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MUSIC: The Vanishing American Family by Scuba Z
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EXPLOSION
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We live in a strange time.
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Extraordinary events keep happening
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that undermine the stability of our world.
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Suicide bombs, waves of refugees,
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Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin,
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even Brexit.
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EXPLOSION
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Yet those in control seem unable to deal with them,
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and no-one has any vision
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of a different or a better kind of future.
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MUSIC: Something I Can Never Have by Nine Inch Nails
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This film will tell the story of how we got to this strange place.
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It is about how, over the past 40 years,
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politicians, financiers and technological utopians,
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rather than face up to the real complexities of the world,
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retreated.
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Instead, they constructed a simpler version of the world
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in order to hang on to power.
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And as this fake world grew, all of us went along with it,
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because the simplicity was reassuring.
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Even those who thought they were attacking the system -
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the radicals, the artists, the musicians,
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and our whole counterculture -
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actually became part of the trickery,
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because they, too, had retreated into the make-believe world,
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which is why their opposition has no effect
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and nothing ever changes.
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MUSIC: The Vanishing American Family by Scuba Z
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But this retreat into a dream world
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allowed dark and destructive forces to fester and grow outside.
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Forces that are now returning to pierce the fragile surface
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of our carefully constructed fake world.
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# In dreams
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# I live... #
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The story begins in two cities at the same moment in 1975.
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One is New York.
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The other is Damascus.
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It was a moment when two ideas about how it might be possible
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to run the world without politics first took hold.
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In 1975, New York City was on the verge of collapse.
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For 30 years, the politicians who ran the city
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had borrowed more and more money from the banks
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to pay for its growing services and welfare.
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But in the early '70s, the middle classes fled from the city
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and the taxes they paid disappeared with them.
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So, the banks lent the city even more.
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But then, they began to get worried about the size of the growing debt
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and whether the city would ever be able to pay it back.
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And then one day in 1975,
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the banks just stopped.
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The city held its regular meeting to issue bonds
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in return for the loans, overseen by the city's financial controller.
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Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
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Today, the city of New York is offering for competitive bidding
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the sale of 260 million tax anticipation notes,
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of which 100 million will mature on June 3rd, 1975.
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The banks were supposed to turn up at 11am,
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but it soon became clear that none of them were going to appear.
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The meeting was rescheduled for 2pm
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and the banks promised they would turn up.
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The announcement on behalf of the controller is that the offer,
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which we had expected to receive
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and announce at two o'clock this afternoon,
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is now expected at four o'clock.
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Paul, does this mean that, so far, nobody wants those bonds?
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We will be making a further announcement at four o'clock
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and anything further that I could say now I think would not advance
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the interest of the sale, which is now in progress.
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Does this mean that you have not been able to sell them so far today?
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We will have a further announcement at four o'clock.
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What happened that day in New York marked a radical shift in power.
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The banks insisted that in order to protect their loans
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they should be allowed to take control of the city.
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The city appealed to the President,
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but he refused to help,
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so a new committee was set up to manage the city's finances.
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Out of nine members, eight of them were bankers.
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It was the start of an extraordinary experiment
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where the financial institutions took power away from the politicians
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and started to run society themselves.
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The city had no other option.
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The bankers enforced what was called "austerity" on the city,
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insisting that thousands of teachers, policemen
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and firemen were sacked.
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This was a new kind of politics.
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The old politicians believed that crises were solved
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through negotiation and deals.
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The bankers had a completely different view.
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They were just the representatives
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of something that couldn't be negotiated with -
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the logic of the market.
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To them, there was no alternative to this system.
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It should run society.
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Just by shifting paper around,
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these slobs can make 60 million, 65 million in a single transaction.
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That would take care of all of the lay-offs in the city,
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so it's reckless, it's cruel and it's a disgrace.
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There would be a fair number of bankers, of course,
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who'd say it's the unions who have been too greedy.
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What would your reaction be to that? I guess they're right in a way.
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If you can make 60 million on a single transaction,
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and a worker makes 8,000, 9,000 a year, I suppose they're correct,
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and as they go back to their little estates in Greenwich, Connecticut,
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I want to wish them well, the slobs.
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But the extraordinary thing was no-one opposed the bankers.
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The radicals and the left-wingers who, ten years before,
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had dreamt of changing America through revolution did nothing.
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They had retreated
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and were living in the abandoned buildings in Manhattan.
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The singer Patti Smith later described the mood of disillusion
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that had come over them.
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"I could not identify
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"with the political movements any longer," she said.
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"All the manic activity in the streets.
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"In trying to join them, I felt overwhelmed
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"by yet another form of bureaucracy."
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What she was describing was the rise of a new, powerful individualism
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that could not fit with the idea of collective political action.
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Instead, Patti Smith and many others
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became a new kind of individual radical,
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who watched the decaying city with a cool detachment.
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They didn't try and change it.
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They just experienced it.
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Look at that. Isn't that cool?
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I love that, where, like, kids write all over the walls.
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That, to me, is neater than any art sometimes.
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"Jose and Maria forever."
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Oh, there's a lot of things, like, when you pass by big movie houses,
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maybe we'll find one, but they have little movie screens,
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where you can see clips of, like, Z, or something like that.
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People watch it over and over.
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I've seen people, I've checked them out. All day!
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I've gone back and forth and they're still there
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watching the credits of a movie, cos they don't have enough dough,
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but it's some entertainment, you know?
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Instead, radicals across America turned to art and music
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as a means of expressing their criticism of society.
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They believed that instead of trying to change the world outside
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the new radicalism should try and change
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what was inside people's heads,
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and the way to do this was through self-expression,
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not collective action.
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U
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V
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W
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Y
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Z
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But some of the Left saw that something else was really going on -
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that by detaching themselves and retreating into an ironic coolness,
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a whole generation were beginning to lose touch
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with the reality of power.
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Shut up.
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Shut up!
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One of them wrote of that time,
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"It was the mood of the era
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"and the revolution was deferred indefinitely.
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"And while we were dozing, the money crept in."
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SOBBING
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What's your date of birth, Larry?
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But one of the people who did understand how to use this new power
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was Donald Trump.
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Trump realised that there was now no future
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in building housing for ordinary people,
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because all the government grants had gone.
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But he saw there were other ways
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to get vast amounts of money out of the state.
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Trump started to buy up derelict buildings in New York
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and he announced that he was going to transform them
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into luxury hotels and apartments.
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But in return, he negotiated the biggest tax break
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in New York's history, worth 160 million.
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The city had to agree because they were desperate,
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and the banks, seeing a new opportunity,
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also started to lend him money.
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And Donald Trump began to transform New York into a city for the rich,
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while he paid practically nothing.
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At the very same time, in 1975,
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there was a confrontation between two powerful men in Damascus,
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the capital of Syria.
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One was Henry Kissinger, the US Secretary of State.
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The other was the President of Syria, Hafez al-Assad.
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The battle between the two men
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was going to have profound consequences for the world.
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And like in New York, it was going to be a struggle
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between the old idea of using politics to change the world
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and a new idea that you could run the world as a stable system.
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President Assad dominated Syria.
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The country was full of giant images and statues that glorified him.
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He was brutal and ruthless,
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killing or imprisoning anyone he suspected of being a threat.
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But Assad believed that the violence was for a purpose.
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He wanted to find a way of uniting the Arab countries
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and using that power to stand up to the West.
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Four,
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three,
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two,
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one.
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Kissinger was also tough and ruthless.
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He had started in the 1950s
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as an expert in the theory of nuclear strategy.
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What was called "the delicate balance of terror."
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It was the system that ran the Cold War.
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Both sides believed that if they attacked,
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the other side would immediately launch their missiles
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and everyone would be annihilated.
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Kissinger had been one of the models for the character
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of Dr Strangelove in Stanley Kubrick's film.
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Mr President, I would not rule out the chance
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to preserve a nucleus of human specimens.
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It would be quite easy.
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At the bottom of some of our deeper mineshafts.
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Henry was not a warm, friendly, modest, jovial sort of person.
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He was thought of as one of the more...
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..anxious, temperamental, self-conscious,
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ambitious, inconsiderate people at Harvard.
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Kissinger saw himself as a hard realist.
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He had no time for the emotional turmoil of political ideologies.
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He believed that history had always really been a struggle for power
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between groups and nations.
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But what Kissinger took from the Cold War
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was a way of seeing the world as an interconnected system,
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and his aim was to keep that system in balance
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and prevent it from falling into chaos.
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I believe that with all the dislocations we now experience,
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there also exists an extraordinary opportunity
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to form, for the first time in history, a truly global society
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carried up by the principle of interdependence,
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and if we act wisely, and with vision,
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I think we can look back to all this turmoil
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as the birth pangs of a more creative and better system.
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If we miss the opportunity, I think there's going to be chaos.
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The flight has been delayed, we understand now.
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Kissinger will be arriving here about an hour and a half from now,
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so we'll just have the press informed
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and then we'll stay in contact with you...
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And it was this idea that Kissinger set out to impose
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on the chaotic politics of the Middle East.
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But to manage it,
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he knew that he was going to have to deal with President Assad of Syria.
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President Assad was convinced that there would only ever be
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a real and lasting peace between the Arabs and Israel
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if the Palestinian refugees were allowed to return to their homeland.
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Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians
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were living in exile in Syria,
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as well as in the Lebanon and Jordan.
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Have you found that the Palestinians here want to integrate
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with the Syrians at all?
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Oh, no. No, never.
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They don't want...
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Not here or neither in Lebanon or in Jordan, never.
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No, because they want to stay as a whole, as...Palestinian.
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As... They call themselves, "Those Who Go Back" -
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"al-a'iduun", you say in Arabic.
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Assad also believed that such a peace
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would strengthen the Arab world.
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But Kissinger thought that strengthening the Arabs
260
00:17:08,067 --> 00:17:11,016
would destabilise his balance of power.
261
00:17:12,019 --> 00:17:14,064
So, he set out to do the very opposite -
262
00:17:14,064 --> 00:17:17,064
to fracture the power of the Arab countries,
263
00:17:17,064 --> 00:17:20,080
by dividing them and breaking their alliances,
264
00:17:20,079 --> 00:17:23,019
so they would keep each other in check.
265
00:17:25,028 --> 00:17:27,004
Kissinger now played a double game.
266
00:17:28,079 --> 00:17:32,008
Or as he termed it, "constructive ambiguity".
267
00:17:34,059 --> 00:17:37,039
In a series of meetings, he persuaded Egypt
268
00:17:37,039 --> 00:17:39,051
to sign a separate agreement with Israel.
269
00:17:40,067 --> 00:17:43,023
But at the same time, he led Assad to believe
270
00:17:43,023 --> 00:17:46,000
that he was working for a wider peace agreement,
271
00:17:46,000 --> 00:17:48,044
one that WOULD include the Palestinians.
272
00:17:53,039 --> 00:17:56,039
In reality, the Palestinians were ignored.
273
00:17:56,039 --> 00:17:59,008
They were irrelevant to the structural balance
274
00:17:59,008 --> 00:18:00,056
of the global system.
275
00:18:07,079 --> 00:18:11,039
The hallmark of Kissinger's thinking about international politics
276
00:18:11,039 --> 00:18:14,079
is its structural design.
277
00:18:14,079 --> 00:18:18,023
Everything is always connected in his mind to everything else.
278
00:18:19,048 --> 00:18:22,011
But his first thoughts are on that level,
279
00:18:22,011 --> 00:18:25,023
on this structural global balance of power level.
280
00:18:26,044 --> 00:18:30,080
And as he addresses questions of human dignity,
281
00:18:30,079 --> 00:18:32,043
human survival, human freedom...
