with his latest effort ‘Bitter Lake’ in which we get his very own special intepretation of history… as his introduction reveals:
Increasingly we live in a world where little makes any sense, events come and go like waves of a fever leaving us confused and uncertain. Those in power tell stories to make us make sense of the complexity of reality but those stories are increasingly unconvincing and hollow. This is a film about why those stories stopped making sense and why that led us in the West to become a dangerous and destructive force in the world.
The blurb to the film tells us…..
The film reveals the forces that over the past thirty years rose up and undermined the confidence of politics to understand the world. And it shows the strange, dark role that Saudi Arabia has played in this.
But Bitter Lake is also experimental. Curtis has taken the unedited rushes of everything that the BBC has ever shot in Afghanistan – and used them in new and radical ways.
He has tried to build a different and more emotional way of depicting what really happened in Afghanistan. A counterpoint to the thin, narrow and increasingly destructive stories told by those in power today.
Very nice that the BBC provides a platform for someone who is an ardent, and very obsessive, conspiracy theorist to peddle his theories.
In his latest iPlayer-only film Bitter Lake, furtive filmmaker Adam Curtis uses his dreamlike documentary style to make sense of the west’s involvement in Afghanistan. But is he an audacious auteur or a dangerous contrarian?
Here is an example of his take on history…
Curtis is about to return with a new film, a two-and-a-half-hour BBC iPlayer-only epic called Bitter Lake. It takes as its premise a meeting in February 1945 between the then US president Franklin D Roosevelt and King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia. Sitting on a yacht on the Great Bitter Lake of the Suez Canal, the pair struck a deal: the US would support this newly formed state and, in return, the Saudis would ensure a continuing stream of oil to the west. From that one point, argues Curtis, came the spread of Wahhabi Islam….
A very simplistic and childish view of history from Curtis with the benefit of a rather unreliable but convenient hind-sight. He seems to think no one should do anything as a single action might have terrible unforeseen consequences…or that is what he must infer following his own logic and scathing conclusions in the wake of historical US actions and their repercussions as he sees them.
Does Curtis think that the oil would have stayed in the ground had there been no agreement? Saudi Arabia would still have raked in the cash whoever bought the oil and provided ‘protection’ for the Saudi regime…..the USSR would have quickly stepped in as it did with Syria and Egypt….and the funds to spread fundamentalist Islam around the world would still have flooded into the Saudi coffers….no coincidence that the Russian state broadcaster finds ‘Bitter lake’ a superb bit of TV….BBC documentary ‘Bitter Lake’ is ‘too dangerous’ for TV
The film concentrates on Afghanistan and adopts the BBC’s approach of painting the war there as an utter failure…and uses the ‘prism of Afghanistan’ to illuminate the tumble of world events over the last few decades.
Once again we have a confirmed lefty telling us we understand nothing, that we are being lied to, and he has the answers.
Well, People understand quite a lot thanks…People understand the BBC has been lying to them about immigration, Europe and Islam for years now…they understand that and vote UKIP.
People understand. They don’t need some self-appointed left-wing, intellectual film maker patronising them and ‘teaching’ them what to think.
They know what is going on….despite all the BBC’s best efforts to kid them.
And this Curtis film is just more evidence that the BBC doesn’t get it…or rather does, and doesn’t like what it sees as people flock to UKIP….and I have to say it is just another example of the Left’s hypocrisy over Islam….attacking Saudi Arabia, which is the spiritual and actual home of Islam, and yet telling us that the Saudis don’t really represent the authentic Islam….and then telling us that Muslims in the UK who follow the same Saudi traditions, are ‘moderate, tolerant Muslims’.
What did the Americans think about the Saudi King in 1945?…..
In the estimation of Colonel Eddy, who knew theArabs probably better than any other American ofhis generation:‘The Guardian of the Holy Places of Islam,and the nearest we have to a successor to theCaliphs, the Defender of the Muslim Faithand of the Holy Cities of three hundred mil-lion people, cemented a friendship with thehead of a great Western and Christian nation.’
