"The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear"

Documentaries made by Adam Curtis always seem to take on an impossible task - to connect and cover very different and unique themes in modern politics. As he is both the director, writer, producer and narrator of most of his films he successfully manages to convey his uncompromisingly illuminating and often inspiring insights on the world of politics.

Adam Curtis being interviewed by David Thomson before the showing of Power of Nightmares

"The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear", a three part documentary that was first screened on BBC Two in Autumn 2004 as a series of three one hour, deals with the state of today's world as it is - still polarized between fragmented and often in hostile opposition with the other side. The causes for opposing the other side vary from cultural differences to religious confrontation. One unifying theme that connects these aspects is fear. Fear of the opposing forces consolidates the power of political elites and by exaggerating the level of threat they gain even more power. The documentaries openly question whether the threat of terrorism to the West was a politically driven fantasy and if al-Qaeda really is an organised network.

Cover of the DVD

The documentary shows how two idealistic political groups - the American neo-conservatives and the radical Islamists were left disillusioned by the failure of their liberal dreams of building a better world that they had once envisioned. Or like Adam Curtis explains in the opening sequence of the documentary : "These two groups have changed the world, but not in the way that either intended. Together, they created today's nightmare vision of a secret organized evil that threatens the world, a fantasy that politicians then found restored their power and authority in a disillusioned age. And those with the darkest fears became the most powerful."

Fear was one of the key elements that US administration used when they were gathering allies to support their attack on Iraq. The accusations gathered against Iraq and its dictator Sadam Hussein, that they were supporting and helping the terrorist organization and were manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. After the US invasion to Iraq the US senate conducted an extensive research into the matter and found out that the threat level was greatly exaggerated and the connections between Al-Qaeda’s and Sadam Hussein were nonexistent.

Some important characters from the film (from top right) Leo Strauss, Sayed Kotb, Donald Rumsfeld, (two in center) Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden, William "Bill" Kristol.

This marks a great failure in the ethics of politics as the political power used the threat situation to gain political capital. Furthermore it can be speculated that this cynical step greatly contributed to the alienation of ordinary citizens from political processes as the people became disillusioned about the ethics and integrity of the political system.

Extra materials:

• Here's a nice and thorough session of questions and answers by Adam Curtis regarding the film.
• San Fransisco's International Film Society awarded Adam Curtis with the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award in 2005 and David Thomson wrote an accompanying essay.
• And all three parts of the documentary are available at google video (part 1, part 2 and part 3).
• A short film by Adam Curtis which he describes as, "a short, and possibly unfair history of the rise and fall of the television journalist as a hero."

The Race for the EU Parliament elections is on

The race for the EU elections have officially began in Estonia. The major players have introduced their campaigns to the public and street adds are up. The Center Party´s campaign demands change. But no one really explains what change they want. When Siiri Oviir, who is the EU parliament member now, stands with a poster demanding change, it makes you wonder weather she wants to come back to Estonia or is there something else they are referring to. The campaign is strongly slandering, making the Reform party the blaming point for everything that has happened in Estonia.

The Reform party´s slogan is- “A better Estonia for everyone. On the European level doers. “ This is very controversial because Estonia entered the economic crisis under the government which was lead by the Reform party. The campaign is not really saying anything and there really isn´t a message. It´s not that clear but the yellow colors are eye- catching.

The third major party is Pro Patria and Res Publica Union. There campaign is built up whit the slogan "The Right decisions at a hard time". The main ideas are " Work for Estonia". This is done by supporting business and making it easier to do business. Relations with the US is very important. Influence people to buy more local products. At the moment they are concentrating on TV commercials starring Mart Laar- the head of the party.

How to win the next European Elections? Just wait for an earthquake.

On Monday 6th of April the hearth decided to shake itself in Abruzzo, Italy. Such event left 297 people dead and around 50% of the population of the regional capital l’Aquila without their houses.
A number of questions could be asked in the attempt to understand why so many houses crumbled like sand castles, but the aim of this article is not to find causes and responsibilities rather to study how a dramatic event such an earthquake can be used to the advantage of a political parties.
On Monday the sixth immediately after the main earth tremor the area was evacuated and a main message was launched: leave the area to the rescue teams; don’t come to the disaster area if you are not part of the rescue effort.
Abruzzo was practically sealed to outsiders. But was the area closed to everybody? Of course the accredited press was allowed to report from the seen, journalists had to be escorted by fire fighters or the army to guarantee their safety, they had as expected plenty of time to broadcast the destruction and the effort of the emergency units. But were the rescue teams and the accredited press the only allowed to move in the area of the disaster? Obviously not.









