1 00:00:08,560 --> 00:00:12,600 MUSIC: The Vanishing American Family by Scuba Z 2 00:00:25,960 --> 00:00:27,960 EXPLOSION 3 00:00:29,120 --> 00:00:31,360 We live in a strange time. 4 00:00:31,360 --> 00:00:33,400 Extraordinary events keep happening 5 00:00:33,400 --> 00:00:36,160 that undermine the stability of our world. 6 00:00:36,160 --> 00:00:38,360 Suicide bombs, waves of refugees, 7 00:00:38,360 --> 00:00:41,320 Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, 8 00:00:41,320 --> 00:00:42,680 even Brexit. 9 00:00:43,760 --> 00:00:45,680 EXPLOSION 10 00:00:45,680 --> 00:00:49,680 Yet those in control seem unable to deal with them, 11 00:00:49,680 --> 00:00:51,320 and no-one has any vision 12 00:00:51,320 --> 00:00:54,000 of a different or a better kind of future. 13 00:00:54,000 --> 00:00:56,720 MUSIC: Something I Can Never Have by Nine Inch Nails 14 00:00:56,720 --> 00:01:00,240 This film will tell the story of how we got to this strange place. 15 00:01:02,120 --> 00:01:04,560 It is about how, over the past 40 years, 16 00:01:04,560 --> 00:01:08,640 politicians, financiers and technological utopians, 17 00:01:08,640 --> 00:01:12,360 rather than face up to the real complexities of the world, 18 00:01:12,360 --> 00:01:14,160 retreated. 19 00:01:15,560 --> 00:01:19,400 Instead, they constructed a simpler version of the world 20 00:01:19,400 --> 00:01:21,720 in order to hang on to power. 21 00:01:21,720 --> 00:01:25,560 And as this fake world grew, all of us went along with it, 22 00:01:25,560 --> 00:01:28,640 because the simplicity was reassuring. 23 00:01:31,640 --> 00:01:34,840 Even those who thought they were attacking the system - 24 00:01:34,840 --> 00:01:37,800 the radicals, the artists, the musicians, 25 00:01:37,800 --> 00:01:39,760 and our whole counterculture - 26 00:01:39,760 --> 00:01:42,800 actually became part of the trickery, 27 00:01:42,800 --> 00:01:47,480 because they, too, had retreated into the make-believe world, 28 00:01:47,480 --> 00:01:50,880 which is why their opposition has no effect 29 00:01:50,880 --> 00:01:52,800 and nothing ever changes. 30 00:01:52,800 --> 00:01:55,200 MUSIC: The Vanishing American Family by Scuba Z 31 00:01:55,200 --> 00:01:57,440 But this retreat into a dream world 32 00:01:57,440 --> 00:02:01,640 allowed dark and destructive forces to fester and grow outside. 33 00:02:04,120 --> 00:02:07,520 Forces that are now returning to pierce the fragile surface 34 00:02:07,520 --> 00:02:10,560 of our carefully constructed fake world. 35 00:02:13,360 --> 00:02:16,880 # In dreams 36 00:02:16,880 --> 00:02:21,160 # I live... # 37 00:02:45,520 --> 00:02:49,600 The story begins in two cities at the same moment in 1975. 38 00:02:51,920 --> 00:02:53,800 One is New York. 39 00:02:53,800 --> 00:02:55,120 The other is Damascus. 40 00:02:57,360 --> 00:03:00,680 It was a moment when two ideas about how it might be possible 41 00:03:00,680 --> 00:03:03,880 to run the world without politics first took hold. 42 00:03:12,200 --> 00:03:16,640 In 1975, New York City was on the verge of collapse. 43 00:03:16,640 --> 00:03:19,280 For 30 years, the politicians who ran the city 44 00:03:19,280 --> 00:03:21,920 had borrowed more and more money from the banks 45 00:03:21,920 --> 00:03:25,560 to pay for its growing services and welfare. 46 00:03:25,560 --> 00:03:29,760 But in the early '70s, the middle classes fled from the city 47 00:03:29,760 --> 00:03:33,160 and the taxes they paid disappeared with them. 48 00:03:34,480 --> 00:03:37,560 So, the banks lent the city even more. 49 00:03:37,560 --> 00:03:41,240 But then, they began to get worried about the size of the growing debt 50 00:03:41,240 --> 00:03:44,520 and whether the city would ever be able to pay it back. 51 00:03:46,560 --> 00:03:49,000 And then one day in 1975, 52 00:03:49,000 --> 00:03:51,440 the banks just stopped. 53 00:03:55,520 --> 00:03:58,280 The city held its regular meeting to issue bonds 54 00:03:58,280 --> 00:04:02,680 in return for the loans, overseen by the city's financial controller. 55 00:04:05,200 --> 00:04:06,920 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. 56 00:04:06,920 --> 00:04:09,920 Today, the city of New York is offering for competitive bidding 57 00:04:09,920 --> 00:04:13,360 the sale of 260 million tax anticipation notes, 58 00:04:13,360 --> 00:04:18,080 of which 100 million will mature on June 3rd, 1975. 59 00:04:19,480 --> 00:04:22,800 The banks were supposed to turn up at 11am, 60 00:04:22,800 --> 00:04:27,080 but it soon became clear that none of them were going to appear. 61 00:04:27,080 --> 00:04:30,000 The meeting was rescheduled for 2pm 62 00:04:30,000 --> 00:04:33,640 and the banks promised they would turn up. 63 00:04:40,400 --> 00:04:44,640 The announcement on behalf of the controller is that the offer, 64 00:04:44,640 --> 00:04:47,040 which we had expected to receive 65 00:04:47,040 --> 00:04:50,400 and announce at two o'clock this afternoon, 66 00:04:50,400 --> 00:04:53,440 is now expected at four o'clock. 67 00:04:53,440 --> 00:04:56,200 Paul, does this mean that, so far, nobody wants those bonds? 68 00:04:56,200 --> 00:04:59,200 We will be making a further announcement at four o'clock 69 00:04:59,200 --> 00:05:02,640 and anything further that I could say now I think would not advance 70 00:05:02,640 --> 00:05:05,440 the interest of the sale, which is now in progress. 71 00:05:05,440 --> 00:05:09,200 Does this mean that you have not been able to sell them so far today? 72 00:05:09,200 --> 00:05:11,920 We will have a further announcement at four o'clock. 73 00:05:15,520 --> 00:05:19,600 What happened that day in New York marked a radical shift in power. 74 00:05:21,000 --> 00:05:24,160 The banks insisted that in order to protect their loans 75 00:05:24,160 --> 00:05:27,360 they should be allowed to take control of the city. 76 00:05:27,360 --> 00:05:30,000 The city appealed to the President, 77 00:05:30,000 --> 00:05:31,720 but he refused to help, 78 00:05:31,720 --> 00:05:36,000 so a new committee was set up to manage the city's finances. 