- 4 months ago
- #documentary
- #hypernormalisation
Documentary, HyperNormalisation part 1
#Documentary #HyperNormalisation
#Documentary #HyperNormalisation
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00We live in a
00:29strange time. Extraordinary events keep happening that undermine the stability of our world.
00:36Suicide bombs, waves of refugees, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, even Brexit.
00:45Yet those in control seem unable to deal with.
00:49No one has any vision of a different or a better kind of future.
00:56This film will tell the story of how we got to this strange place.
00:59It is about how over the past 40 years, politicians, financiers and technological utopians, rather
01:09than face up to the real complexities of the world, retreated.
01:15Instead, they constructed a simpler version of the world in order to hang on to power.
01:20And as this fake world grew, all of us went along with it, because the simplicity was reassuring.
01:32Even those who thought they were attacking the system, the radicals, the artists, the musicians
01:37and our whole counterculture, actually became part of the trickery, because they too had retreated
01:45into the make-believe world, which is why their opposition has no effect, and nothing ever changes.
01:52But this retreat into a dream world allowed dark and destructive forces to fester and grow outside.
02:04Forces that are now returning to pierce the fragile surface of our carefully constructed fake world.
02:10And the way it is, but the world has been heartening.
02:17To a dream, I think it is...
02:20To a dream...
02:21To a dream, I think it is...
02:22To a dream.
02:23To a dream, I think it is...
02:24To a dream, I think it is...
02:28The story begins in two cities, at the same moment, in 1975.
02:49One is New York. The other is Damascus.
02:54It was a moment when two ideas about how it might be possible to run the world without politics first took hold.
03:11In 1975, New York City was on the verge of collapse.
03:15For 30 years, the politicians who ran the city had borrowed more and more money from the banks to pay for its growing services and welfare.
03:23But in the early 70s, the middle classes fled from the city,
03:28and the taxes they paid disappeared with them.
03:31So the banks lent the city even more.
03:35But then they began to get worried about the size of the growing debt,
03:39and whether the city would ever be able to pay it back.
03:43And then, one day in 1975, the banks just stopped.
03:54The city held its regular meeting to issue bonds in return for the loans,
03:58overseen by the city's financial controller.
04:01Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
04:04Today, the city of New York is working for competitive bidding sale,
04:08260 million tax anticipation notes,
04:10of which 100 million will mature on June 3rd, 1975.
04:16The banks were supposed to turn up at 11am.
04:20But it soon became clear that none of them were going to appear.
04:26The meeting was rescheduled for 2pm,
04:29and the banks promised they would turn up.
04:31The announcement on behalf of the controller is that the offer,
04:44which we had expected to receive an announce at 2 o'clock this afternoon,
04:50is now expected at 4 o'clock.
04:52Paul, does this mean that so far nobody wants those bonds?
04:55We will be making a further announcement at 4 o'clock,
04:58and anything further that I could say now,
05:00I think would not advance the interest of the sale,
05:03which is now in progress.
05:04Does this mean that you have not been able to sell them so far today?
05:08We will have a further announcement at 4 o'clock.
05:14What happened that day in New York marked a radical shift in power.
05:20The banks insisted that in order to protect their loans,
05:23they should be allowed to take control of the city.
05:27The city appealed to the president, but he refused to help.
05:31So a new committee was set up to manage the city's finances.
05:35Out of nine members, eight of them were bankers.
05:40It was the start of an extraordinary experiment,
05:43where the financial institutions took power away from the politicians
05:47and started to run society themselves.
05:50The city had no other option.
05:53The bankers enforced what was called austerity on the city,
05:56insisting that thousands of teachers, policemen and firemen were sacked.
06:04This was a new kind of politics.
06:06The old politicians believed that crises were solved
06:09through negotiations and deals.
06:11The bankers had a completely different view.
06:14They were just the representatives of something
06:18that couldn't be negotiated with,
06:20the logic of the market.
06:22To them, there was no alternative to this system.
06:26It should run society.
06:29Just by shifting paper around, these slobs can make 60, 65 million dollars
06:40in a single transaction.
06:42That would take care of all of the layoffs in the city.
06:45So it's reckless, it's cruel, and it's a disgrace.
06:48There'd be a fair number of bankers, of course,
06:50who'd say, well, it's the unions who have been too greedy.
06:52And what would your reaction be to that?
06:54I guess they're right in a way.
06:56If you can make 60 million dollars on a single transaction
06:59and a worker makes 8-9 thousand dollars a year,
07:02I suppose they're correct,
07:03and as they go back to their little estates in Greenwich, Connecticut,
07:06I want to wish them well, the slobs.
07:10But the extraordinary thing was, no-one opposed the bankers.
07:14The radicals and the left-wingers, who ten years before
07:17had dreamt of changing America through revolution, did nothing.