Sounds pretty certain that Saudi Arabia is the epicentre of the Islamic faith and not some propagator of a false version of Islam…they should know after all….Muhammed having come from that very region himself.
Curtis’ film is essentially a YouTube polemic…scratchily put together made up from clips of film that he has taken a fancy to and supposedly tell a coherent tale….each one no doubt has meaning to Curtis but the viewer is left in a certain amount of bewildered confusion…ironic for a film that is supposed to bring the world into focus. What do the clips mean in the context of the film? Difficult to tell much of the time….you just wait until the narrative restarts and you get a semblance of order once more.
Curtis would have been better off sticking with a standard narrative form that told the story he wanted to get across. Instead we have a ‘Tumblr’ type mash of images and themes that are more a stream of consciousness than a coherent and easy to follow story.
It would have been a lot shorter had he cut out the self-indulgent images that served only his own ideological purpose of protraying the West and its actions as ‘dangerous and destructive’.
For instance he related a tale about the construction of dams in Afghanistan…concluding that they caused the soil to become saline, which is true for some areas…and from that we were led to believe that poppies became almost the only crop that could be grown successfully there….so he blames the US for helping to build the dams and thence flood the world not with water but heroin.
Trouble is that’s not true….as this BBC article shows……a vastly different portrayal of Afghanistan and its history…..
Helmand’s Golden Age
Afghanistan once faced the future with confidence.
Caught here on film, it’s an era the world has forgottenAnd despite the setbacks, Helmand began to bloom. Residents and visitors alike remember the bright green of the settlements and orchards along the Helmand river.
Farming increased, harvesting a surplus even at times of drought. Farmers grew and exported cotton for cash in thousands of tonnes. Few even recognised the flower of the opium poppy, according to Farouq Azam.
Agriculture, especially cotton and grain production, continued to expand until Helmand supplied a fifth of Afghanistan’s wheat harvest.
So already we have Curtis twisting history to his own purpose and painting Western aid to Afghanistan as the cause of much misery when that clearly was not the case….claiming that tribal and ethnic differences were stirred up by these projects….again the BBC’s own article refutes that…..
Approximately one million Afghans moved to the Helmand Valley at this time, drawn by the prospect of jobs, good schools and prospects. Very many of these were educated people – their children would be the first in Afghanistan to have the option of single-sex or mixed schools.
People of every ethnicity and many languages lived side by side in Lashkar Gah, some in modern American-built houses with lawns, low fences and front gardens.
“It was such a happy time,” says Saeeda Mahmood, daughter of Kamoliddin Mahmood, the civil servant who also ran the cinema:
We grew up all together. No-one said, you are this, and we are that. Some of our neighbours were Americans. We used to invite them at Eid, they’d invite us for their parties. I remember Santa Claus would come, on a donkey, bringing us all presents.”
The film is over two hours long and makes for a very hard watch….both from an aesthetic and technical point of view but also if you have any regard for the truth in history.
Curtis up to his polemical and dishonest tricks once again.
Not worth watching when there is so much out here of better quality and which doesn’t have such a hysterical and ideologically entrenched view of history. Life is too short to waste your time on this tripe.
Have a read of this scathing review in the Spectator of Curtis’ masterpiece...’the ‘televisual equivalent of a drunken late night Wikipedia binge with pretension for narrative coherence’…..it’s from an unlikely source…a Guardian journalist…
Adam Curtis’s Bitter Lake, review: a Carry On Up the Khyber view of Afghanistan
In fact Afghans have consistently demonstrated their wish to join the 21st century. After more than a decade of trying the Taliban have failed to gain more than a slither of popular support. Democracy in Afghanistan is flawed, but with Afghans continuing to go the polls, it has not failed, as Curtis baldly states.
As Lotfullah Najafizada, one of the country’s leading journalists, put it last year, a sneering western media might have written off Afghanistan’s ‘decade of war’. But, ‘for us, it’s a decade of peace’.