79 00:05:36,000 --> 00:05:39,080 Out of nine members, eight of them were bankers. 80 00:05:40,840 --> 00:05:43,600 It was the start of an extraordinary experiment 81 00:05:43,600 --> 00:05:48,120 where the financial institutions took power away from the politicians 82 00:05:48,120 --> 00:05:51,040 and started to run society themselves. 83 00:05:51,040 --> 00:05:53,400 The city had no other option. 84 00:05:53,400 --> 00:05:57,160 The bankers enforced what was called "austerity" on the city, 85 00:05:57,160 --> 00:06:00,000 insisting that thousands of teachers, policemen 86 00:06:00,000 --> 00:06:02,640 and firemen were sacked. 87 00:06:04,840 --> 00:06:06,920 This was a new kind of politics. 88 00:06:06,920 --> 00:06:10,360 The old politicians believed that crises were solved 89 00:06:10,360 --> 00:06:13,560 through negotiation and deals. 90 00:06:13,560 --> 00:06:16,760 The bankers had a completely different view. 91 00:06:16,760 --> 00:06:19,040 They were just the representatives 92 00:06:19,040 --> 00:06:21,840 of something that couldn't be negotiated with - 93 00:06:21,840 --> 00:06:24,160 the logic of the market. 94 00:06:24,160 --> 00:06:27,440 To them, there was no alternative to this system. 95 00:06:28,840 --> 00:06:31,120 It should run society. 96 00:06:37,000 --> 00:06:38,880 Just by shifting paper around, 97 00:06:38,880 --> 00:06:42,640 these slobs can make 60 million, 65 million in a single transaction. 98 00:06:42,640 --> 00:06:46,080 That would take care of all of the lay-offs in the city, 99 00:06:46,080 --> 00:06:48,760 so it's reckless, it's cruel and it's a disgrace. 100 00:06:48,760 --> 00:06:51,520 There would be a fair number of bankers, of course, 101 00:06:51,520 --> 00:06:53,840 who'd say it's the unions who have been too greedy. 102 00:06:53,840 --> 00:06:57,000 - What would your reaction be to that? - I guess they're right in a way. 103 00:06:57,000 --> 00:06:59,480 If you can make 60 million on a single transaction, 104 00:06:59,480 --> 00:07:03,760 and a worker makes 8,000, 9,000 a year, I suppose they're correct, 105 00:07:03,760 --> 00:07:07,240 and as they go back to their little estates in Greenwich, Connecticut, 106 00:07:07,240 --> 00:07:09,480 I want to wish them well, the slobs. 107 00:07:11,040 --> 00:07:15,440 But the extraordinary thing was no-one opposed the bankers. 108 00:07:15,440 --> 00:07:18,640 The radicals and the left-wingers who, ten years before, 109 00:07:18,640 --> 00:07:23,200 had dreamt of changing America through revolution did nothing. 110 00:07:23,200 --> 00:07:24,800 They had retreated 111 00:07:24,800 --> 00:07:27,320 and were living in the abandoned buildings in Manhattan. 112 00:07:36,920 --> 00:07:40,800 The singer Patti Smith later described the mood of disillusion 113 00:07:40,800 --> 00:07:43,000 that had come over them. 114 00:07:43,000 --> 00:07:44,240 "I could not identify 115 00:07:44,240 --> 00:07:47,280 "with the political movements any longer," she said. 116 00:07:47,280 --> 00:07:50,840 "All the manic activity in the streets. 117 00:07:50,840 --> 00:07:53,720 "In trying to join them, I felt overwhelmed 118 00:07:53,720 --> 00:07:56,240 "by yet another form of bureaucracy." 119 00:07:58,480 --> 00:08:02,520 What she was describing was the rise of a new, powerful individualism 120 00:08:02,520 --> 00:08:06,400 that could not fit with the idea of collective political action. 121 00:08:09,840 --> 00:08:12,240 Instead, Patti Smith and many others 122 00:08:12,240 --> 00:08:14,880 became a new kind of individual radical, 123 00:08:14,880 --> 00:08:18,080 who watched the decaying city with a cool detachment. 124 00:08:19,320 --> 00:08:21,360 They didn't try and change it. 125 00:08:21,360 --> 00:08:24,000 They just experienced it. 126 00:08:24,000 --> 00:08:26,760 Look at that. Isn't that cool? 127 00:08:26,760 --> 00:08:29,560 I love that, where, like, kids write all over the walls. 128 00:08:29,560 --> 00:08:32,440 That, to me, is neater than any art sometimes. 129 00:08:32,440 --> 00:08:35,520 "Jose and Maria forever." 130 00:08:37,640 --> 00:08:42,400 Oh, there's a lot of things, like, when you pass by big movie houses, 131 00:08:42,400 --> 00:08:46,080 maybe we'll find one, but they have little movie screens, 132 00:08:46,080 --> 00:08:49,840 where you can see clips of, like, Z, or something like that. 133 00:08:49,840 --> 00:08:51,240 People watch it over and over. 134 00:08:51,240 --> 00:08:54,600 I've seen people, I've checked them out. All day! 135 00:08:54,600 --> 00:08:56,800 I've gone back and forth and they're still there 136 00:08:56,800 --> 00:08:59,880 watching the credits of a movie, cos they don't have enough dough, 137 00:08:59,880 --> 00:09:01,880 but it's some entertainment, you know? 138 00:09:03,240 --> 00:09:06,520 Instead, radicals across America turned to art and music 139 00:09:06,520 --> 00:09:09,560 as a means of expressing their criticism of society. 140 00:09:10,960 --> 00:09:14,760 They believed that instead of trying to change the world outside 141 00:09:14,760 --> 00:09:17,520 the new radicalism should try and change 142 00:09:17,520 --> 00:09:19,760 what was inside people's heads, 143 00:09:19,760 --> 00:09:23,400 and the way to do this was through self-expression, 144 00:09:23,400 --> 00:09:25,600 not collective action. 145 00:09:31,520 --> 00:09:33,320 U 146 00:09:36,000 --> 00:09:37,960 V 147 00:09:37,960 --> 00:09:40,400 W 148 00:09:40,400 --> 00:09:42,000 X 149 00:09:45,040 --> 00:09:46,960 Y 150 00:09:52,720 --> 00:09:54,200 Z 151 00:10:01,080 --> 00:10:05,480 But some of the Left saw that something else was really going on - 152 00:10:05,480 --> 00:10:10,000 that by detaching themselves and retreating into an ironic coolness, 153 00:10:10,000 --> 00:10:13,280 a whole generation were beginning to lose touch 154 00:10:13,280 --> 00:10:15,640 with the reality of power. 