282
00:18:33,048 --> 00:18:35,067
..I think they tend to come into his mind
283
00:18:35,067 --> 00:18:40,048
as an adjunct of the play of nations at the power game.
284
00:18:41,056 --> 00:18:45,016
When Assad found out the truth, it was too late.
285
00:18:45,016 --> 00:18:48,052
In a series of confrontations with Kissinger in Damascus,
286
00:18:48,051 --> 00:18:51,015
Assad raged about this treachery.
287
00:18:52,031 --> 00:18:54,067
He told Kissinger that what he had done
288
00:18:54,067 --> 00:18:58,064
would release demons hidden under the surface of the Arab world.
289
00:19:02,067 --> 00:19:05,028
Kissinger described their meetings.
290
00:19:05,028 --> 00:19:08,016
"Assad's controlled fury," he wrote,
291
00:19:08,016 --> 00:19:11,064
"was all the more impressive for its eerily cold,
292
00:19:11,064 --> 00:19:13,084
"seemingly unemotional, demeanour."
293
00:19:16,076 --> 00:19:19,004
Assad now retreated.
294
00:19:19,003 --> 00:19:22,087
He started to build a giant palace that loomed over Damascus...
295
00:19:24,000 --> 00:19:27,079
..and his belief that it would be possible to transform the Arab world
296
00:19:27,079 --> 00:19:29,015
began to fade.
297
00:19:30,096 --> 00:19:33,044
A British journalist, who knew Assad, wrote...
298
00:19:33,044 --> 00:19:35,088
"Assad's optimism has gone.
299
00:19:36,087 --> 00:19:38,076
"A trust in the future has gone.
300
00:19:39,092 --> 00:19:44,080
"What has emerged instead is a brutal, vengeful Assad,
301
00:19:44,079 --> 00:19:47,067
"who believes in nothing except revenge."
302
00:20:21,084 --> 00:20:24,028
The original dream of the Soviet Union
303
00:20:24,028 --> 00:20:27,004
had been to create a glorious new world.
304
00:20:27,003 --> 00:20:29,019
A world where not only the society,
305
00:20:29,019 --> 00:20:32,091
but the people themselves would be transformed.
306
00:20:32,092 --> 00:20:36,044
They would become new and better kinds of human beings.
307
00:20:41,059 --> 00:20:45,056
But by the 1980s, it was clear that the dream had failed.
308
00:20:47,003 --> 00:20:48,055
WOMAN GASPS
309
00:20:48,056 --> 00:20:51,044
WOMAN SPEAKS RUSSIAN
310
00:20:53,056 --> 00:20:55,084
The Soviet Union became instead
311
00:20:55,084 --> 00:20:59,016
a society where no-one believed in anything
312
00:20:59,016 --> 00:21:00,096
or had any vision of the future.
313
00:22:52,087 --> 00:22:55,071
RUSSIAN SONG PLAYS
314
00:23:27,087 --> 00:23:31,036
Those who ran the Soviet Union had believed that they could plan
315
00:23:31,036 --> 00:23:34,019
and manage a new kind of socialist society.
316
00:23:35,056 --> 00:23:37,059
But they had discovered that it was impossible
317
00:23:37,059 --> 00:23:39,043
to control and predict everything
318
00:23:39,044 --> 00:23:41,084
and the plan had run out of control.
319
00:23:43,044 --> 00:23:47,024
But rather than reveal this, the technocrats began to pretend
320
00:23:47,023 --> 00:23:50,043
that everything was still going according to plan.
321
00:23:51,051 --> 00:23:55,048
And what emerged instead was a fake version of the society.
322
00:23:56,079 --> 00:24:00,003
The Soviet Union became a society where everyone knew
323
00:24:00,003 --> 00:24:02,075
that what their leaders said was not real
324
00:24:02,076 --> 00:24:04,096
because they could see with their own eyes
325
00:24:04,096 --> 00:24:07,000
that the economy was falling apart.
326
00:24:08,008 --> 00:24:12,016
But everybody had to play along and pretend that it WAS real
327
00:24:12,016 --> 00:24:15,008
because no-one could imagine any alternative.
328
00:24:16,096 --> 00:24:20,028
One Soviet writer called it "hypernormalisation".
329
00:24:21,059 --> 00:24:23,056
You were so much a part of the system
330
00:24:23,056 --> 00:24:26,087
that it was impossible to see beyond it.
331
00:24:26,087 --> 00:24:29,036
The fakeness was hypernormal.
332
00:24:38,003 --> 00:24:40,071
TANNOY ANNOUNCEMENT IN RUSSIAN
333
00:24:40,071 --> 00:24:43,035
In this stagnant world, two brothers -
334
00:24:43,036 --> 00:24:46,012
called Arkady and Boris Strugatsky -
335
00:24:46,011 --> 00:24:49,048
became the inspiration of a growing new dissident movement.
336
00:24:50,087 --> 00:24:55,008
They weren't politicians, they were science fiction writers,
337
00:24:55,008 --> 00:24:56,048
and in their stories,
338
00:24:56,048 --> 00:24:59,071
they expressed the strange mood that was rising up
339
00:24:59,071 --> 00:25:01,059
as the Soviet Empire collapsed.
340
00:25:03,019 --> 00:25:05,091
Their most famous book was called Roadside Picnic.
341
00:25:07,023 --> 00:25:10,067
It is set in a world that seems like the present,
342
00:25:10,067 --> 00:25:14,016
except there is a zone that has been created by an alien force.
343
00:25:16,011 --> 00:25:18,067
People, known as "stalkers", go into the zone.
344
00:25:20,008 --> 00:25:22,048
They find that nothing is what it seems,
345
00:25:22,048 --> 00:25:24,076
that reality changes minute by minute.
346
00:25:25,092 --> 00:25:27,096
Shadows go the wrong way.
347
00:25:27,096 --> 00:25:30,067
There are hidden forces that twist your body
348
00:25:30,067 --> 00:25:32,076
and change the way you think and feel.
349
00:25:35,051 --> 00:25:37,035
The picture the Strugatskys gave
350
00:25:37,036 --> 00:25:39,076
was of a world where nothing was fixed.
351
00:25:40,084 --> 00:25:45,000
Where reality - both what you saw and what you believed -
352
00:25:45,000 --> 00:25:47,028
had become shifting and unstable.
353
00:25:55,076 --> 00:25:59,084
And in 1979, the film director Andrei Tarkovsky
354
00:25:59,084 --> 00:26:02,092
made a film that was based on Roadside Picnic.
355
00:26:02,092 --> 00:26:04,072
He called it Stalker.
356
00:26:09,076 --> 00:26:12,084
WIND WHISTLES
357
00:27:13,084 --> 00:27:16,036
I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear...
358
00:27:16,036 --> 00:27:18,008
..That I will faithfully execute
359
00:27:18,008 --> 00:27:20,084
the office of president of the United States.
360
00:27:20,084 --> 00:27:22,032
..that I will faithfully execute
361
00:27:22,031 --> 00:27:25,079
the office of president of the United States.
362
00:27:25,079 --> 00:27:29,031
The new president of America had a new vision of the world.
363
00:27:30,051 --> 00:27:33,083
It wasn't the harsh realism of Henry Kissinger any longer,
364
00:27:33,084 --> 00:27:35,056
it was different -
365
00:27:35,056 --> 00:27:38,024
it was a simple, moral crusade,
366
00:27:38,023 --> 00:27:42,023
where America had a special destiny to fight evil
367
00:27:42,023 --> 00:27:44,031
and to make the world a better place.
368
00:27:47,016 --> 00:27:50,028
The places and the periods in which man has known freedom
369
00:27:50,028 --> 00:27:51,064
are few and far between -
370
00:27:51,064 --> 00:27:54,040
just scattered moments on the span of time.
371
00:27:54,039 --> 00:27:56,096
And most of those moments have been ours.
372
00:27:56,096 --> 00:28:01,092
The American people have a genius for great and unselfish deeds.
373
00:28:01,092 --> 00:28:04,008
Into the hands of America,
374
00:28:04,008 --> 00:28:07,056
God has placed the destiny of an afflicted mankind.
375
00:28:09,023 --> 00:28:10,059
God bless America.
376
00:28:14,079 --> 00:28:17,039
But this crusade was going to lead Reagan
377
00:28:17,039 --> 00:28:20,067
to come face-to-face with Henry Kissinger's legacy...
378
00:28:21,076 --> 00:28:26,036
..and, above all, the vengeful fury of President Assad of Syria.
379
00:28:29,056 --> 00:28:32,008
EXPLOSION Israel was now determined
380
00:28:32,008 --> 00:28:34,096
to finally destroy the power of the Palestinians.
381
00:28:36,059 --> 00:28:39,043
And, in 1982, they sent a massive army
382
00:28:39,044 --> 00:28:42,032
to encircle the Palestinian camps in the Lebanon.
383
00:28:43,048 --> 00:28:47,096
Do you know... Do you know how strong the Israelis are?
384
00:28:47,096 --> 00:28:52,008
Do you know how many tanks they have outside Beirut?
385
00:28:52,008 --> 00:28:53,076
Do you know how strong they are?
386
00:28:53,076 --> 00:28:58,031
HE TRANSLATES
387
00:29:09,016 --> 00:29:11,024
That means "We are not ready to surrender".
388
00:29:16,079 --> 00:29:18,031
Young, young, young!
389
00:29:20,087 --> 00:29:22,064
NEARBY EXPLOSIONS
390
00:29:22,064 --> 00:29:24,040
Keep going!
391
00:29:26,008 --> 00:29:29,087
Dashed into this building here because the PLO guys with us
392
00:29:29,087 --> 00:29:32,064
expect that, sooner or later, there will be a huge explosion.
393
00:29:32,064 --> 00:29:37,008
There've been several of these in the last few minutes.
394
00:29:37,008 --> 00:29:38,016
As you can see,
395
00:29:38,016 --> 00:29:41,072
there's enormous damage in all the buildings round here.
396
00:29:41,071 --> 00:29:44,059
EXPLOSION
397
00:29:56,096 --> 00:29:58,044
Quick, quick!
398
00:30:05,056 --> 00:30:09,024
DISTANT EXPLOSIONS
399
00:30:16,056 --> 00:30:19,059
Two months later, thousands of Palestinian refugees
400
00:30:19,059 --> 00:30:21,039
were massacred in the camps.
401
00:30:22,059 --> 00:30:24,096
It horrified the world.
402
00:30:24,096 --> 00:30:26,092
But what was even more shocking
403
00:30:26,092 --> 00:30:29,024
was that Israel had allowed it to happen.
404
00:30:30,036 --> 00:30:32,012
Its troops had stood by and watched
405
00:30:32,011 --> 00:30:35,059
as a Christian Lebanese faction murdered the Palestinians.
406
00:30:41,067 --> 00:30:44,079
This was the first of the massacres we discovered yesterday.
407
00:30:44,079 --> 00:30:48,071
Now, 24 hours later, the stench here is appalling.
408
00:30:48,071 --> 00:30:50,015
But the effects on the Israelis
409
00:30:50,016 --> 00:30:52,024
of what their Christian allies did here
410
00:30:52,023 --> 00:30:54,047
and in dozens of other places around this camp
411
00:30:54,048 --> 00:30:56,016
are going to be immense.
412
00:30:56,016 --> 00:30:59,048
There's always been a risk of such massacres if Christian militiamen
413
00:30:59,048 --> 00:31:01,096
were allowed to come into Palestinian camps,
414
00:31:01,096 --> 00:31:03,092
and the Israelis seem to have done nothing
415
00:31:03,092 --> 00:31:06,080
to prevent them coming into this one.
