A new world order?

Zeitgeist 2007

This one is a conspiracy theorists' galore. It just reinforces their belief that the world is not as it seems. There is always a hidden agenda and a hidden hand behind every occurrence around us. In this documentary presentation, the director looks at three aspects of world control, presented in 3 parts.

In the first part, the film looks at religion. He infers that most religions in the world follow a particular pattern and is related to pagan myths and the study of astronomy. There are many similar narratives in the stories of Horus, Krishna and Greek gods. Even the symbol of the crucifix is pagan-derived and the Sun is the real God. The idea of religion as a tool of mind control is put forward to us. More murders are
carried out in the name of religion than to save lives.

The second part illustrates the many loose ends that do not tie up with the 9-11 hijack of planes and the Twin Tower disaster. They are selling the idea that the mishap was a carefully-planned demolition exercise by the powers-that-be to justify a just war! Now, who are the real powers that be? This is covered in the final part.

The bankers, in essence, are the real power brokers of the world. The American Independence War with England was over insistence of the colonial masters of using pounds in the colony, denying the American to use their currency as well as imposing high interest rates on the loan which could only be taken by Britain. After independence, over time, the US did the same mistake of giving the financiers a control over their country. The group of bankers controls the market, let it plummet through schemes and arm-twisted the Government to establish the Federal Reserve Bank which they control. This group of bankers, even as way back as World War 1, through World War 2, Vietnam war all the way to 9-11 orchestrated mishaps to American citizens to stir the emotions of the American to justify war. The downing of Lusitania in WW1 was not by a German submarine! Hostility towards Pearl Harbour was made to the US by Australian intelligence. Inactivity was apparently on purpose. The businesses benefitted from both sides of the warring factions. Standard Oil of the Rockefellers fueled German airplanes to bomb London. Nazi's money was laundered via Union Bank in New York!  The Bank President was Prescott Bush, the grandfather of GW Bush! The bombing US ships in Bay Of Tonkin in 1964 which marked the entry of full deployment of troops was allegedly staged by the US.

The accusations become wilder as they propose a plan to develop a single World government combining a few business islets, North American Union, EU, African Union and the South Asian Union.

3 Negatives and Might make a Right?

The Power of Nightmare (2004)
The rise of politics of fear
#03. The Shadows in the Cave
With the appointment of Bill Clinton as the President and the fail of various uprisings to establish Muslim governments in the Islamic countries, it looked both the neoconservatives and the jihadists movements were doomed to fail. They appear to be marginalized, losing the flavour of the times. The turning point came with the 2001 destruction of the New York Twin Towers.
After failing to receive people's support in Algeria and Egypt, in 1998, Zawahari and Osama retreated to the barren land of Afghanistan. They then changed the strategy. Instead of creating mayhem in Islamic countries, they creating ruckus in concerns of the enemies of the Muslims (in their eyes).Attacks were targeted at embassies, hotels and outlets frequented by their enemy's citizens (read Americans) in Kenya, Tanzania. Volunteers from various countries who came to Afghanistan to serve in the name of religion were recruited as suicide bombers who died in the name of religion, not for hatred of Americans!
Osama was a financier for many anti American activities. He himself did not own any army to boast. For media publicity, he used to hire rag-tag soldier for PR!
Just like that, Khalid Sheikh Muhamad approached BinLaden for funds to bomb American. This event sprang the neoconservatives into action. They quickly cooked up a myth, portraying Osama as an all powerful General monitoring his army from the fortress high up in the caves of Tora Bora in Afghanistan. They even gave a name to the non existent movement - Al Qaeda. The jihadist on the other side were thrilled by such recognition!
 The familiar faces in the Reagan administration who created an enviable all powerful enemy in a collapsing Soviet came to the forefront - Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.
US allied with the Northern Alliance, the warlords who were fighting with the Talibans (ultra conservative group) and started paying them by the count of head of death soldiers that they killed.

