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The Vanishing American Family by Scuba Z

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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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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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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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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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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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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

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would destabilise his balance of power.

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So, he set out to do the very opposite -

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to fracture the power of the Arab countries,

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by dividing them and breaking their alliances,

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so they would keep each other in check.

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00:17:25,280 --> 00:17:27,040
Kissinger now played a double game.

261
00:17:28,800 --> 00:17:32,080
Or as he termed it, "constructive ambiguity".

262
00:17:34,600 --> 00:17:37,400
In a series of meetings, he persuaded Egypt

263
00:17:37,400 --> 00:17:39,520
to sign a separate agreement with Israel.

264
00:17:40,680 --> 00:17:43,240
But at the same time, he led Assad to believe

265
00:17:43,240 --> 00:17:46,000
that he was working for a wider peace agreement,

266
00:17:46,000 --> 00:17:48,440
one that WOULD include the Palestinians.

267
00:17:53,400 --> 00:17:56,400
In reality, the Palestinians were ignored.

268
00:17:56,400 --> 00:17:59,080
They were irrelevant to the structural balance

269
00:17:59,080 --> 00:18:00,560
of the global system.

270
00:18:07,800 --> 00:18:11,400
The hallmark of Kissinger's thinking about international politics

271
00:18:11,400 --> 00:18:14,800
is its structural design.

272
00:18:14,800 --> 00:18:18,240
Everything is always connected in his mind to everything else.

273
00:18:19,480 --> 00:18:22,120
But his first thoughts are on that level,

274
00:18:22,120 --> 00:18:25,240
on this structural global balance of power level.

275
00:18:26,440 --> 00:18:30,800
And as he addresses questions of human dignity,

276
00:18:30,800 --> 00:18:32,440
human survival, human freedom...

277
00:18:33,480 --> 00:18:35,680
..I think they tend to come into his mind

278
00:18:35,680 --> 00:18:40,480
as an adjunct of the play of nations at the power game.

279
00:18:41,560 --> 00:18:45,160
When Assad found out the truth, it was too late.

280
00:18:45,160 --> 00:18:48,520
In a series of confrontations with Kissinger in Damascus,

281
00:18:48,520 --> 00:18:51,160
Assad raged about this treachery.

282
00:18:52,320 --> 00:18:54,680
He told Kissinger that what he had done

283
00:18:54,680 --> 00:18:58,640
would release demons hidden under the surface of the Arab world.

284
00:19:02,680 --> 00:19:05,280
Kissinger described their meetings.

285
00:19:05,280 --> 00:19:08,160
"Assad's controlled fury," he wrote,

286
00:19:08,160 --> 00:19:11,640
"was all the more impressive for its eerily cold,

287
00:19:11,640 --> 00:19:13,840
"seemingly unemotional, demeanour."

288
00:19:16,760 --> 00:19:19,040
Assad now retreated.

289
00:19:19,040 --> 00:19:22,880
He started to build a giant palace that loomed over Damascus...

290
00:19:24,000 --> 00:19:27,800
.. and his belief that it would be possible to transform the Arab world

291
00:19:27,800 --> 00:19:29,160
began to fade.

292
00:19:30,960 --> 00:19:33,440
A British journalist, who knew Assad, wrote...

293
00:19:33,440 --> 00:19:35,880
"Assad's optimism has gone.

294
00:19:36,880 --> 00:19:38,760
"A trust in the future has gone.

295
00:19:39,920 --> 00:19:44,800
"What has emerged instead is a brutal, vengeful Assad,

296
00:19:44,800 --> 00:19:47,680
"who believes in nothing except revenge."

297
00:20:21,840 --> 00:20:24,280
The original dream of the Soviet Union

298
00:20:24,280 --> 00:20:27,040
had been to create a glorious new world.

299
00:20:27,040 --> 00:20:29,200
A world where not only the society,

300
00:20:29,200 --> 00:20:32,920
but the people themselves would be transformed.

301
00:20:32,920 --> 00:20:36,440
They would become new and better kinds of human beings.

302
00:20:41,600 --> 00:20:45,560
But by the 1980s, it was clear that the dream had failed.

303
00:20:53,560 --> 00:20:55,840
The Soviet Union became instead

304
00:20:55,840 --> 00:20:59,160
a society where no-one believed in anything

305
00:20:59,160 --> 00:21:00,960
or had any vision of the future.

306
00:23:27,880 --> 00:23:31,360
Those who ran the Soviet Union had believed that they could plan

307
00:23:31,360 --> 00:23:34,200
and manage a new kind of socialist society.

308
00:23:35,560 --> 00:23:37,600
But they had discovered that it was impossible

309
00:23:37,600 --> 00:23:39,440
to control and predict everything

310
00:23:39,440 --> 00:23:41,840
and the plan had run out of control.

311
00:23:43,440 --> 00:23:47,240
But rather than reveal this, the technocrats began to pretend

312
00:23:47,240 --> 00:23:50,440
that everything was still going according to plan.

313
00:23:51,520 --> 00:23:55,480
And what emerged instead was a fake version of the society.

314
00:23:56,800 --> 00:24:00,040
The Soviet Union became a society where everyone knew

315
00:24:00,040 --> 00:24:02,760
that what their leaders said was not real

316
00:24:02,760 --> 00:24:04,960
because they could see with their own eyes

317
00:24:04,960 --> 00:24:07,000
that the economy was falling apart.

318
00:24:08,080 --> 00:24:12,160
But everybody had to play along and pretend that it WAS real

319
00:24:12,160 --> 00:24:15,080
because no-one could imagine any alternative.

320
00:24:16,960 --> 00:24:20,280
One Soviet writer called it "hypernormalisation".

321
00:24:21,600 --> 00:24:23,560
You were so much a part of the system

322
00:24:23,560 --> 00:24:26,880
that it was impossible to see beyond it.

323
00:24:26,880 --> 00:24:29,360
The fakeness was hypernormal.

324
00:24:40,720 --> 00:24:43,360
In this stagnant world, two brothers -

325
00:24:43,360 --> 00:24:46,120
called Arkady and Boris Strugatsky -

326
00:24:46,120 --> 00:24:49,480
became the inspiration of a growing new dissident movement.

327
00:24:50,880 --> 00:24:55,080
They weren't politicians, they were science fiction writers,

328
00:24:55,080 --> 00:24:56,480
and in their stories,

329
00:24:56,480 --> 00:24:59,720
they expressed the strange mood that was rising up

330
00:24:59,720 --> 00:25:01,600
as the Soviet Empire collapsed.

331
00:25:03,200 --> 00:25:05,920
Their most famous book was called Roadside Picnic.

332
00:25:07,240 --> 00:25:10,680
It is set in a world that seems like the present,

333
00:25:10,680 --> 00:25:14,160
except there is a zone that has been created by an alien force.

334
00:25:16,120 --> 00:25:18,680
People, known as "stalkers", go into the zone.

335
00:25:20,080 --> 00:25:22,480
They find that nothing is what it seems,

336
00:25:22,480 --> 00:25:24,760
that reality changes minute by minute.

337
00:25:25,920 --> 00:25:27,960
Shadows go the wrong way.

338
00:25:27,960 --> 00:25:30,680
There are hidden forces that twist your body

339
00:25:30,680 --> 00:25:32,760
and change the way you think and feel.

340
00:25:35,520 --> 00:25:37,360
The picture the Strugatskys gave

341
00:25:37,360 --> 00:25:39,760
was of a world where nothing was fixed.

342
00:25:40,840 --> 00:25:45,000
Where reality - both what you saw and what you believed -

343
00:25:45,000 --> 00:25:47,280
had become shifting and unstable.

344
00:25:55,760 --> 00:25:59,840
And in 1979, the film director Andrei Tarkovsky

345
00:25:59,840 --> 00:26:02,920
made a film that was based on Roadside Picnic.

346
00:26:02,920 --> 00:26:04,720
He called it Stalker.

347
00:27:13,840 --> 00:27:16,360
I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear...

348
00:27:16,360 --> 00:27:18,080
.. That I will faithfully execute

349
00:27:18,080 --> 00:27:20,840
the office of president of the United States.

350
00:27:20,840 --> 00:27:22,320
.. that I will faithfully execute

351
00:27:22,320 --> 00:27:25,800
the office of president of the United States.

352
00:27:25,800 --> 00:27:29,320
The new president of America had a new vision of the world.

353
00:27:30,520 --> 00:27:33,840
It wasn't the harsh realism of Henry Kissinger any longer,

354
00:27:33,840 --> 00:27:35,560
it was different -

355
00:27:35,560 --> 00:27:38,240
it was a simple, moral crusade,

356
00:27:38,240 --> 00:27:42,240
where America had a special destiny to fight evil

357
00:27:42,240 --> 00:27:44,320
and to make the world a better place.

358
00:27:47,160 --> 00:27:50,280
The places and the periods in which man has known freedom

359
00:27:50,280 --> 00:27:51,640
are few and far between -

360
00:27:51,640 --> 00:27:54,400
just scattered moments on the span of time.

361
00:27:54,400 --> 00:27:56,960
And most of those moments have been ours.

362
00:27:56,960 --> 00:28:01,920
The American people have a genius for great and unselfish deeds.

363
00:28:01,920 --> 00:28:04,080
Into the hands of America,

364
00:28:04,080 --> 00:28:07,560
God has placed the destiny of an afflicted mankind.

365
00:28:09,240 --> 00:28:10,600
God bless America.

366
00:28:14,800 --> 00:28:17,400
But this crusade was going to lead Reagan

367
00:28:17,400 --> 00:28:20,680
to come face-to-face with Henry Kissinger's legacy...

368
00:28:21,760 --> 00:28:26,360
.. and, above all, the vengeful fury of President Assad of Syria.

369
00:28:29,560 --> 00:28:32,080
Israel was now determined

370
00:28:32,080 --> 00:28:34,960
to finally destroy the power of the Palestinians.

371
00:28:36,600 --> 00:28:39,440
And, in 1982, they sent a massive army

372
00:28:39,440 --> 00:28:42,320
to encircle the Palestinian camps in the Lebanon.

373
00:28:43,480 --> 00:28:47,960
Do you know... Do you know how strong the Israelis are?

374
00:28:47,960 --> 00:28:52,080
Do you know how many tanks they have outside Beirut?

375
00:28:52,080 --> 00:28:53,760
Do you know how strong they are?

376
00:29:09,160 --> 00:29:11,240
That means "We are not ready to surrender".

377
00:29:16,800 --> 00:29:18,320
Young, young, young!

378
00:29:22,640 --> 00:29:24,400
Keep going!

379
00:29:26,080 --> 00:29:29,880
Dashed into this building here because the PLO guys with us

380
00:29:29,880 --> 00:29:32,640
expect that, sooner or later, there will be a huge explosion.

381
00:29:32,640 --> 00:29:37,080
There've been several of these in the last few minutes.

382
00:29:37,080 --> 00:29:38,160
As you can see,

383
00:29:38,160 --> 00:29:41,720
there's enormous damage in all the buildings round here.

384
00:29:56,960 --> 00:29:58,440
Quick, quick!

385
00:30:16,560 --> 00:30:19,600
Two months later, thousands of Palestinian refugees

386
00:30:19,600 --> 00:30:21,400
were massacred in the camps.

387
00:30:22,600 --> 00:30:24,960
It horrified the world.

388
00:30:24,960 --> 00:30:26,920
But what was even more shocking

389
00:30:26,920 --> 00:30:29,240
was that Israel had allowed it to happen.

390
00:30:30,360 --> 00:30:32,120
Its troops had stood by and watched

391
00:30:32,120 --> 00:30:35,600
as a Christian Lebanese faction murdered the Palestinians.

392
00:30:41,680 --> 00:30:44,800
This was the first of the massacres we discovered yesterday.

393
00:30:44,800 --> 00:30:48,720
Now, 24 hours later, the stench here is appalling.

394
00:30:48,720 --> 00:30:50,160
But the effects on the Israelis

395
00:30:50,160 --> 00:30:52,240
of what their Christian allies did here

396
00:30:52,240 --> 00:30:54,480
and in dozens of other places around this camp

397
00:30:54,480 --> 00:30:56,160
are going to be immense.

398
00:30:56,160 --> 00:30:59,480
There's always been a risk of such massacres if Christian militiamen

399
00:30:59,480 --> 00:31:01,960
were allowed to come into Palestinian camps,

400
00:31:01,960 --> 00:31:03,920
and the Israelis seem to have done nothing

401
00:31:03,920 --> 00:31:06,800
to prevent them coming into this one.

402
00:31:06,800 --> 00:31:09,680
In the face of the horror and the growing chaos,

403
00:31:09,680 --> 00:31:11,920
President Reagan was forced to act.

404
00:31:12,960 --> 00:31:15,600
He announced that American marines would come to Beirut

405
00:31:15,600 --> 00:31:17,400
to lead a peacekeeping force.

406
00:31:19,200 --> 00:31:22,520
Reagan insisted that the troops were neutral.

407
00:31:22,520 --> 00:31:26,360
But President Assad was convinced that there was another reality.

408
00:31:27,400 --> 00:31:30,240
He saw the troops as part of the growing conspiracy

409
00:31:30,240 --> 00:31:34,200
between America and Israel to divide the Middle East into factions

410
00:31:34,200 --> 00:31:36,440
and destroy the power of the Arabs.

411
00:31:37,960 --> 00:31:42,480
Assad decided to get the Americans out of the Middle East.

412
00:31:42,480 --> 00:31:44,760
And to do this, he made an alliance

413
00:31:44,760 --> 00:31:48,680
with the new revolutionary force of Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran.

414
00:31:50,640 --> 00:31:52,800
And what Khomeini could bring to Assad

415
00:31:52,800 --> 00:31:56,120
was an extraordinary new weapon that he had just created.

416
00:32:00,000 --> 00:32:02,480
It was called it "the poor man's atomic bomb".

417
00:32:17,440 --> 00:32:20,480
Ayatollah Khomeini had come to power two years before

418
00:32:20,480 --> 00:32:23,200
as the leader of the Iranian revolution.

419
00:32:23,200 --> 00:32:26,320
But his hold on power was precarious,

420
00:32:26,320 --> 00:32:30,360
and Khomeini had developed a new idea of how to fight his enemies

421
00:32:30,360 --> 00:32:31,880
and defend the revolution.

422
00:32:32,920 --> 00:32:36,800
Khomeini told his followers that they could destroy themselves

423
00:32:36,800 --> 00:32:41,080
in order to save the revolution providing that, in the process,

424
00:32:41,080 --> 00:32:44,080
they killed as many enemies around them as possible.

425
00:32:46,440 --> 00:32:48,080
This was completely new,

426
00:32:48,080 --> 00:32:51,160
because the Koran specifically prohibited suicide.

427
00:32:52,520 --> 00:32:55,600
In the past, you became a martyr on the battlefield

428
00:32:55,600 --> 00:32:59,520
because God chose the time and place of your death.

429
00:32:59,520 --> 00:33:01,920
But Khomeini changed this.

430
00:33:01,920 --> 00:33:06,120
He did it by going back to one of the central rituals of Shia Islam.

431
00:33:09,600 --> 00:33:12,200
Every year, Shi'ites march in a procession

432
00:33:12,200 --> 00:33:15,920
mourning the sacrifice of their founder, Husayn.

433
00:33:15,920 --> 00:33:18,320
As they do, they whip themselves,

434
00:33:18,320 --> 00:33:21,120
symbolically re-enacting Husayn's suffering.

435
00:33:24,640 --> 00:33:27,920
Khomeini said that the ultimate act of penitence

436
00:33:27,920 --> 00:33:30,120
was not just to whip yourself,

437
00:33:30,120 --> 00:33:31,480
but to kill yourself...

438
00:33:32,760 --> 00:33:36,080
.. providing it was for the greater good of the revolution.

439
00:33:39,360 --> 00:33:42,120
In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful,

440
00:33:42,120 --> 00:33:43,520
good afternoon.

441
00:33:43,520 --> 00:33:46,360
"An Iraqi Soviet-made MiG-23 was shot down

442
00:33:46,360 --> 00:33:49,480
"by the air-force jet fighters of the Islamic Republic

443
00:33:49,480 --> 00:33:52,240
"over the north-western Iranian border region of Marivan

444
00:33:52,240 --> 00:33:54,840
"at 10.08 hours local time, Saturday,"

445
00:33:54,840 --> 00:33:58,280
said the Joint Staff Commands communique numbered 1710.

446
00:33:59,640 --> 00:34:01,600
Khomeini had mobilised this force

447
00:34:01,600 --> 00:34:04,440
when the country was attacked by Iraq.

448
00:34:04,440 --> 00:34:06,920
Iran faced almost certain defeat

449
00:34:06,920 --> 00:34:09,520
because Iraq had far superior weapons,

450
00:34:09,520 --> 00:34:11,440
many of them supplied by America.

451
00:34:13,120 --> 00:34:16,560
So, the revolutionaries took tens of thousands of young boys

452
00:34:16,560 --> 00:34:20,960
out of schools, put them on buses and sent them to the front line.

453
00:34:22,920 --> 00:34:26,480
Their job was to walk through the enemies' minefields,

454
00:34:26,480 --> 00:34:30,680
deliberately blowing themselves up in order to open gaps

455
00:34:30,680 --> 00:34:34,120
that would allow the Iranian army to pass through unharmed.

456
00:34:38,000 --> 00:34:40,680
It was organised suicide on a vast scale.

457
00:34:43,240 --> 00:34:45,720
This human sacrifice was commemorated

458
00:34:45,720 --> 00:34:49,200
in giant cemeteries across the country.

459
00:34:49,200 --> 00:34:51,960
Fountains flowing with blood red-water

460
00:34:51,960 --> 00:34:54,280
glorified this new kind of martyrdom.

461
00:35:15,800 --> 00:35:17,680
And it was this new idea -

462
00:35:17,680 --> 00:35:20,240
of an unstoppable human weapon -

463
00:35:20,240 --> 00:35:23,560
that President Assad took from Khomeini,

464
00:35:23,560 --> 00:35:25,800
and brought to the West for the first time.

465
00:35:27,200 --> 00:35:28,480
But, as it travelled,

466
00:35:28,480 --> 00:35:31,280
it would mutate into something even more deadly.

467
00:35:32,560 --> 00:35:34,600
Instead of just killing yourself,

468
00:35:34,600 --> 00:35:38,880
you would take explosives with you into the heart of the enemy

469
00:35:38,880 --> 00:35:40,760
and then blow yourself up,

470
00:35:40,760 --> 00:35:43,480
taking dozens or even hundreds along with you.

471
00:35:44,880 --> 00:35:47,280
It would become known as "suicide bombing".

472
00:35:51,480 --> 00:35:54,800
In October 1983, two suicide bombers

473
00:35:54,800 --> 00:35:57,920
drove trucks into the US marine barracks in Beirut.

474
00:36:01,640 --> 00:36:06,000
It was seeing something move that took me out of my trance.

475
00:36:06,000 --> 00:36:09,920
And then I recognised, "Oh, yes, marines were in that building.

476
00:36:09,920 --> 00:36:12,640
"A lot of marines were in that building."

477
00:36:12,640 --> 00:36:15,520
And that's when I ran down and...

478
00:36:15,520 --> 00:36:17,640
And it was a black... black marine.

479
00:36:17,640 --> 00:36:18,920
He looked white.

480
00:36:18,920 --> 00:36:20,880
The dust had just covered him.

481
00:36:21,920 --> 00:36:25,560
The massive explosions killed 241 Americans.

482
00:36:28,000 --> 00:36:30,640
The bombers were members of a new militant group

483
00:36:30,640 --> 00:36:32,080
that no-one had heard of.

484
00:36:33,120 --> 00:36:35,520
They called themselves Hezbollah

485
00:36:35,520 --> 00:36:37,760
and, although many of them were Iranian,

486
00:36:37,760 --> 00:36:39,880
they were very much under the control of Syria

487
00:36:39,880 --> 00:36:42,360
and the Syrian intelligence agencies.

488
00:36:43,480 --> 00:36:47,360
President Assad was using them as his proxies to attack America.

489
00:36:51,400 --> 00:36:55,680
Whoever carried out yesterday's bombings - Shia Muslim fanatics,

490
00:36:55,680 --> 00:36:58,520
devotees of the Ayatollah Khomeini, or whatever -

491
00:36:58,520 --> 00:37:01,320
it is Syria who profits politically.

492
00:37:01,320 --> 00:37:05,840
The most significant fact is that the dissidents live and work

493
00:37:05,840 --> 00:37:08,280
with Syrian protection.

494
00:37:08,280 --> 00:37:12,640
So, it is to Syria rather than to the dissident group's guiding light,

495
00:37:12,640 --> 00:37:16,240
Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran, that we must look for an explanation

496
00:37:16,240 --> 00:37:20,000
of the group's activities. Destabilisation is Syria's

497
00:37:20,000 --> 00:37:23,120
Middle-Eastern way of reminding the world that Syria

498
00:37:23,120 --> 00:37:26,600
must not be left out of plans for the future of the area.

499
00:37:33,640 --> 00:37:39,240
There are no words that can express our sorrow and grief

500
00:37:39,240 --> 00:37:42,360
for the loss of those splendid young men

501
00:37:42,360 --> 00:37:44,960
and the injury to so many others.

502
00:37:46,240 --> 00:37:51,000
These deeds make so evident the bestial nature

503
00:37:51,000 --> 00:37:53,920
of those who would assume power

504
00:37:53,920 --> 00:37:58,920
if they could have their way and drive us out of that area.

505
00:37:58,920 --> 00:38:02,200
But despite his words, within four months,

506
00:38:02,200 --> 00:38:06,240
President Reagan withdrew all the American troops from the Lebanon.

507
00:38:06,240 --> 00:38:09,520
The Secretary of State George Shultz explained.

508
00:38:09,520 --> 00:38:13,000
"We became paralysed by the complexity that we faced," he said.

509
00:38:14,920 --> 00:38:17,000
So, the Americans turned and left.

510
00:38:18,680 --> 00:38:22,360
For President Assad, it was an extraordinary achievement.

511
00:38:22,360 --> 00:38:25,640
He was the only Arab leader to have defeated the Americans

512
00:38:25,640 --> 00:38:28,000
and forced them to leave the Middle East.

513
00:38:29,000 --> 00:38:33,040
He had done it by using the new force of suicide bombing.

514
00:38:33,040 --> 00:38:34,800
A force that, once unleashed,

515
00:38:34,800 --> 00:38:37,560
was going to spread with unstoppable power.

516
00:38:38,640 --> 00:38:41,520
But at this point, both Assad and the Iranians

517
00:38:41,520 --> 00:38:43,560
thought that they could control it.