416
00:31:06,079 --> 00:31:09,067
In the face of the horror and the growing chaos,
417
00:31:09,067 --> 00:31:11,091
President Reagan was forced to act.
418
00:31:12,096 --> 00:31:15,059
He announced that American marines would come to Beirut
419
00:31:15,059 --> 00:31:17,039
to lead a peacekeeping force.
420
00:31:19,019 --> 00:31:22,051
Reagan insisted that the troops were neutral.
421
00:31:22,051 --> 00:31:26,035
But President Assad was convinced that there was another reality.
422
00:31:27,039 --> 00:31:30,023
He saw the troops as part of the growing conspiracy
423
00:31:30,023 --> 00:31:34,019
between America and Israel to divide the Middle East into factions
424
00:31:34,019 --> 00:31:36,043
and destroy the power of the Arabs.
425
00:31:37,096 --> 00:31:42,048
Assad decided to get the Americans out of the Middle East.
426
00:31:42,048 --> 00:31:44,076
And to do this, he made an alliance
427
00:31:44,076 --> 00:31:48,067
with the new revolutionary force of Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran.
428
00:31:50,064 --> 00:31:52,080
And what Khomeini could bring to Assad
429
00:31:52,079 --> 00:31:56,011
was an extraordinary new weapon that he had just created.
430
00:32:00,000 --> 00:32:02,048
It was called it "the poor man's atomic bomb".
431
00:32:09,096 --> 00:32:11,076
CHANTING:
432
00:32:17,044 --> 00:32:20,048
Ayatollah Khomeini had come to power two years before
433
00:32:20,048 --> 00:32:23,019
as the leader of the Iranian revolution.
434
00:32:23,019 --> 00:32:26,031
But his hold on power was precarious,
435
00:32:26,031 --> 00:32:30,035
and Khomeini had developed a new idea of how to fight his enemies
436
00:32:30,036 --> 00:32:31,087
and defend the revolution.
437
00:32:32,092 --> 00:32:36,080
Khomeini told his followers that they could destroy themselves
438
00:32:36,079 --> 00:32:41,008
in order to save the revolution providing that, in the process,
439
00:32:41,008 --> 00:32:44,008
they killed as many enemies around them as possible.
440
00:32:46,044 --> 00:32:48,008
This was completely new,
441
00:32:48,008 --> 00:32:51,016
because the Koran specifically prohibited suicide.
442
00:32:52,051 --> 00:32:55,059
In the past, you became a martyr on the battlefield
443
00:32:55,059 --> 00:32:59,051
because God chose the time and place of your death.
444
00:32:59,051 --> 00:33:01,091
But Khomeini changed this.
445
00:33:01,092 --> 00:33:06,012
He did it by going back to one of the central rituals of Shia Islam.
446
00:33:06,011 --> 00:33:09,059
MUSIC PLAYS
447
00:33:09,059 --> 00:33:12,019
Every year, Shi'ites march in a procession
448
00:33:12,019 --> 00:33:15,091
mourning the sacrifice of their founder, Husayn.
449
00:33:15,092 --> 00:33:18,032
As they do, they whip themselves,
450
00:33:18,031 --> 00:33:21,011
symbolically re-enacting Husayn's suffering.
451
00:33:24,064 --> 00:33:27,092
Khomeini said that the ultimate act of penitence
452
00:33:27,092 --> 00:33:30,012
was not just to whip yourself,
453
00:33:30,011 --> 00:33:31,048
but to kill yourself...
454
00:33:32,076 --> 00:33:36,008
..providing it was for the greater good of the revolution.
455
00:33:39,036 --> 00:33:42,012
In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful,
456
00:33:42,011 --> 00:33:43,051
good afternoon.
457
00:33:43,051 --> 00:33:46,035
"An Iraqi Soviet-made MiG-23 was shot down
458
00:33:46,036 --> 00:33:49,048
"by the air-force jet fighters of the Islamic Republic
459
00:33:49,048 --> 00:33:52,024
"over the north-western Iranian border region of Marivan
460
00:33:52,023 --> 00:33:54,083
"at 10.08 hours local time, Saturday,"
461
00:33:54,084 --> 00:33:58,028
said the Joint Staff Commands communique numbered 1710.
462
00:33:59,064 --> 00:34:01,060
Khomeini had mobilised this force
463
00:34:01,059 --> 00:34:04,043
when the country was attacked by Iraq.
464
00:34:04,044 --> 00:34:06,092
Iran faced almost certain defeat
465
00:34:06,092 --> 00:34:09,052
because Iraq had far superior weapons,
466
00:34:09,052 --> 00:34:11,044
many of them supplied by America.
467
00:34:13,012 --> 00:34:16,056
So, the revolutionaries took tens of thousands of young boys
468
00:34:16,056 --> 00:34:20,096
out of schools, put them on buses and sent them to the front line.
469
00:34:20,096 --> 00:34:22,092
CHANTING
470
00:34:22,092 --> 00:34:26,048
Their job was to walk through the enemies' minefields,
471
00:34:26,047 --> 00:34:30,067
deliberately blowing themselves up in order to open gaps
472
00:34:30,068 --> 00:34:34,012
that would allow the Iranian army to pass through unharmed.
473
00:34:38,000 --> 00:34:40,068
It was organised suicide on a vast scale.
474
00:34:43,023 --> 00:34:45,071
This human sacrifice was commemorated
475
00:34:45,072 --> 00:34:49,019
in giant cemeteries across the country.
476
00:34:49,019 --> 00:34:51,096
Fountains flowing with blood red-water
477
00:34:51,096 --> 00:34:54,027
glorified this new kind of martyrdom.
478
00:35:15,079 --> 00:35:17,067
And it was this new idea -
479
00:35:17,068 --> 00:35:20,024
of an unstoppable human weapon -
480
00:35:20,023 --> 00:35:23,056
that President Assad took from Khomeini,
481
00:35:23,056 --> 00:35:25,079
and brought to the West for the first time.
482
00:35:27,019 --> 00:35:28,047
But, as it travelled,
483
00:35:28,047 --> 00:35:31,027
it would mutate into something even more deadly.
484
00:35:32,056 --> 00:35:34,059
Instead of just killing yourself,
485
00:35:34,059 --> 00:35:38,087
you would take explosives with you into the heart of the enemy
486
00:35:38,088 --> 00:35:40,076
and then blow yourself up,
487
00:35:40,076 --> 00:35:43,048
taking dozens or even hundreds along with you.
488
00:35:44,088 --> 00:35:47,028
It would become known as "suicide bombing".
489
00:35:51,047 --> 00:35:54,079
In October 1983, two suicide bombers
490
00:35:54,079 --> 00:35:57,092
drove trucks into the US marine barracks in Beirut.
491
00:36:01,063 --> 00:36:06,000
It was seeing something move that took me out of my trance.
492
00:36:06,000 --> 00:36:09,092
And then I recognised, "Oh, yes, marines were in that building.
493
00:36:09,092 --> 00:36:12,064
"A lot of marines were in that building."
494
00:36:12,063 --> 00:36:15,051
And that's when I ran down and...
495
00:36:15,052 --> 00:36:17,064
And it was a black... black marine.
496
00:36:17,063 --> 00:36:18,091
He looked white.
497
00:36:18,092 --> 00:36:20,088
The dust had just covered him.
498
00:36:21,092 --> 00:36:25,056
The massive explosions killed 241 Americans.
499
00:36:28,000 --> 00:36:30,063
The bombers were members of a new militant group
500
00:36:30,063 --> 00:36:32,007
that no-one had heard of.
501
00:36:33,012 --> 00:36:35,052
They called themselves Hezbollah
502
00:36:35,052 --> 00:36:37,076
and, although many of them were Iranian,
503
00:36:37,076 --> 00:36:39,088
they were very much under the control of Syria
504
00:36:39,088 --> 00:36:42,036
and the Syrian intelligence agencies.
505
00:36:43,047 --> 00:36:47,035
President Assad was using them as his proxies to attack America.
506
00:36:51,039 --> 00:36:55,067
Whoever carried out yesterday's bombings - Shia Muslim fanatics,
507
00:36:55,068 --> 00:36:58,052
devotees of the Ayatollah Khomeini, or whatever -
508
00:36:58,052 --> 00:37:01,032
it is Syria who profits politically.
509
00:37:01,032 --> 00:37:05,084
The most significant fact is that the dissidents live and work
510
00:37:05,083 --> 00:37:08,027
with Syrian protection.
511
00:37:08,027 --> 00:37:12,063
So, it is to Syria rather than to the dissident group's guiding light,
512
00:37:12,063 --> 00:37:16,023
Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran, that we must look for an explanation
513
00:37:16,023 --> 00:37:20,000
of the group's activities. Destabilisation is Syria's
514
00:37:20,000 --> 00:37:23,012
Middle-Eastern way of reminding the world that Syria
515
00:37:23,012 --> 00:37:26,059
must not be left out of plans for the future of the area.
516
00:37:33,063 --> 00:37:39,023
There are no words that can express our sorrow and grief
517
00:37:39,023 --> 00:37:42,036
for the loss of those splendid young men
518
00:37:42,036 --> 00:37:44,096
and the injury to so many others.
519
00:37:46,023 --> 00:37:51,000
These deeds make so evident the bestial nature
520
00:37:51,000 --> 00:37:53,092
of those who would assume power
521
00:37:53,092 --> 00:37:58,092
if they could have their way and drive us out of that area.
522
00:37:58,092 --> 00:38:02,019
But despite his words, within four months,
523
00:38:02,019 --> 00:38:06,023
President Reagan withdrew all the American troops from the Lebanon.
524
00:38:06,023 --> 00:38:09,051
The Secretary of State George Shultz explained.
525
00:38:09,052 --> 00:38:13,000
"We became paralysed by the complexity that we faced," he said.
526
00:38:14,092 --> 00:38:17,000
So, the Americans turned and left.
527
00:38:18,068 --> 00:38:22,036
For President Assad, it was an extraordinary achievement.
528
00:38:22,036 --> 00:38:25,063
He was the only Arab leader to have defeated the Americans
529
00:38:25,063 --> 00:38:28,000
and forced them to leave the Middle East.
530
00:38:29,000 --> 00:38:33,003
He had done it by using the new force of suicide bombing.
531
00:38:33,003 --> 00:38:34,079
A force that, once unleashed,
532
00:38:34,079 --> 00:38:37,056
was going to spread with unstoppable power.
533
00:38:38,063 --> 00:38:41,051
But at this point, both Assad and the Iranians
534
00:38:41,052 --> 00:38:43,056
thought that they could control it.
535
00:38:45,012 --> 00:38:47,048
And what gave it this extraordinary power
536
00:38:47,047 --> 00:38:49,015
was that it held out the dream
537
00:38:49,016 --> 00:38:51,076
of transcending the corruptions of the world
538
00:38:51,076 --> 00:38:54,068
and entering a new and better realm.
539
00:38:54,068 --> 00:38:57,064
TRANSLATION:One should defend the realm of Islam and Muslims
540
00:38:57,063 --> 00:39:00,031
against heretics and invaders.
541
00:39:00,032 --> 00:39:04,012
And to fulfil this duty, one should even sacrifice one's life.
542
00:39:07,000 --> 00:39:10,063
We believe that martyrs can overlook our deeds from the other world.
543
00:39:12,019 --> 00:39:13,088
It means that, after death,
544
00:39:13,088 --> 00:39:17,040
the martyr lives and can still witness this world.