07:22They had retreated and were living in the abandoned buildings in Manhattan.
07:36The singer Patti Smith later described the mood of disillusion
07:40that had come over them.
07:42I could not identify with the political movements any longer, she said.
07:46All the manic activity in the streets.
07:49In trying to join them, I felt overwhelmed by yet another form of bureaucracy.
07:57What she was describing was the rise of a new, powerful individualism
08:01that could not fit with the idea of collective political action.
08:09Instead, Patti Smith and many others became a new kind of individual radical,
08:14who watched the decaying city with a cool detachment.
08:18They didn't try and change it.
08:20They just experienced it.
08:22Look at that. Isn't that cool?
08:24I love that, where, like, kids ride all over the walls.
08:28That, to me, is needed than any art sometimes.
08:30Jose and Maria forever.
08:33Oh, there's a lot of things, like, when you pass by big movie houses.
08:40Maybe we'll find one.
08:42But they have little movie screens where you can see clips of, like, Zee,
08:47or something like that.
08:48People watch it over and over.
08:50I've seen people, I've checked them out all day.
08:53I've gone back and forth and they're still there,
08:55watching the credits of a movie,
08:57because they don't have enough dough,
08:59but it's some entertainment, you know?
09:02Instead, radicals across America turned to art and music
09:05as a means of expressing their criticism of society.
09:10They believed that instead of trying to change the world outside,
09:13the new radicalism should try and change what was inside people's heads.
09:18And the way to do this was through self-expression,
09:22not collective action.
09:31U.
09:35V.
09:38W.
09:40X.
09:45Y.
09:48Z.
10:01But some of the left saw that something else was really going on.
10:05That by detaching themselves and retreating into an ironic coolness,
10:09the whole generation were beginning to lose touch with the reality of power.
10:14Z.
10:15Z.
10:16Z.
10:17Z.
10:18Z.
10:19Z.
10:20Z.
10:21Z.
10:22Z.
10:23Z.
10:24One of them wrote at that time,
10:25Z.
10:26Z.
10:27Z.
10:28Z.
10:29Z.
10:30Z.
10:31Z.
10:32Z.
10:33Z.
10:34Z.
10:35Z.
10:36Z.
10:37Z.
10:38Z.
10:39Z.
10:40Z.
10:41Z.
10:42Z.
10:43Z.
10:44Z.
10:45Z.
10:46Z.
10:47Z.
10:48Z.
10:49Z.
10:50Z.
10:51Z.
10:52Z.
10:53was Donald Trump.
10:56Trump realised that there was now no future
10:58in building housing for ordinary people,
11:01because all the government grants had gone.
11:04But he saw that there were other ways
11:06to get vast amounts of money out of the state.
11:11Trump started to buy up derelict buildings in New York,
11:15and he announced that he was going to transform them
11:17into luxury hotels and apartments.
11:20But in return, he negotiated the biggest tax break
11:23in New York's history, worth $160 million.
11:29The city had to agree, because they were desperate.
11:32And the banks, seeing a new opportunity,
11:35also started to lend him money.
11:39And Donald Trump began to transform New York
11:42into a city for the rich,
11:45while he paid practically nothing.
11:53And Donald Trump began to transform New York's history
11:55in the United States.
11:57And Donald Trump began to transform New York's history
11:59in the United States.
12:00And Donald Trump began to transform New York's history
12:01in the United States.
12:02At the very same time, in 1975,
12:05there was a confrontation between two powerful men
12:09in Damascus, the capital of Syria.
12:10One was Henry Kissinger, the US Secretary of State.
12:15The other was the president of Syria, Hafez al-Assad.
12:21The battle between the two men
12:24was going to have profound consequences for the world.
12:27And like in New York, it was going to be a struggle
12:31between the old idea of using politics to change the world
12:35and a new idea that you could run the world
12:39as a stable system.
12:46President Assad dominated Syria.
12:49The country was full of giant images and statues
12:52that glorified him.
12:55He was brutal and ruthless,
12:57killing or imprisoning anyone he suspected of being a threat.
13:03But Assad believed that the violence
13:05was for a purpose.
13:07He wanted to find a way of uniting the Arab countries
13:10and using that power to stand up to the West.
13:15Four.
13:18Three.
13:21Two.
13:25One.
13:26Kissinger was also tough and ruthless.
13:29He had started in the 1950s
13:31as an expert in the theory of nuclear strategy.
13:34What was called the Delicate Balance of Terror.
13:37It was the system that ran the Cold War.
13:42Both sides believed that if they attacked,
13:44the other side would immediately launch their missiles
13:47and everyone would be annihilated.
13:49Kissinger had been one of the models for the character
13:53of Dr Strangelove in Stanley Kubrick's film.
13:55Mr. President, I would not rule out the chance
13:59to preserve a nucleus of human specimens.