155 00:10:18,760 --> 00:10:20,680 Shut up. 156 00:10:20,680 --> 00:10:22,400 Shut up! 157 00:10:24,320 --> 00:10:26,320 One of them wrote of that time, 158 00:10:26,320 --> 00:10:28,080 "It was the mood of the era 159 00:10:28,080 --> 00:10:31,440 "and the revolution was deferred indefinitely. 160 00:10:34,240 --> 00:10:37,160 "And while we were dozing, the money crept in." 161 00:10:39,800 --> 00:10:42,960 SOBBING 162 00:10:46,800 --> 00:10:48,560 What's your date of birth, Larry? 163 00:10:49,560 --> 00:10:53,600 But one of the people who did understand how to use this new power 164 00:10:53,600 --> 00:10:55,760 was Donald Trump. 165 00:10:55,760 --> 00:10:58,400 Trump realised that there was now no future 166 00:10:58,400 --> 00:11:01,040 in building housing for ordinary people, 167 00:11:01,040 --> 00:11:04,280 because all the government grants had gone. 168 00:11:04,280 --> 00:11:06,160 But he saw there were other ways 169 00:11:06,160 --> 00:11:09,160 to get vast amounts of money out of the state. 170 00:11:11,160 --> 00:11:14,840 Trump started to buy up derelict buildings in New York 171 00:11:14,840 --> 00:11:17,320 and he announced that he was going to transform them 172 00:11:17,320 --> 00:11:19,920 into luxury hotels and apartments. 173 00:11:19,920 --> 00:11:23,560 But in return, he negotiated the biggest tax break 174 00:11:23,560 --> 00:11:27,040 in New York's history, worth 160 million. 175 00:11:28,920 --> 00:11:32,480 The city had to agree because they were desperate, 176 00:11:32,480 --> 00:11:35,160 and the banks, seeing a new opportunity, 177 00:11:35,160 --> 00:11:37,560 also started to lend him money. 178 00:11:39,640 --> 00:11:44,160 And Donald Trump began to transform New York into a city for the rich, 179 00:11:44,160 --> 00:11:46,560 while he paid practically nothing. 180 00:12:02,680 --> 00:12:04,960 At the very same time, in 1975, 181 00:12:04,960 --> 00:12:09,680 there was a confrontation between two powerful men in Damascus, 182 00:12:09,680 --> 00:12:10,920 the capital of Syria. 183 00:12:12,520 --> 00:12:16,200 One was Henry Kissinger, the US Secretary of State. 184 00:12:17,720 --> 00:12:21,520 The other was the President of Syria, Hafez al-Assad. 185 00:12:23,040 --> 00:12:24,720 The battle between the two men 186 00:12:24,720 --> 00:12:27,880 was going to have profound consequences for the world. 187 00:12:29,400 --> 00:12:32,280 And like in New York, it was going to be a struggle 188 00:12:32,280 --> 00:12:36,960 between the old idea of using politics to change the world 189 00:12:36,960 --> 00:12:41,200 and a new idea that you could run the world as a stable system. 190 00:12:46,680 --> 00:12:49,240 President Assad dominated Syria. 191 00:12:49,240 --> 00:12:53,560 The country was full of giant images and statues that glorified him. 192 00:12:55,520 --> 00:12:57,240 He was brutal and ruthless, 193 00:12:57,240 --> 00:13:01,280 killing or imprisoning anyone he suspected of being a threat. 194 00:13:03,400 --> 00:13:07,520 But Assad believed that the violence was for a purpose. 195 00:13:07,520 --> 00:13:10,480 He wanted to find a way of uniting the Arab countries 196 00:13:10,480 --> 00:13:13,840 and using that power to stand up to the West. 197 00:13:15,360 --> 00:13:17,680 Four, 198 00:13:17,680 --> 00:13:20,880 three, 199 00:13:20,880 --> 00:13:24,080 two, 200 00:13:24,080 --> 00:13:25,840 one. 201 00:13:25,840 --> 00:13:29,160 Kissinger was also tough and ruthless. 202 00:13:29,160 --> 00:13:30,800 He had started in the 1950s 203 00:13:30,800 --> 00:13:33,720 as an expert in the theory of nuclear strategy. 204 00:13:34,800 --> 00:13:38,240 What was called "the delicate balance of terror." 205 00:13:38,240 --> 00:13:40,760 It was the system that ran the Cold War. 206 00:13:42,160 --> 00:13:44,920 Both sides believed that if they attacked, 207 00:13:44,920 --> 00:13:48,360 the other side would immediately launch their missiles 208 00:13:48,360 --> 00:13:50,480 and everyone would be annihilated. 209 00:13:50,480 --> 00:13:53,640 Kissinger had been one of the models for the character 210 00:13:53,640 --> 00:13:56,360 of Dr Strangelove in Stanley Kubrick's film. 211 00:13:56,360 --> 00:14:00,080 Mr President, I would not rule out the chance 212 00:14:00,080 --> 00:14:03,160 to preserve a nucleus of human specimens. 213 00:14:03,160 --> 00:14:05,840 It would be quite easy. 214 00:14:07,560 --> 00:14:13,120 At the bottom of some of our deeper mineshafts. 215 00:14:13,120 --> 00:14:18,920 Henry was not a warm, friendly, modest, jovial sort of person. 216 00:14:18,920 --> 00:14:23,480 He was thought of as one of the more... 217 00:14:26,520 --> 00:14:31,920 ..anxious, temperamental, self-conscious, 218 00:14:31,920 --> 00:14:36,400 ambitious, inconsiderate people at Harvard. 219 00:14:39,560 --> 00:14:42,920 Kissinger saw himself as a hard realist. 220 00:14:42,920 --> 00:14:47,920 He had no time for the emotional turmoil of political ideologies. 221 00:14:47,920 --> 00:14:52,400 He believed that history had always really been a struggle for power 222 00:14:52,400 --> 00:14:54,400 between groups and nations. 223 00:14:55,960 --> 00:14:58,320 But what Kissinger took from the Cold War 224 00:14:58,320 --> 00:15:02,800 was a way of seeing the world as an interconnected system, 225 00:15:02,800 --> 00:15:06,480 and his aim was to keep that system in balance 226 00:15:06,480 --> 00:15:10,360 and prevent it from falling into chaos. 