545
00:39:45,039 --> 00:39:48,003
By the middle of the 1980s, the banks were rising up
546
00:39:48,003 --> 00:39:51,067
and becoming ever more powerful in America.
547
00:39:51,068 --> 00:39:54,036
What had started ten years before in New York,
548
00:39:54,036 --> 00:39:58,088
the idea that the financial system could run society,
549
00:39:58,088 --> 00:40:00,024
was spreading.
550
00:40:00,023 --> 00:40:04,000
But unlike older systems of power, it was mostly invisible.
551
00:40:05,083 --> 00:40:07,051
A writer called William Gibson
552
00:40:07,052 --> 00:40:09,059
tried to dramatise what was happening
553
00:40:09,059 --> 00:40:14,052
in a powerful, imaginative way, in a series of novels.
554
00:40:14,052 --> 00:40:17,068
Gibson had noticed how the banks and the new corporations
555
00:40:17,068 --> 00:40:22,096
were beginning to link themselves together through computer systems.
556
00:40:22,096 --> 00:40:25,076
What they were creating was a series of giant networks of
557
00:40:25,076 --> 00:40:30,028
information that were invisible to ordinary people
558
00:40:30,027 --> 00:40:32,051
and to politicians.
559
00:40:32,052 --> 00:40:35,056
But those networks gave the corporations
560
00:40:35,056 --> 00:40:38,003
extraordinary new powers of control.
561
00:40:43,023 --> 00:40:45,092
'Good morning. South-West Development. May I help you?'
562
00:40:45,092 --> 00:40:48,076
Gibson gave this new world a name.
563
00:40:50,012 --> 00:40:52,088
He called it "cyberspace"
564
00:40:52,088 --> 00:40:56,092
and his novels described a future that was dangerous and frightening.
565
00:40:57,088 --> 00:41:02,036
Hackers could literally enter into cyberspace and as they did,
566
00:41:02,036 --> 00:41:05,019
they travelled through systems that were so powerful
567
00:41:05,019 --> 00:41:10,047
that they could reach out and crush intruders by destroying their minds.
568
00:41:10,047 --> 00:41:16,000
In cyberspace, there were no laws and no politicians to protect you.
569
00:41:17,056 --> 00:41:21,052
Just raw, brutal corporate power.
570
00:41:32,016 --> 00:41:35,039
But then, a strange thing happened.
571
00:41:35,039 --> 00:41:37,083
A new group of visionaries in America
572
00:41:37,083 --> 00:41:40,059
took Gibson's idea of a hidden, secret world
573
00:41:40,059 --> 00:41:44,072
and transformed it into something completely different.
574
00:41:44,072 --> 00:41:48,008
They turned it into a dream of a new utopia.
575
00:41:53,012 --> 00:41:56,080
They were the technological utopians who were rising up
576
00:41:56,079 --> 00:41:59,087
on the West Coast of America.
577
00:41:59,088 --> 00:42:03,016
They turned Gibson's idea on its head.
578
00:42:03,016 --> 00:42:05,088
Instead of cyberspace being a frightening place,
579
00:42:05,088 --> 00:42:08,044
dominated by powerful corporations,
580
00:42:08,043 --> 00:42:11,091
they reinvented it as the very opposite.
581
00:42:11,092 --> 00:42:17,012
A new, safe world where radical dreams could come true.
582
00:42:17,012 --> 00:42:21,032
Ten years before, faced by the complexity of real politics,
583
00:42:21,032 --> 00:42:26,028
the radicals had given up on the idea of changing the world.
584
00:42:26,027 --> 00:42:30,039
But now, the computer utopians saw, in cyberspace,
585
00:42:30,039 --> 00:42:32,056
an alternative reality.
586
00:42:32,056 --> 00:42:37,000
A place they could retreat to away from the harsh right-wing politics
587
00:42:37,000 --> 00:42:39,047
that now dominated Reagan's America.
588
00:42:43,052 --> 00:42:46,016
The roots of this vision lay back in the counterculture
589
00:42:46,016 --> 00:42:50,032
of the 1960s, and, above all, with LSD.
590
00:43:01,092 --> 00:43:05,028
We've got some more acid over here if you want to go ahead.
591
00:43:05,027 --> 00:43:07,079
Many of those who had taken LSD in the '60s
592
00:43:07,079 --> 00:43:11,032
were convinced that it was more than just another drug,
593
00:43:11,032 --> 00:43:13,028
that it opened human perception
594
00:43:13,027 --> 00:43:15,047
and allowed people to see new realities
595
00:43:15,047 --> 00:43:17,055
that were normally hidden from them.
596
00:43:17,056 --> 00:43:19,092
See, the ones that have white in them are really great.
597
00:43:21,072 --> 00:43:23,019
SHE GIGGLES
598
00:43:24,052 --> 00:43:26,016
I feel like a rabbit.
599
00:43:29,056 --> 00:43:33,012
It freed them from the narrow, limited view of the world
600
00:43:33,012 --> 00:43:36,084
that was imposed on them by politicians and those in power.
601
00:43:36,083 --> 00:43:39,039
In the United States, in the next, five, ten, 15 years,
602
00:43:39,039 --> 00:43:42,083
you're going to see more and more people taking LSD and making it
603
00:43:42,083 --> 00:43:46,039
a part of their lives, so there will be an LSD country within 15 years.
604
00:43:46,039 --> 00:43:49,047
An LSD society, there will be less interest
605
00:43:49,047 --> 00:43:51,055
in, obviously, warfare,
606
00:43:51,056 --> 00:43:53,019
in power politics.
607
00:43:53,019 --> 00:43:56,072
You know, politics today is a disease, it's a real addiction.
608
00:43:56,072 --> 00:43:58,052
Politics, politics, politics, politics.
609
00:43:58,052 --> 00:44:01,084
Don't politick, don't vote - these are old men's games.
610
00:44:01,083 --> 00:44:04,059
Impotent and senile old man that want to put you
611
00:44:04,059 --> 00:44:07,023
onto their old chess games of war and power.
612
00:44:07,023 --> 00:44:11,092
20 years later, the new networks of machines seemed to offer
613
00:44:11,092 --> 00:44:14,088
a way to construct a real alternate reality.
614
00:44:14,088 --> 00:44:17,040
Not just one that was chemically induced,
615
00:44:17,039 --> 00:44:19,047
but a space that actually existed
616
00:44:19,047 --> 00:44:22,011
in a parallel dimension to the real world.
617
00:44:24,092 --> 00:44:26,068
And like with acid,
618
00:44:26,068 --> 00:44:30,056
cyberspace could be a place where you would be liberated from the old,
619
00:44:30,056 --> 00:44:35,076
corrupt hierarchies of politics and power and explore new ways of being.
620
00:44:37,056 --> 00:44:42,063
One of the leading exponents of this idea was called John Perry Barlow.
621
00:44:42,063 --> 00:44:45,059
In the '60s, he had written songs for the Grateful Dead
622
00:44:45,059 --> 00:44:48,043
and been part of the acid counterculture.
623
00:44:48,043 --> 00:44:52,011
Now, he organised what he called "cyberthons",
624
00:44:52,012 --> 00:44:55,028
to try and bring the cyberspace movement together.
625
00:44:57,012 --> 00:45:00,032
Well, you know, the cyberthon as it was originally conceived
626
00:45:00,032 --> 00:45:02,088
was supposed to be...
627
00:45:05,019 --> 00:45:07,088
..the '90s equivalent of the acid test
628
00:45:07,088 --> 00:45:12,004
and we had thought to involve some of the same personnel.
629
00:45:12,003 --> 00:45:15,083
You and I and Timmy should sit down and talk. OK. That is good.
630
00:45:15,083 --> 00:45:19,063
And it immediately acquired a financial quality
631
00:45:19,063 --> 00:45:22,059
or a commercial quality that was initially
632
00:45:22,059 --> 00:45:24,056
a little unsettling to an old hippy like me,
633
00:45:24,056 --> 00:45:28,016
but as soon as I saw it actually working, then I thought,
634
00:45:28,016 --> 00:45:31,048
"Ah, well, if you're going to have an acid test for the '90s,
635
00:45:31,047 --> 00:45:32,091
"money better be involved."
636
00:45:32,092 --> 00:45:36,084
Instead of having a glass barrier that separates you -
637
00:45:36,083 --> 00:45:39,063
your mind - from the mind of the computer,
638
00:45:39,063 --> 00:45:43,056
the computer pulls us inside and creates a world for us.
639
00:45:43,056 --> 00:45:46,088
Incorporates everything that could be incorporated.
640
00:45:46,088 --> 00:45:49,024
It incorporates experience itself.
641
00:45:50,096 --> 00:45:52,096
Barlow then wrote a manifesto
642
00:45:52,096 --> 00:45:57,056
that he called A Declaration Of Independence Of Cyberspace.
643
00:45:57,056 --> 00:45:59,079
It was addressed to all politicians,
644
00:45:59,079 --> 00:46:02,056
telling them to keep out of this new world.
645
00:46:03,088 --> 00:46:06,088
It was going to be incredibly influential,
646
00:46:06,088 --> 00:46:11,024
because what Barlow did was give a powerful picture of the internet
647
00:46:11,023 --> 00:46:14,063
not as a network controlled by giant corporations,
648
00:46:14,063 --> 00:46:18,023
but, instead, as a kind of magical, free place.
649
00:46:18,023 --> 00:46:22,003
An alternative to the old systems of power.
650
00:46:22,003 --> 00:46:25,043
It was a vision that would come to dominate the internet
651
00:46:25,043 --> 00:46:27,051
over the next 20 years.
652
00:46:31,059 --> 00:46:34,032
Governments of the industrial world,
653
00:46:34,032 --> 00:46:38,024
cyberspace does not lie within your borders.
654
00:46:38,023 --> 00:46:40,083
We are creating a world where anyone,
655
00:46:40,083 --> 00:46:44,076
anywhere, may express his or her beliefs,
656
00:46:44,076 --> 00:46:47,003
no matter how singular,
657
00:46:47,003 --> 00:46:49,092
without fear of being coerced
658
00:46:49,092 --> 00:46:52,072
into silence or conformity.
659
00:46:52,072 --> 00:46:57,016
I declare the global social space we are building
660
00:46:57,016 --> 00:46:59,076
to be naturally independent
661
00:46:59,076 --> 00:47:03,043
of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us.
662
00:47:04,056 --> 00:47:09,052
We will create a civilisation of the mind in cyberspace.
663
00:47:09,052 --> 00:47:11,056
May it be more humane and fair
664
00:47:11,056 --> 00:47:15,039
than the world your governments have made before.
665
00:47:17,063 --> 00:47:19,003
It's begun.
666
00:47:24,036 --> 00:47:27,003
This is the key to a new order.
667
00:47:27,003 --> 00:47:29,007
This code disk means freedom.
668
00:47:33,096 --> 00:47:37,007
But two young hackers in New York thought that Barlow
669
00:47:37,007 --> 00:47:39,083
was describing a fantasy world,
670
00:47:39,083 --> 00:47:42,031
that his vision bore no relationship at all
671
00:47:42,032 --> 00:47:44,039
to what was really emerging online.
672
00:47:45,056 --> 00:47:48,039
They were cult figures on the early online scene
673
00:47:48,039 --> 00:47:50,096
and their fans followed and recorded them.
674
00:47:50,096 --> 00:47:54,083
They called themselves Phiber Optik and Acid Phreak
675
00:47:54,083 --> 00:47:58,007
and they spent their time exploring and breaking in
676
00:47:58,007 --> 00:48:00,087
to giant computer networks that they knew
677
00:48:00,088 --> 00:48:05,012
were the hard realities of modern digital power.