518
00:38:45,120 --> 00:38:47,480
And what gave it this extraordinary power

519
00:38:47,480 --> 00:38:49,160
was that it held out the dream

520
00:38:49,160 --> 00:38:51,760
of transcending the corruptions of the world

521
00:38:51,760 --> 00:38:54,680
and entering a new and better realm.

522
00:38:54,680 --> 00:38:57,640
- One should defend the realm of Islam and Muslims

523
00:38:57,640 --> 00:39:00,320
against heretics and invaders.

524
00:39:00,320 --> 00:39:04,120
And to fulfil this duty, one should even sacrifice one's life.

525
00:39:07,000 --> 00:39:10,640
We believe that martyrs can overlook our deeds from the other world.

526
00:39:12,200 --> 00:39:13,880
It means that, after death,

527
00:39:13,880 --> 00:39:17,400
the martyr lives and can still witness this world.

528
00:39:45,400 --> 00:39:48,040
By the middle of the 1980s, the banks were rising up

529
00:39:48,040 --> 00:39:51,680
and becoming ever more powerful in America.

530
00:39:51,680 --> 00:39:54,360
What had started ten years before in New York,

531
00:39:54,360 --> 00:39:58,880
the idea that the financial system could run society,

532
00:39:58,880 --> 00:40:00,240
was spreading.

533
00:40:00,240 --> 00:40:04,000
But unlike older systems of power, it was mostly invisible.

534
00:40:05,840 --> 00:40:07,520
A writer called William Gibson

535
00:40:07,520 --> 00:40:09,600
tried to dramatise what was happening

536
00:40:09,600 --> 00:40:14,520
in a powerful, imaginative way, in a series of novels.

537
00:40:14,520 --> 00:40:17,680
Gibson had noticed how the banks and the new corporations

538
00:40:17,680 --> 00:40:22,960
were beginning to link themselves together through computer systems.

539
00:40:22,960 --> 00:40:25,760
What they were creating was a series of giant networks of

540
00:40:25,760 --> 00:40:30,280
information that were invisible to ordinary people

541
00:40:30,280 --> 00:40:32,520
and to politicians.

542
00:40:32,520 --> 00:40:35,560
But those networks gave the corporations

543
00:40:35,560 --> 00:40:38,040
extraordinary new powers of control.

544
00:40:43,240 --> 00:40:45,920
'Good morning. South-West Development. May I help you?'

545
00:40:45,920 --> 00:40:48,760
Gibson gave this new world a name.

546
00:40:50,120 --> 00:40:52,880
He called it "cyberspace"

547
00:40:52,880 --> 00:40:56,920
and his novels described a future that was dangerous and frightening.

548
00:40:57,880 --> 00:41:02,360
Hackers could literally enter into cyberspace and as they did,

549
00:41:02,360 --> 00:41:05,200
they travelled through systems that were so powerful

550
00:41:05,200 --> 00:41:10,480
that they could reach out and crush intruders by destroying their minds.

551
00:41:10,480 --> 00:41:16,000
In cyberspace, there were no laws and no politicians to protect you.

552
00:41:17,560 --> 00:41:21,520
Just raw, brutal corporate power.

553
00:41:32,160 --> 00:41:35,400
But then, a strange thing happened.

554
00:41:35,400 --> 00:41:37,840
A new group of visionaries in America

555
00:41:37,840 --> 00:41:40,600
took Gibson's idea of a hidden, secret world

556
00:41:40,600 --> 00:41:44,720
and transformed it into something completely different.

557
00:41:44,720 --> 00:41:48,080
They turned it into a dream of a new utopia.

558
00:41:53,120 --> 00:41:56,800
They were the technological utopians who were rising up

559
00:41:56,800 --> 00:41:59,880
on the West Coast of America.

560
00:41:59,880 --> 00:42:03,160
They turned Gibson's idea on its head.

561
00:42:03,160 --> 00:42:05,880
Instead of cyberspace being a frightening place,

562
00:42:05,880 --> 00:42:08,440
dominated by powerful corporations,

563
00:42:08,440 --> 00:42:11,920
they reinvented it as the very opposite.

564
00:42:11,920 --> 00:42:17,120
A new, safe world where radical dreams could come true.

565
00:42:17,120 --> 00:42:21,320
Ten years before, faced by the complexity of real politics,

566
00:42:21,320 --> 00:42:26,280
the radicals had given up on the idea of changing the world.

567
00:42:26,280 --> 00:42:30,400
But now, the computer utopians saw, in cyberspace,

568
00:42:30,400 --> 00:42:32,560
an alternative reality.

569
00:42:32,560 --> 00:42:37,000
A place they could retreat to away from the harsh right-wing politics

570
00:42:37,000 --> 00:42:39,480
that now dominated Reagan's America.

571
00:42:43,520 --> 00:42:46,160
The roots of this vision lay back in the counterculture

572
00:42:46,160 --> 00:42:50,320
of the 1960s, and, above all, with LSD.

573
00:43:01,920 --> 00:43:05,280
We've got some more acid over here if you want to go ahead.

574
00:43:05,280 --> 00:43:07,800
Many of those who had taken LSD in the '60s

575
00:43:07,800 --> 00:43:11,320
were convinced that it was more than just another drug,

576
00:43:11,320 --> 00:43:13,280
that it opened human perception

577
00:43:13,280 --> 00:43:15,480
and allowed people to see new realities

578
00:43:15,480 --> 00:43:17,560
that were normally hidden from them.

579
00:43:17,560 --> 00:43:19,920
See, the ones that have white in them are really great.

580
00:43:24,520 --> 00:43:26,160
I feel like a rabbit.

581
00:43:29,560 --> 00:43:33,120
It freed them from the narrow, limited view of the world

582
00:43:33,120 --> 00:43:36,840
that was imposed on them by politicians and those in power.

583
00:43:36,840 --> 00:43:39,400
In the United States, in the next, five, ten, 15 years,

584
00:43:39,400 --> 00:43:42,840
you're going to see more and more people taking LSD and making it

585
00:43:42,840 --> 00:43:46,400
a part of their lives, so there will be an LSD country within 15 years.

586
00:43:46,400 --> 00:43:49,480
An LSD society, there will be less interest

587
00:43:49,480 --> 00:43:51,560
in, obviously, warfare,

588
00:43:51,560 --> 00:43:53,200
in power politics.

589
00:43:53,200 --> 00:43:56,720
You know, politics today is a disease, it's a real addiction.

590
00:43:56,720 --> 00:43:58,520
Politics, politics, politics, politics.

591
00:43:58,520 --> 00:44:01,840
Don't politick, don't vote - these are old men's games.

592
00:44:01,840 --> 00:44:04,600
Impotent and senile old man that want to put you

593
00:44:04,600 --> 00:44:07,240
onto their old chess games of war and power.

594
00:44:07,240 --> 00:44:11,920
20 years later, the new networks of machines seemed to offer

595
00:44:11,920 --> 00:44:14,880
a way to construct a real alternate reality.

596
00:44:14,880 --> 00:44:17,400
Not just one that was chemically induced,

597
00:44:17,400 --> 00:44:19,480
but a space that actually existed

598
00:44:19,480 --> 00:44:22,120
in a parallel dimension to the real world.

599
00:44:24,920 --> 00:44:26,680
And like with acid,

600
00:44:26,680 --> 00:44:30,560
cyberspace could be a place where you would be liberated from the old,

601
00:44:30,560 --> 00:44:35,760
corrupt hierarchies of politics and power and explore new ways of being.

602
00:44:37,560 --> 00:44:42,640
One of the leading exponents of this idea was called John Perry Barlow.

603
00:44:42,640 --> 00:44:45,600
In the '60s, he had written songs for the Grateful Dead

604
00:44:45,600 --> 00:44:48,440
and been part of the acid counterculture.

605
00:44:48,440 --> 00:44:52,120
Now, he organised what he called "cyberthons",

606
00:44:52,120 --> 00:44:55,280
to try and bring the cyberspace movement together.

607
00:44:57,120 --> 00:45:00,320
Well, you know, the cyberthon as it was originally conceived

608
00:45:00,320 --> 00:45:02,880
was supposed to be...

609
00:45:05,200 --> 00:45:07,880
.. the '90s equivalent of the acid test

610
00:45:07,880 --> 00:45:12,040
and we had thought to involve some of the same personnel.

611
00:45:12,040 --> 00:45:15,840
- You and I and Timmy should sit down and talk.
- OK. That is good.

612
00:45:15,840 --> 00:45:19,640
And it immediately acquired a financial quality

613
00:45:19,640 --> 00:45:22,600
or a commercial quality that was initially

614
00:45:22,600 --> 00:45:24,560
a little unsettling to an old hippy like me,

615
00:45:24,560 --> 00:45:28,160
but as soon as I saw it actually working, then I thought,

616
00:45:28,160 --> 00:45:31,480
"Ah, well, if you're going to have an acid test for the '90s,

617
00:45:31,480 --> 00:45:32,920
"money better be involved."

618
00:45:32,920 --> 00:45:36,840
Instead of having a glass barrier that separates you -

619
00:45:36,840 --> 00:45:39,640
your mind - from the mind of the computer,

620
00:45:39,640 --> 00:45:43,560
the computer pulls us inside and creates a world for us.

621
00:45:43,560 --> 00:45:46,880
Incorporates everything that could be incorporated.

622
00:45:46,880 --> 00:45:49,240
It incorporates experience itself.

623
00:45:50,960 --> 00:45:52,960
Barlow then wrote a manifesto

624
00:45:52,960 --> 00:45:57,560
that he called A Declaration Of Independence Of Cyberspace.

625
00:45:57,560 --> 00:45:59,800
It was addressed to all politicians,

626
00:45:59,800 --> 00:46:02,560
telling them to keep out of this new world.

627
00:46:03,880 --> 00:46:06,880
It was going to be incredibly influential,

628
00:46:06,880 --> 00:46:11,240
because what Barlow did was give a powerful picture of the internet

629
00:46:11,240 --> 00:46:14,640
not as a network controlled by giant corporations,

630
00:46:14,640 --> 00:46:18,240
but, instead, as a kind of magical, free place.

631
00:46:18,240 --> 00:46:22,040
An alternative to the old systems of power.

632
00:46:22,040 --> 00:46:25,440
It was a vision that would come to dominate the internet

633
00:46:25,440 --> 00:46:27,520
over the next 20 years.

634
00:46:31,600 --> 00:46:34,320
Governments of the industrial world,

635
00:46:34,320 --> 00:46:38,240
cyberspace does not lie within your borders.

636
00:46:38,240 --> 00:46:40,840
We are creating a world where anyone,

637
00:46:40,840 --> 00:46:44,760
anywhere, may express his or her beliefs,

638
00:46:44,760 --> 00:46:47,040
no matter how singular,

639
00:46:47,040 --> 00:46:49,920
without fear of being coerced

640
00:46:49,920 --> 00:46:52,720
into silence or conformity.

641
00:46:52,720 --> 00:46:57,160
I declare the global social space we are building

642
00:46:57,160 --> 00:46:59,760
to be naturally independent

643
00:46:59,760 --> 00:47:03,440
of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us.

644
00:47:04,560 --> 00:47:09,520
We will create a civilisation of the mind in cyberspace.

645
00:47:09,520 --> 00:47:11,560
May it be more humane and fair

646
00:47:11,560 --> 00:47:15,400
than the world your governments have made before.

647
00:47:17,640 --> 00:47:19,040
It's begun.

648
00:47:24,360 --> 00:47:27,040
This is the key to a new order.

649
00:47:27,040 --> 00:47:29,080
This code disk means freedom.

650
00:47:33,960 --> 00:47:37,080
But two young hackers in New York thought that Barlow

651
00:47:37,080 --> 00:47:39,840
was describing a fantasy world,

652
00:47:39,840 --> 00:47:42,320
that his vision bore no relationship at all

653
00:47:42,320 --> 00:47:44,400
to what was really emerging online.

654
00:47:45,560 --> 00:47:48,400
They were cult figures on the early online scene

655
00:47:48,400 --> 00:47:50,960
and their fans followed and recorded them.

656
00:47:50,960 --> 00:47:54,840
They called themselves Phiber Optik and Acid Phreak

657
00:47:54,840 --> 00:47:58,080
and they spent their time exploring and breaking in

658
00:47:58,080 --> 00:48:00,880
to giant computer networks that they knew

659
00:48:00,880 --> 00:48:05,120
were the hard realities of modern digital power.

660
00:48:05,120 --> 00:48:10,480
My specific instance, I was charged with conspiracy

661
00:48:10,480 --> 00:48:14,720
to commit a few dozen "overacts", they called them.

662
00:48:14,720 --> 00:48:20,160
Among a number of things having to do with computer trespass and...

663
00:48:20,160 --> 00:48:23,600
and I guess computer eavesdropping, interception.

664
00:48:23,600 --> 00:48:26,680
Unauthorised access to federal interest computers,

665
00:48:26,680 --> 00:48:30,960
which is pretty vague law.

666
00:48:30,960 --> 00:48:33,800
Communications network computers and so on.

667
00:48:33,800 --> 00:48:39,320
In a notorious public debate online, the two hackers attacked Barlow.

668
00:48:39,320 --> 00:48:42,600
What infuriated them most was Barlow's insistence

669
00:48:42,600 --> 00:48:44,480
that there was no hierarchy

670
00:48:44,480 --> 00:48:47,560
or controlling powers in the new cyber world.

671
00:48:48,800 --> 00:48:52,680
The hackers set out to demonstrate that he was wrong.

672
00:48:52,680 --> 00:48:54,920
Acid Phreak hacked into the computers of

673
00:48:54,920 --> 00:48:57,720
a giant corporation called TRW.

674
00:48:57,720 --> 00:49:00,360
TRW had originally built the systems

675
00:49:00,360 --> 00:49:03,240
that ran the Cold War for the US military.

676
00:49:04,600 --> 00:49:07,760
They had helped create the delicate balance of terror.

677
00:49:08,760 --> 00:49:12,960
Now, TRW had adapted their computers to run a new system,

678
00:49:12,960 --> 00:49:15,040
that of credit and debt.

679
00:49:16,280 --> 00:49:20,200
Their computers gathered up the credit data of millions of Americans

680
00:49:20,200 --> 00:49:24,360
and were being used by the banks to decide individuals' credit ratings.

681
00:49:27,200 --> 00:49:30,320
The hackers broke into the TRW network,

682
00:49:30,320 --> 00:49:33,680
stole Barlow's credit history and published it online.

683
00:49:38,720 --> 00:49:42,520
The hackers were demonstrating the growing power of finance.

684
00:49:42,520 --> 00:49:45,120
How the companies that ran the new systems of credit

685
00:49:45,120 --> 00:49:47,080
knew more and more about you,

686
00:49:47,080 --> 00:49:51,480
and, increasingly, used that information to control your destiny.

687
00:49:52,640 --> 00:49:55,320
But the system that was allowing this to happen

688
00:49:55,320 --> 00:49:57,920
were the new giant networks of information

689
00:49:57,920 --> 00:50:00,200
connected through computer servers.

690
00:50:04,560 --> 00:50:08,080
The hackers were questioning whether Barlow's utopian rhetoric

691
00:50:08,080 --> 00:50:13,000
about cyberspace might really be a convenient camouflage

692
00:50:13,000 --> 00:50:16,720
hiding the emergence of a new and growing power

693
00:50:16,720 --> 00:50:19,120
that was way beyond politics.

694
00:50:49,600 --> 00:50:53,520
But cyberspace was not the only imaginary story being created.

695
00:50:54,560 --> 00:50:57,640
Faced with the humiliating defeat in the Lebanon,

696
00:50:57,640 --> 00:51:00,800
President Reagan's government was desperate to shore up

697
00:51:00,800 --> 00:51:03,080
the vision of a moral world

698
00:51:03,080 --> 00:51:06,920
where a good America struggled against evil.

699
00:51:06,920 --> 00:51:11,240
And to do this they were going to create a simple villain.

700
00:51:11,240 --> 00:51:13,800
An imaginary enemy, one that would free them

701
00:51:13,800 --> 00:51:17,880
from the paralysing complexity of real Middle-Eastern politics.

702
00:51:19,480 --> 00:51:22,960
The perfect candidate was waiting in the wings.

703
00:51:22,960 --> 00:51:25,920
Colonel Gaddafi, the ruler of Libya.

704
00:51:32,520 --> 00:51:35,720
The Americans were going to ruthlessly use Colonel Gaddafi

705
00:51:35,720 --> 00:51:38,440
to create a fake terrorist mastermind.

706
00:51:41,880 --> 00:51:44,760
And Gaddafi was going to happily play along,

707
00:51:44,760 --> 00:51:49,040
because it would turn him into a famous global figure.

708
00:52:04,840 --> 00:52:08,560
Colonel Gaddafi had taken power in a coup in the 1970s

709
00:52:08,560 --> 00:52:10,480
but from the very start,

710
00:52:10,480 --> 00:52:14,480
he was convinced that he was more than just the leader of one country.

711
00:52:14,480 --> 00:52:17,880
He believed that he was an international revolutionary

712
00:52:17,880 --> 00:52:21,240
whose destiny was to challenge the power of the West.

713
00:52:27,480 --> 00:52:29,400
Gentlemen, the Queen.

714
00:52:37,440 --> 00:52:39,040
When he was a young officer,

715
00:52:39,040 --> 00:52:41,760
Gaddafi had been sent to England for training

716
00:52:41,760 --> 00:52:45,120
and he had detested the patronising racism

717
00:52:45,120 --> 00:52:48,640
that he said he had found at the heart of British society.

718
00:52:48,640 --> 00:52:52,200
Yes, I attended a course.

719
00:52:52,200 --> 00:53:00,040
I had been in England in 1966 from February to August.

720
00:53:00,040 --> 00:53:01,560
You had the best months.

721
00:53:04,000 --> 00:53:06,000
I was in Beaconsfield,

722
00:53:06,000 --> 00:53:08,360
a village called Beaconsfield,

723
00:53:08,360 --> 00:53:11,640
in an army school.

724
00:53:14,120 --> 00:53:22,120
In fact, we were ill-treated in that place from some British officers.

725
00:53:24,360 --> 00:53:30,200
I think the officers were Jews,

726
00:53:30,200 --> 00:53:31,880
maybe Jews.

727
00:53:31,880 --> 00:53:34,160
Ill-treated in what sort of way?

728
00:53:36,000 --> 00:53:37,760
In many ways.

729
00:53:40,520 --> 00:53:43,760
They ill-treat us every time.

730
00:53:45,280 --> 00:53:48,480
By being rude or by bullying or...?

731
00:53:50,960 --> 00:53:57,120
In their own behaviour towards us, they ill-treated us.

732
00:53:57,120 --> 00:53:59,440
They hate us in there

733
00:53:59,440 --> 00:54:02,480
because of colonisation.

734
00:54:02,480 --> 00:54:04,280
It is the result of colonising.

735
00:54:08,640 --> 00:54:12,960
Once in power, Gaddafi had developed his own revolutionary theory,

736
00:54:12,960 --> 00:54:17,120
which he called the Third Universal Theory.

737
00:54:17,120 --> 00:54:21,040
It was an alternative, he said, to communism and capitalism.

738
00:54:21,040 --> 00:54:22,920
He published it in a green book,

739
00:54:22,920 --> 00:54:24,960
but practically no-one read it.

740
00:54:26,240 --> 00:54:29,160
He had sent money and weapons to the IRA in Ireland

741
00:54:29,160 --> 00:54:32,440
to help them overthrow the British ruling class.

742
00:54:32,440 --> 00:54:37,800
But all the other Arab leaders rejected him and his ideas.

743
00:54:37,800 --> 00:54:40,600
They thought that he was mad.

744
00:54:40,600 --> 00:54:45,200
And by the mid-1980s, Gaddafi was an isolated figure

745
00:54:45,200 --> 00:54:48,520
with no friends and no global influence.

746
00:54:50,360 --> 00:54:52,440
Then, suddenly, that changed.

747
00:54:56,480 --> 00:54:58,400
In December 1985,

748
00:54:58,400 --> 00:55:01,960
terrorists attacked Rome and Vienna airports simultaneously,

749
00:55:01,960 --> 00:55:03,880
killing 19 people,

750
00:55:03,880 --> 00:55:06,640
including five Americans.

751
00:55:06,640 --> 00:55:10,680
There was growing pressure on President Reagan to retaliate.

752
00:55:10,680 --> 00:55:13,160
It's time to rename your State Department

753
00:55:13,160 --> 00:55:15,240
the Capitulation Department.

754
00:55:15,240 --> 00:55:18,200
Get off of your stick, Mr President.

755
00:55:18,200 --> 00:55:21,960
The American people are sick and tired of being kicked around.

756
00:55:21,960 --> 00:55:23,560
You talk tough,

757
00:55:23,560 --> 00:55:26,560
let's see you use some of these billions and billions

758
00:55:26,560 --> 00:55:28,760
and billions of dollars' worth of weapons

759
00:55:28,760 --> 00:55:30,720
that you've asked us to approve.

760
00:55:30,720 --> 00:55:32,960
Your words are cheap talk.

761
00:55:32,960 --> 00:55:35,160
President Reagan immediately announced

762
00:55:35,160 --> 00:55:38,880
that Colonel Gaddafi was definitely behind the attacks.

763
00:55:38,880 --> 00:55:41,640
These murderers could not carry out their crimes

764
00:55:41,640 --> 00:55:43,800
without the sanctuary and support

765
00:55:43,800 --> 00:55:47,320
provided by regimes such as Colonel Gaddafi's in Libya.

766
00:55:47,320 --> 00:55:49,480
The Rome and Vienna murders are only the latest

767
00:55:49,480 --> 00:55:54,360
in a series of brutal terrorist acts committed with Gaddafi's backing.

768
00:55:54,360 --> 00:55:58,080
But the European security services who investigated the attacks

769
00:55:58,080 --> 00:56:01,200
were convinced that Libya was not involved at all

770
00:56:01,200 --> 00:56:05,400
and that the mastermind behind the attacks was, in fact, Syria -

771
00:56:05,400 --> 00:56:07,960
that the terrorists had been directed

772
00:56:07,960 --> 00:56:10,160
by the Syrian intelligence agencies.

773
00:56:11,880 --> 00:56:15,720
But the Americans say that the attack at Rome Airport

774
00:56:15,720 --> 00:56:20,280
was organised by Gaddafi, not by Damascus. What do you say?

775
00:56:20,280 --> 00:56:23,680
- No, we don't have any evidence...
- You have no evidence?

776
00:56:23,680 --> 00:56:28,840
.. supporting such an... affirmation.

777
00:56:31,040 --> 00:56:33,800
The only evidence we have

778
00:56:33,800 --> 00:56:37,040
shows a Syrian connection.

779
00:56:37,040 --> 00:56:39,480
You say that it was Libya and the President

780
00:56:39,480 --> 00:56:44,240
- said the evidence of Libya's culpability was irrefutable.
- Yeah.