Even though there was no evidence of such a sophisticated network, the neoconservative created such a fantasy, a frenzy with terms like sleeper cells and dirty bombs which could spray lethal doses of radiation to the general public!
Slowly, the web of deceit began to implicate Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attack and justified an attack on sovereign country.
Politicians now have a different role as a protector from fear of an imagined bleak future. Just like the Green Movement in the 80s who advocated that the Governments of the day had the moral obligation to protect the world from environmental degradation even though they could not prove the decay then, the politicians embarked on the Precautionary Principle. It says that 'not having the evidence that something might be a problem is not a reason for not taking action as if were a problem'. Hence, action without evidence seem justified!
In the beginning, two thinkers (Kutb and Strauss) were disillusioned with the world we lived in. In pursuit of a better world, it appears that they have both failed. The world, as it is today, is as confused and chaotic, if not, worse than it was in the 50s.

I can see clearly now!

The Power of Nightmare (2004)
The rise of politics of fear
#2. The Phantom Victory

The neoconservatives and Islamic jihadists have one common goal- to elevate their community. In the mid 70s and 80s, USSR was also their common enemy. Their playground then was Afghanistan. When Afghanistan was attacked, Ronald Reagan and his band of neoconservatives took it upon themselves to arm the Mujahideens with latest technology and weapons as well as plaster them with tons of money to crush the Soviet power.
Pretty soon, the Muslim clergymen around the Muslim passed a fatwa (decree) calling it a religious duty to help their Muslim brothers to protect their motherland. This just drew support in many forms. Through Abdullah Azam's enterprising efforts, help came from Arabs, members of Muslim Brotherhood and other more radical Islamic groups. Some prisons were more than willing to relieve their radical inmates for this jihad. These people wanted to use Afghanistan as a model to make Islam as a nucleus to flush out corrupt regimes in the Middle East.

 Ayman Zawahari (influenced by Sayid Kutb) recruited the rich Osama Binladen to plan for a post war Afghanistan. Soon there were two groups of freedom fighters emerged - the moderate ones under Azam and the radical Islamists who were non-Afghanis, most Arabic jihadists. These jihadists feel that democracy was unIslamic as it gave politicians power to make laws. Only laws of God and Koran can be used on Earth, hence politicians or people condoning politicians should be killed!
The Afghani war was taking its toll on USSR. Body count was increasing and the economy took a nose dive. Gorbachev tried to break a deal with Reagan to negotiate peace and allay his fear on the probable direction of a radical Islamic government in Afghanistan but it was plainly refused. The Soviets left wounded.
Both the US and the Mujahideen thought that they had both won the war all by themselves. The neoconservatives thought their weaponry and planning of fighting violence with violence did the trick. The Islamists thought their dedication and quest for the Truth won the war!
In reality, the unconvincing and brittle Soviet system of governance collapsed like a pack of cards. The collapse of the Berlin Wall further convinced the neoconservatives that their way of violence freed people and spread democracy. In reality also, it was a phantom victory, nobody actually won the war.
Azam died suspiciously in a car bomb blast, giving Zawahari and Osama to out power the struggle. The fire of Islamic revolutionism spread to countries like Algeria and Egypt. Local election favoured radical groups who planned to abolish democratic elections after they had won. The army then moved in to enforce martial law. 

Fall of Iron Curtain

 Again people are seen as zombies, just following the masses with no mind of their own and no foresight.
In the 80s, Saddam Hussein was an American ally. That changed when he attacked Kuwait. It prompted the stability and peace loving Bush Sr, a non neoconservative (like Kissinger) to interfere and send Saddam's army back to Iraq. This disappointed the neoconservatives.
They returned with a vengeance. They campaigned to create religion as a basis of society, even though they do not believe in religion. A noble lie for the greater benefit of the nation is acceptable in their dictionary. They infiltrate the Republican Party, advocating moralism and opposing multiculturalism. This turned off the people who voted the Democratic candidate, Bill Clinton.
After failed attempts at establishing an Islamic institutions  in the Islamic countries, the jihadists retreated into the hostile terrains of Afghanistan. Osama and Zawahari with their warped sense of justification went on spree of killing politicians and all who supported politicians, i.e. general public. Their perception is that all politicians are corrupt and all those who supported them need to be punished. They, as the vanguards of the decree of God, had to do what they have to do.
Across the Atlantic, the spread evangelicalism and moral advocacy did not go well with the American public and the Republican party was booted out. In a way, the ideology of Straussian was similar to Marxism! In comes Bill Clinton, the subject of witch-hunt . Barrage of accusations were hurled to discredit the Clintons via Arkansas project - White Water shady land deal (enen though the Clintons lost money), drug smuggling, sexual predatory and even murder (it turned out to be suicide). After many failures, the linchpin was Monica Lewinsky's dress and the affair which managed to try and impeach the president, but in vain! Kenneth Starr and his fellow neoconservatives found a phantom enemy in Bill Clinton.