678
00:48:05,012 --> 00:48:10,048
My specific instance, I was charged with conspiracy
679
00:48:10,047 --> 00:48:14,071
to commit a few dozen "overacts", they called them.
680
00:48:14,072 --> 00:48:20,016
Among a number of things having to do with computer trespass and...
681
00:48:20,016 --> 00:48:23,059
and I guess computer eavesdropping, interception.
682
00:48:23,059 --> 00:48:26,067
Unauthorised access to federal interest computers,
683
00:48:26,068 --> 00:48:30,096
which is pretty vague law.
684
00:48:30,096 --> 00:48:33,079
Communications network computers and so on.
685
00:48:33,079 --> 00:48:39,032
In a notorious public debate online, the two hackers attacked Barlow.
686
00:48:39,032 --> 00:48:42,059
What infuriated them most was Barlow's insistence
687
00:48:42,059 --> 00:48:44,047
that there was no hierarchy
688
00:48:44,047 --> 00:48:47,055
or controlling powers in the new cyber world.
689
00:48:48,079 --> 00:48:52,067
The hackers set out to demonstrate that he was wrong.
690
00:48:52,068 --> 00:48:54,092
Acid Phreak hacked into the computers of
691
00:48:54,092 --> 00:48:57,072
a giant corporation called TRW.
692
00:48:57,072 --> 00:49:00,036
TRW had originally built the systems
693
00:49:00,036 --> 00:49:03,023
that ran the Cold War for the US military.
694
00:49:04,059 --> 00:49:07,076
They had helped create the delicate balance of terror.
695
00:49:08,076 --> 00:49:12,096
Now, TRW had adapted their computers to run a new system,
696
00:49:12,096 --> 00:49:15,003
that of credit and debt.
697
00:49:16,027 --> 00:49:20,019
Their computers gathered up the credit data of millions of Americans
698
00:49:20,019 --> 00:49:24,036
and were being used by the banks to decide individuals' credit ratings.
699
00:49:27,019 --> 00:49:30,032
The hackers broke into the TRW network,
700
00:49:30,032 --> 00:49:33,068
stole Barlow's credit history and published it online.
701
00:49:38,072 --> 00:49:42,052
The hackers were demonstrating the growing power of finance.
702
00:49:42,052 --> 00:49:45,012
How the companies that ran the new systems of credit
703
00:49:45,012 --> 00:49:47,008
knew more and more about you,
704
00:49:47,007 --> 00:49:51,047
and, increasingly, used that information to control your destiny.
705
00:49:52,063 --> 00:49:55,031
But the system that was allowing this to happen
706
00:49:55,032 --> 00:49:57,092
were the new giant networks of information
707
00:49:57,092 --> 00:50:00,019
connected through computer servers.
708
00:50:04,056 --> 00:50:08,008
The hackers were questioning whether Barlow's utopian rhetoric
709
00:50:08,007 --> 00:50:13,000
about cyberspace might really be a convenient camouflage
710
00:50:13,000 --> 00:50:16,072
hiding the emergence of a new and growing power
711
00:50:16,072 --> 00:50:19,012
that was way beyond politics.
712
00:50:49,059 --> 00:50:53,052
But cyberspace was not the only imaginary story being created.
713
00:50:54,056 --> 00:50:57,063
Faced with the humiliating defeat in the Lebanon,
714
00:50:57,063 --> 00:51:00,079
President Reagan's government was desperate to shore up
715
00:51:00,079 --> 00:51:03,007
the vision of a moral world
716
00:51:03,007 --> 00:51:06,091
where a good America struggled against evil.
717
00:51:06,092 --> 00:51:11,023
And to do this they were going to create a simple villain.
718
00:51:11,023 --> 00:51:13,079
An imaginary enemy, one that would free them
719
00:51:13,079 --> 00:51:17,087
from the paralysing complexity of real Middle-Eastern politics.
720
00:51:19,047 --> 00:51:22,095
The perfect candidate was waiting in the wings.
721
00:51:22,096 --> 00:51:25,092
Colonel Gaddafi, the ruler of Libya.
722
00:51:32,052 --> 00:51:35,072
The Americans were going to ruthlessly use Colonel Gaddafi
723
00:51:35,072 --> 00:51:38,044
to create a fake terrorist mastermind.
724
00:51:41,088 --> 00:51:44,076
And Gaddafi was going to happily play along,
725
00:51:44,076 --> 00:51:49,003
because it would turn him into a famous global figure.
726
00:52:04,083 --> 00:52:08,056
Colonel Gaddafi had taken power in a coup in the 1970s
727
00:52:08,056 --> 00:52:10,048
but from the very start,
728
00:52:10,047 --> 00:52:14,047
he was convinced that he was more than just the leader of one country.
729
00:52:14,047 --> 00:52:17,087
He believed that he was an international revolutionary
730
00:52:17,088 --> 00:52:21,024
whose destiny was to challenge the power of the West.
731
00:52:27,047 --> 00:52:29,039
Gentlemen, the Queen.
732
00:52:33,032 --> 00:52:37,044
GOD SAVE THE QUEEN PLAYS
733
00:52:37,043 --> 00:52:39,003
When he was a young officer,
734
00:52:39,003 --> 00:52:41,076
Gaddafi had been sent to England for training
735
00:52:41,076 --> 00:52:45,012
and he had detested the patronising racism
736
00:52:45,012 --> 00:52:48,064
that he said he had found at the heart of British society.
737
00:52:48,063 --> 00:52:52,019
Yes, I attended a course.
738
00:52:52,019 --> 00:53:00,003
I had been in England in 1966 from February to August.
739
00:53:00,003 --> 00:53:01,056
You had the best months.
740
00:53:01,056 --> 00:53:04,000
HE CHUCKLES
741
00:53:04,000 --> 00:53:06,000
I was in Beaconsfield,
742
00:53:06,000 --> 00:53:08,036
a village called Beaconsfield,
743
00:53:08,036 --> 00:53:11,063
in an army school.
744
00:53:14,012 --> 00:53:22,012
In fact, we were ill-treated in that place from some British officers.
745
00:53:24,036 --> 00:53:30,019
I think the officers were Jews,
746
00:53:30,019 --> 00:53:31,088
maybe Jews.
747
00:53:31,088 --> 00:53:34,016
Ill-treated in what sort of way?
748
00:53:36,000 --> 00:53:37,076
In many ways.
749
00:53:40,052 --> 00:53:43,076
They ill-treat us every time.
750
00:53:45,027 --> 00:53:48,047
By being rude or by bullying or...?
751
00:53:50,096 --> 00:53:57,012
In their own behaviour towards us, they ill-treated us.
752
00:53:57,012 --> 00:53:59,044
They hate us in there
753
00:53:59,043 --> 00:54:02,047
because of colonisation.
754
00:54:02,047 --> 00:54:04,027
It is the result of colonising.
755
00:54:08,063 --> 00:54:12,096
Once in power, Gaddafi had developed his own revolutionary theory,
756
00:54:12,096 --> 00:54:17,012
which he called the Third Universal Theory.
757
00:54:17,012 --> 00:54:21,004
It was an alternative, he said, to communism and capitalism.
758
00:54:21,003 --> 00:54:22,092
He published it in a green book,
759
00:54:22,092 --> 00:54:24,096
but practically no-one read it.
760
00:54:26,023 --> 00:54:29,016
He had sent money and weapons to the IRA in Ireland
761
00:54:29,016 --> 00:54:32,043
to help them overthrow the British ruling class.
762
00:54:32,043 --> 00:54:37,079
But all the other Arab leaders rejected him and his ideas.
763
00:54:37,079 --> 00:54:40,059
They thought that he was mad.
764
00:54:40,059 --> 00:54:45,019
And by the mid-1980s, Gaddafi was an isolated figure
765
00:54:45,019 --> 00:54:48,052
with no friends and no global influence.
766
00:54:50,036 --> 00:54:52,043
Then, suddenly, that changed.
767
00:54:56,047 --> 00:54:58,039
In December 1985,
768
00:54:58,039 --> 00:55:01,096
terrorists attacked Rome and Vienna airports simultaneously,
769
00:55:01,096 --> 00:55:03,088
killing 19 people,
770
00:55:03,088 --> 00:55:06,064
including five Americans.
771
00:55:06,063 --> 00:55:10,067
There was growing pressure on President Reagan to retaliate.
772
00:55:10,068 --> 00:55:13,016
It's time to rename your State Department
773
00:55:13,016 --> 00:55:15,023
the Capitulation Department.
774
00:55:15,023 --> 00:55:18,019
Get off of your stick, Mr President.
775
00:55:18,019 --> 00:55:21,096
The American people are sick and tired of being kicked around.
776
00:55:21,096 --> 00:55:23,056
You talk tough,
777
00:55:23,056 --> 00:55:26,056
let's see you use some of these billions and billions
778
00:55:26,056 --> 00:55:28,076
and billions of dollars' worth of weapons
779
00:55:28,076 --> 00:55:30,072
that you've asked us to approve.
780
00:55:30,072 --> 00:55:32,096
Your words are cheap talk.
781
00:55:32,096 --> 00:55:35,016
President Reagan immediately announced
782
00:55:35,016 --> 00:55:38,088
that Colonel Gaddafi was definitely behind the attacks.
783
00:55:38,088 --> 00:55:41,064
These murderers could not carry out their crimes
784
00:55:41,063 --> 00:55:43,079
without the sanctuary and support
785
00:55:43,079 --> 00:55:47,032
provided by regimes such as Colonel Gaddafi's in Libya.
786
00:55:47,032 --> 00:55:49,048
The Rome and Vienna murders are only the latest
787
00:55:49,047 --> 00:55:54,035
in a series of brutal terrorist acts committed with Gaddafi's backing.
788
00:55:54,036 --> 00:55:58,008
But the European security services who investigated the attacks
789
00:55:58,007 --> 00:56:01,019
were convinced that Libya was not involved at all
790
00:56:01,019 --> 00:56:05,039
and that the mastermind behind the attacks was, in fact, Syria -
791
00:56:05,039 --> 00:56:07,096
that the terrorists had been directed
792
00:56:07,096 --> 00:56:10,016
by the Syrian intelligence agencies.
793
00:56:11,088 --> 00:56:15,072
But the Americans say that the attack at Rome Airport
794
00:56:15,072 --> 00:56:20,028
was organised by Gaddafi, not by Damascus. What do you say?
795
00:56:20,027 --> 00:56:23,067
No, we don't have any evidence... You have no evidence?
796
00:56:23,068 --> 00:56:28,084
..supporting such an...affirmation.
797
00:56:31,003 --> 00:56:33,079
The only evidence we have
798
00:56:33,079 --> 00:56:37,003
shows a Syrian connection.
799
00:56:37,003 --> 00:56:39,047
You say that it was Libya and the President
800
00:56:39,047 --> 00:56:44,023
said the evidence of Libya's culpability was irrefutable.Yeah.
801
00:56:44,023 --> 00:56:48,056
But the Italian authorities to whom I've spoken say emphatically
802
00:56:48,056 --> 00:56:52,008
on the record that their investigations have shown
803
00:56:52,007 --> 00:56:55,007
that it was entirely masterminded by Syria.
804
00:56:55,007 --> 00:56:56,076
I don't agree with that at all.
805
00:56:56,076 --> 00:57:00,023
Well, they interrogated the surviving terrorists.
806
00:57:00,023 --> 00:57:02,087
I must just say I don't agree with that.