227 00:15:12,280 --> 00:15:18,200 I believe that with all the dislocations we now experience, 228 00:15:18,200 --> 00:15:21,440 there also exists an extraordinary opportunity 229 00:15:21,440 --> 00:15:26,080 to form, for the first time in history, a truly global society 230 00:15:26,080 --> 00:15:29,080 carried up by the principle of interdependence, 231 00:15:29,080 --> 00:15:32,520 and if we act wisely, and with vision, 232 00:15:32,520 --> 00:15:36,040 I think we can look back to all this turmoil 233 00:15:36,040 --> 00:15:42,240 as the birth pangs of a more creative and better system. 234 00:15:42,240 --> 00:15:45,640 If we miss the opportunity, I think there's going to be chaos. 235 00:15:45,640 --> 00:15:49,600 The flight has been delayed, we understand now. 236 00:15:49,600 --> 00:15:54,400 Kissinger will be arriving here about an hour and a half from now, 237 00:15:54,400 --> 00:15:56,720 so we'll just have the press informed 238 00:15:56,720 --> 00:15:59,360 and then we'll stay in contact with you... 239 00:16:00,480 --> 00:16:04,120 And it was this idea that Kissinger set out to impose 240 00:16:04,120 --> 00:16:06,640 on the chaotic politics of the Middle East. 241 00:16:10,000 --> 00:16:11,440 But to manage it, 242 00:16:11,440 --> 00:16:15,280 he knew that he was going to have to deal with President Assad of Syria. 243 00:16:18,560 --> 00:16:21,920 President Assad was convinced that there would only ever be 244 00:16:21,920 --> 00:16:25,080 a real and lasting peace between the Arabs and Israel 245 00:16:25,080 --> 00:16:29,960 if the Palestinian refugees were allowed to return to their homeland. 246 00:16:29,960 --> 00:16:32,600 Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians 247 00:16:32,600 --> 00:16:34,720 were living in exile in Syria, 248 00:16:34,720 --> 00:16:37,200 as well as in the Lebanon and Jordan. 249 00:16:37,200 --> 00:16:40,920 Have you found that the Palestinians here want to integrate 250 00:16:40,920 --> 00:16:42,000 with the Syrians at all? 251 00:16:42,000 --> 00:16:43,440 Oh, no. No, never. 252 00:16:43,440 --> 00:16:44,800 They don't want... 253 00:16:44,800 --> 00:16:48,400 Not here or neither in Lebanon or in Jordan, never. 254 00:16:48,400 --> 00:16:52,880 No, because they want to stay as a whole, as...Palestinian. 255 00:16:52,880 --> 00:16:56,240 As... They call themselves, "Those Who Go Back" - 256 00:16:56,240 --> 00:16:59,040 "al-a'iduun", you say in Arabic. 257 00:17:00,080 --> 00:17:02,640 Assad also believed that such a peace 258 00:17:02,640 --> 00:17:04,280 would strengthen the Arab world. 259 00:17:05,680 --> 00:17:08,680 But Kissinger thought that strengthening the Arabs 260 00:17:08,680 --> 00:17:11,160 would destabilise his balance of power. 261 00:17:12,200 --> 00:17:14,640 So, he set out to do the very opposite - 262 00:17:14,640 --> 00:17:17,640 to fracture the power of the Arab countries, 263 00:17:17,640 --> 00:17:20,800 by dividing them and breaking their alliances, 264 00:17:20,800 --> 00:17:23,200 so they would keep each other in check. 265 00:17:25,280 --> 00:17:27,040 Kissinger now played a double game. 266 00:17:28,800 --> 00:17:32,080 Or as he termed it, "constructive ambiguity". 267 00:17:34,600 --> 00:17:37,400 In a series of meetings, he persuaded Egypt 268 00:17:37,400 --> 00:17:39,520 to sign a separate agreement with Israel. 269 00:17:40,680 --> 00:17:43,240 But at the same time, he led Assad to believe 270 00:17:43,240 --> 00:17:46,000 that he was working for a wider peace agreement, 271 00:17:46,000 --> 00:17:48,440 one that WOULD include the Palestinians. 272 00:17:53,400 --> 00:17:56,400 In reality, the Palestinians were ignored. 273 00:17:56,400 --> 00:17:59,080 They were irrelevant to the structural balance 274 00:17:59,080 --> 00:18:00,560 of the global system. 275 00:18:07,800 --> 00:18:11,400 The hallmark of Kissinger's thinking about international politics 276 00:18:11,400 --> 00:18:14,800 is its structural design. 277 00:18:14,800 --> 00:18:18,240 Everything is always connected in his mind to everything else. 278 00:18:19,480 --> 00:18:22,120 But his first thoughts are on that level, 279 00:18:22,120 --> 00:18:25,240 on this structural global balance of power level. 280 00:18:26,440 --> 00:18:30,800 And as he addresses questions of human dignity, 281 00:18:30,800 --> 00:18:32,440 human survival, human freedom... 282 00:18:33,480 --> 00:18:35,680 ..I think they tend to come into his mind 283 00:18:35,680 --> 00:18:40,480 as an adjunct of the play of nations at the power game. 284 00:18:41,560 --> 00:18:45,160 When Assad found out the truth, it was too late. 285 00:18:45,160 --> 00:18:48,520 In a series of confrontations with Kissinger in Damascus, 286 00:18:48,520 --> 00:18:51,160 Assad raged about this treachery. 287 00:18:52,320 --> 00:18:54,680 He told Kissinger that what he had done 288 00:18:54,680 --> 00:18:58,640 would release demons hidden under the surface of the Arab world. 289 00:19:02,680 --> 00:19:05,280 Kissinger described their meetings. 290 00:19:05,280 --> 00:19:08,160 "Assad's controlled fury," he wrote, 291 00:19:08,160 --> 00:19:11,640 "was all the more impressive for its eerily cold, 292 00:19:11,640 --> 00:19:13,840 "seemingly unemotional, demeanour." 293 00:19:16,760 --> 00:19:19,040 Assad now retreated. 294 00:19:19,040 --> 00:19:22,880 He started to build a giant palace that loomed over Damascus... 295 00:19:24,000 --> 00:19:27,800 ..and his belief that it would be possible to transform the Arab world 296 00:19:27,800 --> 00:19:29,160 began to fade. 297 00:19:30,960 --> 00:19:33,440 A British journalist, who knew Assad, wrote... 298 00:19:33,440 --> 00:19:35,880 "Assad's optimism has gone. 299 00:19:36,880 --> 00:19:38,760 "A trust in the future has gone. 300 00:19:39,920 --> 00:19:44,800 "What has emerged instead is a brutal, vengeful Assad, 301 00:19:44,800 --> 00:19:47,680 "who believes in nothing except revenge." 302 00:20:21,840 --> 00:20:24,280 The original dream of the Soviet Union 303 00:20:24,280 --> 00:20:27,040 had been to create a glorious new world. 304 00:20:27,040 --> 00:20:29,200 A world where not only the society, 305 00:20:29,200 --> 00:20:32,920 but the people themselves would be transformed. 