781
00:56:44,240 --> 00:56:48,560
But the Italian authorities to whom I've spoken say emphatically

782
00:56:48,560 --> 00:56:52,080
on the record that their investigations have shown

783
00:56:52,080 --> 00:56:55,080
that it was entirely masterminded by Syria.

784
00:56:55,080 --> 00:56:56,760
I don't agree with that at all.

785
00:56:56,760 --> 00:57:00,240
Well, they interrogated the surviving terrorists.

786
00:57:00,240 --> 00:57:02,880
I must just say I don't agree with that.

787
00:57:02,880 --> 00:57:05,400
But you've no evidence that Libya was in on the planning either.

788
00:57:05,400 --> 00:57:09,680
Our evidence on Libya is circumstantial, but very strong.

789
00:57:09,680 --> 00:57:12,400
But why does the President then say it's "irrefutable",

790
00:57:12,400 --> 00:57:14,240
if you call it "circumstantial"?

791
00:57:14,240 --> 00:57:18,000
Well, people can be convicted and sentenced in our courts

792
00:57:18,000 --> 00:57:19,920
on circumstantial evidence.

793
00:57:19,920 --> 00:57:22,480
But what made it even more confusing

794
00:57:22,480 --> 00:57:24,600
was that although there seemed to be no evidence

795
00:57:24,600 --> 00:57:26,840
that Gaddafi had been behind the attacks,

796
00:57:26,840 --> 00:57:30,280
he made no attempt to deny the allegations.

797
00:57:30,280 --> 00:57:32,480
Instead, he went the other way

798
00:57:32,480 --> 00:57:35,240
and turned the crisis into a global drama...

799
00:57:35,240 --> 00:57:37,400
It is not a time of saying.

800
00:57:37,400 --> 00:57:39,000
It is a time of war,

801
00:57:39,000 --> 00:57:41,320
a time of confrontation.

802
00:57:41,320 --> 00:57:44,360
.. threatening suicide attacks against America.

803
00:58:09,760 --> 00:58:11,960
Gaddafi now started to play a role

804
00:58:11,960 --> 00:58:14,480
that was going to become very familiar.

805
00:58:14,480 --> 00:58:16,680
He grabbed the publicity that had been given to him

806
00:58:16,680 --> 00:58:19,320
by the Americans and used it dramatically.

807
00:58:20,680 --> 00:58:23,880
He promoted himself as an international revolutionary

808
00:58:23,880 --> 00:58:27,720
who would help to liberate oppressed peoples around the world,

809
00:58:27,720 --> 00:58:29,600
even the blacks in America.

810
00:58:33,080 --> 00:58:35,760
Gaddafi arranged for a live satellite link

811
00:58:35,760 --> 00:58:38,640
to a mass meeting of the Nation Of Islam in Chicago.

812
00:58:39,760 --> 00:58:41,280
Brothers and sisters,

813
00:58:41,280 --> 00:58:44,520
it is with great honour and privilege that I present to you

814
00:58:44,520 --> 00:58:48,480
the leader of the al-Fateh Revolution from Libya,

815
00:58:48,480 --> 00:58:51,040
our brother Muammar al-Gaddafi.

816
00:58:52,920 --> 00:58:56,200
Gaddafi told them that Libya was now their ally

817
00:58:56,200 --> 00:58:59,040
in their struggle against white America.

818
00:58:59,040 --> 00:59:05,320
..To express my full support and support of my country

819
00:59:05,320 --> 00:59:09,400
to your struggle for freedom, for emancipation.

820
00:59:09,400 --> 00:59:11,960
Gaddafi promised that he would supply weapons

821
00:59:11,960 --> 00:59:15,560
to create a black army in America of 400,000 men.

822
00:59:16,600 --> 00:59:20,440
"If white America refuses to accept blacks as US citizens,"

823
00:59:20,440 --> 00:59:23,040
he told them, "it must therefore be destroyed."

824
00:59:28,840 --> 00:59:32,400
Gaddafi also invited a group of German rocket scientists

825
00:59:32,400 --> 00:59:35,160
to come to Libya to build him a rocket.

826
00:59:35,160 --> 00:59:38,280
He insisted that it had no military purpose.

827
00:59:38,280 --> 00:59:41,120
Libya was now going to explore outer space.

828
00:59:43,920 --> 00:59:48,400
I think it is peaceful and civil...

829
00:59:48,400 --> 00:59:49,720
Civilian?

830
00:59:49,720 --> 00:59:52,160
.. civilian activity

831
00:59:52,160 --> 00:59:55,320
for investigation of space

832
00:59:55,320 --> 00:59:56,720
and something like this

833
00:59:56,720 --> 01:00:03,640
and it has nothing to do with any military things.

834
01:00:03,640 --> 01:00:05,560
But no-one believed him.

835
01:00:05,560 --> 01:00:09,280
Journalists warned that Gaddafi was really preparing to attack Europe,

836
01:00:09,280 --> 01:00:12,160
vividly dramatising the new danger.

837
01:00:12,160 --> 01:00:13,720
That is something like this

838
01:00:13,720 --> 01:00:15,960
which goes that way to put something into space.

839
01:00:15,960 --> 01:00:18,840
But the same device tilted, say, to an angle of 45 degrees

840
01:00:18,840 --> 01:00:21,800
could, of course, become something very different -

841
01:00:21,800 --> 01:00:24,240
a missile possibly carrying a warhead.

842
01:00:24,240 --> 01:00:28,120
That would put Libya within range of an enormous area.

843
01:00:28,120 --> 01:00:31,920
A chilling proposition with its range of 2,000km.

844
01:00:32,960 --> 01:00:36,200
The Americans and Gaddafi now became locked together

845
01:00:36,200 --> 01:00:38,480
in a cycle of mutual reinforcement.

846
01:00:40,160 --> 01:00:43,280
In the process, a powerful new image was created

847
01:00:43,280 --> 01:00:46,880
that was going to capture the imagination of the West.

848
01:00:46,880 --> 01:00:50,200
Gaddafi became a global supervillain,

849
01:00:50,200 --> 01:00:53,360
at the head of what was called a "rogue state" -

850
01:00:53,360 --> 01:00:56,640
a madman who threatened the stability of the world.

851
01:00:57,840 --> 01:01:00,920
And Gaddafi was loving every minute of it.

852
01:01:00,920 --> 01:01:02,760
So, you think, in the past,

853
01:01:02,760 --> 01:01:07,440
his decisions sometimes have been taken too quickly...

854
01:01:07,440 --> 01:01:10,560
- Maybe, maybe.
- .. on world affairs?
- Maybe.

855
01:01:12,400 --> 01:01:15,800
I think, sometimes, that is what has made people in the world

856
01:01:15,800 --> 01:01:17,720
- nervous of you, perhaps?
- Maybe.

857
01:01:37,880 --> 01:01:40,480
Then, there was another terrorist attack

858
01:01:40,480 --> 01:01:42,600
at a discotheque in West Berlin.

859
01:01:46,560 --> 01:01:50,920
A bomb killed an American soldier and injured hundreds.

860
01:01:50,920 --> 01:01:54,040
The Americans released what they said were intercepts

861
01:01:54,040 --> 01:01:56,040
by the National Security Agency

862
01:01:56,040 --> 01:01:59,800
that proved that Colonel Gaddafi was behind the bombing

863
01:01:59,800 --> 01:02:03,280
and a dossier that they said proved that he was also the mastermind

864
01:02:03,280 --> 01:02:05,560
behind a whole range of other attacks.

865
01:02:07,400 --> 01:02:09,920
President Reagan ordered the Pentagon

866
01:02:09,920 --> 01:02:12,280
to prepare to bomb Libya.

867
01:02:12,280 --> 01:02:13,960
But again, there were doubts -

868
01:02:13,960 --> 01:02:17,120
this time, within the American Government itself.

869
01:02:18,920 --> 01:02:21,800
There were concerns that analysts were being pressured

870
01:02:21,800 --> 01:02:24,520
to make a case that didn't really exist...

871
01:02:25,560 --> 01:02:29,560
.. and to do it, they were taking Gaddafi's rhetoric about himself

872
01:02:29,560 --> 01:02:33,040
as a global revolutionary and his manic ravings

873
01:02:33,040 --> 01:02:35,400
and then re-presenting them as fact.

874
01:02:36,680 --> 01:02:38,360
And, in the process, together,

875
01:02:38,360 --> 01:02:43,520
the Americans and Gaddafi were constructing a fictional world.

876
01:02:43,520 --> 01:02:48,480
The analysts were certainly, I'm convinced...

877
01:02:48,480 --> 01:02:53,160
pressured into developing a prima facie case

878
01:02:53,160 --> 01:02:55,320
against the Libyan Government.

879
01:02:55,320 --> 01:03:01,240
From the somewhat incoherent ravings of a maniac,

880
01:03:01,240 --> 01:03:06,120
both interceptions of a clandestine nature

881
01:03:06,120 --> 01:03:11,960
and interceptions of an open radio broadcast or whatever,

882
01:03:11,960 --> 01:03:15,360
as well as other sources, quotations of his,

883
01:03:15,360 --> 01:03:19,760
one can assemble a neatly-put-together package

884
01:03:19,760 --> 01:03:24,600
demonstrating that the man had violent interests

885
01:03:24,600 --> 01:03:28,000
against the United States and its European allies.

886
01:03:28,000 --> 01:03:30,320
The European intelligence agencies

887
01:03:30,320 --> 01:03:32,560
told the Americans that they were wrong,

888
01:03:32,560 --> 01:03:36,400
that it was Syria that was behind the bombing, not Libya.

889
01:03:36,400 --> 01:03:39,040
But the Americans had decided to attack Libya

890
01:03:39,040 --> 01:03:42,000
because they couldn't face the dangerous consequences

891
01:03:42,000 --> 01:03:43,440
of attacking Syria.

892
01:03:44,800 --> 01:03:47,200
Instead, they went for Gaddafi,

893
01:03:47,200 --> 01:03:49,080
a man without friends or allies.

894
01:03:50,400 --> 01:03:56,040
Libya had less downsided consequences, if you will.

895
01:03:56,040 --> 01:03:59,520
There's less Arab support for Gaddafi,

896
01:03:59,520 --> 01:04:02,880
we figured there would be less Soviet support for Gaddafi.

897
01:04:04,080 --> 01:04:10,440
There's no question that Libya was more vulnerable than Syria and Iran.

898
01:04:10,440 --> 01:04:13,760
- He was a soft target?
- And that is certainly an element, of course.

899
01:04:17,200 --> 01:04:20,120
In April 1986, the Americans attacked Libya.

900
01:04:21,840 --> 01:04:24,920
Their targets included Colonel Gaddafi's own house.

901
01:04:25,960 --> 01:04:27,440
Immediately after the attack,

902
01:04:27,440 --> 01:04:31,320
Gaddafi appeared in the ruins to describe what had happened.

903
01:04:31,320 --> 01:04:35,280
- The family were asleep and my wife

904
01:04:35,280 --> 01:04:37,720
was, that day, tied down to the bed

905
01:04:37,720 --> 01:04:40,000
because she had a slipped disc.

906
01:04:40,000 --> 01:04:41,720
I tried to rescue the children

907
01:04:41,720 --> 01:04:43,720
and the house started to collapse,

908
01:04:43,720 --> 01:04:45,160
as you can see.

909
01:04:45,160 --> 01:04:47,680
And the bombs started to land.

910
01:04:47,680 --> 01:04:50,120
They concentrated on the children's room

911
01:04:50,120 --> 01:04:53,560
so that they would kill all the children.

912
01:04:53,560 --> 01:04:56,120
Our small adopted daughter was killed

913
01:04:56,120 --> 01:04:58,840
and two of our children were injured.

914
01:04:58,840 --> 01:05:01,600
But, yet again, Gaddafi might have been lying.

915
01:05:01,600 --> 01:05:02,760
Ever since then,

916
01:05:02,760 --> 01:05:07,440
there have been rumours that his adopted daughter actually survived.

917
01:05:07,440 --> 01:05:10,040
But many other children were killed in the raid

918
01:05:10,040 --> 01:05:12,840
because the American bombing was so inaccurate.

919
01:05:14,280 --> 01:05:17,320
Gaddafi realised that the attention of the whole world

920
01:05:17,320 --> 01:05:19,200
was now focused on him

921
01:05:19,200 --> 01:05:22,760
and he grabbed the moment to promote his own revolutionary theory,

922
01:05:22,760 --> 01:05:26,840
The Third Way, as a global alternative to democracy.

923
01:05:28,360 --> 01:05:31,840
- I feel that I'm really responsible

924
01:05:31,840 --> 01:05:35,000
for conveying the Third Way theory and the Green Book

925
01:05:35,000 --> 01:05:39,320
to the rising generations, to the young American and British people,

926
01:05:39,320 --> 01:05:41,840
so that we can rescue America and Britain

927
01:05:41,840 --> 01:05:45,760
and these generations of young people from this theory,

928
01:05:45,760 --> 01:05:47,920
this electoral party theory

929
01:05:47,920 --> 01:05:50,760
which enabled an imbecile like Reagan

930
01:05:50,760 --> 01:05:53,160
to rule the mightiest power on Earth

931
01:05:53,160 --> 01:05:56,240
and use it to destroy other people's homes

932
01:05:56,240 --> 01:06:00,560
and enabled a harlot like Thatcher to rule a great nation like Britain.

933
01:06:15,480 --> 01:06:19,120
- Wow, look at that. What the heck is that?

934
01:06:20,520 --> 01:06:22,680
Oh, my God, look at that.

935
01:06:27,160 --> 01:06:28,680
Holy crap!

936
01:06:34,240 --> 01:06:38,720
It's just moving really slowly. Wow!

937
01:06:38,720 --> 01:06:41,240
- Look, look, look! Come here, come here!
- What is it doing?

938
01:06:41,240 --> 01:06:42,560
What the heck?

939
01:06:45,000 --> 01:06:46,440
Guys, it's...

940
01:06:46,440 --> 01:06:48,120
- Whoa!
- Oh, my gosh!

941
01:06:48,120 --> 01:06:50,040
Wow!

942
01:06:50,040 --> 01:06:52,640
- What is happening?
- Dude, what is happening?

943
01:06:52,640 --> 01:06:55,760
- What is going on?
- Oh, my gosh!

944
01:06:55,760 --> 01:07:01,600
- Oh, my God, guys!
- Guys, is that a freaking UFO?

945
01:07:02,680 --> 01:07:07,040
- Wait, can you get a good video?
- What is it?
- What the hell?

946
01:07:09,320 --> 01:07:12,360
In the 1980s, more and more people in the United States

947
01:07:12,360 --> 01:07:15,800
reported seeing unexplained objects and lights in the sky.

948
01:07:17,560 --> 01:07:20,880
At the same time, investigators who believed in UFOs

949
01:07:20,880 --> 01:07:24,720
revealed that they had discovered top-secret government documents

950
01:07:24,720 --> 01:07:28,280
that stated that alien craft had visited Earth.

951
01:07:30,920 --> 01:07:33,720
The documents had been hidden for 20 years

952
01:07:33,720 --> 01:07:37,240
and they seemed to prove that there had been a giant cover-up.

953
01:07:39,240 --> 01:07:42,360
But, actually, the reality was even stranger.

954
01:07:42,360 --> 01:07:45,880
The American Government might have been making it all up,

955
01:07:45,880 --> 01:07:48,680
that they had created a fake conspiracy

956
01:07:48,680 --> 01:07:51,480
to deliberately mislead the population.

957
01:07:53,000 --> 01:07:55,560
The lights that people imagined were UFOs

958
01:07:55,560 --> 01:07:59,600
may, in reality, have been new high-technology weapons

959
01:07:59,600 --> 01:08:02,200
that the US Government were testing.

960
01:08:07,200 --> 01:08:09,240
The government had developed the weapons

961
01:08:09,240 --> 01:08:10,720
because they, in turn,

962
01:08:10,720 --> 01:08:14,600
imagined that the Soviet Union was far stronger than it was

963
01:08:14,600 --> 01:08:17,000
and still wanted to conquer the world.

964
01:08:19,160 --> 01:08:21,920
The government wanted to keep the weapons secret,

965
01:08:21,920 --> 01:08:25,760
but they couldn't always hide their appearance in the skies

966
01:08:25,760 --> 01:08:29,440
so it is alleged that they chose a number of people to use

967
01:08:29,440 --> 01:08:34,000
to spread the rumour that these were really alien visitations.

968
01:08:34,000 --> 01:08:36,440
One of those chosen was called Paul Bennewitz

969
01:08:36,440 --> 01:08:40,200
who lived outside a giant air base in New Mexico

970
01:08:40,200 --> 01:08:42,880
and had noticed strange things going on.

971
01:08:44,520 --> 01:08:46,600
Years later,

972
01:08:46,600 --> 01:08:49,160
I sat down with Paul at dinner

973
01:08:49,160 --> 01:08:52,840
and told Paul exactly that everything we did

974
01:08:52,840 --> 01:08:56,440
was a sanctioned counterintelligence operation to convince him

975
01:08:56,440 --> 01:08:58,840
that what he was seeing was UFOs

976
01:08:58,840 --> 01:09:01,240
and that what we didn't want him to know was

977
01:09:01,240 --> 01:09:03,960
that he had tapped into something on the base

978
01:09:03,960 --> 01:09:07,520
and we didn't want him to ever disclose that.

979
01:09:07,520 --> 01:09:10,440
We kind of planted the seed in Paul

980
01:09:10,440 --> 01:09:12,640
that what he was seeing and what he was hearing

981
01:09:12,640 --> 01:09:15,200
and what he was collecting was, in fact,

982
01:09:15,200 --> 01:09:16,800
probably, maybe, UFOs.

983
01:09:16,800 --> 01:09:19,880
Bennewitz and others chosen by the agency

984
01:09:19,880 --> 01:09:23,560
were, it is alleged, given a series of forged documents.

985
01:09:23,560 --> 01:09:26,640
Many of them were top-secret memos by the military

986
01:09:26,640 --> 01:09:30,400
describing sightings of unidentified aerial vehicles.

987
01:09:32,520 --> 01:09:35,080
The documents spread like wildfire

988
01:09:35,080 --> 01:09:38,280
and they formed the basis for the wave of belief in UFOs

989
01:09:38,280 --> 01:09:41,880
that would spread through America in the 1990s.

990
01:09:45,560 --> 01:09:47,800
- What the fuck is that?
- That's a...

991
01:09:53,640 --> 01:09:55,160
That's crazy, bro.

992
01:09:58,480 --> 01:10:00,080
Is that that space, uh...?

993
01:10:01,880 --> 01:10:05,200
And it also fuelled the wider growing belief

994
01:10:05,200 --> 01:10:07,600
that governments lied to you -

995
01:10:07,600 --> 01:10:09,720
that conspiracies were real.

996
01:10:13,520 --> 01:10:16,080
What the Reagan administration were doing,

997
01:10:16,080 --> 01:10:19,240
both with Colonel Gaddafi and with the UFOs,

998
01:10:19,240 --> 01:10:22,120
was a blurring of fact and fiction

999
01:10:22,120 --> 01:10:24,760
but it was part of an even broader programme.

1000
01:10:26,200 --> 01:10:29,440
The President's advisers had given it a name -

1001
01:10:29,440 --> 01:10:32,200
they called it "perception management"

1002
01:10:32,200 --> 01:10:35,000
and it became a central part of the American Government

1003
01:10:35,000 --> 01:10:36,520
during the 1980s.

1004
01:10:38,920 --> 01:10:43,680
The aim was to tell dramatic stories that grabbed the public imagination,

1005
01:10:43,680 --> 01:10:45,520
not just about the Middle East,

1006
01:10:45,520 --> 01:10:47,680
but about Central America

1007
01:10:47,680 --> 01:10:49,360
and the Soviet Union

1008
01:10:49,360 --> 01:10:53,240
and it didn't matter if the stories were true or not,

1009
01:10:53,240 --> 01:10:57,400
providing they distracted people and you, the politician,

1010
01:10:57,400 --> 01:10:59,320
from having to deal with

1011
01:10:59,320 --> 01:11:03,040
the intractable complexities of the real world.

1012
01:11:12,760 --> 01:11:14,200
Reality became less and less

1013
01:11:14,200 --> 01:11:16,600
of an important factor in American politics.

1014
01:11:16,600 --> 01:11:19,240
It wasn't what was real that was driving anything

1015
01:11:19,240 --> 01:11:21,320
or the facts driving anything.

1016
01:11:21,320 --> 01:11:23,760
It was how you could turn those facts or twist those facts

1017
01:11:23,760 --> 01:11:26,640
or even make up the facts to make your opponent look bad.

1018
01:11:26,640 --> 01:11:29,240
So, perception management became a device

1019
01:11:29,240 --> 01:11:32,920
and the facts could be twisted. Anything could be anything.

1020
01:11:32,920 --> 01:11:36,000
It becomes how can you manipulate the American people?

1021
01:11:36,000 --> 01:11:38,640
And, in the process, reality becomes what?

1022
01:11:38,640 --> 01:11:42,320
Reality becomes simply something to play with to achieve that end.

1023
01:11:42,320 --> 01:11:45,280
Reality is not important in this context.

1024
01:11:45,280 --> 01:11:47,880
Reality is simply something that you handle.

1025
01:11:52,120 --> 01:11:55,720
But something was about to happen that would demonstrate dramatically

1026
01:11:55,720 --> 01:12:00,840
just how far the American Government had detached from reality.

1027
01:12:00,840 --> 01:12:03,120
The Soviet Empire was about to implode.

1028
01:12:06,800 --> 01:12:09,360
And no-one, none of the politicians,

1029
01:12:09,360 --> 01:12:10,840
or the journalists,

1030
01:12:10,840 --> 01:12:12,640
or the think tank experts,

1031
01:12:12,640 --> 01:12:13,960
or the economists,

1032
01:12:13,960 --> 01:12:16,280
or the academics saw it coming.

1033
01:12:51,320 --> 01:12:53,040
That's it! Whoo!

1034
01:12:53,040 --> 01:12:55,280
Get ready to work out.

1035
01:14:51,760 --> 01:14:53,640
The collapse of the Soviet Union

1036
01:14:53,640 --> 01:14:57,200
also had a powerful effect on the West.

1037
01:14:57,200 --> 01:15:00,400
For many, it symbolised the final failure of the dream

1038
01:15:00,400 --> 01:15:03,720
that politics could be used to build a new kind of world.

1039
01:15:06,000 --> 01:15:09,720
What was going to emerge instead was a new system that had nothing

1040
01:15:09,720 --> 01:15:11,360
to do with politics.