807
00:57:02,088 --> 00:57:05,040
But you've no evidence that Libya was in on the planning either.
808
00:57:05,039 --> 00:57:09,067
Our evidence on Libya is circumstantial, but very strong.
809
00:57:09,068 --> 00:57:12,040
But why does the President then say it's "irrefutable",
810
00:57:12,039 --> 00:57:14,023
if you call it "circumstantial"?
811
00:57:14,023 --> 00:57:18,000
Well, people can be convicted and sentenced in our courts
812
00:57:18,000 --> 00:57:19,092
on circumstantial evidence.
813
00:57:19,092 --> 00:57:22,048
But what made it even more confusing
814
00:57:22,047 --> 00:57:24,059
was that although there seemed to be no evidence
815
00:57:24,059 --> 00:57:26,083
that Gaddafi had been behind the attacks,
816
00:57:26,083 --> 00:57:30,027
he made no attempt to deny the allegations.
817
00:57:30,027 --> 00:57:32,047
Instead, he went the other way
818
00:57:32,047 --> 00:57:35,023
and turned the crisis into a global drama...
819
00:57:35,023 --> 00:57:37,039
It is not a time of saying.
820
00:57:37,039 --> 00:57:39,000
It is a time of war,
821
00:57:39,000 --> 00:57:41,032
a time of confrontation.
822
00:57:41,032 --> 00:57:44,036
..threatening suicide attacks against America.
823
00:57:46,019 --> 00:57:49,072
TRANSLATION:
824
00:58:09,076 --> 00:58:11,096
Gaddafi now started to play a role
825
00:58:11,096 --> 00:58:14,048
that was going to become very familiar.
826
00:58:14,047 --> 00:58:16,067
He grabbed the publicity that had been given to him
827
00:58:16,068 --> 00:58:19,032
by the Americans and used it dramatically.
828
00:58:20,068 --> 00:58:23,088
He promoted himself as an international revolutionary
829
00:58:23,088 --> 00:58:27,072
who would help to liberate oppressed peoples around the world,
830
00:58:27,072 --> 00:58:29,059
even the blacks in America.
831
00:58:33,007 --> 00:58:35,076
Gaddafi arranged for a live satellite link
832
00:58:35,076 --> 00:58:38,063
to a mass meeting of the Nation Of Islam in Chicago.
833
00:58:39,076 --> 00:58:41,028
Brothers and sisters,
834
00:58:41,027 --> 00:58:44,051
it is with great honour and privilege that I present to you
835
00:58:44,052 --> 00:58:48,048
the leader of the al-Fateh Revolution from Libya,
836
00:58:48,047 --> 00:58:51,003
our brother Muammar al-Gaddafi.
837
00:58:51,003 --> 00:58:52,092
APPLAUSE
838
00:58:52,092 --> 00:58:56,019
Gaddafi told them that Libya was now their ally
839
00:58:56,019 --> 00:58:59,003
in their struggle against white America.
840
00:58:59,003 --> 00:59:05,031
..To express my full support and support of my country
841
00:59:05,032 --> 00:59:09,039
to your struggle for freedom, for emancipation.
842
00:59:09,039 --> 00:59:11,096
Gaddafi promised that he would supply weapons
843
00:59:11,096 --> 00:59:15,056
to create a black army in America of 400,000 men.
844
00:59:16,059 --> 00:59:20,043
"If white America refuses to accept blacks as US citizens,"
845
00:59:20,043 --> 00:59:23,003
he told them, "it must therefore be destroyed."
846
00:59:28,083 --> 00:59:32,039
Gaddafi also invited a group of German rocket scientists
847
00:59:32,039 --> 00:59:35,016
to come to Libya to build him a rocket.
848
00:59:35,016 --> 00:59:38,028
He insisted that it had no military purpose.
849
00:59:38,027 --> 00:59:41,011
Libya was now going to explore outer space.
850
00:59:43,092 --> 00:59:48,039
I think it is peaceful and civil...
851
00:59:48,039 --> 00:59:49,072
Civilian?
852
00:59:49,072 --> 00:59:52,016
..civilian activity
853
00:59:52,016 --> 00:59:55,032
for investigation of space
854
00:59:55,032 --> 00:59:56,072
and something like this
855
00:59:56,072 --> 01:00:03,064
and it has nothing to do with any military things.
856
01:00:03,063 --> 01:00:05,056
But no-one believed him.
857
01:00:05,056 --> 01:00:09,028
Journalists warned that Gaddafi was really preparing to attack Europe,
858
01:00:09,027 --> 01:00:12,015
vividly dramatising the new danger.
859
01:00:12,016 --> 01:00:13,072
That is something like this
860
01:00:13,072 --> 01:00:15,096
which goes that way to put something into space.
861
01:00:15,096 --> 01:00:18,083
But the same device tilted, say, to an angle of 45 degrees
862
01:00:18,083 --> 01:00:21,079
could, of course, become something very different -
863
01:00:21,079 --> 01:00:24,023
a missile possibly carrying a warhead.
864
01:00:24,023 --> 01:00:28,011
That would put Libya within range of an enormous area.
865
01:00:28,012 --> 01:00:31,092
A chilling proposition with its range of 2,000km.
866
01:00:32,096 --> 01:00:36,019
The Americans and Gaddafi now became locked together
867
01:00:36,019 --> 01:00:38,047
in a cycle of mutual reinforcement.
868
01:00:40,016 --> 01:00:43,028
In the process, a powerful new image was created
869
01:00:43,027 --> 01:00:46,087
that was going to capture the imagination of the West.
870
01:00:46,088 --> 01:00:50,019
Gaddafi became a global supervillain,
871
01:00:50,019 --> 01:00:53,036
at the head of what was called a "rogue state" -
872
01:00:53,036 --> 01:00:56,063
a madman who threatened the stability of the world.
873
01:00:57,083 --> 01:01:00,091
And Gaddafi was loving every minute of it.
874
01:01:00,092 --> 01:01:02,076
So, you think, in the past,
875
01:01:02,076 --> 01:01:07,043
his decisions sometimes have been taken too quickly...
876
01:01:07,043 --> 01:01:10,056
Maybe, maybe. ..on world affairs?Maybe.
877
01:01:12,039 --> 01:01:15,079
I think, sometimes, that is what has made people in the world
878
01:01:15,079 --> 01:01:17,072
nervous of you, perhaps?Maybe.
879
01:01:19,072 --> 01:01:22,072
HE CHUCKLES
880
01:01:37,088 --> 01:01:40,048
Then, there was another terrorist attack
881
01:01:40,047 --> 01:01:42,059
at a discotheque in West Berlin.
882
01:01:46,056 --> 01:01:50,092
A bomb killed an American soldier and injured hundreds.
883
01:01:50,092 --> 01:01:54,003
The Americans released what they said were intercepts
884
01:01:54,003 --> 01:01:56,003
by the National Security Agency
885
01:01:56,003 --> 01:01:59,079
that proved that Colonel Gaddafi was behind the bombing
886
01:01:59,079 --> 01:02:03,027
and a dossier that they said proved that he was also the mastermind
887
01:02:03,027 --> 01:02:05,055
behind a whole range of other attacks.
888
01:02:07,039 --> 01:02:09,092
President Reagan ordered the Pentagon
889
01:02:09,092 --> 01:02:12,028
to prepare to bomb Libya.
890
01:02:12,027 --> 01:02:13,096
But again, there were doubts -
891
01:02:13,096 --> 01:02:17,012
this time, within the American Government itself.
892
01:02:18,092 --> 01:02:21,079
There were concerns that analysts were being pressured
893
01:02:21,079 --> 01:02:24,052
to make a case that didn't really exist...
894
01:02:25,056 --> 01:02:29,056
..and to do it, they were taking Gaddafi's rhetoric about himself
895
01:02:29,056 --> 01:02:33,003
as a global revolutionary and his manic ravings
896
01:02:33,003 --> 01:02:35,039
and then re-presenting them as fact.
897
01:02:36,068 --> 01:02:38,036
And, in the process, together,
898
01:02:38,036 --> 01:02:43,052
the Americans and Gaddafi were constructing a fictional world.
899
01:02:43,052 --> 01:02:48,048
The analysts were certainly, I'm convinced...
900
01:02:48,047 --> 01:02:53,015
pressured into developing a prima facie case
901
01:02:53,016 --> 01:02:55,032
against the Libyan Government.
902
01:02:55,032 --> 01:03:01,024
From the somewhat incoherent ravings of a maniac,
903
01:03:01,023 --> 01:03:06,011
both interceptions of a clandestine nature
904
01:03:06,012 --> 01:03:11,096
and interceptions of an open radio broadcast or whatever,
905
01:03:11,096 --> 01:03:15,036
as well as other sources, quotations of his,
906
01:03:15,036 --> 01:03:19,076
one can assemble a neatly-put-together package
907
01:03:19,076 --> 01:03:24,059
demonstrating that the man had violent interests
908
01:03:24,059 --> 01:03:28,000
against the United States and its European allies.
909
01:03:28,000 --> 01:03:30,032
The European intelligence agencies
910
01:03:30,032 --> 01:03:32,056
told the Americans that they were wrong,
911
01:03:32,056 --> 01:03:36,039
that it was Syria that was behind the bombing, not Libya.
912
01:03:36,039 --> 01:03:39,003
But the Americans had decided to attack Libya
913
01:03:39,003 --> 01:03:42,000
because they couldn't face the dangerous consequences
914
01:03:42,000 --> 01:03:43,043
of attacking Syria.
915
01:03:44,079 --> 01:03:47,019
Instead, they went for Gaddafi,
916
01:03:47,019 --> 01:03:49,007
a man without friends or allies.
917
01:03:50,039 --> 01:03:56,003
Libya had less downsided consequences, if you will.
918
01:03:56,003 --> 01:03:59,051
There's less Arab support for Gaddafi,
919
01:03:59,052 --> 01:04:02,088
we figured there would be less Soviet support for Gaddafi.
920
01:04:04,007 --> 01:04:10,043
There's no question that Libya was more vulnerable than Syria and Iran.
921
01:04:10,043 --> 01:04:13,076
He was a soft target?And that is certainly an element, of course.
922
01:04:17,019 --> 01:04:20,012
In April 1986, the Americans attacked Libya.
923
01:04:21,083 --> 01:04:24,091
Their targets included Colonel Gaddafi's own house.
924
01:04:25,096 --> 01:04:27,043
Immediately after the attack,
925
01:04:27,043 --> 01:04:31,031
Gaddafi appeared in the ruins to describe what had happened.
926
01:04:31,032 --> 01:04:35,028
TRANSLATION:The family were asleep and my wife
927
01:04:35,027 --> 01:04:37,071
was, that day, tied down to the bed
928
01:04:37,072 --> 01:04:40,000
because she had a slipped disc.
929
01:04:40,000 --> 01:04:41,072
I tried to rescue the children
930
01:04:41,072 --> 01:04:43,072
and the house started to collapse,
931
01:04:43,072 --> 01:04:45,016
as you can see.
932
01:04:45,016 --> 01:04:47,068
And the bombs started to land.
933
01:04:47,068 --> 01:04:50,012
They concentrated on the children's room
934
01:04:50,012 --> 01:04:53,056
so that they would kill all the children.
935
01:04:53,056 --> 01:04:56,012
Our small adopted daughter was killed
936
01:04:56,012 --> 01:04:58,084
and two of our children were injured.
937
01:04:58,083 --> 01:05:01,059
But, yet again, Gaddafi might have been lying.
938
01:05:01,059 --> 01:05:02,076
Ever since then,
939
01:05:02,076 --> 01:05:07,043
there have been rumours that his adopted daughter actually survived.