306 00:20:32,920 --> 00:20:36,440 They would become new and better kinds of human beings. 307 00:20:41,600 --> 00:20:45,560 But by the 1980s, it was clear that the dream had failed. 308 00:20:47,040 --> 00:20:48,560 WOMAN GASPS 309 00:20:48,560 --> 00:20:51,440 WOMAN SPEAKS RUSSIAN 310 00:20:53,560 --> 00:20:55,840 The Soviet Union became instead 311 00:20:55,840 --> 00:20:59,160 a society where no-one believed in anything 312 00:20:59,160 --> 00:21:00,960 or had any vision of the future. 313 00:22:52,880 --> 00:22:55,720 RUSSIAN SONG PLAYS 314 00:23:27,880 --> 00:23:31,360 Those who ran the Soviet Union had believed that they could plan 315 00:23:31,360 --> 00:23:34,200 and manage a new kind of socialist society. 316 00:23:35,560 --> 00:23:37,600 But they had discovered that it was impossible 317 00:23:37,600 --> 00:23:39,440 to control and predict everything 318 00:23:39,440 --> 00:23:41,840 and the plan had run out of control. 319 00:23:43,440 --> 00:23:47,240 But rather than reveal this, the technocrats began to pretend 320 00:23:47,240 --> 00:23:50,440 that everything was still going according to plan. 321 00:23:51,520 --> 00:23:55,480 And what emerged instead was a fake version of the society. 322 00:23:56,800 --> 00:24:00,040 The Soviet Union became a society where everyone knew 323 00:24:00,040 --> 00:24:02,760 that what their leaders said was not real 324 00:24:02,760 --> 00:24:04,960 because they could see with their own eyes 325 00:24:04,960 --> 00:24:07,000 that the economy was falling apart. 326 00:24:08,080 --> 00:24:12,160 But everybody had to play along and pretend that it WAS real 327 00:24:12,160 --> 00:24:15,080 because no-one could imagine any alternative. 328 00:24:16,960 --> 00:24:20,280 One Soviet writer called it "hypernormalisation". 329 00:24:21,600 --> 00:24:23,560 You were so much a part of the system 330 00:24:23,560 --> 00:24:26,880 that it was impossible to see beyond it. 331 00:24:26,880 --> 00:24:29,360 The fakeness was hypernormal. 332 00:24:38,040 --> 00:24:40,720 TANNOY ANNOUNCEMENT IN RUSSIAN 333 00:24:40,720 --> 00:24:43,360 In this stagnant world, two brothers - 334 00:24:43,360 --> 00:24:46,120 called Arkady and Boris Strugatsky - 335 00:24:46,120 --> 00:24:49,480 became the inspiration of a growing new dissident movement. 336 00:24:50,880 --> 00:24:55,080 They weren't politicians, they were science fiction writers, 337 00:24:55,080 --> 00:24:56,480 and in their stories, 338 00:24:56,480 --> 00:24:59,720 they expressed the strange mood that was rising up 339 00:24:59,720 --> 00:25:01,600 as the Soviet Empire collapsed. 340 00:25:03,200 --> 00:25:05,920 Their most famous book was called Roadside Picnic. 341 00:25:07,240 --> 00:25:10,680 It is set in a world that seems like the present, 342 00:25:10,680 --> 00:25:14,160 except there is a zone that has been created by an alien force. 343 00:25:16,120 --> 00:25:18,680 People, known as "stalkers", go into the zone. 344 00:25:20,080 --> 00:25:22,480 They find that nothing is what it seems, 345 00:25:22,480 --> 00:25:24,760 that reality changes minute by minute. 346 00:25:25,920 --> 00:25:27,960 Shadows go the wrong way. 347 00:25:27,960 --> 00:25:30,680 There are hidden forces that twist your body 348 00:25:30,680 --> 00:25:32,760 and change the way you think and feel. 349 00:25:35,520 --> 00:25:37,360 The picture the Strugatskys gave 350 00:25:37,360 --> 00:25:39,760 was of a world where nothing was fixed. 351 00:25:40,840 --> 00:25:45,000 Where reality - both what you saw and what you believed - 352 00:25:45,000 --> 00:25:47,280 had become shifting and unstable. 353 00:25:55,760 --> 00:25:59,840 And in 1979, the film director Andrei Tarkovsky 354 00:25:59,840 --> 00:26:02,920 made a film that was based on Roadside Picnic. 355 00:26:02,920 --> 00:26:04,720 He called it Stalker. 356 00:26:09,760 --> 00:26:12,840 WIND WHISTLES 357 00:27:13,840 --> 00:27:16,360 I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear... 358 00:27:16,360 --> 00:27:18,080 ..That I will faithfully execute 359 00:27:18,080 --> 00:27:20,840 the office of president of the United States. 360 00:27:20,840 --> 00:27:22,320 ..that I will faithfully execute 361 00:27:22,320 --> 00:27:25,800 the office of president of the United States. 362 00:27:25,800 --> 00:27:29,320 The new president of America had a new vision of the world. 363 00:27:30,520 --> 00:27:33,840 It wasn't the harsh realism of Henry Kissinger any longer, 364 00:27:33,840 --> 00:27:35,560 it was different - 365 00:27:35,560 --> 00:27:38,240 it was a simple, moral crusade, 366 00:27:38,240 --> 00:27:42,240 where America had a special destiny to fight evil 367 00:27:42,240 --> 00:27:44,320 and to make the world a better place. 368 00:27:47,160 --> 00:27:50,280 The places and the periods in which man has known freedom 369 00:27:50,280 --> 00:27:51,640 are few and far between - 370 00:27:51,640 --> 00:27:54,400 just scattered moments on the span of time. 371 00:27:54,400 --> 00:27:56,960 And most of those moments have been ours. 372 00:27:56,960 --> 00:28:01,920 The American people have a genius for great and unselfish deeds. 373 00:28:01,920 --> 00:28:04,080 Into the hands of America, 374 00:28:04,080 --> 00:28:07,560 God has placed the destiny of an afflicted mankind. 375 00:28:09,240 --> 00:28:10,600 God bless America. 376 00:28:14,800 --> 00:28:17,400 But this crusade was going to lead Reagan 377 00:28:17,400 --> 00:28:20,680 to come face-to-face with Henry Kissinger's legacy... 378 00:28:21,760 --> 00:28:26,360 ..and, above all, the vengeful fury of President Assad of Syria. 379 00:28:29,560 --> 00:28:32,080 EXPLOSION Israel was now determined 380 00:28:32,080 --> 00:28:34,960 to finally destroy the power of the Palestinians. 381 00:28:36,600 --> 00:28:39,440 And, in 1982, they sent a massive army 382 00:28:39,440 --> 00:28:42,320 to encircle the Palestinian camps in the Lebanon. 