14:01It would be quite easy.
14:03At the bottom of some of our deeper minds, sir.
14:07Henry was not a warm, friendly, modest, jovial sort of person.
14:17He was thought of as one of the more anxious, temperamental, self-conscious, ambitious, inconsiderate
14:22people at Harvard.
14:35Kissinger saw himself as a hard realist.
14:41He had no time for the emotional turmoil of political ideologies.
14:48He believed that history had always really been a struggle for power
14:52between groups and nations.
14:56But what Kissinger took from the Cold War
14:58was a way of seeing the world as an interconnected system.
15:03And his aim was to keep that system in balance
15:05and prevent it from falling into chaos.
15:12I believe that with all the dislocations we now experience,
15:19there also exists an extraordinary opportunity
15:21to form for the first time in history a truly global society
15:26carried by the principle of interdependence.
15:29And if we act wisely and with vision,
15:33I think we can look back to all this turmoil
15:36as the birth pangs of a more creative and better system.
15:42If we miss the opportunity, I think there's going to be chaos.
15:46The plight has been delayed, we understand now.
15:49The Kissinger will be arriving here about an hour and a half from now.
15:55So we'll just have the press informed
15:58and then we'll stay in contact with you.
16:00And it was this idea that Kissinger set out to impose
16:04on the chaotic politics of the Middle East.
16:10But to manage it, he knew that he was going to have to deal
16:13with President Assad of Syria.
16:19President Assad was convinced that there would only ever be
16:22a real and lasting peace between the Arabs and Israel
16:25if the Palestinian refugees were allowed to return to their homeland.
16:31Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were living in exile in Syria,
16:35as well as in the Lebanon and Jordan.
16:37Have you found that the Palestinians here
16:39want to integrate with the Syrians at all?
16:41Oh, no. No, never.
16:43They don't want not here or neither in Lebanon or in Jordan, never.
16:48No, because they want to stay as a whole, as a Palestinian.
16:53As they call themselves those who go back.
16:56Al-Aidun, say, in Arabic.
17:00Assad also believed that such a peace would strengthen the Arab world.
17:06But Kissinger thought that strengthening the Arabs
17:09would destabilise his balance of power.
17:11So he set out to do the very opposite,
17:14to fracture the power of the Arab countries
17:17by dividing them and breaking their alliances
17:20so they would keep each other in check.
17:25Kissinger now played a double game.
17:29Or, as he termed it, constructive ambiguity.
17:34In a series of meetings, he persuaded Egypt
17:37to sign a separate agreement with Israel.
17:39But at the same time, he led Assad to believe
17:43that he was working for a wider peace agreement,
17:46one that would include the Palestinians.
17:53In reality, the Palestinians were ignored.
17:56They were irrelevant to the structural balance of the global system.
18:00The hallmark of Kissinger's thinking about international politics
18:11is its structural design.
18:14Everything is always connected in his mind to everything else.
18:19But his first thoughts are on that level,
18:21on this structural global balance of power level.
18:25And as he addresses questions of human dignity,
18:30human survival, human freedom,
18:33I think they tend to come into his mind as an adjunct
18:37of the play of nations at the power game.
18:41When Assad found out the truth, it was too late.
18:45In a series of confrontations with Kissinger in Damascus,
18:48Assad raged about this treachery.
18:52He told Kissinger that what he had done would release demons
18:56hidden under the surface of the Arab world.
19:02Kissinger described their meetings.
19:05Assad's controlled fury, he wrote,
19:07was all the more impressive for its eerily cold,
19:12seemingly unemotional, demeanour.
19:17Assad now retreated.
19:19He started to build a giant palace that loomed over Damascus.
19:24And his belief that it would be possible to transform the Arab world
19:28began to fade.
19:31A British journalist who knew Assad wrote,
19:33Assad's optimism has gone.
19:37A trust in the future has gone.
19:40What has emerged instead is a brutal, vengeful Assad,
19:45who believes in nothing except revenge.
20:03The original dream of the Soviet Union had been to create a glorious new world.
20:27A world where not only the society, but the people themselves would be transformed.
20:33They would become new and better kinds of human beings.
20:41But by the 1980s, it was clear that the dream had failed.
20:53The Soviet Union became instead a society where no-one believed in anything
20:59or had any vision of the future.
21:04The Soviet Union had been able to see the peace of the day in hell.
21:06It wasohama!
21:09I was told that it was a bit of time now.
21:11I started to say a bit of time.
21:12I started to say...
21:13I was told that we were all my health at the end of the day.
21:14I was told that my children wanted not to offer it to be your advantage.
21:18It was a big deal, but I brought some value of life.
21:19In my mind, I was told that my children had been able to be a person.
21:20What a dream that was given for the future?
21:21What?
21:22What?