940
01:05:07,043 --> 01:05:10,003
But many other children were killed in the raid
941
01:05:10,003 --> 01:05:12,083
because the American bombing was so inaccurate.
942
01:05:14,027 --> 01:05:17,031
Gaddafi realised that the attention of the whole world
943
01:05:17,032 --> 01:05:19,019
was now focused on him
944
01:05:19,019 --> 01:05:22,076
and he grabbed the moment to promote his own revolutionary theory,
945
01:05:22,076 --> 01:05:26,083
The Third Way, as a global alternative to democracy.
946
01:05:28,036 --> 01:05:31,083
TRANSLATION:I feel that I'm really responsible
947
01:05:31,083 --> 01:05:35,000
for conveying the Third Way theory and the Green Book
948
01:05:35,000 --> 01:05:39,032
to the rising generations, to the young American and British people,
949
01:05:39,032 --> 01:05:41,084
so that we can rescue America and Britain
950
01:05:41,083 --> 01:05:45,076
and these generations of young people from this theory,
951
01:05:45,076 --> 01:05:47,092
this electoral party theory
952
01:05:47,092 --> 01:05:50,076
which enabled an imbecile like Reagan
953
01:05:50,076 --> 01:05:53,016
to rule the mightiest power on Earth
954
01:05:53,016 --> 01:05:56,023
and use it to destroy other people's homes
955
01:05:56,023 --> 01:06:00,056
and enabled a harlot like Thatcher to rule a great nation like Britain.
956
01:06:15,047 --> 01:06:19,011
MAN:Wow, look at that. What the heck is that?
957
01:06:20,052 --> 01:06:22,068
Oh, my God, look at that.
958
01:06:27,016 --> 01:06:28,068
Holy crap!
959
01:06:34,023 --> 01:06:38,071
It's just moving really slowly. Wow!
960
01:06:38,072 --> 01:06:41,024
Look, look, look! Come here, come here! What is it doing?
961
01:06:41,023 --> 01:06:42,056
What the heck?!
962
01:06:45,000 --> 01:06:46,043
Guys, it's...
963
01:06:46,043 --> 01:06:48,011
Whoa!Oh, my gosh!
964
01:06:48,012 --> 01:06:50,004
Wow!
965
01:06:50,003 --> 01:06:52,063
What is happening? Dude, what is happening?!
966
01:06:52,063 --> 01:06:55,076
What is going on? Oh, my gosh!
967
01:06:55,076 --> 01:07:01,059
Oh, my God, guys! Guys, is that a freaking UFO?
968
01:07:02,068 --> 01:07:07,004
Wait, can you get a good video? What is it?What the hell?
969
01:07:09,032 --> 01:07:12,036
In the 1980s, more and more people in the United States
970
01:07:12,036 --> 01:07:15,079
reported seeing unexplained objects and lights in the sky.
971
01:07:17,056 --> 01:07:20,088
At the same time, investigators who believed in UFOs
972
01:07:20,088 --> 01:07:24,072
revealed that they had discovered top-secret government documents
973
01:07:24,072 --> 01:07:28,028
that stated that alien craft had visited Earth.
974
01:07:30,092 --> 01:07:33,072
The documents had been hidden for 20 years
975
01:07:33,072 --> 01:07:37,024
and they seemed to prove that there had been a giant cover-up.
976
01:07:39,023 --> 01:07:42,036
But, actually, the reality was even stranger.
977
01:07:42,036 --> 01:07:45,088
The American Government might have been making it all up,
978
01:07:45,088 --> 01:07:48,068
that they had created a fake conspiracy
979
01:07:48,068 --> 01:07:51,048
to deliberately mislead the population.
980
01:07:53,000 --> 01:07:55,056
The lights that people imagined were UFOs
981
01:07:55,056 --> 01:07:59,059
may, in reality, have been new high-technology weapons
982
01:07:59,059 --> 01:08:02,019
that the US Government were testing.
983
01:08:07,019 --> 01:08:09,023
The government had developed the weapons
984
01:08:09,023 --> 01:08:10,071
because they, in turn,
985
01:08:10,072 --> 01:08:14,059
imagined that the Soviet Union was far stronger than it was
986
01:08:14,059 --> 01:08:17,000
and still wanted to conquer the world.
987
01:08:19,015 --> 01:08:21,091
The government wanted to keep the weapons secret,
988
01:08:21,091 --> 01:08:25,076
but they couldn't always hide their appearance in the skies
989
01:08:25,076 --> 01:08:29,043
so it is alleged that they chose a number of people to use
990
01:08:29,043 --> 01:08:34,000
to spread the rumour that these were really alien visitations.
991
01:08:34,000 --> 01:08:36,043
One of those chosen was called Paul Bennewitz
992
01:08:36,043 --> 01:08:40,019
who lived outside a giant air base in New Mexico
993
01:08:40,020 --> 01:08:42,088
and had noticed strange things going on.
994
01:08:44,051 --> 01:08:46,059
Years later,
995
01:08:46,060 --> 01:08:49,016
I sat down with Paul at dinner
996
01:08:49,015 --> 01:08:52,083
and told Paul exactly that everything we did
997
01:08:52,083 --> 01:08:56,043
was a sanctioned counterintelligence operation to convince him
998
01:08:56,043 --> 01:08:58,083
that what he was seeing was UFOs
999
01:08:58,083 --> 01:09:01,023
and that what we didn't want him to know was
1000
01:09:01,024 --> 01:09:03,096
that he had tapped into something on the base
1001
01:09:03,095 --> 01:09:07,051
and we didn't want him to ever disclose that.
1002
01:09:07,051 --> 01:09:10,043
We kind of planted the seed in Paul
1003
01:09:10,043 --> 01:09:12,064
that what he was seeing and what he was hearing
1004
01:09:12,064 --> 01:09:15,020
and what he was collecting was, in fact,
1005
01:09:15,020 --> 01:09:16,080
probably, maybe, UFOs.
1006
01:09:16,079 --> 01:09:19,087
Bennewitz and others chosen by the agency
1007
01:09:19,087 --> 01:09:23,055
were, it is alleged, given a series of forged documents.
1008
01:09:23,055 --> 01:09:26,063
Many of them were top-secret memos by the military
1009
01:09:26,064 --> 01:09:30,039
describing sightings of unidentified aerial vehicles.
1010
01:09:32,051 --> 01:09:35,007
The documents spread like wildfire
1011
01:09:35,007 --> 01:09:38,028
and they formed the basis for the wave of belief in UFOs
1012
01:09:38,028 --> 01:09:41,088
that would spread through America in the 1990s.
1013
01:09:45,055 --> 01:09:47,079
What the fuck is that?That's a...
1014
01:09:53,064 --> 01:09:55,016
That's crazy, bro.
1015
01:09:58,047 --> 01:10:00,007
Is that that space, uh...?
1016
01:10:01,087 --> 01:10:05,019
And it also fuelled the wider growing belief
1017
01:10:05,020 --> 01:10:07,060
that governments lied to you -
1018
01:10:07,060 --> 01:10:09,072
that conspiracies were real.
1019
01:10:13,051 --> 01:10:16,007
What the Reagan administration were doing,
1020
01:10:16,007 --> 01:10:19,023
both with Colonel Gaddafi and with the UFOs,
1021
01:10:19,024 --> 01:10:22,012
was a blurring of fact and fiction
1022
01:10:22,011 --> 01:10:24,076
but it was part of an even broader programme.
1023
01:10:26,020 --> 01:10:29,044
The President's advisers had given it a name -
1024
01:10:29,043 --> 01:10:32,019
they called it "perception management"
1025
01:10:32,020 --> 01:10:35,000
and it became a central part of the American Government
1026
01:10:35,000 --> 01:10:36,051
during the 1980s.
1027
01:10:38,091 --> 01:10:43,067
The aim was to tell dramatic stories that grabbed the public imagination,
1028
01:10:43,068 --> 01:10:45,052
not just about the Middle East,
1029
01:10:45,051 --> 01:10:47,067
but about Central America
1030
01:10:47,068 --> 01:10:49,036
and the Soviet Union
1031
01:10:49,036 --> 01:10:53,024
and it didn't matter if the stories were true or not,
1032
01:10:53,024 --> 01:10:57,039
providing they distracted people and you, the politician,
1033
01:10:57,039 --> 01:10:59,032
from having to deal with
1034
01:10:59,032 --> 01:11:03,003
the intractable complexities of the real world.
1035
01:11:12,076 --> 01:11:14,020
Reality became less and less
1036
01:11:14,020 --> 01:11:16,060
of an important factor in American politics.
1037
01:11:16,060 --> 01:11:19,024
It wasn't what was real that was driving anything
1038
01:11:19,024 --> 01:11:21,032
or the facts driving anything.
1039
01:11:21,032 --> 01:11:23,076
It was how you could turn those facts or twist those facts
1040
01:11:23,076 --> 01:11:26,064
or even make up the facts to make your opponent look bad.
1041
01:11:26,064 --> 01:11:29,024
So, perception management became a device
1042
01:11:29,024 --> 01:11:32,092
and the facts could be twisted. Anything could be anything.
1043
01:11:32,091 --> 01:11:36,000
It becomes how can you manipulate the American people?
1044
01:11:36,000 --> 01:11:38,064
And, in the process, reality becomes what?
1045
01:11:38,064 --> 01:11:42,032
Reality becomes simply something to play with to achieve that end.
1046
01:11:42,032 --> 01:11:45,028
Reality is not important in this context.
1047
01:11:45,028 --> 01:11:47,088
Reality is simply something that you handle.
1048
01:11:52,011 --> 01:11:55,072
But something was about to happen that would demonstrate dramatically
1049
01:11:55,072 --> 01:12:00,083
just how far the American Government had detached from reality.
1050
01:12:00,083 --> 01:12:03,011
The Soviet Empire was about to implode.
1051
01:12:06,079 --> 01:12:09,036
And no-one, none of the politicians,
1052
01:12:09,036 --> 01:12:10,083
or the journalists,
1053
01:12:10,083 --> 01:12:12,063
or the think tank experts,
1054
01:12:12,064 --> 01:12:13,096
or the economists,
1055
01:12:13,095 --> 01:12:16,027
or the academics saw it coming.
1056
01:12:51,032 --> 01:12:53,003
That's it! Whoo!
1057
01:12:53,003 --> 01:12:55,028
Get ready to work out.
1058
01:13:34,028 --> 01:13:35,056
GUNSHOTS
1059
01:14:51,076 --> 01:14:53,064
The collapse of the Soviet Union
1060
01:14:53,064 --> 01:14:57,020
also had a powerful effect on the West.
1061
01:14:57,020 --> 01:15:00,040
For many, it symbolised the final failure of the dream
1062
01:15:00,039 --> 01:15:03,072
that politics could be used to build a new kind of world.
1063
01:15:06,000 --> 01:15:09,072
What was going to emerge instead was a new system that had nothing
1064
01:15:09,072 --> 01:15:11,036
to do with politics.
1065
01:15:12,060 --> 01:15:15,080
A system whose aim was not to try and change things,
1066
01:15:15,079 --> 01:15:19,036
but rather, to manage a post-political world.
1067
01:15:24,091 --> 01:15:28,007
One of the first people to describe this dramatic change
1068
01:15:28,007 --> 01:15:31,068
was a left-wing German political thinker called Ulrich Beck.
1069
01:15:33,003 --> 01:15:36,011
Beck said that any politician who believed that they could take
1070
01:15:36,011 --> 01:15:39,015
control of society, and drive it forward to build
1071
01:15:39,015 --> 01:15:41,091
a better future, was now seen as dangerous.