383 00:28:43,480 --> 00:28:47,960 Do you know... Do you know how strong the Israelis are? 384 00:28:47,960 --> 00:28:52,080 Do you know how many tanks they have outside Beirut? 385 00:28:52,080 --> 00:28:53,760 Do you know how strong they are? 386 00:28:53,760 --> 00:28:58,320 HE TRANSLATES 387 00:29:09,160 --> 00:29:11,240 That means "We are not ready to surrender". 388 00:29:16,800 --> 00:29:18,320 Young, young, young! 389 00:29:20,880 --> 00:29:22,640 NEARBY EXPLOSIONS 390 00:29:22,640 --> 00:29:24,400 Keep going! 391 00:29:26,080 --> 00:29:29,880 Dashed into this building here because the PLO guys with us 392 00:29:29,880 --> 00:29:32,640 expect that, sooner or later, there will be a huge explosion. 393 00:29:32,640 --> 00:29:37,080 There've been several of these in the last few minutes. 394 00:29:37,080 --> 00:29:38,160 As you can see, 395 00:29:38,160 --> 00:29:41,720 there's enormous damage in all the buildings round here. 396 00:29:41,720 --> 00:29:44,600 EXPLOSION 397 00:29:56,960 --> 00:29:58,440 Quick, quick! 398 00:30:05,560 --> 00:30:09,240 DISTANT EXPLOSIONS 399 00:30:16,560 --> 00:30:19,600 Two months later, thousands of Palestinian refugees 400 00:30:19,600 --> 00:30:21,400 were massacred in the camps. 401 00:30:22,600 --> 00:30:24,960 It horrified the world. 402 00:30:24,960 --> 00:30:26,920 But what was even more shocking 403 00:30:26,920 --> 00:30:29,240 was that Israel had allowed it to happen. 404 00:30:30,360 --> 00:30:32,120 Its troops had stood by and watched 405 00:30:32,120 --> 00:30:35,600 as a Christian Lebanese faction murdered the Palestinians. 406 00:30:41,680 --> 00:30:44,800 This was the first of the massacres we discovered yesterday. 407 00:30:44,800 --> 00:30:48,720 Now, 24 hours later, the stench here is appalling. 408 00:30:48,720 --> 00:30:50,160 But the effects on the Israelis 409 00:30:50,160 --> 00:30:52,240 of what their Christian allies did here 410 00:30:52,240 --> 00:30:54,480 and in dozens of other places around this camp 411 00:30:54,480 --> 00:30:56,160 are going to be immense. 412 00:30:56,160 --> 00:30:59,480 There's always been a risk of such massacres if Christian militiamen 413 00:30:59,480 --> 00:31:01,960 were allowed to come into Palestinian camps, 414 00:31:01,960 --> 00:31:03,920 and the Israelis seem to have done nothing 415 00:31:03,920 --> 00:31:06,800 to prevent them coming into this one. 416 00:31:06,800 --> 00:31:09,680 In the face of the horror and the growing chaos, 417 00:31:09,680 --> 00:31:11,920 President Reagan was forced to act. 418 00:31:12,960 --> 00:31:15,600 He announced that American marines would come to Beirut 419 00:31:15,600 --> 00:31:17,400 to lead a peacekeeping force. 420 00:31:19,200 --> 00:31:22,520 Reagan insisted that the troops were neutral. 421 00:31:22,520 --> 00:31:26,360 But President Assad was convinced that there was another reality. 422 00:31:27,400 --> 00:31:30,240 He saw the troops as part of the growing conspiracy 423 00:31:30,240 --> 00:31:34,200 between America and Israel to divide the Middle East into factions 424 00:31:34,200 --> 00:31:36,440 and destroy the power of the Arabs. 425 00:31:37,960 --> 00:31:42,480 Assad decided to get the Americans out of the Middle East. 426 00:31:42,480 --> 00:31:44,760 And to do this, he made an alliance 427 00:31:44,760 --> 00:31:48,680 with the new revolutionary force of Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran. 428 00:31:50,640 --> 00:31:52,800 And what Khomeini could bring to Assad 429 00:31:52,800 --> 00:31:56,120 was an extraordinary new weapon that he had just created. 430 00:32:00,000 --> 00:32:02,480 It was called it "the poor man's atomic bomb". 431 00:32:09,960 --> 00:32:11,760 CHANTING: 432 00:32:17,440 --> 00:32:20,480 Ayatollah Khomeini had come to power two years before 433 00:32:20,480 --> 00:32:23,200 as the leader of the Iranian revolution. 434 00:32:23,200 --> 00:32:26,320 But his hold on power was precarious, 435 00:32:26,320 --> 00:32:30,360 and Khomeini had developed a new idea of how to fight his enemies 436 00:32:30,360 --> 00:32:31,880 and defend the revolution. 437 00:32:32,920 --> 00:32:36,800 Khomeini told his followers that they could destroy themselves 438 00:32:36,800 --> 00:32:41,080 in order to save the revolution providing that, in the process, 439 00:32:41,080 --> 00:32:44,080 they killed as many enemies around them as possible. 440 00:32:46,440 --> 00:32:48,080 This was completely new, 441 00:32:48,080 --> 00:32:51,160 because the Koran specifically prohibited suicide. 442 00:32:52,520 --> 00:32:55,600 In the past, you became a martyr on the battlefield 443 00:32:55,600 --> 00:32:59,520 because God chose the time and place of your death. 444 00:32:59,520 --> 00:33:01,920 But Khomeini changed this. 445 00:33:01,920 --> 00:33:06,120 He did it by going back to one of the central rituals of Shia Islam. 446 00:33:06,120 --> 00:33:09,600 MUSIC PLAYS 447 00:33:09,600 --> 00:33:12,200 Every year, Shi'ites march in a procession 448 00:33:12,200 --> 00:33:15,920 mourning the sacrifice of their founder, Husayn. 449 00:33:15,920 --> 00:33:18,320 As they do, they whip themselves, 450 00:33:18,320 --> 00:33:21,120 symbolically re-enacting Husayn's suffering. 451 00:33:24,640 --> 00:33:27,920 Khomeini said that the ultimate act of penitence 452 00:33:27,920 --> 00:33:30,120 was not just to whip yourself, 453 00:33:30,120 --> 00:33:31,480 but to kill yourself... 454 00:33:32,760 --> 00:33:36,080 ..providing it was for the greater good of the revolution. 455 00:33:39,360 --> 00:33:42,120 In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful, 456 00:33:42,120 --> 00:33:43,520 good afternoon. 