21:22What is it?
21:23I started to say.
21:23What?
21:23What is it?
21:24What if you were given to, for example?
21:24What?
21:25What did you have been able to be a person?
21:26What?
21:26What?
21:27What?
21:28What is it?
21:28Is that a desire?
21:29It's a dream.
21:31Is that a dream?
21:33What would it be?
21:35I don't know. What should I say?
21:39When I had not hoped I did not wish I did anything.
21:45I don't think I would agree.
21:47I'm on the other hand.
21:48Now I'm not flバイy and I will always go home and dream.
21:53Is that a dream?
21:54Who?
21:56Who?
21:57Who do you think?
21:58I don't believe anyone. I don't believe anyone.
22:02And you too.
22:14You have a strange dress. Where did you get so beautifully?
22:19I'm familiar with Moscow pank, and they get so beautifully.
22:23What are these pankings?
22:25It's people who love freedom, they love violence.
22:31You're not free, right?
22:33I'm free.
22:34I think that something happened.
22:36Yes, I didn't say anything.
22:38I didn't say anything.
22:42Then I'll tell you.
22:45Then I'll tell you something.
22:48Then I'll tell you something.
22:50I'll tell you something.
22:52I'll tell you something.
22:53I'll tell you something.
22:55I'll tell you something.
22:56I'll tell you something.
22:57I'll tell you something.
22:58Thatchau.
23:00Yay!
23:01progress
23:03The
23:05What
23:14Those who ran the Soviet Union had believed that they could plan and manage a new kind
23:33of socialist society.
23:35But they had discovered that it was impossible to control and predict everything, and the
23:40plan had run out of control.
23:44But rather than reveal this, the technocrats began to pretend that everything was still
23:48going according to plan.
23:52And what emerged instead was a fake version of the society.
23:57The Soviet Union became a society where everyone knew that what their leaders said was not real,
24:03because they could see with their own eyes that the economy was falling apart.
24:08But everybody had to play along and pretend that it was real, because no one could imagine
24:14any alternative.
24:17One Soviet writer called it hyper-normalization.
24:22You were so much a part of the system that it was impossible to see beyond it.
24:27The fakeness was hyper-normal.
24:41In this stagnant world, two brothers, called Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, became the inspiration
24:47of a growing new dissident movement.
24:50They weren't politicians.
24:52They were science fiction writers.
24:55And in their stories, they expressed the strange mood that was rising up as the Soviet Empire collapsed.
25:01Their most famous book was called Roadside Picnic.
25:06It is set in a world that seems like the present, except there is a zone that has been created
25:13by an alien force.
25:16People known as stalkers go into the zone.
25:19They find that nothing is what it seems.
25:22That reality changes minute by minute.
25:25Shadows go the wrong way.
25:27There are hidden forces that twist your body and change the way you think and feel.
25:33The picture the Strugatsky's gave was of a world where nothing was fixed.
25:40Where reality, both what you saw and what you believed, had become shifting and unstable.
25:56And in 1979, the film director, Andrei Tarkovsky, made a film that was based on Roadside Picnic.
26:03He called it Stalker.
26:10T puis don't edit.
26:36What happened?
26:39Why didn't you stop me?
26:43I didn't stop you.
26:44Who?
26:46You?
26:51Who knows.
27:09I, Ronald Reagan, solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States.
27:20That I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States.
27:25The new President of America had a new vision of the world.
27:30It wasn't the harsh realism of Henry Kissinger any longer.
27:33It was different.
27:34It was a simple moral crusade.
27:37Where America had a special destiny.
27:40To fight evil and to make the world a better place.
27:46The places and the periods in which man has known freedom are few and far between.
27:50Just scattered moments on the span of time.
27:53And most of those moments have been ours.
27:56The American people have a genius for great and unselfish deeds.
28:01Into the hands of America, God has placed the destiny of an afflicted mankind.
28:08God bless America.
28:14But this crusade was going to lead Reagan to come face to face with Henry Kissinger's legacy.
28:21And above all, the vengeful fury of President Assad of Syria.
28:26Israel was now determined to finally destroy the power of the Palestinians.
28:35And in 1982, they sent a massive army to encircle the Palestinian camps in the Lebanon.
28:41Do you know, do you know how strong the Israelis are?
28:47Do you know how many, how many tanks they have outside Beirut?
28:51Do you know how strong they are?
28:53Do you know that Israel is too strong?
28:56Do you think it will affect us?
28:59Did this affect us?
29:01Israel, America and the world world are not affected.
29:04Before we avaient wrestle in our hands,
29:06or any country can't make a gang fought it.
29:09The 점 is secure to surrender.
29:11It has a fight to strengthen and have a fight with us.
29:14When we stop fighting each other, the t-shirt of Jewish people are strong.
29:18McDonalds!