Jon Boone is Pakistan correspondent for the Guardian
“Al-Qaeda’s Saudi Origins:
Islamist Ideology”
http://www.meforum.org/999/al-qaedas-saudi-origins
Curtis has taken the unedited rushes of everything that the BBC has ever shot in Afghanistan – and used them in new and radical ways.
Groan. As an alternative, the BBC might have shown a matter-of-fact documentary on how the Taliban shot a young girl in the face for wanting to be educated, might have contrasted that with a matter-of-fact documentary on how the West provided medical care for her and, in a new and radical departure from the norm, might have left the viewer to draw their own conclusions.
That would be Malala Yousafzai , who first came to prominence through her blog for the BBC.
T’ would appear so.
Why didn’t they give it more prominence? Can’t recall anything abut it on TV or radio (unless it was 5 Live, which I avoid for health reasons).
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/outcry-after-undercover-film-exposes-brutality-of-halal-industry-10019467.html….training to slaughter the infidel
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2937206/Halal-abattoir-staff-hacked-taunted-sheep-One-worker-sacked-three-suspended-caught-camera-carrying-horrifying-routine-abuse.html…deport these scum
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2937298/Jewish-anger-George-Galloway-gets-BBC-invitation-appear-week-s-Question-Time.html
This is disgusting. Just to pick Galloway for A QT in Finchley is an extreme act of anti-Semitism. The locals ought to declare Finchley an anti-Semite Free Zone and neither Galloway nor most of the Beeboids could attend.
Amazing also that the so-called “B”BC still pretend that the questions are asked by the audience members in advance. It may be true but you know there will be one selected by the so-called “B”BC that will hbe an undisguised and racist attack on Israel.
Technically, Muhammad came from the Hejaz region, which though in Saudi Arabia today, was conquered rather late by the Kingdom and which was not for the most part Wahhabi, and still is not entirely Wahhabi in mindset.
One can be interested in the BBC’s presentation of Islam, sure, but isn’t it rather minor in importance? This site seems to spend a lot more time on it than would seem to be warranted by its importance.
Er sorry that you think this site is wrong to reflect on the BBC’s obsession with the death cult ! we speak as we find so maybe if you think a world wide war by the followers of an insane religion who are killing yesterday ,today and tomorrow all covered up for by one of the worlds most powerful media corporations is of little importance why are you here moaning at us why not go talk to the BBC and ask them ?
er, sorry but he’s right. Whilst I agree that the BBC gives Islamic terrorists a free pass and does everything it can to separate Islam and their fundamental beliefs that pales next to the BBCs addiction to state sponsored ideologies.
The biggest threat to this country is Miliband and his state financed crew of traitors not the lesser threat of Third World butchers and their medieval beliefs.
I haven’t noticed the BBC give an especial emphasis to Islam, no matter how one views their reportage on it (I find the suggestion Islam is simply a death cult is silly and simplistic). Islam is a minor issue of BBC bias compared to social liberalism or immigration or the EU.
Islam gives them a problem. Being mainly efnik, it ticks the boxes for special treatment, what with their commitment to promote diversity and all. But given their long campaigns in support of feminism and homosexuality, where even the smallest transgression by Christian whitey is jumped on, the Religion Of Peace don’t play the game at all. Could even cause the BBC to be accused of hypocrisy by those who don’t have its interests at heart.
I can’t think of a subject that encapsulates BBC hypocrisy better than this one.
Edward Gibbon took six volumes to detail ‘The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’. That was nearly 240 years ago, but it still sends a shiver down the spine. Our country is rapidly accelerating to the same fate, with determined foreigners piling in from every angle and the state, at best, indifferent to the problem. This is alarming to many people. But while some immigrants are reasonably aligned to our culture, the prospect of being dominated by The Religion Of Peace is a nightmare for those who previously took our liberal culture for granted. It’s little wonder that people are concerned.