457 00:33:43,520 --> 00:33:46,360 "An Iraqi Soviet-made MiG-23 was shot down 458 00:33:46,360 --> 00:33:49,480 "by the air-force jet fighters of the Islamic Republic 459 00:33:49,480 --> 00:33:52,240 "over the north-western Iranian border region of Marivan 460 00:33:52,240 --> 00:33:54,840 "at 10.08 hours local time, Saturday," 461 00:33:54,840 --> 00:33:58,280 said the Joint Staff Commands communique numbered 1710. 462 00:33:59,640 --> 00:34:01,600 Khomeini had mobilised this force 463 00:34:01,600 --> 00:34:04,440 when the country was attacked by Iraq. 464 00:34:04,440 --> 00:34:06,920 Iran faced almost certain defeat 465 00:34:06,920 --> 00:34:09,520 because Iraq had far superior weapons, 466 00:34:09,520 --> 00:34:11,440 many of them supplied by America. 467 00:34:13,120 --> 00:34:16,560 So, the revolutionaries took tens of thousands of young boys 468 00:34:16,560 --> 00:34:20,960 out of schools, put them on buses and sent them to the front line. 469 00:34:20,960 --> 00:34:22,920 CHANTING 470 00:34:22,920 --> 00:34:26,480 Their job was to walk through the enemies' minefields, 471 00:34:26,480 --> 00:34:30,680 deliberately blowing themselves up in order to open gaps 472 00:34:30,680 --> 00:34:34,120 that would allow the Iranian army to pass through unharmed. 473 00:34:38,000 --> 00:34:40,680 It was organised suicide on a vast scale. 474 00:34:43,240 --> 00:34:45,720 This human sacrifice was commemorated 475 00:34:45,720 --> 00:34:49,200 in giant cemeteries across the country. 476 00:34:49,200 --> 00:34:51,960 Fountains flowing with blood red-water 477 00:34:51,960 --> 00:34:54,280 glorified this new kind of martyrdom. 478 00:35:15,800 --> 00:35:17,680 And it was this new idea - 479 00:35:17,680 --> 00:35:20,240 of an unstoppable human weapon - 480 00:35:20,240 --> 00:35:23,560 that President Assad took from Khomeini, 481 00:35:23,560 --> 00:35:25,800 and brought to the West for the first time. 482 00:35:27,200 --> 00:35:28,480 But, as it travelled, 483 00:35:28,480 --> 00:35:31,280 it would mutate into something even more deadly. 484 00:35:32,560 --> 00:35:34,600 Instead of just killing yourself, 485 00:35:34,600 --> 00:35:38,880 you would take explosives with you into the heart of the enemy 486 00:35:38,880 --> 00:35:40,760 and then blow yourself up, 487 00:35:40,760 --> 00:35:43,480 taking dozens or even hundreds along with you. 488 00:35:44,880 --> 00:35:47,280 It would become known as "suicide bombing". 489 00:35:51,480 --> 00:35:54,800 In October 1983, two suicide bombers 490 00:35:54,800 --> 00:35:57,920 drove trucks into the US marine barracks in Beirut. 491 00:36:01,640 --> 00:36:06,000 It was seeing something move that took me out of my trance. 492 00:36:06,000 --> 00:36:09,920 And then I recognised, "Oh, yes, marines were in that building. 493 00:36:09,920 --> 00:36:12,640 "A lot of marines were in that building." 494 00:36:12,640 --> 00:36:15,520 And that's when I ran down and... 495 00:36:15,520 --> 00:36:17,640 And it was a black... black marine. 496 00:36:17,640 --> 00:36:18,920 He looked white. 497 00:36:18,920 --> 00:36:20,880 The dust had just covered him. 498 00:36:21,920 --> 00:36:25,560 The massive explosions killed 241 Americans. 499 00:36:28,000 --> 00:36:30,640 The bombers were members of a new militant group 500 00:36:30,640 --> 00:36:32,080 that no-one had heard of. 501 00:36:33,120 --> 00:36:35,520 They called themselves Hezbollah 502 00:36:35,520 --> 00:36:37,760 and, although many of them were Iranian, 503 00:36:37,760 --> 00:36:39,880 they were very much under the control of Syria 504 00:36:39,880 --> 00:36:42,360 and the Syrian intelligence agencies. 505 00:36:43,480 --> 00:36:47,360 President Assad was using them as his proxies to attack America. 506 00:36:51,400 --> 00:36:55,680 Whoever carried out yesterday's bombings - Shia Muslim fanatics, 507 00:36:55,680 --> 00:36:58,520 devotees of the Ayatollah Khomeini, or whatever - 508 00:36:58,520 --> 00:37:01,320 it is Syria who profits politically. 509 00:37:01,320 --> 00:37:05,840 The most significant fact is that the dissidents live and work 510 00:37:05,840 --> 00:37:08,280 with Syrian protection. 511 00:37:08,280 --> 00:37:12,640 So, it is to Syria rather than to the dissident group's guiding light, 512 00:37:12,640 --> 00:37:16,240 Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran, that we must look for an explanation 513 00:37:16,240 --> 00:37:20,000 of the group's activities. Destabilisation is Syria's 514 00:37:20,000 --> 00:37:23,120 Middle-Eastern way of reminding the world that Syria 515 00:37:23,120 --> 00:37:26,600 must not be left out of plans for the future of the area. 516 00:37:33,640 --> 00:37:39,240 There are no words that can express our sorrow and grief 517 00:37:39,240 --> 00:37:42,360 for the loss of those splendid young men 518 00:37:42,360 --> 00:37:44,960 and the injury to so many others. 519 00:37:46,240 --> 00:37:51,000 These deeds make so evident the bestial nature 520 00:37:51,000 --> 00:37:53,920 of those who would assume power 521 00:37:53,920 --> 00:37:58,920 if they could have their way and drive us out of that area. 522 00:37:58,920 --> 00:38:02,200 But despite his words, within four months, 523 00:38:02,200 --> 00:38:06,240 President Reagan withdrew all the American troops from the Lebanon. 524 00:38:06,240 --> 00:38:09,520 The Secretary of State George Shultz explained. 525 00:38:09,520 --> 00:38:13,000 "We became paralysed by the complexity that we faced," he said. 526 00:38:14,920 --> 00:38:17,000 So, the Americans turned and left. 527 00:38:18,680 --> 00:38:22,360 For President Assad, it was an extraordinary achievement. 528 00:38:22,360 --> 00:38:25,640 He was the only Arab leader to have defeated the Americans 529 00:38:25,640 --> 00:38:28,000 and forced them to leave the Middle East. 530 00:38:29,000 --> 00:38:33,040 He had done it by using the new force of suicide bombing. 531 00:38:33,040 --> 00:38:34,800 A force that, once unleashed, 532 00:38:34,800 --> 00:38:37,560 was going to spread with unstoppable power. 