29:19We've dashed into this building here because the PLF guys with us expect that sooner or later there will be a huge explosion.
29:32There have been several of these in the last few minutes.
29:36As you can see, there's enormous damage in all the buildings around here.
29:49Quickie, quickie.
29:56Two months later, thousands of Palestinian refugees were massacred in the camps.
30:20It horrified the world.
30:23But what was even more shocking was that Israel had allowed it to happen.
30:28Its troops had stood by and watched as a Christian Lebanese faction murdered the Palestinians.
30:40This was the first of the massacres we discovered yesterday.
30:43Now, 24 hours later, the stench here is appalling.
30:47But the effects on the Israelis of what their Christian allies did here
30:51and in dozens of other places around this camp are going to be immense.
30:55There's always been a risk of such massacres if Christian militiamen were allowed to come into Palestinian camps.
31:00And the Israelis seem to have done nothing to prevent them coming into this one.
31:04In the face of the horror and the growing chaos, President Reagan was forced to act.
31:10He announced that American marines would come to Beirut to lead a peacekeeping force.
31:19Reagan insisted that the troops were neutral.
31:22But President Assad was convinced that there was another reality.
31:26He saw the troops as part of the growing conspiracy between America and Israel
31:31to divide the Middle East into factions and destroy the power of the Arabs.
31:37Assad decided to get the Americans out of the Middle East.
31:41And to do this, he made an alliance with the new revolutionary force of Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran.
31:49And what Khomeini could bring to Assad was an extraordinary new weapon that he had just created.
31:59It was called the Poor Man's Atomic Bomb.
32:05Ayatollah Khomeini had come to power two years before as the leader of the Iranian Revolution.
32:22But his hold on power was precarious.
32:25And Khomeini had developed a new idea of how to fight his enemies and defend the revolution.
32:31Khomeini told his followers that they could destroy themselves in order to save the revolution.
32:38Providing that in the process, they killed as many enemies around them as possible.
32:44This was completely new because the Quran specifically prohibited suicide.
32:51In the past, you became a martyr on the battlefield because God chose the time and place of your death.
32:58But Khomeini changed this.
33:01He did it by going back to one of the central rituals of Shia Islam.
33:09Every year, Shiites march in a procession, mourning the sacrifice of their founder, Hussein.
33:15As they do, they whip themselves, symbolically re-enacting Hussein's suffering.
33:20Khomeini said that the ultimate act of penitence was not just to whip yourself, but to kill yourself.
33:32Providing it was for the greater good of the revolution.
33:35In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful, good afternoon.
33:42An Iraqi Soviet-made MiG-23 was shot down by the Air Force jet fighters of the Islamic Republic
33:48over the northwestern Iranian border region of Marivon at 10.08 hours local time Saturday,
33:54said the Joint Staff Commands communique, numbered 1710.
33:58Khomeini had mobilised this force when the country was attacked by Iraq.
34:04Iran faced almost certain defeat because Iraq had far superior weapons,
34:09many of them supplied by America.
34:12So the revolutionaries took tens of thousands of young boys out of schools,
34:17put them on buses and sent them to the front line.
34:21Their job was to walk through the enemy's minefields,
34:25deliberately blowing themselves up in order to open gaps
34:29that would allow the Iranian army to pass through unharmed.
34:37It was organised suicide on a vast scale.
34:42This human sacrifice was commemorated in giant cemeteries across the country.
34:47Fountains flowing with blood-red water glorified this new kind of martyrdom.
34:53And it was this new idea of an unstoppable human weapon
34:55that President Assad took from Khomeini and returned to the U.S.
34:57.
34:58.
34:59.
35:00.
35:01.
35:02.
35:03.
35:04.
35:05.
35:06.
35:07.
35:08.
35:09.
35:10.
35:11.
35:12.
35:13.
35:14.
35:15.
35:16.
35:17.
35:18.
35:19.
35:28.
35:29.
35:30.
35:31.
35:32.
35:33.
35:34.
35:35.
35:36.
35:37.
35:50.
35:51.
35:52.
35:53.
35:54.
35:55.
35:56.
35:57.
35:58.
35:59.
36:00.
36:01.
36:02.
36:03.
36:04.
36:05.
36:06.
36:21.
36:22killed 241 Americans.
36:27The bombers were members of a new militant group
36:30that no-one had heard of.
36:32They called themselves Hezbollah,
36:35and although many of them were Iranian,
36:37they were very much under the control of Syria
36:39and the Syrian intelligence agencies.
36:42President Assad was using them as his proxies to attack America.
36:47Whoever carried out yesterday's bombings,
36:53Shia Muslim fanatics, devotees of the Ayatollah Khomeini,
36:57or whatever, it is Syria who profits politically.
37:00The most significant fact is that the dissidents live
37:04and work with Syrian protection.