1072
01:15:44,039 --> 01:15:47,079
In the past, politicians might have been able to do this.
1073
01:15:47,079 --> 01:15:51,028
But now they were faced with what he called "a runaway world."
1074
01:15:52,055 --> 01:15:55,027
Where things were so complex and interconnected,
1075
01:15:55,028 --> 01:15:59,020
and modern technologies so potentially dangerous
1076
01:15:59,020 --> 01:16:03,076
that it was impossible to predict the outcomes of anything you did.
1077
01:16:03,076 --> 01:16:07,000
The catalogue of environmental disasters proved this.
1078
01:16:08,076 --> 01:16:12,011
Politicians would have to give up any idea of trying to change
1079
01:16:12,011 --> 01:16:13,091
the world.
1080
01:16:13,091 --> 01:16:17,031
Instead, their new aim would be to try and predict the dangers
1081
01:16:17,032 --> 01:16:21,007
in the future, and then, find ways to avoid those risks.
1082
01:16:25,043 --> 01:16:27,091
Although Beck came from the political left,
1083
01:16:27,091 --> 01:16:30,071
the world he saw coming was deeply conservative.
1084
01:16:32,064 --> 01:16:33,088
The picture he gave
1085
01:16:33,087 --> 01:16:38,027
was of a political class reduced to trying to steer society
1086
01:16:38,028 --> 01:16:41,000
into a dark and frightening future.
1087
01:16:41,000 --> 01:16:42,079
Constantly peering forward
1088
01:16:42,079 --> 01:16:45,072
and trying to see the risks coming towards them.
1089
01:16:47,015 --> 01:16:50,055
Their only aim, to avoid those risks
1090
01:16:50,055 --> 01:16:52,095
and keep society stable.
1091
01:16:52,095 --> 01:16:55,071
It only lasted for a few seconds so you were basically shocked,
1092
01:16:55,072 --> 01:16:57,083
you really didn't know what was going on at the time.
1093
01:16:57,083 --> 01:17:00,028
Where were you in the building and where was the explosion?
1094
01:17:00,028 --> 01:17:02,079
EXPLOSION Oh, my God!
1095
01:17:04,024 --> 01:17:06,088
But a system that could anticipate the future
1096
01:17:06,087 --> 01:17:10,051
and keep society stable was already being built,
1097
01:17:10,051 --> 01:17:13,063
pieced together from all kinds of different,
1098
01:17:13,064 --> 01:17:16,020
and sometimes surprising, sources.
1099
01:17:16,020 --> 01:17:18,004
All of them outside politics.
1100
01:17:19,060 --> 01:17:22,060
One part of it was taking shape in a tiny town
1101
01:17:22,060 --> 01:17:26,064
in the far north-west of the United States called East Wenatchee.
1102
01:17:28,020 --> 01:17:29,072
It was a giant computer
1103
01:17:29,072 --> 01:17:32,076
whose job was to make the future predictable.
1104
01:17:41,087 --> 01:17:44,076
The man building it was a banker called Larry Fink.
1105
01:17:48,003 --> 01:17:49,019
Back in 1986,
1106
01:17:49,020 --> 01:17:52,000
Mr Fink's career had collapsed.
1107
01:17:52,000 --> 01:17:53,024
Shoot!
1108
01:17:55,000 --> 01:17:58,060
He lost 100 million in a deal and had been sacked.
1109
01:18:00,055 --> 01:18:03,031
He became determined it wouldn't happen again.
1110
01:18:07,064 --> 01:18:10,036
Fink started a company called BlackRock and built
1111
01:18:10,036 --> 01:18:12,072
a computer he called Aladdin.
1112
01:18:14,000 --> 01:18:16,007
It is housed in a series of large sheds
1113
01:18:16,007 --> 01:18:18,095
in the apple orchards outside Wenatchee.
1114
01:18:21,039 --> 01:18:24,087
Fink's aim was to use the computer to predict, with certainty,
1115
01:18:24,087 --> 01:18:27,095
what the risk of any deal or investment was going to be.
1116
01:18:29,068 --> 01:18:32,088
The computer constantly monitors the world
1117
01:18:32,087 --> 01:18:35,036
and it take things that it sees happening,
1118
01:18:35,036 --> 01:18:38,000
and then, compares them to events in the past.
1119
01:18:39,076 --> 01:18:42,079
It can do this because it has, in its memory, a vast history
1120
01:18:42,079 --> 01:18:47,064
of the past 50 years. Not just financial, but all kinds of events.
1121
01:18:49,028 --> 01:18:51,064
Out of the millions and millions of correlations,
1122
01:18:51,064 --> 01:18:54,052
the computer then spots possible disasters,
1123
01:18:54,051 --> 01:18:57,019
possible dangers lying in the future
1124
01:18:57,020 --> 01:19:01,016
and moves the investments to avoid any radical change
1125
01:19:01,015 --> 01:19:03,063
and keep the system stable.
1126
01:19:03,064 --> 01:19:07,024
Today, I'm going to deliver 1.8 million reports.
1127
01:19:07,024 --> 01:19:09,024
Execute 25,000 trades.
1128
01:19:09,024 --> 01:19:10,079
And avert 3,000 disasters.
1129
01:19:10,079 --> 01:19:13,043
I'm going to monitor interest rates in Europe.
1130
01:19:13,043 --> 01:19:16,007
Silver prices in Asia. Droughts in the Midwest.
1131
01:19:16,007 --> 01:19:18,068
I'm going to witness 4 billion shares change hands on the
1132
01:19:18,068 --> 01:19:20,000
New York Stock Exchange.
1133
01:19:20,000 --> 01:19:24,011
And record the effects on 14 trillion in assets
1134
01:19:24,011 --> 01:19:26,059
across 20,000 portfolios.
1135
01:19:26,060 --> 01:19:28,096
I am Aladdin.I am Aladdin.
1136
01:19:28,095 --> 01:19:32,043
And, today, I'll find the numbers behind the numbers.
1137
01:19:32,043 --> 01:19:34,064
I will see the trends the models don't.
1138
01:19:34,064 --> 01:19:36,032
The connections.The risks.
1139
01:19:37,043 --> 01:19:41,036
I am Aladdin.I am Aladdin, and I will get the data right.
1140
01:19:41,036 --> 01:19:43,024
I am 25 million lines of code.
1141
01:19:43,024 --> 01:19:45,028
Written by hundreds of people.
1142
01:19:45,028 --> 01:19:46,092
Across two decades.
1143
01:19:46,091 --> 01:19:48,076
I'm smarter than any algorithm.
1144
01:19:48,076 --> 01:19:50,076
More powerful than any processor.
1145
01:19:50,076 --> 01:19:52,000
Because I am Aladdin.
1146
01:19:52,000 --> 01:19:53,024
Because I am Aladdin.
1147
01:19:54,043 --> 01:19:55,072
I am Aladdin.
1148
01:19:55,072 --> 01:19:57,024
I am Aladdin...
1149
01:20:01,003 --> 01:20:04,015
Aladdin has proved to be incredibly successful.
1150
01:20:04,015 --> 01:20:06,055
The assets it guides and controls
1151
01:20:06,055 --> 01:20:08,059
now amount to 15 trillion,
1152
01:20:08,060 --> 01:20:12,008
which is 7% of the world's total wealth.
1153
01:20:18,000 --> 01:20:20,083
But Wenatchee was also a dramatic example
1154
01:20:20,083 --> 01:20:22,063
of another kind of craving
1155
01:20:22,064 --> 01:20:24,084
for stability and reassurance.
1156
01:20:24,083 --> 01:20:26,083
More of its citizens took Prozac
1157
01:20:26,083 --> 01:20:29,051
than practically any other town in America.
1158
01:20:31,043 --> 01:20:35,087
When a person's central nervous system is changed by an SSRI,
1159
01:20:35,087 --> 01:20:38,091
with that medicine they will view things differently
1160
01:20:38,091 --> 01:20:41,047
and they will be strangers.
1161
01:20:41,047 --> 01:20:43,019
They look at things differently.
1162
01:20:43,020 --> 01:20:45,032
I have a chemical up here that changes me.
1163
01:20:45,032 --> 01:20:46,047
I think differently.
1164
01:20:46,047 --> 01:20:49,032
For me it was like walking around like this for my whole life
1165
01:20:49,032 --> 01:20:52,016
and really not knowing that I was near-sighted. I mean, really.
1166
01:20:52,015 --> 01:20:54,011
I mean, no-one had ever offered me glasses.
1167
01:20:54,011 --> 01:20:56,063
And then, all of a sudden, here comes somebody that says,
1168
01:20:56,064 --> 01:20:59,016
"OK, now try these on. Try this Prozac on."
1169
01:20:59,015 --> 01:21:02,019
And I tried it on and for the first time in my life I went,
1170
01:21:02,020 --> 01:21:05,084
"Whoa! Is this the way reality really is?"
1171
01:21:05,083 --> 01:21:08,015
Your perception can be changed and it's frightening
1172
01:21:08,015 --> 01:21:10,000
and it's scary to people.
1173
01:21:10,000 --> 01:21:12,095
It speaks of science fiction almost.
1174
01:21:20,011 --> 01:21:24,076
Well, the medicine just kind of lets you listen to what needs to go on.
1175
01:21:24,076 --> 01:21:27,015
And then your doctor, every time you come back, says,
1176
01:21:27,015 --> 01:21:29,043
"You're looking so much better."
1177
01:21:29,043 --> 01:21:31,095
And then every time I go in he goes,
1178
01:21:31,095 --> 01:21:34,051
"You're so beautiful." You know?
1179
01:21:34,051 --> 01:21:37,063
He isn't even sucking up. He's being nice, you know?
1180
01:21:37,064 --> 01:21:40,020
"You're beautiful, you're nice, you're friendly.
1181
01:21:40,020 --> 01:21:44,008
"You've got so much going for you." I think, "Yeah, I do."
1182
01:21:44,007 --> 01:21:45,095
So, I go out and tell my friends,
1183
01:21:45,095 --> 01:21:48,023
"I feel so much better about myself."
1184
01:21:48,024 --> 01:21:51,036
Mom goes out, "Oh, I feel so much better about myself."
1185
01:21:51,036 --> 01:21:54,043
So, your friends start saying, "I've seen such an improvement.
1186
01:21:54,043 --> 01:21:56,032
"I've seen such improvement."
1187
01:21:56,032 --> 01:21:59,028
And everybody improves all the way around. They see improvement.
1188
01:21:59,028 --> 01:22:03,016
It's like everybody's brainwashing each other into being happy.
1189
01:22:05,072 --> 01:22:08,036
But there was a more effective way of reassuring people
1190
01:22:08,036 --> 01:22:12,015
that was being developed that did not involve medication.
1191
01:22:15,032 --> 01:22:18,016
It, too, came from computer systems
1192
01:22:18,015 --> 01:22:20,087
but this time, artificial intelligence.
1193
01:22:22,011 --> 01:22:25,007
But the way to do it had been discovered by accident.
1194
01:22:33,047 --> 01:22:36,015
Back in the 1960s, there had been optimistic dreams
1195
01:22:36,015 --> 01:22:38,079
that it would be possible to develop computers
1196
01:22:38,079 --> 01:22:40,083
that could think like human beings.
1197
01:22:43,064 --> 01:22:46,060
Scientists then spent years trying to programme the rules
1198
01:22:46,060 --> 01:22:48,036
that governed human thought...
1199
01:22:50,060 --> 01:22:52,012
..but they never worked.
99358
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