The same day of the disaster Mr. Silvio Berlusconi flew with an helicopter over the area to understand the degree of the damages. After the flight he landed near by and went to visit the area in person.
His visit didn't seemed anything strange, he is the Prime minister and he wanted personally to understand the gravity of the situation. After setting up a press conference to brief the media on the current situation, he announced that the Government would work side by side with the people effected by the earthquake.
And in what way the Government decided to be present in Abruzzo? Since the terrible night of the 6th of April, Mr.Berlusconi visited the area in numerous occasions.
The PR machine started working, the Premier was photographed with fire fighters wearing their helmet, hugging old people, opening a school in a temporary tent camp for refugees together with kids, and in many other occasions.
Did this systematic campaign work?
According to the latest surveys the popularity of Mr. Berlusconi, after the earthquake, increased to an unpredicted level. In terms of intention of vote, referred to the European elections, the party of Mr. Berlusconi is expected to receive near 50% of total votes in a country where there will be no less five main parties running for the seats in Brussels.
The elections are very close and if the ''Berlusconi machine'' will work as expected, there won't be any chances for the opponents.

The European Parliament Elections in Finland

The European Parliament elections are approaching and parties are almost daily announcing new candidates. Finnish people haven’t been very interested about the European Parliament elections and the voting percentage in the elections of 2004 was 41,1 % and in 1999 the percentage was only 31,4 %. It is interesting to see if we will reach the 50 % in this election but I really doubt that, because according the latest survey of The Finnish Broadcasting Corporation YLE 48 % of Finnish people couldn’t name any candidate. If compared to the latest Presidential election (voting percentage 77,2%) and Parliamentary election (voting percentage 67,9%) Finnish people really are not interested about EU-elections and parties have big troubles to get convincing candidates for the elections.

According to YLE’s survey about the most well known candidates the results was as following; Timo Soini (23%), Jani Sievinen (6%) and Anneli Jäätteenmäki (2%).Timo Soini is probably the most controversial congressman in Finland, Jani Sievinen is a former star athlete (though nowadays he is more familiar with his relationship with a Swedish model through Yellow Press) and Anneli Jäätteenmäki is Finland’s former Prime Minister who lost her post after a political scandal. So here are the most well known candidates and it is easy to see what is the state of EU-elections in Finland.

Jani Sievinen & Mari Samuelsen

Probably the biggest reason for this situation is the fact that most of the Finnish people feels that it really doesn’t matter who are going to be our representatives in the European Parliament, since Finland has only 13 representatives and if the total number of MEPs is 736 our portion is roughly 1,8 %. In Finland people trust more to the administration, the President and the Parliament.

It is interesting to see what the voting percentage will be, since the creditability of the whole European Union has suffered badly during the recession and especially the creditability of the European Economic and Monetary Union.

G20 meeting in London – an attempt to save the world from the recession?

The world G20 leaders met in London on the 2nd & 3rd of April to discuss the current economical situation, and to come up with a good set of solutions.

From the homepage you can find the decisions that the leaders made and signed on 2 April 2009. Global plan for recovery and reform: the Communiqué from the London Summit includes 29 points.

I will point out the most interesting ones, but you can check out the entire list here. Overall the list includes pledges and the most critical areas that have to be dealt with during “the greatest challenge to the world economy in modern times”.

Point 3 states that wealth is inseparable, but needs long-term global planning for successful sustain.

Point 4: We have today therefore pledged to do whatever is necessary to:

• restore confidence, growth, and jobs;
• repair the financial system to restore lending;strengthen financial regulation to rebuild trust;
• fund and reform our international financial institutions to overcome this crisis and prevent future ones;
• promote global trade and investment and reject protectionism, to underpin prosperity;
• andbuild an inclusive, green, and sustainable recovery.