37:06So it is to Syria, rather than to the dissident group's guiding light,
37:11Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran,
37:13that we must look for an explanation of the group's activities.
37:17Destabilisation is Syria's Middle Eastern way
37:20of reminding the world that Syria must not be left out of plans
37:24for the future of the area.
37:33There are no words that can express our sorrow and grief
37:38over the loss of those splendid young men
37:41and the injury to so many others.
37:45But these deeds make so evident the bestial nature
37:50of those who would assume power
37:53if they could have their way and drive us out of that area.
37:58But despite his words, within four months,
38:01President Reagan withdrew all the American troops from the Lebanon.
38:04The Secretary of State, George Shultz, explained.
38:07We became paralysed by the complexity that we faced, he said.
38:13So the Americans turned and left.
38:16For President Assad, it was an extraordinary achievement.
38:20He was the only Arab leader to have defeated the Americans
38:24and forced them to leave the Middle East.
38:27He had done it by using the new force of suicide bombing.
38:32A force that once unleashed was going to spread with unstoppable power.
38:37But at this point, both Assad and the Iranians
38:41thought that they could control it.
38:43And what gave it this extraordinary power
38:46was that it held out the dream
38:48of transcending the corruptions of the world
38:50and entering a new and better realm.
38:53One should defend the realm of Islam and Muslims
38:56against heretics and invaders.
38:58And to fulfil this duty, one should even sacrifice one's life.
39:04We believe that martyrs can overlook our deeds from the other world.
39:10It means that after death, the martyr lives
39:14and can still witness this world.
39:40By the middle of the 1980s, the banks were rising up
39:47and becoming ever more powerful in America.
39:50What had started ten years before in New York,
39:54the idea that the financial system could run society, was spreading.
39:59But unlike older systems of power, it was mostly invisible.
40:03A writer called William Gibson tried to dramatise what was happening
40:09in a powerful, imaginative way in a series of novels.
40:12Gibson had noticed how the banks and the new corporations
40:17were beginning to link themselves together through computer systems.
40:21What they were creating was a series of giant networks of information
40:26that were invisible to ordinary people and to politicians.
40:31But those networks gave the corporations extraordinary new powers of control.
40:42Good morning, South-West Development. May I help you?
40:45Gibson gave this new world a name.
40:48He called it cyberspace.
40:52And his novels described a future that was dangerous and frightening.
40:57Hackers could literally enter into cyberspace.
41:00And as they did, they travelled through systems that were so powerful
41:04that they could reach out and crush intruders by destroying their minds.
41:09In cyberspace, there were no laws and no politicians to protect you.
41:15Just raw, brutal, corporate power.
41:31But then a strange thing happened.
41:34A new group of visionaries in America took Gibson's idea
41:38of a hidden, secret world and transformed it into something completely different.
41:43They turned it into a dream of a new utopia.
41:52They were the technological utopians who were rising up on the west coast of America.
41:59They turned Gibson's idea on its head.
42:02Instead of cyberspace being a frightening place dominated by powerful corporations,
42:07they reinvented it as the very opposite,
42:10a new, safe world where radical dreams could come true.
42:16Ten years before, faced by the complexity of real politics,
42:20the radicals had given up on the idea of changing the world.
42:25But now, the computer utopians saw in cyberspace an alternative reality,
42:31a place they could retreat to, away from the harsh right-wing politics
42:36that now dominated Reagan's America.
42:43The roots of this vision lay back in the counterculture of the 1960s,
42:46and, above all, with LSD.
43:01We've got some more acid over here if you want to go ahead and drop it.
43:04Many of those who had taken LSD in the 60s were convinced
43:07that it was more than just another drug,
43:10that it opened human perception
43:12and allowed people to see new realities that were normally hidden from them.
43:16See, the ones that have white in them are really great.
43:24I'm like a rabbit.
43:28It freed them from the narrow, limited view of the world
43:32that was imposed on them by politicians and those in power.
43:35In the United States, in the next 5, 10, 15 years,
43:38you're going to see more and more people taking LSD
43:41and making it a part of their lives,
43:43so that we'll be an LSD country within 15 years.
43:45In LSD society, there'll be less interest in, obviously, warfare,
43:50in power politics.
43:52You know, politics today is a disease.
43:54That's a real addiction.
43:56Politics, politics, politics, politics.
43:57Don't politic. Don't vote.
43:59These are old men's games, impotent and senile old men
44:02that want to put you onto their old chess games of war and power.
44:0720 years later, the new networks of machines
44:10seemed to offer a way to construct a real alternate reality.
44:14Not just one that was chemically induced,
44:16but a space that actually existed in a parallel dimension to the real world.
44:21And like with acid, cyberspace could be a place where you would be liberated
44:28from the old corrupt hierarchies of politics and power
44:33and explore new ways of being.