Both fighting to same end?

The Power of Nightmare (2004)
The rise of politics of fear
#01. "Baby, it's cold outside!"

Another good BBC documentary produced and directed by Adam Curtis. This time around, he is trying to make sense of the world around us by trying to analyse the genesis of Islamic jihadist and the American neoconservatives. He tells us that the seed of their origin is America itself.

Politicians used to give hope to their people, promising them to bring them to a better world. With the big wars, I suppose, people lost trust in their leaders. They became 'anti-establishment', but now the tide has changed. People have once again given their leader a role to protect them from an increasingly hostile world -so the leaders claim, is the threat over-exaggerated or is it real?

Sayid Qutb

Both the American neoconservatives and the Muslim ultra-conservatives both wish for a better world but instead what they get is a nightmare.
It all started around 1949...

In Colorado, an Egyptian school inspector, Sayid Qutb was sent to the US to learn the school system. The opinion he formed after watching an innocent school dance involving teens slow dancing to the song "Baby, it's cold outside!" changed his opinion about America altogether! He thought that the society was decaying, corrupt, crass, vulgar, materialistic, selfish and self-centred. Even though the community was free, or they thought they were, were actually lost souls. The culture of individualism was actually taking them backwards in civilisation.

Leo Strauss

In Chicago, a political philosopher in the University of Chicago, Leo Strauss stated his fear of the destructive nature of individualism that would lead to nihilism (anarchy). At an era when Man was behaving like herds of animals when everything is possible, and boundaries of morality are blurred, he felt that to give confidence to people, the politicians ought to create necessary myth and delusions to move forward as a nation. Strauss' favourite TV shows, 'Gunsmoke' and 'Perry Mason' epitomises his train of thought - where a group of elite, at least in public life, irrespective of what they thought privately, used whatever method and trick possible to maintain law and order.

After his stint in the USA, Kutb returned home to see a nation already immersed in American culture. He suggested religion as a basis to squash individualism, using vanguards to lead people to be saved from corruption and bring them back to the path of truth. He joined the Muslim Brotherhood movement. In 1952, the movement helped General Nasser to oust the British. After securing power, Nasser forged an alliance with the Americans. CIA was given the task of organising security services. Kutb and his fellow same minded individuals were arrested and tortured via CIA techniques - electrocuted, mauled by savage animals etcetera. He survived incarceration and heart attack. His opinion about humanity regressed. People were regressing, being infected, without realising into barbarism (jahiliyyah). In 1966, he was executed, not without having a mark in the life of people like Ayman Zawahiri who later became the right-hand man of Osama Bin-Laden.

In the USA, 1967 saw the optimistic liberal dominant order crumble with riot and violence. Irving Kristol explored Strauss' theory. People like Paul Wolfowitz, Francis Fukuyama and William Kristol started this neoconservative movement. They tried to destroy the destruction of society by giving a shared purpose in life. They promoted US' unique way of life with a mission against the enemy of the world, i.e. USSR.

In opposition to their suggestion, Kissinger (1972) signed a peace accord with USSR admitting mutual interdependence in a globalised world. With the Watergate scandal and the loss in Vietnam War, neoconservatives infiltrate Washington to assist President Gerald Ford - Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cherney. They created fear against the Soviets even though independent panel never found any evidence of disproportionate weapons. The neoconservatives responded that the Soviets have such a high technology that the armaments and submarines remained undetectable. In reality, however, the Kremlin was crumbling economically and military wise! The war between the good and the bad had begun.

Ayman Zawahiri

In Egypt, by the 70s, it had prospered, and the middle class had expanded. The American ally in Anwar Sadat tried to have peace talks with Israel. The vanguards from the Muslim Brotherhood looked at it as an insult to Islam and plotted Sadat's assassination. Qutb's dream of liberating people via religion materialised through the Iranian Revolution. Islamist jihadist who also pursued the same vision.

On the other side, the neoconservatives were creating new fantasies to support democratic revolutions by supporting groups that support democracy and are under the threat of tyranny.