By acting together to fulfil these pledges we will bring the world economy out of recession and prevent a crisis like this from recurring in the future.

Point 5: The agreements we have reached today, to treble resources available to the IMF to $750 billion, to support a new SDR allocation of $250 billion, to support at least $100 billion of additional lending by the MDBs, to ensure $250 billion of support for trade finance, and to use the additional resources from agreed IMF gold sales for concessional finance for the poorest countries, constitute an additional $1.1 trillion programme of support to restore credit, growth and jobs in the world economy. Together with the measures we have each taken nationally, this constitutes a global plan for recovery on an unprecedented scale.

It seems like the leaders know where the main problems lay, and have thought through how to spend the financial resource in order to get the economy up and running again. For some reason I really have hope in the G20 and its new Action Plan.

Let’s give the economy a facelift!

Milk

The fight for the equal treatment for minorities - be it racial or sexual minorities - has always been an uphill struggle. The conservative and religious frameworks of our society are hard to widen. So individuals who are willing to step onto this road are always visionaries and humanitarian heroes as they are willing to sacrifice their personal life for the sake of educating people about the harm of stereotypes and the need for individual freedom.

The fight for the equal treatment of homosexual in the US gained momentum during the second half of the 70's, when Harvey Milk was first openly gay candidate who was elected for a public post in the US.

Harvey Milk

This kind of struggle serves as an ideal basis for a movie. The first attempt to show the political struggle of Harvey Milks was made in the 1984, when Rob Epstein's documentary "The Times of Harvey Milk" portrayed the struggle of its protagonist. The documentary garnered critical acclaim and also received an Oscar in the documentary category.

In 2008 a more open approach in the form a fictional movie directed by Gus Van Sant and starred by Sean Penn in role of Harvey Milk was released. This adaptation won two Oscars - one went to Sean Penn for his solid performance and the second one went to Dustin Lance Black, who wrote the screenplay. I have to agree that Penn deserved the award as his performance was balanced and was one of the strongest points of the movie. The script, that should be the foundation of a movie onto which other parts can be placed on, was a bit disappointing - supporting characters were not fully fleshed out and came off as caricatures. Lacking was also the execution and build up of the main conflict that should have made the film unique - differences between individuals that lead to the tragic end of Harvey Milks' life.

Sean Penn in "Milk"

The music by Danny Elfman, best known for composing the musical theme for "The Simpsons" and "Batman", was lacking the emotional impact that his works usually have.

So in the end there were some strong aspects - like Sean Penn's performance and some cinematography effects. But the film as a whole did not manage to create the high level of synergy between the different layers and that is the main fact that stops it becoming a true classic.

Just before his assassination Harvey Milk gave a speech that became a legend. A year ago nice looking graphical animation was added and now you can all witness the power of a well made speech.

At the court of Mr. Berlusconi

If in my previous post I commented on the awareness of Italian Prime Minister Mr. Silvio Berlusconi of the importance of having ‘’the right face’’ to win public approval, today I want to spend a few words on Berlusconi and his idea of the ideal female candidate.

When it comes to women, what are the ingredients to make a right candidate?

As demonstrated by the victories of the past two years, the right candidate should be young, intelligent and of course good looking.
And what if the candidate has a past as a showgirl? No problem!
It is the case of the Minister for Equal Opportunities Ms. Mara Garfagna (pic. above) that famous in the past for her semi naked pictures became a very well appreciated Minister thanks to her dedication to the job and to her impersonification of the emancipatio Italian women.

But, is Minister Garfagna an isoleted case of beauty and political engagement? Of course not . The court of Mr. Silvio Berlusconi counts another minister worth of the best fashion magazines, Minister of Environment Stefania Prestigiacomo (pic. right)


And, Is there space for a new minister? On. Michela Brambilla, to whom Berlusconi has promised a place as Minister by the end of 2009 even if we still don't know who will be fired to make space for her (pic.left)

And for the future? Who is going to be the new lady of Berlusconi's group of candidates to the European Elections? The 27 years old TV presenter Barbara Matera.

Will Mr.Berlusconi once again prove that beauty is not a synonymous of stupidity? and has he changed forever the stereotypical idea that italians have of politicians?