44:36One of the leading exponents of this idea was called John Perry Barlow.
44:41In the 60s, he had written songs for the Grateful Dead
44:44and been part of the acid counterculture.
44:48Now, he organised what he called Cyberthons
44:51to try and bring the cyberspace movement together.
44:56Well, you know, the Cyberthon, as it was originally conceived,
44:59was supposed to be the 90s equivalent of the acid test,
45:06and we had thought to involve some of the same personnel.
45:10You and I and Timmy should sit down and talk.
45:12Okay, that's good.
45:14And it immediately acquired a financial quality
45:18or commercial quality that was initially
45:21a little unsettling to an old hippie like me,
45:23but as soon as I saw it actually working,
45:26then I thought, ah, well, if you're going to have an acid test
45:29for the 90s, money better be involved.
45:31Instead of having a glass barrier
45:34that separates you, your mind, from the mind of the computer,
45:38the computer pulls us inside and creates a world for us.
45:42Incorporates everything that could be incorporated.
45:45It incorporates experience itself.
45:50Barlow then wrote a manifesto
45:52that he called a Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace.
45:56It was addressed to all politicians,
45:59telling them to keep out of this new world.
46:02It was going to be incredibly influential,
46:05because what Barlow did was give a powerful picture of the internet,
46:10not as a network controlled by giant corporations,
46:13but instead as a kind of magical free place,
46:17an alternative to the old systems of power.
46:20It was a vision that would come to dominate the internet
46:24over the next 20 years.
46:30Governments of the industrial world,
46:33cyberspace does not lie within your borders.
46:36We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere,
46:40may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular,
46:46without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.
46:52I declare the global social space we are building
46:56to be naturally independent
46:59of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us.
47:03We will create a civilization of the mind in cyberspace.
47:08May it be more humane and fair
47:11than the world your governments have made before.
47:17It's begun.
47:24This is the key to a new order.
47:26This code disc means freedom.
47:33But two young hackers in New York
47:35thought that Barlow was describing a fantasy world,
47:38that his vision bore no relationship at all
47:41to what was really emerging online.
47:44They were cult figures on the early online scene
47:47and their fans followed and recorded them.
47:49They called themselves Fibre Optic and Acid Freak.
47:53And they spent their time exploring
47:56and breaking into giant computer networks
47:59that they knew were the hard realities of modern digital power.
48:04My specific instance, I was charged with conspiracy
48:08to commit a few dozen overt acts, they called them,
48:13among a number of things having to do with computer trespass
48:17and, I guess, computer eavesdropping, interception.
48:22Unauthorised access to federal interest computers,
48:25which is pretty vague law,
48:29communications network computers and so on.
48:32In a notorious public debate online,
48:35the two hackers attacked Barlow.
48:38What infuriated them most was Barlow's insistence
48:41that there was no hierarchy or controlling powers
48:44in the new cyber world.
48:46The hackers set out to demonstrate that he was wrong.
48:51Acid Freak hacked into the computers of a giant corporation called TRW.
48:56TRW had originally built the systems that ran the Cold War
49:01for the US military.
49:02They had helped create the delicate balance of terror.
49:06Now, TRW had adapted their computers to run a new system,
49:12that of credit and debt.
49:15Their computers gathered up the credit data of millions of Americans
49:19and were being used by the banks to decide individuals' credit ratings.
49:23The hackers broke into the TRW network,
49:29stole Barlow's credit history and published it online.
49:38The hackers were demonstrating the growing power of finance,
49:41how the companies that ran the new systems of credit
49:44knew more and more about you
49:46and increasingly used that information to control your destiny.
49:52And the system that was allowing this to happen
49:54were the new giant networks of information
49:57connected through computer servers.
50:04The hackers were questioning
50:05whether Barlow's utopian rhetoric about cyberspace
50:08might really be a convenient camouflage,
50:12hiding the emergence of a new and growing power
50:16that was way beyond politics.
50:38The cyber-space was not the only imaginary story being created.
50:54Faced with the humiliating defeat in the Lebanon,
50:57President Reagan's government was desperate
50:59to shore up the vision of a moral world
51:02where a good America struggled against evil.
51:05and to do this, they were going to create a simple villain,
51:10an imaginary enemy,
51:12one that would free them from the paralysing complexity
51:15of real Middle Eastern politics.
51:18And the perfect candidate was waiting in the wings.
51:22Colonel Gaddafi, the ruler of Libya.
51:25The Americans were going to ruthlessly use Colonel Gaddafi
51:35to create a fake terrorist mastermind.
51:41And Gaddafi was going to happily play along,
51:44because it would turn him into a famous global figure.
51:48Colonel Gaddafi had taken power in a coup in the 1970s.
52:07But from the very start,
52:09he was convinced that he was more than just the leader of one country.