1041
01:15:12,600 --> 01:15:15,800
A system whose aim was not to try and change things,

1042
01:15:15,800 --> 01:15:19,360
but rather, to manage a post-political world.

1043
01:15:24,920 --> 01:15:28,080
One of the first people to describe this dramatic change

1044
01:15:28,080 --> 01:15:31,680
was a left-wing German political thinker called Ulrich Beck.

1045
01:15:33,040 --> 01:15:36,120
Beck said that any politician who believed that they could take

1046
01:15:36,120 --> 01:15:39,160
control of society, and drive it forward to build

1047
01:15:39,160 --> 01:15:41,920
a better future, was now seen as dangerous.

1048
01:15:44,400 --> 01:15:47,800
In the past, politicians might have been able to do this.

1049
01:15:47,800 --> 01:15:51,280
But now they were faced with what he called "a runaway world."

1050
01:15:52,560 --> 01:15:55,280
Where things were so complex and interconnected,

1051
01:15:55,280 --> 01:15:59,200
and modern technologies so potentially dangerous

1052
01:15:59,200 --> 01:16:03,760
that it was impossible to predict the outcomes of anything you did.

1053
01:16:03,760 --> 01:16:07,000
The catalogue of environmental disasters proved this.

1054
01:16:08,760 --> 01:16:12,120
Politicians would have to give up any idea of trying to change

1055
01:16:12,120 --> 01:16:13,920
the world.

1056
01:16:13,920 --> 01:16:17,320
Instead, their new aim would be to try and predict the dangers

1057
01:16:17,320 --> 01:16:21,080
in the future, and then, find ways to avoid those risks.

1058
01:16:25,440 --> 01:16:27,920
Although Beck came from the political left,

1059
01:16:27,920 --> 01:16:30,720
the world he saw coming was deeply conservative.

1060
01:16:32,640 --> 01:16:33,880
The picture he gave

1061
01:16:33,880 --> 01:16:38,280
was of a political class reduced to trying to steer society

1062
01:16:38,280 --> 01:16:41,000
into a dark and frightening future.

1063
01:16:41,000 --> 01:16:42,800
Constantly peering forward

1064
01:16:42,800 --> 01:16:45,720
and trying to see the risks coming towards them.

1065
01:16:47,160 --> 01:16:50,560
Their only aim, to avoid those risks

1066
01:16:50,560 --> 01:16:52,960
and keep society stable.

1067
01:16:52,960 --> 01:16:55,720
It only lasted for a few seconds so you were basically shocked,

1068
01:16:55,720 --> 01:16:57,840
you really didn't know what was going on at the time.

1069
01:16:57,840 --> 01:17:00,280
Where were you in the building and where was the explosion?

1070
01:17:00,280 --> 01:17:02,800
- Oh, my God!

1071
01:17:04,240 --> 01:17:06,880
But a system that could anticipate the future

1072
01:17:06,880 --> 01:17:10,520
and keep society stable was already being built,

1073
01:17:10,520 --> 01:17:13,640
pieced together from all kinds of different,

1074
01:17:13,640 --> 01:17:16,200
and sometimes surprising, sources.

1075
01:17:16,200 --> 01:17:18,040
All of them outside politics.

1076
01:17:19,600 --> 01:17:22,600
One part of it was taking shape in a tiny town

1077
01:17:22,600 --> 01:17:26,640
in the far north-west of the United States called East Wenatchee.

1078
01:17:28,200 --> 01:17:29,720
It was a giant computer

1079
01:17:29,720 --> 01:17:32,760
whose job was to make the future predictable.

1080
01:17:41,880 --> 01:17:44,760
The man building it was a banker called Larry Fink.

1081
01:17:48,040 --> 01:17:49,200
Back in 1986,

1082
01:17:49,200 --> 01:17:52,000
Mr Fink's career had collapsed.

1083
01:17:52,000 --> 01:17:53,240
Shoot!

1084
01:17:55,000 --> 01:17:58,600
He lost 100 million in a deal and had been sacked.

1085
01:18:00,560 --> 01:18:03,320
He became determined it wouldn't happen again.

1086
01:18:07,640 --> 01:18:10,360
Fink started a company called BlackRock and built

1087
01:18:10,360 --> 01:18:12,720
a computer he called Aladdin.

1088
01:18:14,000 --> 01:18:16,080
It is housed in a series of large sheds

1089
01:18:16,080 --> 01:18:18,960
in the apple orchards outside Wenatchee.

1090
01:18:21,400 --> 01:18:24,880
Fink's aim was to use the computer to predict, with certainty,

1091
01:18:24,880 --> 01:18:27,960
what the risk of any deal or investment was going to be.

1092
01:18:29,680 --> 01:18:32,880
The computer constantly monitors the world

1093
01:18:32,880 --> 01:18:35,360
and it take things that it sees happening,

1094
01:18:35,360 --> 01:18:38,000
and then, compares them to events in the past.

1095
01:18:39,760 --> 01:18:42,800
It can do this because it has, in its memory, a vast history

1096
01:18:42,800 --> 01:18:47,640
of the past 50 years. Not just financial, but all kinds of events.

1097
01:18:49,280 --> 01:18:51,640
Out of the millions and millions of correlations,

1098
01:18:51,640 --> 01:18:54,520
the computer then spots possible disasters,

1099
01:18:54,520 --> 01:18:57,200
possible dangers lying in the future

1100
01:18:57,200 --> 01:19:01,160
and moves the investments to avoid any radical change

1101
01:19:01,160 --> 01:19:03,640
and keep the system stable.

1102
01:19:03,640 --> 01:19:07,240
Today, I'm going to deliver 1.8 million reports.

1103
01:19:07,240 --> 01:19:09,240
Execute 25,000 trades.

1104
01:19:09,240 --> 01:19:10,800
And avert 3,000 disasters.

1105
01:19:10,800 --> 01:19:13,440
I'm going to monitor interest rates in Europe.

1106
01:19:13,440 --> 01:19:16,080
- Silver prices in Asia.
- Droughts in the Midwest.

1107
01:19:16,080 --> 01:19:18,680
I'm going to witness 4 billion shares change hands on the

1108
01:19:18,680 --> 01:19:20,000
New York Stock Exchange.

1109
01:19:20,000 --> 01:19:24,120
And record the effects on 14 trillion in assets

1110
01:19:24,120 --> 01:19:26,600
across 20,000 portfolios.

1111
01:19:26,600 --> 01:19:28,960
- I am Aladdin.
- I am Aladdin.

1112
01:19:28,960 --> 01:19:32,440
And, today, I'll find the numbers behind the numbers.

1113
01:19:32,440 --> 01:19:34,640
I will see the trends the models don't.

1114
01:19:34,640 --> 01:19:36,320
- The connections.
- The risks.

1115
01:19:37,440 --> 01:19:41,360
- I am Aladdin.
- I am Aladdin, and I will get the data right.

1116
01:19:41,360 --> 01:19:43,240
I am 25 million lines of code.

1117
01:19:43,240 --> 01:19:45,280
Written by hundreds of people.

1118
01:19:45,280 --> 01:19:46,920
Across two decades.

1119
01:19:46,920 --> 01:19:48,760
I'm smarter than any algorithm.

1120
01:19:48,760 --> 01:19:50,760
More powerful than any processor.

1121
01:19:50,760 --> 01:19:52,000
Because I am Aladdin.

1122
01:19:52,000 --> 01:19:53,240
Because I am Aladdin.

1123
01:19:54,440 --> 01:19:55,720
I am Aladdin.

1124
01:19:55,720 --> 01:19:57,240
I am Aladdin...

1125
01:20:01,040 --> 01:20:04,160
Aladdin has proved to be incredibly successful.

1126
01:20:04,160 --> 01:20:06,560
The assets it guides and controls

1127
01:20:06,560 --> 01:20:08,600
now amount to 15 trillion,

1128
01:20:08,600 --> 01:20:12,080
which is 7% of the world's total wealth.

1129
01:20:18,000 --> 01:20:20,840
But Wenatchee was also a dramatic example

1130
01:20:20,840 --> 01:20:22,640
of another kind of craving

1131
01:20:22,640 --> 01:20:24,840
for stability and reassurance.

1132
01:20:24,840 --> 01:20:26,840
More of its citizens took Prozac

1133
01:20:26,840 --> 01:20:29,520
than practically any other town in America.

1134
01:20:31,440 --> 01:20:35,880
When a person's central nervous system is changed by an SSRI,

1135
01:20:35,880 --> 01:20:38,920
with that medicine they will view things differently

1136
01:20:38,920 --> 01:20:41,480
and they will be strangers.

1137
01:20:41,480 --> 01:20:43,200
They look at things differently.

1138
01:20:43,200 --> 01:20:45,320
I have a chemical up here that changes me.

1139
01:20:45,320 --> 01:20:46,480
I think differently.

1140
01:20:46,480 --> 01:20:49,320
For me it was like walking around like this for my whole life

1141
01:20:49,320 --> 01:20:52,160
and really not knowing that I was near-sighted. I mean, really.

1142
01:20:52,160 --> 01:20:54,120
I mean, no-one had ever offered me glasses.

1143
01:20:54,120 --> 01:20:56,640
And then, all of a sudden, here comes somebody that says,

1144
01:20:56,640 --> 01:20:59,160
"OK, now try these on. Try this Prozac on."

1145
01:20:59,160 --> 01:21:02,200
And I tried it on and for the first time in my life I went,

1146
01:21:02,200 --> 01:21:05,840
"Whoa! Is this the way reality really is?"

1147
01:21:05,840 --> 01:21:08,160
Your perception can be changed and it's frightening

1148
01:21:08,160 --> 01:21:10,000
and it's scary to people.

1149
01:21:10,000 --> 01:21:12,960
It speaks of science fiction almost.

1150
01:21:20,120 --> 01:21:24,760
Well, the medicine just kind of lets you listen to what needs to go on.

1151
01:21:24,760 --> 01:21:27,160
And then your doctor, every time you come back, says,

1152
01:21:27,160 --> 01:21:29,440
"You're looking so much better."

1153
01:21:29,440 --> 01:21:31,960
And then every time I go in he goes,

1154
01:21:31,960 --> 01:21:34,520
"You're so beautiful." You know?

1155
01:21:34,520 --> 01:21:37,640
He isn't even sucking up. He's being nice, you know?

1156
01:21:37,640 --> 01:21:40,200
"You're beautiful, you're nice, you're friendly.

1157
01:21:40,200 --> 01:21:44,080
"You've got so much going for you." I think, "Yeah, I do."

1158
01:21:44,080 --> 01:21:45,960
So, I go out and tell my friends,

1159
01:21:45,960 --> 01:21:48,240
"I feel so much better about myself."

1160
01:21:48,240 --> 01:21:51,360
Mom goes out, "Oh, I feel so much better about myself."

1161
01:21:51,360 --> 01:21:54,440
So, your friends start saying, "I've seen such an improvement.

1162
01:21:54,440 --> 01:21:56,320
"I've seen such improvement."

1163
01:21:56,320 --> 01:21:59,280
And everybody improves all the way around. They see improvement.

1164
01:21:59,280 --> 01:22:03,160
It's like everybody's brainwashing each other into being happy.

1165
01:22:05,720 --> 01:22:08,360
But there was a more effective way of reassuring people

1166
01:22:08,360 --> 01:22:12,160
that was being developed that did not involve medication.

1167
01:22:15,320 --> 01:22:18,160
It, too, came from computer systems

1168
01:22:18,160 --> 01:22:20,880
but this time, artificial intelligence.

1169
01:22:22,120 --> 01:22:25,080
But the way to do it had been discovered by accident.

1170
01:22:33,480 --> 01:22:36,160
Back in the 1960s, there had been optimistic dreams

1171
01:22:36,160 --> 01:22:38,800
that it would be possible to develop computers

1172
01:22:38,800 --> 01:22:40,840
that could think like human beings.

1173
01:22:43,640 --> 01:22:46,600
Scientists then spent years trying to programme the rules

1174
01:22:46,600 --> 01:22:48,360
that governed human thought...

1175
01:22:50,600 --> 01:22:52,120
.. but they never worked.

1176
01:22:59,040 --> 01:23:01,120
One computer scientist, at MIT,

1177
01:23:01,120 --> 01:23:05,080
became so disillusioned that he decided to build a computer programme

1178
01:23:05,080 --> 01:23:08,080
that would parody these hopeless attempts.

1179
01:23:09,320 --> 01:23:11,560
He was called Joseph Weizenbaum

1180
01:23:11,560 --> 01:23:16,240
and he built what he claimed was a computer psychotherapist.

1181
01:23:16,240 --> 01:23:19,800
Just like a therapist, people could come and talk to the machine

1182
01:23:19,800 --> 01:23:21,440
by typing in their problems.

1183
01:23:24,120 --> 01:23:26,640
Weizenbaum called the programme "Eliza".

1184
01:23:27,800 --> 01:23:30,880
He modelled it on a real psychotherapist called Carl Rogers

1185
01:23:30,880 --> 01:23:33,880
who was famous for simply repeating back to the patient

1186
01:23:33,880 --> 01:23:35,240
what they had just said.

1187
01:23:36,840 --> 01:23:38,360
And that is what Eliza did.

1188
01:23:39,400 --> 01:23:41,720
The patient sat in front of the screen and typed in

1189
01:23:41,720 --> 01:23:43,560
what they were feeling

1190
01:23:43,560 --> 01:23:46,920
and the programme repeated it back to them,

1191
01:23:46,920 --> 01:23:48,720
often in the form of a question.

1192
01:24:06,320 --> 01:24:09,000
He says I'm depressed much of the time.

1193
01:24:17,840 --> 01:24:19,560
Well, I need some help.

1194
01:24:19,560 --> 01:24:21,480
That much seems certain.

1195
01:24:21,480 --> 01:24:25,400
One of the first people to use Eliza was Weizenbaum's secretary

1196
01:24:25,400 --> 01:24:29,080
and her reaction was something that he had not predicted at all.

1197
01:24:30,480 --> 01:24:33,000
I asked her to my office and sat her down at the keyboard

1198
01:24:33,000 --> 01:24:34,920
and then she began to type and, of course,

1199
01:24:34,920 --> 01:24:37,200
I looked over her shoulder to make sure everything

1200
01:24:37,200 --> 01:24:40,160
was operating properly. After two or three interchanges

1201
01:24:40,160 --> 01:24:42,760
with the machine she turned to me and she said,

1202
01:24:42,760 --> 01:24:45,240
"Would you mind leaving the room, please?"

1203
01:24:45,240 --> 01:24:50,200
And yet she knew, as Weizenbaum did, that Eliza didn't understand

1204
01:24:50,200 --> 01:24:52,760
a single word that was being typed into it.

1205
01:24:54,080 --> 01:24:56,880
You're like my father in some ways.

1206
01:24:56,880 --> 01:25:00,440
- You don't argue with me.
- Why do you think I don't argue with you?

1207
01:25:01,480 --> 01:25:05,200
- You're afraid of me.
- Does it please you to think I'm afraid of you?

1208
01:25:06,200 --> 01:25:08,120
My father's afraid of everybody.

1209
01:25:10,840 --> 01:25:12,560
My father's afraid of everybody...

1210
01:25:12,560 --> 01:25:14,200
Weizenbaum was astonished.

1211
01:25:14,200 --> 01:25:18,960
He discovered that everyone who tried Eliza became engrossed.

1212
01:25:18,960 --> 01:25:21,240
They would sit for hours telling the machine

1213
01:25:21,240 --> 01:25:22,720
about their inner feelings

1214
01:25:22,720 --> 01:25:25,400
and incredibly intimate details of their lives.

1215
01:25:26,880 --> 01:25:29,000
They also liked it because it was free

1216
01:25:29,000 --> 01:25:31,240
of any kind of patronising elitism.

1217
01:25:32,480 --> 01:25:37,240
One person said, "After all, the computer doesn't burn out,

1218
01:25:37,240 --> 01:25:40,640
"look down on you, or try to have sex with you."

1219
01:25:44,840 --> 01:25:48,760
What Eliza showed was that, in an age of individualism,

1220
01:25:48,760 --> 01:25:50,640
what made people feel secure

1221
01:25:50,640 --> 01:25:53,720
was having themselves reflected back to them.

1222
01:25:55,320 --> 01:25:56,560
Just like in a mirror.

1223
01:26:07,440 --> 01:26:10,360
Artificial intelligence changed direction

1224
01:26:10,360 --> 01:26:13,720
and started to create new systems that did just that,

1225
01:26:13,720 --> 01:26:15,080
but on a giant scale.

1226
01:26:16,880 --> 01:26:19,080
They were called intelligent agents.

1227
01:26:20,080 --> 01:26:22,440
They worked by monitoring individuals,

1228
01:26:22,440 --> 01:26:26,280
gathering vast amounts of data about their past behaviour

1229
01:26:26,280 --> 01:26:29,120
and then looked for patterns and correlations

1230
01:26:29,120 --> 01:26:32,880
from which they could predict what they would want in the future.

1231
01:26:34,440 --> 01:26:36,800
It was a system that ordered the world in a way

1232
01:26:36,800 --> 01:26:39,200
that was centred around you.

1233
01:26:39,200 --> 01:26:42,200
And in an age of anxious individualism,

1234
01:26:42,200 --> 01:26:44,480
frightened of the future,

1235
01:26:44,480 --> 01:26:47,840
that was reassuring, just like Eliza.

1236
01:26:48,880 --> 01:26:50,760
A safe bubble that protected you

1237
01:26:50,760 --> 01:26:53,920
from the complexities of the world outside.

1238
01:26:59,080 --> 01:27:00,840
And the applications of this new direction

1239
01:27:00,840 --> 01:27:02,920
proved fruitful and profitable.

1240
01:27:04,280 --> 01:27:07,080
If you liked that, you'll love this.

1241
01:27:14,240 --> 01:27:16,280
What was rising up in different ways

1242
01:27:16,280 --> 01:27:19,520
was a new system that promised to keep the world stable.

1243
01:27:20,760 --> 01:27:23,960
Its tentacles reached into every area of our lives.

1244
01:27:25,240 --> 01:27:28,320
Finance promised that it could control the unpredictability

1245
01:27:28,320 --> 01:27:29,840
of the free market...

1246
01:27:30,880 --> 01:27:33,360
.. while individuals were more and more monitored

1247
01:27:33,360 --> 01:27:36,320
to stabilise their physical and mental states.

1248
01:27:37,520 --> 01:27:40,240
And, increasingly, the intelligent agents online

1249
01:27:40,240 --> 01:27:43,520
predicted what people would want in the future

1250
01:27:43,520 --> 01:27:45,400
and how they would behave.

1251
01:27:47,800 --> 01:27:50,160
But the biggest change was to politics.

1252
01:27:51,520 --> 01:27:55,160
In a world where the overriding aim was now stability,

1253
01:27:55,160 --> 01:27:59,520
politics became just part of a wider system of managing the world.

1254
01:28:01,680 --> 01:28:04,040
The old idea of democratic politics,

1255
01:28:04,040 --> 01:28:08,320
that it gave a voice to the weak against the powerful, was eroded.

1256
01:28:10,600 --> 01:28:14,520
And a resentment began to quietly grow out on the edges of society.

1257
01:28:48,680 --> 01:28:52,240
But the new system did have a dangerous flaw.

1258
01:28:52,240 --> 01:28:55,680
Because in the real world, not everything can be predicted

1259
01:28:55,680 --> 01:28:57,680
by reading data from the past.

1260
01:29:02,000 --> 01:29:04,480
And someone who was about to discover that,

1261
01:29:04,480 --> 01:29:06,480
to his own cost, was Donald Trump.

1262
01:29:12,040 --> 01:29:16,480
One day a man called Jess Marcum received a phone call.

1263
01:29:16,480 --> 01:29:17,920
It was from Donald Trump

1264
01:29:17,920 --> 01:29:20,000
and Trump was desperate for help.

1265
01:29:22,600 --> 01:29:25,400
Marcum was a strange, mysterious figure.

1266
01:29:25,400 --> 01:29:27,640
He had been a nuclear scientist in the 1950s

1267
01:29:27,640 --> 01:29:31,320
and studied the effect of radiation from nuclear weapons

1268
01:29:31,320 --> 01:29:33,000
on the human body.

1269
01:29:35,920 --> 01:29:39,760
Then Marcum had gone to Las Vegas and become obsessed by gambling.

1270
01:29:40,840 --> 01:29:44,040
He had a photographic memory and he used it to instantly

1271
01:29:44,040 --> 01:29:47,680
process the data of the games as they were played.

1272
01:29:47,680 --> 01:29:50,800
From that, he could predict the outcome.

1273
01:29:50,800 --> 01:29:52,240
And he always won.

1274
01:29:54,240 --> 01:29:57,280
The Las Vegas gangsters were fascinated by him.

1275
01:29:57,280 --> 01:29:59,640
They called him "The Automat".

1276
01:29:59,640 --> 01:30:03,040
Where are we going? Let's go. Go, go, go.

1277
01:30:03,040 --> 01:30:06,360
Donald Trump was one of the heroes of the age.

1278
01:30:06,360 --> 01:30:09,520
But, in reality, much of this success was a facade.

1279
01:30:10,760 --> 01:30:12,880
The banks that had lent Trump millions

1280
01:30:12,880 --> 01:30:15,000
had discovered that he could no longer

1281
01:30:15,000 --> 01:30:17,400
pay the interest on the loans.

1282
01:30:17,400 --> 01:30:20,240
Trump's empire was facing bankruptcy.

1283
01:30:20,240 --> 01:30:24,240
His wife Ivana hated him because he was having an affair

1284
01:30:24,240 --> 01:30:26,520
with Miss Hawaiian Tropic 1985.

1285
01:30:29,840 --> 01:30:34,280
And then, a famous Japanese gambler called Akio Kashiwagi

1286
01:30:34,280 --> 01:30:36,480
came to one of Trump's casinos

1287
01:30:36,480 --> 01:30:38,600
and started to win millions of dollars

1288
01:30:38,600 --> 01:30:40,480
in an extraordinary run of luck.

1289
01:30:41,760 --> 01:30:44,280
Trump, who was desperate for money,

1290
01:30:44,280 --> 01:30:46,480
panicked as day-after-day he watched millions

1291
01:30:46,480 --> 01:30:48,600
being siphoned out of his casino.

1292
01:30:52,280 --> 01:30:55,560
So, he turned for help to Jess Marcum.

1293
01:30:55,560 --> 01:30:59,320
Marcum came to Trump's casino in Atlantic City.

1294
01:30:59,320 --> 01:31:03,280
He analysed all the data about the way the Kashiwagi had been playing.

1295
01:31:04,440 --> 01:31:07,920
He then told Trump to suggest a particular high-stakes game

1296
01:31:07,920 --> 01:31:11,320
that he knew the Japanese gambler could not resist.

