Broadcast cancelled
On Monday, a story in the Australian paper The Age reported that the Australian network SBS had dropped a scheduled airing of a BBC TV series called "The Power of Nightmares (search)."
The reason given for the sudden yank was "the recent events in London," i.e. the bombings.
No wonder SBS pulled the series. It first aired in January in Britain and in it, BBC producers worked up the theory that there is actually not an Al Qaeda (search). To quote the BBC press release, "The series assesses whether the threat from a hidden and organized terror network is an illusion and it explains how the illusion was created and who benefits from the illusion."
Guess who created the illusion? American neocons. Guess who benefits? The folks with the darkest imaginations — that might include me — who use a phantom threat to frighten you into following their instructions.
That group might also include the White House, the American military and, well, you get the picture.
The BBC Web site says the series was turned into a movie and screened at Cannes. Somehow it didn't pick up the steam Michael Moore got out of the French.
The producer, Adam Curtis (search), spent a lot of time responding to criticism of his series on the BBC Web site. You can go read it yourself.
He responds to people in a strange disembodied way as if all the bombings that have happened around the world since the end of the Gulf War had no string, no connective tissue. Events have proved him wrong, but he's bulldog British. He'll hang in with a moronic theory as long as somebody is willing to discuss it and pick up the bar bill.
The French had one of these guys. He said the 9/11 attacks were actually perpetrated by the U.S. Government in order to draw all of us into wars.
And there was another guy running around Canada spouting the same drivel.
So the BBC stooped to the same level as a crackpot in France and another one in Canada. Did you expect much else?
I am waiting to see how they all make it fit with the July 7 bombings in London. It may take a shoehorn to make that shoe fit, but I'm confident they'll find a way.
That's My Word.
It's Cosmo...He's Chinese.