52:12He believed that he was an international revolutionary,
52:16whose destiny was to challenge the power of the West.
52:27Gentlemen, the Queen.
52:28When he was a young officer,
52:38Gaddafi had been sent to England for training.
52:41And he had detested the patronising racism
52:44that he said he had found at the heart of British society.
52:47Yes, I attended a course.
52:52I have been in England in 1966,
52:56from April to August.
52:59You had the best months.
53:02I...
53:03I was in Bakkenfield,
53:05a village called Bakkenfield,
53:07in army school.
53:13In fact, we ill-treated in that place.
53:16from some British officers.
53:21I think those officers were Jews.
53:29Maybe Jews.
53:31Ill-treated in what sort of way?
53:35In many ways.
53:39They ill-treated us every time.
53:42By being rude, or by being bullying, or...
53:47In their own behaviour towards us,
53:53they ill-treated us.
53:56They hate us anyhow.
53:58Because of colonisation.
54:01It is the result of colonialism.
54:04Once in power,
54:08Gaddafi had developed his own revolutionary theory,
54:11which he called the Third Universal Theory.
54:15It was an alternative, he said,
54:17to communism and capitalism.
54:20He published it in a green book.
54:22But practically no-one read it.
54:24He had sent money and weapons to the IRA in Ireland
54:28to help them overthrow the British ruling class.
54:31But all the other Arab leaders rejected him,
54:34and his ideas.
54:36They thought that he was mad.
54:39And by the mid-1980s,
54:40Gaddafi was an isolated figure,
54:42with no friends and no global influence.
54:50Then suddenly, that changed.
54:55In December 1985,
54:57terrorists attacked Rome and Vienna airports simultaneously,
55:01killing 19 people, including five Americans.
55:04There was growing pressure on President Reagan to retaliate.
55:09It's time to rename your State Department
55:12the Capitulation Department.
55:14Get off of your stick, Mr President.
55:17The American people are sick and tired of being kicked around.
55:21You talk tough.
55:23Let's say you use some of these billions and billions
55:25and billions of dollars worth of weapons
55:28that you've asked us to approve.
55:30Your words are cheap talk.
55:32President Reagan immediately announced
55:34that Colonel Gaddafi was definitely behind the attacks.
55:38These murderers could not carry out their crimes
55:41without the sanctuary and support provided by regimes
55:44such as Colonel Gaddafi's in Libya.
55:46The Rome and Vienna murders are only the latest
55:48in a series of brutal terrorist acts
55:51committed with Gaddafi's backing.
55:54But the European Security Services,
55:55who investigated the attacks,
55:57were convinced that Libya was not involved at all.
56:01that the mastermind behind the attacks was, in fact, Syria.
56:05That the terrorists had been directed
56:07by the Syrian intelligence agencies.
56:11But the Americans say that the attack at Rome airport
56:15was organised by Gaddafi, not by Damascus.
56:18No. What do you say?
56:20We don't have any evidence.
56:22You have no evidence?
56:23We have no evidence in writing such such affirmation.
56:28The only evidence we have shows a Syrian connection.
56:34Do you say that it was Libya,
56:36and the president said the evidence of Libya's culpability
56:38was irrefutable?
56:40Libya's culpability was irrefutable yeah but the Italian authorities to whom
56:46I've spoken say emphatically on the record that their investigations have
56:51shown that it was entirely masterminded by Syria I don't agree with that at all
56:56well they've invest interrogated the surviving terrorists I must just say I
57:02don't agree with that but you've no evidence that Libya was in on the
57:05planning either our evidence on Libya is circumstantial but very strong but why
57:10does the president then says irrefutable if you call it a circumstantial well
57:14people can be convicted and sentenced in our courts on circumstantial evidence but
57:20what made it even more confusing was that although there seemed to be no
57:24evidence that Gaddafi had been behind the attacks he made no attempt to deny the
57:28allegations instead he went the other way and turned the crisis into a global
57:35drama threatening suicide attacks against America this hostile position cannot be
57:49explained in a racist and crusade terms suicidal attacks will have to be an answer to a military
57:58attack but Libya is not affected by such measures that Reagan has declared thinking rotten crusader
58:08Gaddafi now started to play a role that was going to become very familiar he grabbed the publicity that
58:15had been given to him by the Americans and used it dramatically he promoted himself as an
58:22international revolutionary who would help to liberate oppressed peoples around the world
58:27even the blacks in America
58:29Gaddafi arranged for a live satellite link to a mass meeting of the nation of Islam in Chicago
58:38brothers and sisters it is with great honor and privilege that I present to you the leader of the
58:45Al-Fatah revolution from Libya our brother Muammar al-Qaddafi Gaddafi told them that Libya was now their ally in their struggle against white America
Be the first to comment