1297
01:31:13,160 --> 01:31:17,440
His model, Marcum said, predicted that Kashiwagi had to lose.

1298
01:31:19,760 --> 01:31:23,160
And after five agonising days, he did.

1299
01:31:23,160 --> 01:31:26,480
Kashiwagi lost 10 million and he gave up.

1300
01:31:28,040 --> 01:31:29,880
Donald Trump was elated.

1301
01:31:29,880 --> 01:31:31,880
He thought he'd got his money back.

1302
01:31:52,040 --> 01:31:54,360
Before Kashiwagi could pay his debt,

1303
01:31:54,360 --> 01:31:57,640
he was hacked to death in his kitchen by Yakuza gangsters...

1304
01:31:59,160 --> 01:32:01,360
.. and Donald Trump didn't get his money.

1305
01:32:03,840 --> 01:32:05,680
Trump's business went bankrupt

1306
01:32:05,680 --> 01:32:09,040
and he was forced to sell most of his buildings to the banks.

1307
01:32:10,480 --> 01:32:12,600
And he married Miss Hawaiian Tropic.

1308
01:32:14,200 --> 01:32:17,120
In the future, he would sell his name to other people

1309
01:32:17,120 --> 01:32:18,480
to put on their buildings

1310
01:32:18,480 --> 01:32:22,120
and he himself would become a celebrity tycoon.

1311
01:32:32,880 --> 01:32:35,440
President Assad didn't want stability.

1312
01:32:35,440 --> 01:32:37,080
He wanted revenge.

1313
01:32:47,320 --> 01:32:48,960
In December 1988,

1314
01:32:48,960 --> 01:32:52,400
a bomb exploded on a Pan Am plane over Lockerbie in Scotland.

1315
01:32:53,800 --> 01:32:56,600
Almost immediately, investigators and journalists

1316
01:32:56,600 --> 01:32:58,240
pointed the finger at Syria.

1317
01:32:59,560 --> 01:33:03,000
"The bombing had been done," they said, "in revenge for the Americans

1318
01:33:03,000 --> 01:33:06,920
"shooting down an Iranian airliner in the Gulf a few months before."

1319
01:33:09,200 --> 01:33:12,560
And for 18 months, everyone agreed that this was the truth.

1320
01:33:14,560 --> 01:33:16,640
But then, a strange thing happened.

1321
01:33:18,000 --> 01:33:21,640
The security agencies said that they had been wrong.

1322
01:33:21,640 --> 01:33:23,240
It hadn't been Syria at all.

1323
01:33:24,320 --> 01:33:28,360
It was Libya who had been behind the Lockerbie bombing.

1324
01:33:28,360 --> 01:33:31,960
But many journalists and politicians did not believe it.

1325
01:33:31,960 --> 01:33:34,160
They were convinced that the switch had happened

1326
01:33:34,160 --> 01:33:36,040
for the most cynical of reasons.

1327
01:33:37,280 --> 01:33:40,720
That America and Britain desperately needed Assad as an ally

1328
01:33:40,720 --> 01:33:43,520
in the coming Gulf War against Saddam Hussein.

1329
01:33:45,080 --> 01:33:49,640
So, once again, they blamed Colonel Gaddafi as the terrorist mastermind.

1330
01:33:53,000 --> 01:33:55,520
Syria, of course, was, unfortunately, accused

1331
01:33:55,520 --> 01:33:59,120
of many terrorist outrages and of harbouring terrorist groups.

1332
01:33:59,120 --> 01:34:01,480
It appears that we have now restored relations with them,

1333
01:34:01,480 --> 01:34:04,080
as have the Americans. They're now our friends,

1334
01:34:04,080 --> 01:34:07,240
although we've got no real assurances on the past whatsoever.

1335
01:34:07,240 --> 01:34:09,840
It strikes me as very strange indeed that many of the things

1336
01:34:09,840 --> 01:34:12,840
we thought were previously the responsibility of Syria

1337
01:34:12,840 --> 01:34:15,560
have now, dramatically, become the responsibility of Libya.

1338
01:34:17,400 --> 01:34:19,680
But Assad was not really in control.

1339
01:34:19,680 --> 01:34:22,320
Because he had released forces

1340
01:34:22,320 --> 01:34:25,520
that no-one would be able to control.

1341
01:34:25,520 --> 01:34:27,400
The force that, ten years before,

1342
01:34:27,400 --> 01:34:31,120
he had brought from Iran to attack the West - the human bomb -

1343
01:34:31,120 --> 01:34:33,720
was now about to jump, like a virus,

1344
01:34:33,720 --> 01:34:35,760
from Shia to Sunni Islam.

1345
01:34:42,520 --> 01:34:45,600
In December 1992, the militant group Hamas

1346
01:34:45,600 --> 01:34:49,040
kidnapped an Israeli border guard and stabbed him to death.

1347
01:34:50,400 --> 01:34:53,360
The Israeli response was overwhelming.

1348
01:34:53,360 --> 01:34:56,280
They arrested 415 members of Hamas,

1349
01:34:56,280 --> 01:34:59,960
put them on buses and took them to the top of a bleak mountain

1350
01:34:59,960 --> 01:35:02,000
in southern Lebanon.

1351
01:35:10,560 --> 01:35:12,680
They left them there -

1352
01:35:12,680 --> 01:35:15,640
and refused to allow any humanitarian aid through.

1353
01:35:20,640 --> 01:35:23,440
But the Israelis had dumped the Hamas militants

1354
01:35:23,440 --> 01:35:25,520
in an area controlled by Hezbollah.

1355
01:35:26,640 --> 01:35:28,640
They spent six months there,

1356
01:35:28,640 --> 01:35:31,280
and during that time, they learnt from Hezbollah

1357
01:35:31,280 --> 01:35:34,760
how powerful suicide bombing could be.

1358
01:35:34,760 --> 01:35:37,280
Hezbollah told them how they had used it

1359
01:35:37,280 --> 01:35:39,920
to force the Israelis out of Beirut

1360
01:35:39,920 --> 01:35:41,680
and back to the border.

1361
01:35:43,920 --> 01:35:46,720
The first sign that the idea had spread to Hamas

1362
01:35:46,720 --> 01:35:48,760
was when a group of the deportees

1363
01:35:48,760 --> 01:35:52,240
marched in protest towards the Israeli border,

1364
01:35:52,240 --> 01:35:55,280
dressed as martyrs, as the Israelis shelled them.

1365
01:35:57,320 --> 01:35:59,720
But it soon became more than just theatre.

1366
01:36:01,080 --> 01:36:04,080
Hamas began a wave of suicide attacks in Israel.

1367
01:36:05,960 --> 01:36:09,080
- Just before nine, at the height of Tel Aviv's rush hour,

1368
01:36:09,080 --> 01:36:11,560
the bomb ripped apart a commuter bus.

1369
01:36:11,560 --> 01:36:15,360
An amateur cameraman recorded the scene in the moments afterwards

1370
01:36:15,360 --> 01:36:18,800
as a dazed woman was helped out of the smouldering wreckage.

1371
01:36:21,400 --> 01:36:25,520
I didn't want to believe that under my house there is a bomb.

1372
01:36:25,520 --> 01:36:27,280
And when I realised it's a bomb, I...

1373
01:36:29,160 --> 01:36:30,920
I started to cry.

1374
01:36:30,920 --> 01:36:34,560
Because it was the first time I saw it in Tel Aviv.

1375
01:36:34,560 --> 01:36:37,800
Hamas sent the bombers into the heart of Israeli cities

1376
01:36:37,800 --> 01:36:41,680
to blow themselves up and kill as many around them as possible.

1377
01:36:43,400 --> 01:36:47,600
In doing this, Hamas were going much further than Hezbollah ever had.

1378
01:36:47,600 --> 01:36:49,800
They were targeting civilians,

1379
01:36:49,800 --> 01:36:51,920
something Hezbollah had never done.

1380
01:36:53,120 --> 01:36:55,200
The tactic shocked the Sunni world.

1381
01:36:56,200 --> 01:36:59,800
This was something completely alien to its history.

1382
01:36:59,800 --> 01:37:02,600
Not only did the Koran forbid suicide,

1383
01:37:02,600 --> 01:37:05,960
but Sunni Islam did not have any rituals of self-sacrifice -

1384
01:37:05,960 --> 01:37:07,360
unlike the Shias.

1385
01:37:08,760 --> 01:37:11,520
The most senior religious leader in Saudi Arabia

1386
01:37:11,520 --> 01:37:12,840
insisted it was wrong.

1387
01:37:14,320 --> 01:37:16,560
But a mainstream theologian from Egypt

1388
01:37:16,560 --> 01:37:20,400
called Sheikh Qaradawi seized the moment.

1389
01:37:20,400 --> 01:37:23,000
He issued a fatwa that justified the attacks.

1390
01:37:24,000 --> 01:37:27,960
"And," he added, "it was also justified to kill civilians,

1391
01:37:27,960 --> 01:37:30,240
"because, in Israel, everyone -

1392
01:37:30,240 --> 01:37:33,160
"including women - serve as reservists.

1393
01:37:33,160 --> 01:37:35,880
"So, really, they are all part of the enemy army."

1394
01:37:41,040 --> 01:37:45,240
- It's not suicide. It is martyrdom in the name of God.

1395
01:37:45,240 --> 01:37:47,960
Islamic theologians and jurisprudence

1396
01:37:47,960 --> 01:37:49,680
have debated this issue.

1397
01:37:49,680 --> 01:37:52,520
Israeli women are not like women in our society,

1398
01:37:52,520 --> 01:37:55,560
because Israeli women are militarised.

1399
01:37:55,560 --> 01:37:59,600
Secondly, I consider this type of martyrdom operation

1400
01:37:59,600 --> 01:38:04,320
as an indication of justice of Allah, our Almighty.

1401
01:38:04,320 --> 01:38:05,920
Allah is just.

1402
01:38:05,920 --> 01:38:07,560
Through his infinite wisdom,

1403
01:38:07,560 --> 01:38:11,320
he has given the weak what the strong do not possess.

1404
01:38:11,320 --> 01:38:14,800
And that is their ability to turn their bodies into bombs

1405
01:38:14,800 --> 01:38:17,000
like the Palestinians do.

1406
01:38:17,000 --> 01:38:19,720
Hamas kept sending the bombers into Israel.

1407
01:38:19,720 --> 01:38:21,480
Sometimes day-after-day.

1408
01:38:22,560 --> 01:38:24,880
The horror overwhelmed Israeli society

1409
01:38:24,880 --> 01:38:28,360
and it completely destroyed the ability of politics

1410
01:38:28,360 --> 01:38:30,280
to solve the Palestinian crisis.

1411
01:38:33,000 --> 01:38:36,440
Instead, in the Israeli election of 1996,

1412
01:38:36,440 --> 01:38:39,040
Benjamin Netanyahu took power.

1413
01:38:39,040 --> 01:38:43,320
He turned against the peace process, which was exactly what Hamas wanted.

1414
01:38:44,840 --> 01:38:48,120
And from then on, the two sides became locked together

1415
01:38:48,120 --> 01:38:50,520
in ever more horrific cycles of violence.

1416
01:38:52,520 --> 01:38:55,080
The human bomb had destroyed the very thing

1417
01:38:55,080 --> 01:38:57,440
that President Assad had first wanted.

1418
01:38:58,760 --> 01:39:02,320
A real political solution to the Palestinian question.

1419
01:39:04,120 --> 01:39:05,960
- It was just after one o'clock

1420
01:39:05,960 --> 01:39:08,000
and the market was full of shoppers.

1421
01:39:10,360 --> 01:39:14,120
Streams of ambulances came to carry away the dead and the injured.

1422
01:39:15,720 --> 01:39:18,240
It was a place of appalling suffering.

1423
01:39:18,240 --> 01:39:19,720
But even with the first grief

1424
01:39:19,720 --> 01:39:23,840
came the immediate political impact on the peace process.

1425
01:39:23,840 --> 01:39:24,960
Peace impossible!

1426
01:39:24,960 --> 01:39:27,560
This moment, it will be the end!

1427
01:39:27,560 --> 01:39:30,680
It must be the end of this bloody peace process.

1428
01:39:42,160 --> 01:39:45,560
And, in America, all optimistic visions of the future

1429
01:39:45,560 --> 01:39:47,000
had also disappeared.

1430
01:39:48,200 --> 01:39:51,400
Instead everyone in society - not just the politicians -

1431
01:39:51,400 --> 01:39:55,200
but the scientists, the journalists, and all kinds of experts

1432
01:39:55,200 --> 01:39:59,360
had begun to focus on the dangers that might be hidden in the future.

1433
01:40:00,880 --> 01:40:03,640
This, in turn, created a pessimistic mood

1434
01:40:03,640 --> 01:40:07,960
that then began to spread out from the rational technocratic world

1435
01:40:07,960 --> 01:40:10,040
and infect the whole of the culture.

1436
01:40:13,600 --> 01:40:17,920
And everyone became possessed by dark forebodings,

1437
01:40:17,920 --> 01:40:20,480
imagining the very worst that might happen.

1438
01:42:16,760 --> 01:42:18,680
RUMBLING, SHATTERING GLASS

1439
01:43:00,080 --> 01:43:04,600
The attacks in September 2001 were suicide bombs,

1440
01:43:04,600 --> 01:43:06,040
but now on a huge scale.

1441
01:43:08,000 --> 01:43:11,400
They demonstrated the terrifying power of this new force

1442
01:43:11,400 --> 01:43:13,040
to penetrate all defences.

1443
01:43:14,040 --> 01:43:17,760
They had come to kill thousands of Americans on their own soil.

1444
01:43:24,320 --> 01:43:25,520
20 years before,

1445
01:43:25,520 --> 01:43:29,480
President Reagan had been confronted by the first suicide bombers.

1446
01:43:30,880 --> 01:43:33,800
They had been unleashed by President Assad of Syria

1447
01:43:33,800 --> 01:43:36,080
to force America out of the Middle East.

1448
01:43:37,720 --> 01:43:40,480
But rather than confront the complexity of Syria

1449
01:43:40,480 --> 01:43:43,240
and Israel and the Palestinian problem,

1450
01:43:43,240 --> 01:43:46,480
America had retreated and left Syria -

1451
01:43:46,480 --> 01:43:48,320
and suicide bombing -

1452
01:43:48,320 --> 01:43:50,160
to fester and mutate.

1453
01:43:51,920 --> 01:43:54,680
They had gone instead for Colonel Gaddafi

1454
01:43:54,680 --> 01:43:57,280
and turned him into an evil global terrorist.

1455
01:43:59,560 --> 01:44:02,640
But, in the process, this changed the way people saw

1456
01:44:02,640 --> 01:44:04,360
and understood terrorism.

1457
01:44:05,880 --> 01:44:09,760
Instead of a violence born out of political struggles for power,

1458
01:44:09,760 --> 01:44:14,240
it became replaced by a much simpler image of an evil tyrant

1459
01:44:14,240 --> 01:44:16,240
at the head of a rogue state

1460
01:44:16,240 --> 01:44:18,400
who became more like an archcriminal

1461
01:44:18,400 --> 01:44:20,400
who wanted to terrorise the world.

1462
01:44:25,320 --> 01:44:28,600
All the politics and power dropped away.

1463
01:44:28,600 --> 01:44:31,840
The problem was just them and their evil personalities.

1464
01:44:37,880 --> 01:44:43,120
And after 9/11, this led to a new, and equally simple, idea.

1465
01:44:43,120 --> 01:44:46,600
That if only you could remove these tyrannical figures,

1466
01:44:46,600 --> 01:44:48,920
then the grateful people of their country

1467
01:44:48,920 --> 01:44:52,360
would transform naturally into a democracy,

1468
01:44:52,360 --> 01:44:55,000
because they would be free of the evil.

1469
01:44:55,000 --> 01:44:59,120
We owe it to the future of civilisation

1470
01:44:59,120 --> 01:45:03,080
not to allow the world's worst leaders

1471
01:45:03,080 --> 01:45:07,080
to develop and deploy, and therefore,

1472
01:45:07,080 --> 01:45:09,320
blackmail freedom-loving countries

1473
01:45:09,320 --> 01:45:11,280
with the world's worst weapons.

1474
01:45:11,280 --> 01:45:13,960
We know they've already got chemical and biological weapons there.

1475
01:45:13,960 --> 01:45:16,160
We know that they're certainly doing their best

1476
01:45:16,160 --> 01:45:17,960
to acquire nuclear weapons technology.

1477
01:45:17,960 --> 01:45:19,640
If we allow them to do that,

1478
01:45:19,640 --> 01:45:21,600
and do nothing about it, then,

1479
01:45:21,600 --> 01:45:25,200
I think, later generations will consider us deeply irresponsible.

1480
01:45:25,200 --> 01:45:30,120
Both Tony Blair and George Bush became possessed by the idea

1481
01:45:30,120 --> 01:45:33,000
of ridding the world of Saddam Hussein.

1482
01:45:33,000 --> 01:45:35,360
So possessed that they believed any story

1483
01:45:35,360 --> 01:45:38,080
that proved his evil intentions.

1484
01:45:38,080 --> 01:45:41,920
And the line between reality and fiction became ever more blurred.

1485
01:45:43,720 --> 01:45:48,520
In September 2002, the head of MI6 rushed to Downing Street

1486
01:45:48,520 --> 01:45:52,400
to tell Blair excitedly that they had finally found the source

1487
01:45:52,400 --> 01:45:55,000
that confirmed everything.

1488
01:45:55,000 --> 01:45:57,440
The source, he said, had "direct access"

1489
01:45:57,440 --> 01:46:00,440
to Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons programme

1490
01:46:00,440 --> 01:46:03,640
which was making vast quantities of VX and sarin nerve agents.

1491
01:46:05,240 --> 01:46:10,000
The nerve agents were being loaded into "linked hollow glass spheres".

1492
01:46:10,000 --> 01:46:11,760
But then someone in MI6 noticed

1493
01:46:11,760 --> 01:46:15,680
that the detail the source was describing was identical

1494
01:46:15,680 --> 01:46:18,880
to scenes in the 1996 movie The Rock,

1495
01:46:18,880 --> 01:46:21,400
starring Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage.

1496
01:46:28,960 --> 01:46:31,640
Really elegant string-of-pearls configuration.

1497
01:46:31,640 --> 01:46:34,400
Unfortunately, incredibly unstable.

1498
01:46:34,400 --> 01:46:36,320
What exactly does this stuff do?

1499
01:46:36,320 --> 01:46:37,680
If the rocket renders it aerosol,

1500
01:46:37,680 --> 01:46:39,720
it could take out the entire city of people.

1501
01:46:39,720 --> 01:46:41,720
- How?
- It's a cholinesterase inhibitor.

1502
01:46:41,720 --> 01:46:45,160
Stops the brain from sending nerve messages down the spinal cord...

1503
01:46:45,160 --> 01:46:48,280
A later report into the Iraq War pointed out,

1504
01:46:48,280 --> 01:46:52,160
"Glass containers were not typically used in chemical munitions..."

1505
01:46:52,160 --> 01:46:54,880
.. seizes your nervous system... Do not move that!

1506
01:46:54,880 --> 01:46:56,720
".. and the informant had obviously seen

1507
01:46:56,720 --> 01:46:59,560
"a popular movie known as The Rock

1508
01:46:59,560 --> 01:47:02,600
"that had inaccurately depicted nerve agents being carried

1509
01:47:02,600 --> 01:47:04,200
"in glass beads or spheres."

1510
01:47:04,200 --> 01:47:06,240
.. that's after your skin melts off.

1511
01:47:06,240 --> 01:47:07,680
My God.

1512
01:47:07,680 --> 01:47:10,280
That there is a threat from Saddam Hussein

1513
01:47:10,280 --> 01:47:13,800
and the weapons of mass destruction that he has acquired,

1514
01:47:13,800 --> 01:47:15,440
is not in doubt at all.

1515
01:47:27,160 --> 01:47:30,880
Hafez al-Assad had died in 2000.

1516
01:47:30,880 --> 01:47:34,040
His son, Bashar, became the new president of Syria.

1517
01:47:35,440 --> 01:47:38,040
But he couldn't escape the inexorable logic

1518
01:47:38,040 --> 01:47:39,840
of what his father had started.

1519
01:47:41,640 --> 01:47:45,480
20 years before, his father had sent Shi'ite suicide bombers

1520
01:47:45,480 --> 01:47:47,560
to attack the Americans in Lebanon.

1521
01:47:49,160 --> 01:47:52,040
Now, as America and Britain invaded Iraq,

1522
01:47:52,040 --> 01:47:54,960
Bashar decided that he would copy his father.

1523
01:47:56,400 --> 01:48:00,920
But what he was about to let loose would tear the Arab world apart -

1524
01:48:00,920 --> 01:48:04,360
and then come back to try to destroy him.

1525
01:48:14,400 --> 01:48:17,840
Bashar Assad had was never supposed to have been president.

1526
01:48:17,840 --> 01:48:21,360
It was always going to have been his elder brother, Bassel.

1527
01:48:21,360 --> 01:48:23,560
But then, Bassel had died in a car crash.

1528
01:48:24,880 --> 01:48:27,240
So now, Bashar took over the giant palace

1529
01:48:27,240 --> 01:48:29,720
that his father had built above Damascus.

1530
01:48:38,400 --> 01:48:42,280
Up to this point, Bashar had not been interested in politics.

1531
01:48:42,280 --> 01:48:44,960
He was fascinated by computers.

1532
01:48:44,960 --> 01:48:47,080
He founded the Syrian Computer Society

1533
01:48:47,080 --> 01:48:49,800
and brought the internet to the country.

1534
01:48:49,800 --> 01:48:53,640
His favourite band was the Electric Light Orchestra.

1535
01:48:55,360 --> 01:48:56,880
But now, he was president.

1536
01:48:59,400 --> 01:49:01,680
And he set out to attack America.

1537
01:49:09,360 --> 01:49:12,280
Bashar Assad was convinced that the invasion of Iraq

1538
01:49:12,280 --> 01:49:16,000
was just the first step of a plot by the Western powers

1539
01:49:16,000 --> 01:49:19,200
to take over the whole of the Middle East.

1540
01:49:19,200 --> 01:49:21,360
He knew that the invasion had outraged

1541
01:49:21,360 --> 01:49:24,080
many of the radical Islamists in Syria

1542
01:49:24,080 --> 01:49:28,000
and what they most wanted to do was to go to Iraq and kill Americans.

1543
01:49:29,080 --> 01:49:32,080
So, Bashar instructed the Syrian Intelligence Services

1544
01:49:32,080 --> 01:49:34,120
to help them do this.

1545
01:49:34,120 --> 01:49:36,880
Syrian agents set up a pipeline

1546
01:49:36,880 --> 01:49:40,440
that began to feed thousands of militants across the border

1547
01:49:40,440 --> 01:49:42,680
and into the heart of the insurgency.