Um. Not sure about your take on this. When I was at college in 1969 I got my first ever hit of acid from a hippy who had just come back from the East. Later, he returned, and the last thing I heard of him was that he was an Imam! Imam John Butt. Back over here a few years ago, he talked about how he had had to leave Peshawar where he had been. and go to Delhi – why? Because Wahabism was overwhelming Pakistan, and he was in danger.
I think Curtis is correct on what he says about this. Slightly kneejerk reaction on your part.
I happened to catch a glimpse of the trailer for this on BBC4 last night.
Something inside me turned mournfully over.
you can bet that on question time that george galloway will try and pretend he is the freind of the jewish people and rant on about how he is just anti zionist as a deflection from his own hatred of isreal over the conflict in palestine,just look at george galloways twitter feed to see what hatred there shown towards isreal from his anti semetic followers,see george galloway is very clever at hiding his true feelings about isreal as proved when he was not charged by the politacal correct police in west yourshire when he declared bradford as a isreali free zone ,anti zionism is just a cover name for anti semetic hatred that the left use to attack jews and the state of isreal,dont let them fool you into thinking anything different..
And talking of the neo-cons?
Just heard some bearded academic on the rolling 24 hour news a few minutes ago telling us all that the “Arab Spring” was a construct of the sadly-deluded NeoCons.
They apparently wanted to bring democracy to the Middle East at the barrel of a gun…and Jonathan(our bearded expert) tells us more in sorrow than in anger that the NeoCons turn out to be wrong-so wrong.
And Jonathan no doubt could have told us so.
I myself would like to see what he was writing, spouting and saying in 2011/12…the whoops and hollers from the liberals, the Guardian and the BBC at the new order being the context in which he earns a nice pitta.
None of which in any way could be related to Wolfowitz, Perle or the other neo-cons who turn out to be fools-as opposed to Blair, Brown, Obama and Hague. Who , of course turn out to be-well the jury is out, and it`ll be best not to disturb them until the 8th May!
Oh-and apparently IS were tactically astute in getting a targetted Jordanian to deal with….any attempt to put it down to a random shooting down of a lucky dip plane will not be countenanced.
No sir-IS deserve maximum respect-certainly their films are “well-produced”, and are feared and respected players.
Not random porn addicted scumlife in need of gruesome reprisals…hardly Clive Stafford Smith now is it?
george galloway has just said on his twitter feed that extreme zionists( meaning the jewish community in finchley) the daily mail and lbc are trying to wreck his appearance on question time on thursday,notice the sly way he uses the word zionist to describe those in the jewish community who oppose him,what odds that the question time audience on thursday will be packed out with his far left extremist supporters howling and clapping everytime he makes a anti western including isreal or an anti american comment.
And we will be watching, and recording the bias as we see it.
And voting accordingly.
You are wrong to suggest that if the USSR had beaten the US to Saudi Arabia things would be no different because that ignores what they did in the rest of the Middle East. If the UUSR had influence over Saudi then they would have murdered the royal family and placed their own puppets in power. The oil would have gone to Moscow and there would be next to no profits to share with the Saudi people. They’d’ve ended up like the Iraqi, Syrian, Lebonese, Egyptian etc ad nauseum peoples, poverty stricken and oppressed.
Would the madness of Islamic terrorism have been quashed? No because terrorism was always a useful tool for the Soviets – just look at the PLO.
Once the Soviet Union had collapsed then we’d be back where we are now, the Soviet funded groups replaced by ones funded from oil profits. Again look at the PLO whose influence collapsed soon after the Soviet Union and the money and arms stopped coming in.
Either way to blame the US or the USSR for Islamic terrorism is as wrong and patronising as blaming Britain for the failure of our former colonies in Africa. The blame stops with those in charge now, not with those who were in charge prior to ‘liberation.’
The fact that some evil bastards in a desert decide to spout evil and run a regime based on inhumanity is their decision. Name one leader in that area which is good?
This Curtis person seems to lack any belief, most especially in himself.