1548
01:49:44,160 --> 01:49:45,680
And it grew.

1549
01:49:45,680 --> 01:49:48,320
Within a year, almost all of the foreign fighters

1550
01:49:48,320 --> 01:49:51,120
from across the world were coming through Syria...

1551
01:49:53,000 --> 01:49:56,280
.. and they brought suicide bombing with them.

1552
01:49:56,280 --> 01:50:00,720
The Americans estimated that 90% of the suicide bombers in Iraq

1553
01:50:00,720 --> 01:50:02,400
were foreign fighters.

1554
01:50:09,720 --> 01:50:11,640
But it began to run out of control.

1555
01:50:11,640 --> 01:50:16,080
Most of the jihadists had joined the group al-Qaeda in Iraq

1556
01:50:16,080 --> 01:50:20,120
that then turned to killing Shi'ites in an attempt to create a civil war.

1557
01:50:21,560 --> 01:50:25,040
And the force that had originally been invented by the Shi'ites,

1558
01:50:25,040 --> 01:50:27,360
suicide bombing, now returned

1559
01:50:27,360 --> 01:50:29,280
and started to kill them.

1560
01:50:33,080 --> 01:50:34,240
Then, this.

1561
01:50:37,000 --> 01:50:40,640
A moment of silence before people realised what was happening.

1562
01:50:42,240 --> 01:50:45,520
A few seconds ago, we just had repeated explosions

1563
01:50:45,520 --> 01:50:47,080
in the street below me.

1564
01:50:47,080 --> 01:50:48,680
People are now fleeing in terror

1565
01:50:48,680 --> 01:50:50,800
from the central square around the mosque.

1566
01:50:50,800 --> 01:50:53,000
- This is what everybody feared...

1567
01:50:53,000 --> 01:50:55,240
We just heard another explosion in the distance.

1568
01:50:55,240 --> 01:50:58,160
.. that somebody would try to target this religious festival

1569
01:50:58,160 --> 01:51:01,200
to try to bring about a sectarian conflict in Iraq.

1570
01:51:06,280 --> 01:51:07,400
There was panic.

1571
01:51:07,400 --> 01:51:09,400
A terrified stampede.

1572
01:51:12,400 --> 01:51:16,200
But some of these people were running into the next bombs.

1573
01:51:19,400 --> 01:51:22,440
We counted at least six separate explosions.

1574
01:51:36,520 --> 01:51:39,680
Tony Blair and George Bush were faced by disaster.

1575
01:51:39,680 --> 01:51:41,720
Iraq was imploding.

1576
01:51:41,720 --> 01:51:45,120
While, at home, they were being accused of lying to their own people

1577
01:51:45,120 --> 01:51:46,560
to justify the invasion.

1578
01:51:47,840 --> 01:51:50,920
What they desperately needed was something that would show

1579
01:51:50,920 --> 01:51:54,360
that the invasion was having a good effect in the Arab world.

1580
01:51:56,880 --> 01:52:00,320
So, they made an extraordinary decision.

1581
01:52:00,320 --> 01:52:03,720
They turned for help to the man who they had always insisted

1582
01:52:03,720 --> 01:52:06,280
was one of the world's most dangerous tyrants.

1583
01:52:08,080 --> 01:52:09,760
Colonel Gaddafi.

1584
01:52:12,120 --> 01:52:15,760
And, instead, they set out to make him their new best friend.

1585
01:52:16,960 --> 01:52:19,280
It was going to be the highest achievement

1586
01:52:19,280 --> 01:52:21,520
of Perception Management.

1587
01:52:21,520 --> 01:52:24,240
A man who had been created by the West

1588
01:52:24,240 --> 01:52:27,080
as a fake global supervillain

1589
01:52:27,080 --> 01:52:30,680
was now going to be turned into a fake hero of democracy.

1590
01:52:32,240 --> 01:52:36,320
And everyone, not just politicians, would become involved.

1591
01:52:36,320 --> 01:52:38,520
Public relations, academics,

1592
01:52:38,520 --> 01:52:41,720
television presenters, spies, and even musicians

1593
01:52:41,720 --> 01:52:44,760
were all going to help reinvent Colonel Gaddafi.

1594
01:52:46,400 --> 01:52:50,280
It would show just how many people in the Western Establishment

1595
01:52:50,280 --> 01:52:54,520
had, by now, become the engineers of this fake world.

1596
01:53:00,600 --> 01:53:03,480
Ever since he had been accused of the Lockerbie bombing,

1597
01:53:03,480 --> 01:53:06,480
Colonel Gaddafi had been a complete outcast.

1598
01:53:06,480 --> 01:53:08,800
The West had imposed sanctions on Libya

1599
01:53:08,800 --> 01:53:11,040
and the economy was falling apart.

1600
01:53:12,600 --> 01:53:17,680
But then, suddenly, Tony Blair broke live into the BBC evening news.

1601
01:53:18,760 --> 01:53:22,200
The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, is about to make a statement,

1602
01:53:22,200 --> 01:53:24,360
the BBC understands, from Downing Street.

1603
01:53:24,360 --> 01:53:26,000
It's of international significance.

1604
01:53:26,000 --> 01:53:28,120
He'll be making his statement at any moment now.

1605
01:53:28,120 --> 01:53:30,200
We can see pictures of him in Durham...

1606
01:53:30,200 --> 01:53:31,760
- This evening...
- Here he is.

1607
01:53:31,760 --> 01:53:35,320
.. Colonel Gaddafi has confirmed that Libya has, in the past,

1608
01:53:35,320 --> 01:53:37,360
sought to develop weapons-of-mass-destruction

1609
01:53:37,360 --> 01:53:38,720
capabilities.

1610
01:53:38,720 --> 01:53:42,240
Libya has now declared its intention to dismantle

1611
01:53:42,240 --> 01:53:46,600
its weapons of mass destruction completely.

1612
01:53:46,600 --> 01:53:50,000
This decision by Colonel Gaddafi is a historic one,

1613
01:53:50,000 --> 01:53:52,040
and a courageous one, and I applaud it.

1614
01:53:52,040 --> 01:53:54,560
Today, in Tripoli,

1615
01:53:54,560 --> 01:53:57,000
the leader of Libya,

1616
01:53:57,000 --> 01:53:59,440
Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi...

1617
01:54:00,480 --> 01:54:05,120
.. publically confirmed his commitment to disclose and dismantle

1618
01:54:05,120 --> 01:54:09,320
all weapons-of-mass-destruction programmes in his country.

1619
01:54:09,320 --> 01:54:11,640
Colonel Gaddafi now became,

1620
01:54:11,640 --> 01:54:15,120
for Western politicians, a heroic figure.

1621
01:54:15,120 --> 01:54:18,480
His decision to give up his weapons of mass destruction

1622
01:54:18,480 --> 01:54:20,800
seemed to prove that the invasion of Iraq

1623
01:54:20,800 --> 01:54:22,720
could transform the Middle East.

1624
01:54:25,240 --> 01:54:28,840
And Tony Blair travelled to meet Gaddafi in his desert tent.

1625
01:54:30,960 --> 01:54:34,120
To welcome him back into what one journalist called,

1626
01:54:34,120 --> 01:54:36,720
"The community of civilised nations."

1627
01:54:44,880 --> 01:54:45,960
But, as in the past,

1628
01:54:45,960 --> 01:54:48,760
nothing was what it seemed with Colonel Gaddafi.

1629
01:54:51,160 --> 01:54:53,440
In reality, Gaddafi did not really have

1630
01:54:53,440 --> 01:54:55,600
the terrifying weapons of mass destruction

1631
01:54:55,600 --> 01:54:58,200
that he was promising to destroy.

1632
01:54:58,200 --> 01:55:02,000
His nuclear programme had stuttered to a halt long ago

1633
01:55:02,000 --> 01:55:05,080
and never produced anything dangerous.

1634
01:55:05,080 --> 01:55:08,240
He had managed to buy some equipment on the black market,

1635
01:55:08,240 --> 01:55:11,840
but his technicians had been unable to assemble it.

1636
01:55:11,840 --> 01:55:14,560
His biological weapons were non-existent.

1637
01:55:14,560 --> 01:55:18,800
All he had was some old mustard gas in leaking barrels.

1638
01:55:19,840 --> 01:55:25,040
But now, he had to pretend to have a terrifying arsenal of weapons.

1639
01:55:25,040 --> 01:55:27,160
And the West had to pretend

1640
01:55:27,160 --> 01:55:29,760
that they had avoided another global threat.

1641
01:55:33,480 --> 01:55:37,200
And then the made-up stories became even more complicated.

1642
01:55:37,200 --> 01:55:40,440
As part of the deal, the West said that if Gaddafi admitted

1643
01:55:40,440 --> 01:55:42,840
that Libya had done the Lockerbie bombing,

1644
01:55:42,840 --> 01:55:45,400
then they would lift the sanctions.

1645
01:55:45,400 --> 01:55:48,160
But many of those who had investigated Lockerbie

1646
01:55:48,160 --> 01:55:51,120
were still convinced that Libya hadn't done it.

1647
01:55:51,120 --> 01:55:52,840
That, really, it had been Syria.

1648
01:55:54,880 --> 01:55:57,600
But Colonel Gaddafi confessed.

1649
01:55:57,600 --> 01:56:00,360
His son, Saif, was interviewed about this confession.

1650
01:56:01,680 --> 01:56:04,240
He said that his father was simply pretending

1651
01:56:04,240 --> 01:56:06,200
that he had been behind the Lockerbie bombing

1652
01:56:06,200 --> 01:56:08,800
to get the sanctions lifted.

1653
01:56:08,800 --> 01:56:12,200
That new lies were being built on top of old lies

1654
01:56:12,200 --> 01:56:15,200
to construct a completely make-believe world.

1655
01:56:17,160 --> 01:56:20,440
You have to accept, or you had to accept at the time,

1656
01:56:20,440 --> 01:56:25,000
a responsibility, because you have to accept responsibilities,

1657
01:56:25,000 --> 01:56:28,520
you have to pay compensation in order to get rid of sanction.

1658
01:56:28,520 --> 01:56:32,240
We did that, not because we are convinced that we did it,

1659
01:56:32,240 --> 01:56:35,760
but because of the final exit out of this nightmare.

1660
01:56:35,760 --> 01:56:39,080
So, what you're saying is that you accept responsibility,

1661
01:56:39,080 --> 01:56:41,400
- but you're not admitting that you did it.
- Yes.

1662
01:56:43,280 --> 01:56:46,040
And this is all a sham,

1663
01:56:46,040 --> 01:56:48,880
you're saying, just to get sanctions over with

1664
01:56:48,880 --> 01:56:53,000
so that you can start normal diplomatic relations with the West.

1665
01:56:53,000 --> 01:56:54,680
OK. OK. What's wrong with that?

1666
01:56:55,920 --> 01:57:00,440
It's a very cynical way to behave, as a country, isn't it?

1667
01:57:00,440 --> 01:57:03,600
- Many people would say...
- First of all...

1668
01:57:03,600 --> 01:57:06,160
I mean, the Americans and the British,

1669
01:57:06,160 --> 01:57:07,760
they told us to write that letter.

1670
01:57:08,920 --> 01:57:12,000
They told us to pay compensation.

1671
01:57:12,000 --> 01:57:14,080
And then, they opened their embassies

1672
01:57:14,080 --> 01:57:16,000
and they restored their relation.

1673
01:57:16,960 --> 01:57:18,280
They came to us.

1674
01:57:19,800 --> 01:57:22,040
It was their game. Not our game.

1675
01:57:24,520 --> 01:57:28,600
Does the... Does the leader know there's a picture on the television?

1676
01:57:28,600 --> 01:57:30,560
- Will you tell him?
- Oh, good. Thank you.

1677
01:57:36,960 --> 01:57:39,560
Public relations companies then came to Libya

1678
01:57:39,560 --> 01:57:42,560
to do what they called "reframing the narrative".

1679
01:57:44,760 --> 01:57:48,080
One firm was paid 3 million to turn Gaddafi

1680
01:57:48,080 --> 01:57:51,760
into what they described as a modern world thinker.

1681
01:57:53,440 --> 01:57:57,000
OK. We're going in ten.

1682
01:57:57,000 --> 01:58:00,440
They did this by bringing other famous world thinkers

1683
01:58:00,440 --> 01:58:03,600
and TV presenters out to Libya to meet the colonel

1684
01:58:03,600 --> 01:58:05,640
and discuss his theories.

1685
01:58:07,400 --> 01:58:11,680
Hello, and welcome to Libya In The Global Age,

1686
01:58:11,680 --> 01:58:16,280
A Conversation With Muammar Gaddafi.

1687
01:58:16,280 --> 01:58:22,760
But first, let's get the story so far of Libya.

1688
01:58:22,760 --> 01:58:26,440
One world thinker was called Lord Anthony Giddens.

1689
01:58:26,440 --> 01:58:30,440
Coincidentally, he had a theory which he called "The Third Way"

1690
01:58:30,440 --> 01:58:32,800
which had inspired Tony Blair.

1691
01:58:32,800 --> 01:58:38,120
Colonel Gaddafi's own theory was called "The Third Universal Theory."

1692
01:58:38,120 --> 01:58:40,400
Lord Giddens later wrote about his talks

1693
01:58:40,400 --> 01:58:42,440
with the Libyan leader.

1694
01:58:42,440 --> 01:58:45,000
"Colonel Gaddafi likes my term 'the third way'

1695
01:58:45,000 --> 01:58:47,400
"because his own political philosophy

1696
01:58:47,400 --> 01:58:48,920
"is a version of this idea.

1697
01:58:49,960 --> 01:58:53,360
"He makes many intelligent and perceptive points.

1698
01:58:53,360 --> 01:58:55,640
"I leave enlivened and encouraged."

1699
01:58:58,320 --> 01:59:03,120
That for 40 years, the leader of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi...

1700
01:59:03,120 --> 01:59:06,800
And then, Colonel Gaddafi achieved his lifelong dream.

1701
01:59:06,800 --> 01:59:10,160
He was invited to address the United Nations.

1702
01:59:10,160 --> 01:59:14,840
He spent almost two hours explaining his Third International Theory.

1703
01:59:14,840 --> 01:59:16,880
And also demanding an investigation

1704
01:59:16,880 --> 01:59:20,920
into the shootings of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

1705
01:59:22,440 --> 01:59:25,280
When he was in New York, Gaddafi was offered a tent,

1706
01:59:25,280 --> 01:59:27,480
just like the one he had at home,

1707
01:59:27,480 --> 01:59:29,520
in the gardens of a grand mansion.

1708
01:59:29,520 --> 01:59:33,280
The man who made the offer was Donald Trump.

1709
01:59:33,280 --> 01:59:35,200
- 'I've dealt with everybody.

1710
01:59:35,200 --> 01:59:37,480
- 'And by the way, I can tell you something else!'
- What?

1711
01:59:37,480 --> 01:59:39,480
'I've dealt with Gaddafi.'

1712
01:59:39,480 --> 01:59:44,280
- What did you do?
- 'Excuse me. I rented him a piece of land.

1713
01:59:44,280 --> 01:59:47,680
'He paid me more for one night than the land was worth

1714
01:59:47,680 --> 01:59:49,720
'for the whole year or for two years.

1715
01:59:49,720 --> 01:59:51,360
'And then, I didn't let him use the land!

1716
01:59:51,360 --> 01:59:53,960
- 'That's what we should be doing.'
- Was that over in New Jersey?

1717
01:59:53,960 --> 01:59:56,360
'I don't want to use the word "screw", but I screwed him.

1718
01:59:56,360 --> 01:59:57,840
'That's what we should be doing!'

1719
02:00:15,320 --> 02:00:17,520
People in Britain and America now began to

1720
02:00:17,520 --> 02:00:19,120
turn away from politics.

1721
02:00:20,440 --> 02:00:23,960
The effect of the Iraq war had been very powerful.

1722
02:00:23,960 --> 02:00:26,960
Not only did millions of people feel that they had been lied to

1723
02:00:26,960 --> 02:00:28,960
over the weapons of mass destruction,

1724
02:00:28,960 --> 02:00:32,120
but there was a deeper feeling - that whatever

1725
02:00:32,120 --> 02:00:33,840
they did or said had no effect.

1726
02:00:35,320 --> 02:00:38,960
That despite the mass protests, and the fears and the warnings -

1727
02:00:38,960 --> 02:00:40,600
the war had happened anyway.

1728
02:00:44,240 --> 02:00:47,200
Liberals, radicals and a whole new generation

1729
02:00:47,200 --> 02:00:48,800
of young people retreated.

1730
02:00:50,240 --> 02:00:54,320
They turned instead to another world that was free of this hypocrisy

1731
02:00:54,320 --> 02:00:56,840
and the corruption of politics

1732
02:00:57,840 --> 02:00:59,440
They went into cyberspace.

1733
02:01:32,360 --> 02:01:34,560
By now cyberspace had become even more

1734
02:01:34,560 --> 02:01:37,640
sophisticated and responsive to human interaction.

1735
02:01:39,000 --> 02:01:40,880
The online world was full of algorithms

1736
02:01:40,880 --> 02:01:43,680
that could analyse and predict human behaviour.

1737
02:01:45,320 --> 02:01:46,880
The man behind much of this was

1738
02:01:46,880 --> 02:01:49,480
a scientist called Judea Pearl.

1739
02:01:49,480 --> 02:01:52,760
He was the godfather of modern Artificial Intelligence.

1740
02:01:54,000 --> 02:01:56,640
Pearl's breakthrough had been to use what were

1741
02:01:56,640 --> 02:01:58,640
called Bayesian Belief Networks.

1742
02:01:59,680 --> 02:02:02,520
They were systems that could predict behaviour,

1743
02:02:02,520 --> 02:02:05,000
even when the information was incomplete.

1744
02:02:07,680 --> 02:02:10,760
But to make the system work, Pearl and others had imported

1745
02:02:10,760 --> 02:02:13,520
a model of human beings drawn from economics.

1746
02:02:15,040 --> 02:02:18,040
They created what were called rational agents,

1747
02:02:18,040 --> 02:02:20,640
software that mimicked human beings

1748
02:02:20,640 --> 02:02:22,360
but in a very simplified form.

1749
02:02:23,720 --> 02:02:27,200
The model assumed that the agent would always act rationally in

1750
02:02:27,200 --> 02:02:30,520
order to get what it wanted. Nothing more.

1751
02:02:32,200 --> 02:02:34,520
One of the early utopians of cyberspace,

1752
02:02:34,520 --> 02:02:37,480
Jaron Lanier, warned of the implications of this.

1753
02:02:39,480 --> 02:02:41,400
"The agent's model of what you are

1754
02:02:41,400 --> 02:02:44,280
"interested in will always be a cartoon.

1755
02:02:45,680 --> 02:02:48,120
"And in return you will see a cartoon

1756
02:02:48,120 --> 02:02:50,880
"version of the world through the agent's eyes."

1757
02:02:53,880 --> 02:02:57,040
And, he added, "It will never be clear

1758
02:02:57,040 --> 02:03:02,080
"who they are working for - you or someone else."

1759
02:03:12,400 --> 02:03:15,200
New technology began to allow people to upload

1760
02:03:15,200 --> 02:03:18,000
millions of images and videos into cyberspace.

1761
02:03:19,200 --> 02:03:21,600
And the web - which up to that point had seemed

1762
02:03:21,600 --> 02:03:24,440
like an abstract otherworld - began to

1763
02:03:24,440 --> 02:03:26,400
look and feel like the real world.

1764
02:03:29,000 --> 02:03:30,760
No, not yet.

1765
02:03:32,360 --> 02:03:34,240
From videos of animals, personal moments of

1766
02:03:34,240 --> 02:03:36,400
experience, extraordinary events,

1767
02:03:36,400 --> 02:03:39,720
to horrific terror videos, more and more was uploaded.

1768
02:03:59,120 --> 02:04:01,080
And in a strange, sad twist,

1769
02:04:01,080 --> 02:04:03,840
the first terrorist beheading video that was

1770
02:04:03,840 --> 02:04:05,800
posted online was that of

1771
02:04:05,800 --> 02:04:08,720
Judea Pearl's own son, Daniel Pearl.

1772
02:04:10,040 --> 02:04:11,240
He was a journalist for the

1773
02:04:11,240 --> 02:04:13,800
Wall Street Journal and had been kidnapped by

1774
02:04:13,800 --> 02:04:15,680
radical Islamists in Pakistan.

1775
02:04:17,040 --> 02:04:19,840
They recorded what they said was his confession...

1776
02:04:20,920 --> 02:04:22,320
.. and then his killing.

1777
02:04:26,280 --> 02:04:27,880
My name is Daniel Pearl.

1778
02:04:27,880 --> 02:04:29,440
I'm a Jewish-American.

1779
02:04:29,440 --> 02:04:33,400
I come from... On my father's side of the family, are Zionists.

1780
02:04:34,600 --> 02:04:36,320
My father is Jewish.

1781
02:04:36,320 --> 02:04:38,960
My mother is Jewish. I'm Jewish.

1782
02:04:38,960 --> 02:04:44,120
Only now do I think about some of the people in Guantanamo Bay

1783
02:04:44,120 --> 02:04:46,240
must be in a similar situation.

1784
02:04:49,160 --> 02:04:52,040
This was a new world that the old systems of power

1785
02:04:52,040 --> 02:04:55,120
found it very difficult to deal with.

1786
02:04:55,120 --> 02:04:56,920
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks,

1787
02:04:56,920 --> 02:05:00,040
the security agencies secretly collected data from

1788
02:05:00,040 --> 02:05:01,640
millions of people online.

1789
02:05:02,880 --> 02:05:06,960
One programme was called Optic Nerve. It took stills from

1790
02:05:06,960 --> 02:05:10,240
the webcam conversations of millions of people across the world,

1791
02:05:10,240 --> 02:05:13,320
trying to spot terrorists planning another attack.

1792
02:05:14,800 --> 02:05:18,040
The programme did not discover a single terrorist.

1793
02:05:18,040 --> 02:05:20,120
But it did discover something else.

1794
02:05:21,640 --> 02:05:23,520
A top secret assessment said...

1795
02:05:55,640 --> 02:05:57,520
But increasingly, people were using

1796
02:05:57,520 --> 02:06:00,000
the internet in other ways - to present themselves as

1797
02:06:00,000 --> 02:06:01,320
THEY wanted to be seen.

1798
02:06:02,880 --> 02:06:04,760
I guess the video blog is about me.

1799
02:06:08,360 --> 02:06:10,680
I don't really want to tell you where I live

1800
02:06:10,680 --> 02:06:14,120
because you could, like, stalk me.

1801
02:06:14,120 --> 02:06:17,000
The web drew people in because it was mesmerising.

1802
02:06:17,000 --> 02:06:19,520
It was somewhere that you could explore

1803
02:06:19,520 --> 02:06:21,600
and get lost in in any way you wanted.

1804
02:06:23,240 --> 02:06:26,080
But behind the screen, like in a two-way mirror,

1805
02:06:26,080 --> 02:06:28,240
the simplified agents were watching and

1806
02:06:28,240 --> 02:06:31,120
predicting and guiding your hand on the mouse.

1807
02:06:32,280 --> 02:06:34,280
Stop...

1808
02:06:34,280 --> 02:06:36,960
I nearly... threw my phone away!

1809
02:06:36,960 --> 02:06:39,000
Stop! Stop!

1810
02:06:39,000 --> 02:06:41,320
- Pose.
- Pose. And snap a selfie...

1811
02:06:42,520 --> 02:06:43,880
- There you go.
- There you go.

1812
02:06:55,440 --> 02:06:57,880
They play with themselves.

1813
02:06:57,880 --> 02:06:59,440
But what they don't know...

1814
02:07:24,560 --> 02:07:26,960
As the intelligent systems online gathered

1815
02:07:26,960 --> 02:07:30,440
ever more data, new forms of guidance began to emerge.

1816
02:07:32,200 --> 02:07:34,560
Social media created filters -

1817
02:07:34,560 --> 02:07:36,480
complex algorithms that looked at what

1818
02:07:36,480 --> 02:07:39,320
individuals liked - and then fed more of the same

1819
02:07:39,320 --> 02:07:40,360
back to them.

1820
02:07:43,200 --> 02:07:45,280
In the process, individuals began to

1821
02:07:45,280 --> 02:07:48,360
move, without noticing, into bubbles that

1822
02:07:48,360 --> 02:07:51,800
isolated them from enormous amounts of other information.

1823
02:07:53,120 --> 02:07:55,400
They only heard and saw what they liked.

1824
02:07:57,280 --> 02:07:58,960
And the news feeds increasingly

1825
02:07:58,960 --> 02:08:01,360
excluded anything that might challenge people's

1826
02:08:01,360 --> 02:08:02,760
pre-existing beliefs.

1827
02:08:53,880 --> 02:08:55,720
The version of cyberspace that was

1828
02:08:55,720 --> 02:08:57,880
rising up seemed to be very much like

1829
02:08:57,880 --> 02:08:59,960
William Gibson's original vision.

1830
02:09:01,480 --> 02:09:03,920
That behind the superficial freedoms of the web

1831
02:09:03,920 --> 02:09:07,920
were a few giant corporations with opaque systems that controlled

1832
02:09:07,920 --> 02:09:10,520
what people saw and shaped what they thought.

1833
02:09:13,040 --> 02:09:15,160
And what was even more mysterious was

1834
02:09:15,160 --> 02:09:19,400
how they made their decisions about what you should like.

1835
02:09:19,400 --> 02:09:21,400
And what should be hidden from you.

1836
02:09:23,560 --> 02:09:28,240
But then, the other utopian vision of cyberspace re-emerged.

1837
02:09:35,360 --> 02:09:37,400
Taking over the roadway.

1838
02:09:42,360 --> 02:09:44,080
Take it!

1839
02:09:50,880 --> 02:09:53,960
After the financial crash of 2008

1840
02:09:53,960 --> 02:09:55,880
the politicians saved the banks.

1841
02:09:57,000 --> 02:09:59,640
But they did practically nothing about the massive corruption

1842
02:09:59,640 --> 02:10:01,680
that was revealed in its wake.

1843
02:10:01,680 --> 02:10:03,720
And the reason they gave was that it might

1844
02:10:03,720 --> 02:10:05,160
destabilise the system.

1845
02:10:06,760 --> 02:10:11,000
Public anger burst out. The Occupy movement took over Wall Street

1846
02:10:11,000 --> 02:10:13,640
and then the Senate in Washington.

1847
02:10:13,640 --> 02:10:16,040
The issue is that certain individuals

1848
02:10:16,040 --> 02:10:19,840
that are very wealthy, have pretty much corrupted our political system

1849
02:10:19,840 --> 02:10:21,680
and this is the heart of it.

1850
02:10:21,680 --> 02:10:23,360
This is the Senate building.

1851
02:10:23,360 --> 02:10:26,320
These people have been cut off and they've corrupted our democracy

1852
02:10:26,320 --> 02:10:27,880
and it's literally killing people.

1853
02:10:27,880 --> 02:10:30,440
I'm an Iraqi war vet. I went to Iraq in 2009.

1854
02:10:30,440 --> 02:10:33,120
I've seen what happens first hand when we let corruption

1855
02:10:33,120 --> 02:10:36,280
rule our elected government and democracy. We're coming here today

1856
02:10:36,280 --> 02:10:37,800
just to raise awareness.

1857
02:10:37,800 --> 02:10:40,000
What drove the Occupy movement was the

1858
02:10:40,000 --> 02:10:42,200
original dream of the internet that people

1859
02:10:42,200 --> 02:10:45,760
like John Perry Barlow had outlined in the early 1990s.

1860
02:10:47,480 --> 02:10:50,640
In his Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,

1861
02:10:50,640 --> 02:10:54,200
Barlow had described a new world free of politics and the

1862
02:10:54,200 --> 02:10:56,560
old hierarchies of power.

1863
02:10:56,560 --> 02:11:00,760
A space where people connected together as equals in a network

1864
02:11:00,760 --> 02:11:03,080
and built a new society without leaders.

1865
02:11:04,720 --> 02:11:07,160
Now, the Occupy movement set out to

1866
02:11:07,160 --> 02:11:09,720
build that kind of society in the real world.

1867
02:11:11,840 --> 02:11:14,200
The camps were to be the models.

1868
02:11:14,200 --> 02:11:18,000
All the meetings used the idea of the human microphone.

1869
02:11:18,000 --> 02:11:19,960
People throughout the crowd repeated a

1870
02:11:19,960 --> 02:11:22,560
speaker's words so everyone could hear them.

1871
02:11:22,560 --> 02:11:25,280
- We are now going to vote...

1872
02:11:25,280 --> 02:11:29,000
- .. on whether to stay here for the next two hours...

1873
02:11:29,000 --> 02:11:32,760
- .. on whether to stay here for the next two hours...

1874
02:11:32,760 --> 02:11:34,880
- .. or leave now.

1875
02:11:34,880 --> 02:11:36,360
- .. or leave now.

1876
02:11:36,360 --> 02:11:39,400
But if someone wanted to challenge the speaker,

1877
02:11:39,400 --> 02:11:42,760
the human amplifiers also had to repeat THEIR words

1878
02:11:42,760 --> 02:11:45,320
so their voice had equal power.

1879
02:11:45,320 --> 02:11:46,960
- .. what she said...

1880
02:11:46,960 --> 02:11:48,440
- .. what she said...

1881
02:11:51,640 --> 02:11:54,880
Each person was an autonomous individual who expressed

1882
02:11:54,880 --> 02:11:57,080
what they believed.

1883
02:11:57,080 --> 02:12:00,920
But together they became components in a network that organised itself

1884
02:12:00,920 --> 02:12:05,480
through the feedback of information around the system.

1885
02:12:05,480 --> 02:12:09,160
You could organise people without the exercise of power.

1886
02:12:11,960 --> 02:12:14,520
The crisis in Egypt.

1887
02:12:20,080 --> 02:12:22,080
A march through our main streets.

1888
02:12:22,080 --> 02:12:25,000
Looks like chaos. Looks like

1889
02:12:25,000 --> 02:12:26,680
police is running around

1890
02:12:26,680 --> 02:12:31,000
and a few hundred people walking down the street.

1891
02:12:32,840 --> 02:12:35,720
Then, almost immediately, the Arab Spring began.

1892
02:12:37,200 --> 02:12:38,920
The first revolution started in Tunisia,

1893
02:12:38,920 --> 02:12:40,960
but it quickly spread to Egypt.

1894
02:12:42,640 --> 02:12:46,160
On January 25th 2011, thousands of Egyptians

1895
02:12:46,160 --> 02:12:48,720
came out in groups across Cairo and then

1896
02:12:48,720 --> 02:12:51,000
started moving towards Tahrir Square.

1897
02:12:53,720 --> 02:12:56,800
It seemed like a spontaneous uprising but the internet

1898
02:12:56,800 --> 02:12:59,480
had played a key role in organising the groups.

1899
02:13:01,040 --> 02:13:02,520
One of the main activists was

1900
02:13:02,520 --> 02:13:05,480
an Egyptian computer engineer called Wael Ghonim.

1901
02:13:06,560 --> 02:13:08,160
He worked for Google in Egypt

1902
02:13:08,160 --> 02:13:11,080
but he had also set up the Facebook site that

1903
02:13:11,080 --> 02:13:14,160
played the key role in organising the first protests.

1904
02:13:16,040 --> 02:13:18,240
As hundreds of thousands took over Tahrir Square,

1905
02:13:18,240 --> 02:13:20,720
Ghonim gave an interview on Egyptian TV.

1906
02:14:04,120 --> 02:14:06,680
But Ghonim was also overwhelmed by the power

1907
02:14:06,680 --> 02:14:08,520
this new technology had,

1908
02:14:08,520 --> 02:14:12,080
that a computer engineer with a keyboard could call out

1909
02:14:12,080 --> 02:14:14,120
thousands of people...

1910
02:14:14,120 --> 02:14:17,000
some of whom then died in the midst of the protests.

1911
02:14:50,960 --> 02:14:53,440
Many liberals in the West saw this as proof

1912
02:14:53,440 --> 02:14:56,800
of the revolutionary power of the internet.

1913
02:14:56,800 --> 02:14:58,960
Again it seemed to be able to organise

1914
02:14:58,960 --> 02:15:00,680
a revolution without leaders.

1915
02:15:02,040 --> 02:15:05,000
A revolution powerful enough to topple a brutal dictator

1916
02:15:05,000 --> 02:15:08,160
who had been backed by America and the West for 30 years.

1917
02:15:15,720 --> 02:15:17,520
But the internet radicals were not the

1918
02:15:17,520 --> 02:15:19,880
only ones who saw their dreams being fulfilled

1919
02:15:19,880 --> 02:15:21,000
in the Arab Spring.

1920
02:15:22,080 --> 02:15:24,720
Many of the political leaders of the West also

1921
02:15:24,720 --> 02:15:27,560
enthusiastically supported the revolutions

1922
02:15:27,560 --> 02:15:31,280
because it seemed to fit with their simple idea of regime change.

1923
02:15:32,760 --> 02:15:34,840
It might have failed in Iraq

1924
02:15:34,840 --> 02:15:37,800
but now the people, everywhere, were rising up to rid

1925
02:15:37,800 --> 02:15:40,560
themselves of the evil tyrants.

1926
02:15:40,560 --> 02:15:42,360
And democracy would flourish.

1927
02:15:56,160 --> 02:15:58,480
So when an uprising began in Libya,

1928
02:15:58,480 --> 02:16:00,960
Britain, France and America supported it.

1929
02:16:02,320 --> 02:16:04,760
And suddenly, Colonel Gaddafi stopped being

1930
02:16:04,760 --> 02:16:05,920
a hero of the West.

1931
02:16:09,040 --> 02:16:13,040
All the politicians, and the public relations people, and the academics

1932
02:16:13,040 --> 02:16:15,920
who had all promoted him as a global thinker

1933
02:16:15,920 --> 02:16:17,320
suddenly disappeared.

1934
02:16:18,520 --> 02:16:23,320
And Gaddafi became yet again an evil dictator who had to be overthrown.

1935
02:16:25,360 --> 02:16:28,400
His son Saif said, "The way these people are

1936
02:16:28,400 --> 02:16:31,040
"disowning me and my father is disgusting.

1937
02:16:32,680 --> 02:16:34,840
"Just a few months ago, we were being treated as

1938
02:16:34,840 --> 02:16:36,760
"honoured friends.

1939
02:16:36,760 --> 02:16:40,120
"Now that rebels are threatening our country, these cowards

1940
02:16:40,120 --> 02:16:41,360
"are turning on us."

1941
02:16:42,440 --> 02:16:45,600
Colonel Gaddafi retreated to the ruins of the house that

1942
02:16:45,600 --> 02:16:49,840
the Americans had bombed 30 years before and addressed the world.

1943
02:16:49,840 --> 02:16:53,400
- Muammar Gaddafi is the glory.

1944
02:16:53,400 --> 02:16:55,720
If I had a position, if I were a president,

1945
02:16:55,720 --> 02:16:56,880
I would have resigned.

1946
02:16:56,880 --> 02:16:59,680
I would have thrown my resignation in your face.

1947
02:16:59,680 --> 02:17:02,360
But I have no position, no post.

1948
02:17:02,360 --> 02:17:04,080
I have nowhere to resign from.

1949
02:17:04,080 --> 02:17:08,120
I have my gun, I have my rifle to fight for Libya.

1950
02:17:10,080 --> 02:17:12,400
Withdraw your children from the streets.

1951
02:17:14,320 --> 02:17:16,080
Take your children back.

1952
02:17:16,080 --> 02:17:18,400
They are drugging your children.

1953
02:17:18,400 --> 02:17:20,200
They are making your children drunk

1954
02:17:20,200 --> 02:17:23,120
and they are sending them to hell.

1955
02:17:23,120 --> 02:17:25,400
Your children will die. What for?

1956
02:17:36,240 --> 02:17:41,240
In November 2011 a large convoy was spotted driving at high speed

1957
02:17:41,240 --> 02:17:44,000
away from Colonel Gaddafi's home town of Sirte.

1958
02:17:45,360 --> 02:17:46,560
An American drone,

1959
02:17:46,560 --> 02:17:49,160
controlled from a shed outside Las Vegas,

1960
02:17:49,160 --> 02:17:50,400
was sent to follow it.

1961
02:17:58,920 --> 02:18:02,400
The operator fired a missile at the lead car of the convoy.

1962
02:18:13,520 --> 02:18:16,480
Gaddafi then fled - looking for shelter from

1963
02:18:16,480 --> 02:18:18,080
the oncoming rebel forces.

1964
02:18:19,320 --> 02:18:21,600
He hid under the road in a drainage pipe.

1965
02:18:56,960 --> 02:18:59,040
But instead of becoming a democracy,

1966
02:18:59,040 --> 02:19:01,040
Libya began to descend into chaos.

1967
02:19:10,240 --> 02:19:13,160
And the other revolutions were also failing.

1968
02:19:13,160 --> 02:19:16,920
The Occupy camps had become trapped in endless meetings.

1969
02:19:16,920 --> 02:19:18,920
And it became clear that there

1970
02:19:18,920 --> 02:19:22,040
was a terrible confusion at the heart of the movement.

1971
02:19:22,040 --> 02:19:23,680
The radicals had believed that if

1972
02:19:23,680 --> 02:19:26,520
they could create a new way of organising people

1973
02:19:26,520 --> 02:19:29,120
then a new society would emerge.

1974
02:19:29,120 --> 02:19:31,960
But what they did not have was a picture of what that

1975
02:19:31,960 --> 02:19:35,040
society would be like, a vision of the future.

1976
02:19:37,080 --> 02:19:40,360
The truth was that their revolution was not about an idea.

1977
02:19:41,520 --> 02:19:43,520
It was about how you manage things.

1978
02:19:46,600 --> 02:19:48,760
And those who had started the revolution

1979
02:19:48,760 --> 02:19:52,000
in Egypt came face-to-face with the same terrible fact.

1980
02:19:53,440 --> 02:19:54,480
Social media had helped

1981
02:19:54,480 --> 02:19:56,960
to bring people together in Tahrir square.

1982
02:19:58,000 --> 02:20:00,800
But once there, the internet gave no clue as

1983
02:20:00,800 --> 02:20:03,880
to what kind of new society they could create in Egypt.

1984
02:20:05,240 --> 02:20:06,560
The movement stalled.

1985
02:20:08,160 --> 02:20:10,440
And a group that DID have a powerful idea - the

1986
02:20:10,440 --> 02:20:13,320
Muslim Brotherhood - rushed in to fill the vacuum.

1987
02:20:14,640 --> 02:20:16,920
The Brotherhood took power in an election

1988
02:20:16,920 --> 02:20:19,800
and one of them, Mohamed Morsi, became President.

1989
02:20:22,600 --> 02:20:24,880
The liberals and the Left were shocked.

1990
02:20:24,880 --> 02:20:26,760
And, bit by bit, they turned back to

1991
02:20:26,760 --> 02:20:30,040
the military, protesting, asking them to save

1992
02:20:30,040 --> 02:20:32,920
the revolution from being captured by Islamists.

1993
02:20:36,520 --> 02:20:40,720
In the spring of 2013, the military took action.

1994
02:20:40,720 --> 02:20:42,600
They arrested the President and

1995
02:20:42,600 --> 02:20:45,480
killed hundreds of his supporters who protested.

1996
02:20:47,120 --> 02:20:50,960
And an extraordinary spectacle unfolded in Tahrir Square.

1997
02:20:51,960 --> 02:20:54,040
Thousands of the liberal activists who

1998
02:20:54,040 --> 02:20:56,360
had begun the revolution two years before,

1999
02:20:56,360 --> 02:20:59,440
summoned by social media, now welcomed the

2000
02:20:59,440 --> 02:21:02,440
military back by waving their laser pens at the

2001
02:21:02,440 --> 02:21:04,240
helicopters flying overhead.

2002
02:21:10,440 --> 02:21:13,720
The crowd had been summoned there once again by Facebook.

2003
02:21:42,560 --> 02:21:44,560
After the failure of the revolutions, it was not

2004
02:21:44,560 --> 02:21:47,480
just the radicals - no-one in the West had

2005
02:21:47,480 --> 02:21:49,720
any idea of how to change the world.

2006
02:21:51,080 --> 02:21:53,520
At home, the politicians had given so much of their

2007
02:21:53,520 --> 02:21:56,360
power away, to finance and the ever-growing

2008
02:21:56,360 --> 02:21:59,680
managerial bureaucracies, that they in effect

2009
02:21:59,680 --> 02:22:01,600
had become managers themselves.

2010
02:22:03,320 --> 02:22:06,080
While abroad, all their adventures had failed.

2011
02:22:07,200 --> 02:22:10,040
And their simplistic vision of the world had been exposed

2012
02:22:10,040 --> 02:22:11,840
as dangerous and destructive.

2013
02:22:16,840 --> 02:22:18,960
But in Russia, there was a group of men who

2014
02:22:18,960 --> 02:22:21,000
had seen how this very lack of belief in

2015
02:22:21,000 --> 02:22:23,640
politics, and dark uncertainty about the

2016
02:22:23,640 --> 02:22:25,960
future could work to their advantage.

2017
02:22:28,040 --> 02:22:30,880
What they had done was turn politics into a strange

2018
02:22:30,880 --> 02:22:33,720
theatre where nobody knew what was true or

2019
02:22:33,720 --> 02:22:35,160
what was fake any longer.

2020
02:22:38,760 --> 02:22:41,280
They were called political technologists and they were

2021
02:22:41,280 --> 02:22:43,440
the key figures behind President Putin.

2022
02:22:44,640 --> 02:22:47,800
They had kept him in power, unchallenged, for 15 years.

2023
02:22:50,440 --> 02:22:52,600
Some of them had been dissidents back in the 1970s

2024
02:22:52,600 --> 02:22:55,480
and had been powerfully influenced by the

2025
02:22:55,480 --> 02:22:58,640
science fiction writings of the Strugatsky brothers.

2026
02:23:00,280 --> 02:23:01,920
20 years later, when Russia fell

2027
02:23:01,920 --> 02:23:05,000
apart after the end of communism, they rose up

2028
02:23:05,000 --> 02:23:06,720
and took control of the media.

2029
02:23:08,080 --> 02:23:11,560
And they used it to manipulate the electorate on a vast scale.

2030
02:23:13,440 --> 02:23:15,680
For them, reality was just something that

2031
02:23:15,680 --> 02:23:18,800
could be manipulated and shaped into anything

2032
02:23:18,800 --> 02:23:19,920
you wanted it to be.

2033
02:23:39,360 --> 02:23:43,040
But then a technologist emerged who went much further.

2034
02:23:43,040 --> 02:23:44,960
And his ideas would become central to

2035
02:23:44,960 --> 02:23:46,280
Putin's grip on power.

2036
02:23:48,280 --> 02:23:51,200
He was called Vladislav Surkov.

2037
02:23:51,200 --> 02:23:54,520
Surkov came originally from the theatre world and those who have

2038
02:23:54,520 --> 02:23:57,280
studied his career say that what he did was take

2039
02:23:57,280 --> 02:23:59,800
avant-garde ideas from the theatre and bring

2040
02:23:59,800 --> 02:24:01,840
them into the heart of politics.

2041
02:24:03,160 --> 02:24:06,600
Surkov's aim was not just to manipulate people

2042
02:24:06,600 --> 02:24:09,760
but to go deeper and play with, and undermine

2043
02:24:09,760 --> 02:24:12,600
their very perception of the world so they are

2044
02:24:12,600 --> 02:24:14,720
never sure what is really happening.

2045
02:24:21,920 --> 02:24:23,920
Surkov turned Russian politics into

2046
02:24:23,920 --> 02:24:27,960
a bewildering, constantly changing piece of theatre.

2047
02:24:27,960 --> 02:24:29,560
He used Kremlin money to sponsor

2048
02:24:29,560 --> 02:24:34,000
all kinds of groups - from mass anti-fascist youth organisations,

2049
02:24:34,000 --> 02:24:36,560
to the very opposite - neo-Nazi skinheads.

2050
02:24:40,280 --> 02:24:42,080
And liberal human rights groups who

2051
02:24:42,080 --> 02:24:44,320
then attacked the government.

2052
02:24:44,320 --> 02:24:47,120
Surkov even backed whole political parties that were

2053
02:24:47,120 --> 02:24:49,000
opposed to President Putin.

2054
02:24:50,840 --> 02:24:54,720
But the key thing was that Surkov then let it be known that this

2055
02:24:54,720 --> 02:24:56,760
was what he was doing.

2056
02:24:56,760 --> 02:24:59,960
Which meant that no-one was sure what was real or what was fake

2057
02:24:59,960 --> 02:25:01,000
in modern Russia.

2058
02:25:03,000 --> 02:25:04,760
As one journalist put it,

2059
02:25:04,760 --> 02:25:08,200
"It's a strategy of power that keeps any opposition

2060
02:25:08,200 --> 02:25:09,840
"constantly confused -

2061
02:25:09,840 --> 02:25:13,840
"a ceaseless shape-shifting that is unstoppable

2062
02:25:13,840 --> 02:25:15,720
"because it is indefinable."

2063
02:25:20,080 --> 02:25:23,400
Meanwhile, real power was elsewhere -

2064
02:25:23,400 --> 02:25:24,960
hidden away behind the stage,

2065
02:25:24,960 --> 02:25:28,120
exercised without anyone seeing it.

2066
02:25:32,280 --> 02:25:36,920
And then the same thing seemed to start happening in the West.

2067
02:25:38,080 --> 02:25:40,600
By now it was becoming ever more clear

2068
02:25:40,600 --> 02:25:43,040
that the system had deep flaws.

2069
02:25:43,040 --> 02:25:45,640
Every month there were new revelations,

2070
02:25:45,640 --> 02:25:49,440
of most of the banks' involvement in global corruption,

2071
02:25:49,440 --> 02:25:52,520
of massive tax avoidance by all the major corporations,

2072
02:25:52,520 --> 02:25:55,240
of the secret surveillance of everyone's e-mails

2073
02:25:55,240 --> 02:25:57,920
by the National Security Agency.

2074
02:25:57,920 --> 02:26:00,400
Yet no-one was prosecuted,

2075
02:26:00,400 --> 02:26:03,200
except for a few people at the lowest levels.

2076
02:26:04,280 --> 02:26:05,880
And behind it all,

2077
02:26:05,880 --> 02:26:08,640
the massive inequality kept on growing.

2078
02:26:08,640 --> 02:26:11,760
Yet the structure of power remained the same.

2079
02:26:11,760 --> 02:26:14,960
Nothing ever changed -

2080
02:26:14,960 --> 02:26:19,160
because nothing could be allowed to destabilise the system.

2081
02:26:19,160 --> 02:26:21,600
But then the shape-shifting began.

2082
02:26:25,000 --> 02:26:27,280
Thank you very much. So nice.

2083
02:26:27,280 --> 02:26:30,880
So amazing. So amazing.

2084
02:26:30,880 --> 02:26:33,040
- We love you.
- What? That's OK.

2085
02:26:33,040 --> 02:26:34,400
I love you more, OK?

2086
02:26:35,880 --> 02:26:37,760
The campaign that Donald Trump ran

2087
02:26:37,760 --> 02:26:40,440
was unlike anything before in politics.

2088
02:26:40,440 --> 02:26:41,920
Nothing was fixed.

2089
02:26:41,920 --> 02:26:44,040
What he said, who he attacked

2090
02:26:44,040 --> 02:26:49,480
and how he attacked them was constantly changing and shifting.

2091
02:26:49,480 --> 02:26:51,320
Trump attacked his Republican rivals

2092
02:26:51,320 --> 02:26:54,960
as all being part of a broken and corrupt system -

2093
02:26:54,960 --> 02:26:58,080
a politics where everyone could be bought,

2094
02:26:58,080 --> 02:27:02,360
using words that could have come from the Occupy movement.

2095
02:27:02,360 --> 02:27:05,280
You've also donated to several Democratic candidates,

2096
02:27:05,280 --> 02:27:07,800
Hillary Clinton included, Nancy Pelosi.

2097
02:27:07,800 --> 02:27:10,840
You explained away those donations saying you did that

2098
02:27:10,840 --> 02:27:13,200
to get business-related favours.

2099
02:27:13,200 --> 02:27:15,640
And you said recently, "When you give,

2100
02:27:15,640 --> 02:27:18,840
"they do whatever the hell you want them to do."

2101
02:27:18,840 --> 02:27:22,200
- You'd better believe it.
- So what specifically did they do?

2102
02:27:22,200 --> 02:27:24,600
If I ask them, if I need them...

2103
02:27:24,600 --> 02:27:26,480
You know, most of the people on this stage,

2104
02:27:26,480 --> 02:27:29,320
I've given to, just so you understand, a lot of money.

2105
02:27:29,320 --> 02:27:31,800
I will tell you that our system is broken.

2106
02:27:31,800 --> 02:27:33,760
I give to many people.

2107
02:27:33,760 --> 02:27:36,160
Before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman.

2108
02:27:36,160 --> 02:27:38,720
I give to everybody. When they call, I give.

2109
02:27:38,720 --> 02:27:41,360
And you know what, when I need something from them,

2110
02:27:41,360 --> 02:27:43,880
two years later, three years later, I call them.

2111
02:27:43,880 --> 02:27:47,240
- They are there for me.
- So what did you get?
- And that's a broken system.

2112
02:27:47,240 --> 02:27:50,440
But at the same time, Trump used the language

2113
02:27:50,440 --> 02:27:53,520
of the extreme racist right in America,

2114
02:27:53,520 --> 02:27:55,960
connecting with people's darkest fears -

2115
02:27:55,960 --> 02:27:59,560
pushing them and bringing those fears out into the open.

2116
02:27:59,560 --> 02:28:01,800
Get the fuck out of here!

2117
02:28:01,800 --> 02:28:04,240
Our country, motherfucker!

2118
02:28:04,240 --> 02:28:05,760
Our country!

2119
02:28:05,760 --> 02:28:07,400
Proud fucking American!

2120
02:28:07,400 --> 02:28:09,040
Made in the USA, bitch!

2121
02:28:09,040 --> 02:28:11,720
Made in the fucking USA!

2122
02:28:11,720 --> 02:28:14,120
Don't fucking come back, burrito bitch!

2123
02:28:16,760 --> 02:28:19,920
Go fucking right back to jail, motherfucker!

2124
02:28:19,920 --> 02:28:22,920
Build that fucking wall for me!

2125
02:28:22,920 --> 02:28:25,240
Trump! Donald Trump!

2126
02:28:25,240 --> 02:28:27,720
Fuck you! I love my country!

2127
02:28:27,720 --> 02:28:30,920
Yeah! I'll fuck like at least ten of you up in one session,

2128
02:28:30,920 --> 02:28:32,760
you fucking pussy!

2129
02:28:32,760 --> 02:28:35,600
Many of the facts that Trump asserted

2130
02:28:35,600 --> 02:28:37,840
were also completely untrue.

2131
02:28:37,840 --> 02:28:39,960
But Trump didn't care.

2132
02:28:39,960 --> 02:28:42,920
He and his audience knew that much of what he said

2133
02:28:42,920 --> 02:28:45,120
bore little relationship to reality.

2134
02:28:46,680 --> 02:28:49,800
This meant that Trump defeated journalism -

2135
02:28:49,800 --> 02:28:52,160
because the journalists' central belief was that

2136
02:28:52,160 --> 02:28:56,360
their job was to expose lies and assert the truth.

2137
02:28:56,360 --> 02:28:58,520
With Trump, this became irrelevant.

2138
02:29:00,440 --> 02:29:04,000
Not surprisingly, Vladimir Putin admired this.

2139
02:29:52,840 --> 02:29:55,600
The liberals were outraged by Trump.

2140
02:29:55,600 --> 02:29:58,440
But they expressed their anger in cyberspace,

2141
02:29:58,440 --> 02:30:00,120
so it had no effect -

2142
02:30:00,120 --> 02:30:03,640
because the algorithms made sure that they only spoke to people

2143
02:30:03,640 --> 02:30:05,200
who already agreed with them.

2144
02:30:06,560 --> 02:30:10,800
Instead, ironically, their waves of angry messages and tweets

2145
02:30:10,800 --> 02:30:14,840
benefitted the large corporations who ran the social media platforms.

2146
02:30:16,320 --> 02:30:21,000
One online analyst put it simply, "Angry people click more."

2147
02:30:25,240 --> 02:30:27,080
It meant that the radical fury

2148
02:30:27,080 --> 02:30:29,480
that came like waves across the internet

2149
02:30:29,480 --> 02:30:32,880
no longer had the power to change the world.

2150
02:30:32,880 --> 02:30:35,600
Instead, it was becoming a fuel

2151
02:30:35,600 --> 02:30:38,400
that was feeding the new systems of power

2152
02:30:38,400 --> 02:30:40,400
and making them ever more powerful.

2153
02:30:45,000 --> 02:30:47,800
But none of the liberals could possibly imagine

2154
02:30:47,800 --> 02:30:50,520
that Donald Trump could ever win the nomination.

2155
02:30:50,520 --> 02:30:53,000
It was just a giant pantomime.

2156
02:30:56,440 --> 02:30:58,520
Then of course there's Donald Trump.

2157
02:30:58,520 --> 02:31:00,960
Donald Trump has been saying that he will run for president

2158
02:31:00,960 --> 02:31:02,920
as a Republican, which is surprising,

2159
02:31:02,920 --> 02:31:05,040
since I just assumed he was running as a joke.

2160
02:31:13,400 --> 02:31:16,840
Donald Trump often appears on Fox, which is ironic,

2161
02:31:16,840 --> 02:31:19,760
because a fox often appears on Donald Trump's head.

2162
02:31:27,440 --> 02:31:29,640
Donald Trump owns the Miss USA Pageant,

2163
02:31:29,640 --> 02:31:31,240
which is great for Republicans

2164
02:31:31,240 --> 02:31:33,880
because it will streamline their search for a vice president.

2165
02:31:40,920 --> 02:31:44,480
Donald Trump said recently he has a great relationship with the blacks.

2166
02:31:44,480 --> 02:31:47,200
though unless the Blacks are a family of white people,

2167
02:31:47,200 --> 02:31:49,640
I bet he's mistaken.

2168
02:32:01,160 --> 02:32:03,320
But underneath the liberal disdain,

2169
02:32:03,320 --> 02:32:07,640
both Donald Trump in America, and Vladislav Surkov in Russia

2170
02:32:07,640 --> 02:32:09,920
had realised the same thing -

2171
02:32:09,920 --> 02:32:13,520
that the version of reality that politics presented

2172
02:32:13,520 --> 02:32:15,680
was no longer believable,

2173
02:32:15,680 --> 02:32:19,400
that the stories politicians told their people about the world

2174
02:32:19,400 --> 02:32:22,120
had stopped making sense.

2175
02:32:22,120 --> 02:32:25,920
And in the face of that, you could play with reality,

2176
02:32:25,920 --> 02:32:28,800
constantly shifting and changing,

2177
02:32:28,800 --> 02:32:31,960
and in the process, further undermine and weaken

2178
02:32:31,960 --> 02:32:33,800
the old forms of power.

2179
02:33:00,360 --> 02:33:03,880
And there was another force that was about to dramatically reveal

2180
02:33:03,880 --> 02:33:07,200
just how weak politics had become in the West -

2181
02:33:07,200 --> 02:33:08,560
Syria.

2182
02:33:31,320 --> 02:33:34,400
The attack happened here at a central police station

2183
02:33:34,400 --> 02:33:35,800
in Damascus.

2184
02:33:35,800 --> 02:33:39,160
Police say the bomber came up the stairs,

2185
02:33:39,160 --> 02:33:41,720
police then opened fire,

2186
02:33:41,720 --> 02:33:44,840
and then police say he detonated the explosives.

2187
02:33:44,840 --> 02:33:46,600
And the damage is here to see.

2188
02:33:46,600 --> 02:33:51,560
Behind me, the pockmarked walls where the ball bearings hit.

2189
02:33:51,560 --> 02:33:55,040
Blood splattered on the walls.

2190
02:33:55,040 --> 02:33:59,040
And the force of the blast caused walls to collapse.

2191
02:33:59,040 --> 02:34:03,760
And everything is topsy-turvy, everything destroyed.

2192
02:34:10,040 --> 02:34:14,040
By now Syria was being torn apart by a horrific civil war.

2193
02:34:14,040 --> 02:34:16,960
What had started as part of the Arab Spring

2194
02:34:16,960 --> 02:34:19,680
had turned into a vicious battle to the death

2195
02:34:19,680 --> 02:34:23,000
between Bashar Assad and his opponents.

2196
02:34:23,000 --> 02:34:24,960
And at the heart of the conflict

2197
02:34:24,960 --> 02:34:28,440
was the force that his father had first brought to the West -

2198
02:34:28,440 --> 02:34:30,680
suicide bombing.

2199
02:34:36,600 --> 02:34:37,840
Back in the 1980s

2200
02:34:37,840 --> 02:34:41,080
Bashar Assad's father had seen suicide bombing

2201
02:34:41,080 --> 02:34:42,920
as a weapon he could use

2202
02:34:42,920 --> 02:34:46,480
to force the Americans out of the Middle East.

2203
02:34:46,480 --> 02:34:49,880
But over the next 30 years it had shifted and mutated

2204
02:34:49,880 --> 02:34:53,320
into something that had now ended up doing the very opposite -

2205
02:34:53,320 --> 02:34:55,720
tearing the Arab world apart.

2206
02:34:59,120 --> 02:35:03,720
Hafez al-Assad's dream of a powerful and united Arab world

2207
02:35:03,720 --> 02:35:05,440
was now destroyed.

2208
02:35:05,440 --> 02:35:10,000
In Iraq, extremist Sunni groups had used suicide bombing

2209
02:35:10,000 --> 02:35:13,520
as a way to start a sectarian war.

2210
02:35:13,520 --> 02:35:18,560
And now groups like Isis brought the same techniques into Syria

2211
02:35:18,560 --> 02:35:22,160
to attack not just Assad's son but his fellow Shi'ites.

2212
02:35:28,640 --> 02:35:32,120
And like his father, Bashar Assad retaliated

2213
02:35:32,120 --> 02:35:34,160
with a vengeful fury.

2214
02:35:34,160 --> 02:35:35,960
And the country fell apart.

2215
02:35:38,680 --> 02:35:40,520
- Allahu Akbar.

2216
02:35:46,440 --> 02:35:48,760
Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar.

2217
02:36:03,640 --> 02:36:05,200
My fellow Americans...

2218
02:36:05,200 --> 02:36:08,200
tonight I want to talk to you about Syria -

2219
02:36:08,200 --> 02:36:12,720
why it matters and where we go from here.

2220
02:36:12,720 --> 02:36:16,680
Faced by the war, western politicians were bewildered.

2221
02:36:16,680 --> 02:36:20,400
They insisted Bashar Assad was evil.

2222
02:36:20,400 --> 02:36:23,920
But then it turned out that his enemies were more evil

2223
02:36:23,920 --> 02:36:25,680
and more horrific than him.

2224
02:36:25,680 --> 02:36:27,840
The question before the House today

2225
02:36:27,840 --> 02:36:30,880
is how we keep the British people safe from the threat

2226
02:36:30,880 --> 02:36:32,520
posed by Isil.

2227
02:36:32,520 --> 02:36:36,000
This is not about whether we want to fight terrorism,

2228
02:36:36,000 --> 02:36:37,720
it's about how best we do that.

2229
02:36:39,240 --> 02:36:41,680
So Britain, America and France

2230
02:36:41,680 --> 02:36:45,240
decided to bomb the terrorist threat.

2231
02:36:45,240 --> 02:36:48,600
But the effect of that was to help keep Assad in power.

2232
02:36:55,320 --> 02:36:58,000
Then it became more confusing.

2233
02:36:58,000 --> 02:37:00,920
Suddenly, the Russians intervened.

2234
02:37:02,120 --> 02:37:05,280
President Putin sent hundreds of planes and combat troops

2235
02:37:05,280 --> 02:37:07,720
to support Assad.

2236
02:37:07,720 --> 02:37:11,840
But no-one knew what their underlying aim was.

2237
02:37:11,840 --> 02:37:14,160
They seemed to be using a strategy that

2238
02:37:14,160 --> 02:37:16,960
Vladislav Surkov had developed in the Ukraine.

2239
02:37:18,200 --> 02:37:20,880
He called it non-linear warfare.

2240
02:37:20,880 --> 02:37:24,200
It was a new kind of war - where you never know

2241
02:37:24,200 --> 02:37:26,520
what the enemy are really up to.

2242
02:37:26,520 --> 02:37:28,760
- Allahu Akbar.

2243
02:37:28,760 --> 02:37:32,640
The underlying aim, Surkov said, was not to win the war,

2244
02:37:32,640 --> 02:37:35,720
but to use the conflict to create a constant state

2245
02:37:35,720 --> 02:37:37,800
of destabilised perception -

2246
02:37:37,800 --> 02:37:40,520
in order to manage and control.

2247
02:37:43,400 --> 02:37:44,840
Allahu Akbar.

2248
02:37:50,280 --> 02:37:54,640
In March 2016 the Russians suddenly announced with a great fanfare

2249
02:37:54,640 --> 02:37:57,000
that they were leaving Syria.

2250
02:37:57,000 --> 02:38:00,000
And a concert was held in the ruins of Palmyra

2251
02:38:00,000 --> 02:38:01,640
to celebrate the withdrawal.

2252
02:38:03,880 --> 02:38:07,480
But in reality, the Russians never left.

2253
02:38:07,480 --> 02:38:08,680
They are still there,

2254
02:38:08,680 --> 02:38:12,040
and still no-one knows what they want.

2255
02:38:21,440 --> 02:38:25,080
And within Syria there was a new Islamist ideologist

2256
02:38:25,080 --> 02:38:28,240
who was determined to exploit the growing uncertainties

2257
02:38:28,240 --> 02:38:30,600
in Europe and America.

2258
02:38:30,600 --> 02:38:33,720
He was called Abu Musab al-Suri -

2259
02:38:33,720 --> 02:38:35,720
the Syrian.

2260
02:38:45,360 --> 02:38:49,600
Al-Suri had originally worked with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan,

2261
02:38:49,600 --> 02:38:52,320
but he had turned against him.

2262
02:38:52,320 --> 02:38:55,080
Al-Suri gave lectures that had a powerful effect

2263
02:38:55,080 --> 02:38:56,560
on the Islamist movement.

2264
02:38:56,560 --> 02:38:59,720
He argued that bin Laden had been wrong

2265
02:38:59,720 --> 02:39:01,640
to attack the West head on,

2266
02:39:01,640 --> 02:39:04,600
because it created a massive military response

2267
02:39:04,600 --> 02:39:07,880
that had almost destroyed Islamism.

2268
02:39:07,880 --> 02:39:09,880
Instead, al-Suri said,

2269
02:39:09,880 --> 02:39:12,360
independent groups or individuals

2270
02:39:12,360 --> 02:39:15,280
should stage random, small-scale attacks

2271
02:39:15,280 --> 02:39:17,920
on civilians in Europe and America.

2272
02:39:17,920 --> 02:39:20,080
The aim was to spread fear,

2273
02:39:20,080 --> 02:39:22,360
uncertainty and doubt -

2274
02:39:22,360 --> 02:39:26,320
and undermine the already failing authority of western politicians.

2275
02:39:46,880 --> 02:39:50,560
The effect of the attacks shocked Europe and America

2276
02:39:50,560 --> 02:39:55,640
and gave powerful force to the new politics of uncertainty and anxiety.

2277
02:39:57,200 --> 02:39:59,840
I'm sure that you, with me,

2278
02:39:59,840 --> 02:40:04,080
share the absolute horror and total revulsion

2279
02:40:04,080 --> 02:40:07,440
at what happened in Paris last Friday.

2280
02:40:07,440 --> 02:40:09,200
And I'm afraid there is,

2281
02:40:09,200 --> 02:40:12,000
and we have to be honest and frank about this

2282
02:40:12,000 --> 02:40:15,320
and talk about these things without being fearful,

2283
02:40:15,320 --> 02:40:21,960
there is a problem with some of the Muslim community in this country.

2284
02:40:21,960 --> 02:40:24,480
There is a problem. And we have to be honest about it.

2285
02:40:24,480 --> 02:40:27,520
Our politicians, I'm afraid, haven't had the guts.

2286
02:40:31,360 --> 02:40:34,160
This could be the great Trojan horse of all time,

2287
02:40:34,160 --> 02:40:37,840
because you look at the migration... Study it, look at it.

2288
02:40:37,840 --> 02:40:40,680
Now they'll start infiltrating with women and children.

2289
02:40:40,680 --> 02:40:43,840
Both the Brexit campaign in Britain

2290
02:40:43,840 --> 02:40:45,720
and Donald Trump in America

2291
02:40:45,720 --> 02:40:48,600
did exactly what al-Suri had predicted.

2292
02:40:48,600 --> 02:40:51,920
They used the fear to dramatise a world where everything -

2293
02:40:51,920 --> 02:40:55,240
even going to a restaurant - had become a risky event.

2294
02:40:56,400 --> 02:41:00,560
And what had been seen as doomed campaigns on the fringes of society

2295
02:41:00,560 --> 02:41:03,040
that could never win became frighteningly real.

2296
02:41:04,560 --> 02:41:08,440
I am genuinely freaked out right now about this whole Brexit thing.

2297
02:41:08,440 --> 02:41:11,400
Because we'd all been told that it wasn't going to happen,

2298
02:41:11,400 --> 02:41:13,960
like it was going away, it was going away from Brexiting

2299
02:41:13,960 --> 02:41:15,440
and on to the staying.

2300
02:41:15,440 --> 02:41:18,440
And because I had this, like bedrock belief...

2301
02:41:18,440 --> 02:41:20,960
I have friends who, like, live and work in London,

2302
02:41:20,960 --> 02:41:24,400
and they said, "Don't worry, we're a very sensible people."

2303
02:41:25,560 --> 02:41:27,640
"This isn't going to happen. It's a lot of talk,

2304
02:41:27,640 --> 02:41:29,800
"but we don't do that sort of stuff here."

2305
02:41:29,800 --> 02:41:32,280
Um... they were wrong.

2306
02:41:33,840 --> 02:41:38,840
And that really kind of crushes my view of,

2307
02:41:38,840 --> 02:41:40,560
like, what can happen that is bad

2308
02:41:40,560 --> 02:41:42,680
that we don't think is going to happen.

2309
02:41:42,680 --> 02:41:44,600
Like it's just not supposed to happen.

2310
02:42:03,480 --> 02:42:06,120
I fear that we are watching

2311
02:42:06,120 --> 02:42:10,640
the stirrings of fascism in Europe again.

2312
02:42:10,640 --> 02:42:15,520
And I genuinely never thought it would be my country

2313
02:42:15,520 --> 02:42:16,880
that did that.

2314
02:42:16,880 --> 02:42:18,960
I thought this would be America.

2315
02:42:18,960 --> 02:42:22,600
I thought America was the people who were so filled with hate.

2316
02:42:22,600 --> 02:42:24,160
Not us.

2317
02:42:24,160 --> 02:42:28,480
And I'm so disappointed.

2318
02:42:28,480 --> 02:42:30,280
I'm so hurt.

2319
02:42:34,960 --> 02:42:36,320
Zee.

2320
02:42:38,520 --> 02:42:41,120
Standing Room Only by Barbara Mandrell.

2321
02:44:25,520 --> 02:44:27,840
This is my right to free speech going on here, OK?

2322
02:45:20,080 --> 02:45:21,520
Oh.

2323
02:45:23,640 --> 02:45:25,120
- You're on video.
- Oh.

2324
02:45:28,960 --> 02:45:31,400
Say bye, Heather.