533 00:38:38,640 --> 00:38:41,520 But at this point, both Assad and the Iranians 534 00:38:41,520 --> 00:38:43,560 thought that they could control it. 535 00:38:45,120 --> 00:38:47,480 And what gave it this extraordinary power 536 00:38:47,480 --> 00:38:49,160 was that it held out the dream 537 00:38:49,160 --> 00:38:51,760 of transcending the corruptions of the world 538 00:38:51,760 --> 00:38:54,680 and entering a new and better realm. 539 00:38:54,680 --> 00:38:57,640 - TRANSLATION: - One should defend the realm of Islam and Muslims 540 00:38:57,640 --> 00:39:00,320 against heretics and invaders. 541 00:39:00,320 --> 00:39:04,120 And to fulfil this duty, one should even sacrifice one's life. 542 00:39:07,000 --> 00:39:10,640 We believe that martyrs can overlook our deeds from the other world. 543 00:39:12,200 --> 00:39:13,880 It means that, after death, 544 00:39:13,880 --> 00:39:17,400 the martyr lives and can still witness this world. 545 00:39:45,400 --> 00:39:48,040 By the middle of the 1980s, the banks were rising up 546 00:39:48,040 --> 00:39:51,680 and becoming ever more powerful in America. 547 00:39:51,680 --> 00:39:54,360 What had started ten years before in New York, 548 00:39:54,360 --> 00:39:58,880 the idea that the financial system could run society, 549 00:39:58,880 --> 00:40:00,240 was spreading. 550 00:40:00,240 --> 00:40:04,000 But unlike older systems of power, it was mostly invisible. 551 00:40:05,840 --> 00:40:07,520 A writer called William Gibson 552 00:40:07,520 --> 00:40:09,600 tried to dramatise what was happening 553 00:40:09,600 --> 00:40:14,520 in a powerful, imaginative way, in a series of novels. 554 00:40:14,520 --> 00:40:17,680 Gibson had noticed how the banks and the new corporations 555 00:40:17,680 --> 00:40:22,960 were beginning to link themselves together through computer systems. 556 00:40:22,960 --> 00:40:25,760 What they were creating was a series of giant networks of 557 00:40:25,760 --> 00:40:30,280 information that were invisible to ordinary people 558 00:40:30,280 --> 00:40:32,520 and to politicians. 559 00:40:32,520 --> 00:40:35,560 But those networks gave the corporations 560 00:40:35,560 --> 00:40:38,040 extraordinary new powers of control. 561 00:40:43,240 --> 00:40:45,920 'Good morning. South-West Development. May I help you?' 562 00:40:45,920 --> 00:40:48,760 Gibson gave this new world a name. 563 00:40:50,120 --> 00:40:52,880 He called it "cyberspace" 564 00:40:52,880 --> 00:40:56,920 and his novels described a future that was dangerous and frightening. 565 00:40:57,880 --> 00:41:02,360 Hackers could literally enter into cyberspace and as they did, 566 00:41:02,360 --> 00:41:05,200 they travelled through systems that were so powerful 567 00:41:05,200 --> 00:41:10,480 that they could reach out and crush intruders by destroying their minds. 568 00:41:10,480 --> 00:41:16,000 In cyberspace, there were no laws and no politicians to protect you. 569 00:41:17,560 --> 00:41:21,520 Just raw, brutal corporate power. 570 00:41:32,160 --> 00:41:35,400 But then, a strange thing happened. 571 00:41:35,400 --> 00:41:37,840 A new group of visionaries in America 572 00:41:37,840 --> 00:41:40,600 took Gibson's idea of a hidden, secret world 573 00:41:40,600 --> 00:41:44,720 and transformed it into something completely different. 574 00:41:44,720 --> 00:41:48,080 They turned it into a dream of a new utopia. 575 00:41:53,120 --> 00:41:56,800 They were the technological utopians who were rising up 576 00:41:56,800 --> 00:41:59,880 on the West Coast of America. 577 00:41:59,880 --> 00:42:03,160 They turned Gibson's idea on its head. 578 00:42:03,160 --> 00:42:05,880 Instead of cyberspace being a frightening place, 579 00:42:05,880 --> 00:42:08,440 dominated by powerful corporations, 580 00:42:08,440 --> 00:42:11,920 they reinvented it as the very opposite. 581 00:42:11,920 --> 00:42:17,120 A new, safe world where radical dreams could come true. 582 00:42:17,120 --> 00:42:21,320 Ten years before, faced by the complexity of real politics, 583 00:42:21,320 --> 00:42:26,280 the radicals had given up on the idea of changing the world. 584 00:42:26,280 --> 00:42:30,400 But now, the computer utopians saw, in cyberspace, 585 00:42:30,400 --> 00:42:32,560 an alternative reality. 586 00:42:32,560 --> 00:42:37,000 A place they could retreat to away from the harsh right-wing politics 587 00:42:37,000 --> 00:42:39,480 that now dominated Reagan's America. 588 00:42:43,520 --> 00:42:46,160 The roots of this vision lay back in the counterculture 589 00:42:46,160 --> 00:42:50,320 of the 1960s, and, above all, with LSD. 590 00:43:01,920 --> 00:43:05,280 We've got some more acid over here if you want to go ahead. 591 00:43:05,280 --> 00:43:07,800 Many of those who had taken LSD in the '60s 592 00:43:07,800 --> 00:43:11,320 were convinced that it was more than just another drug, 593 00:43:11,320 --> 00:43:13,280 that it opened human perception 594 00:43:13,280 --> 00:43:15,480 and allowed people to see new realities 595 00:43:15,480 --> 00:43:17,560 that were normally hidden from them. 596 00:43:17,560 --> 00:43:19,920 See, the ones that have white in them are really great. 597 00:43:21,720 --> 00:43:23,200 SHE GIGGLES 598 00:43:24,520 --> 00:43:26,160 I feel like a rabbit. 599 00:43:29,560 --> 00:43:33,120 It freed them from the narrow, limited view of the world 600 00:43:33,120 --> 00:43:36,840 that was imposed on them by politicians and those in power. 601 00:43:36,840 --> 00:43:39,400 In the United States, in the next, five, ten, 15 years, 602 00:43:39,400 --> 00:43:42,840 you're going to see more and more people taking LSD and making it 603 00:43:42,840 --> 00:43:46,400 a part of their lives, so there will be an LSD country within 15 years. 604 00:43:46,400 --> 00:43:49,480 An LSD society, there will be less interest 605 00:43:49,480 --> 00:43:51,560 in, obviously, warfare, 606 00:43:51,560 --> 00:43:53,200 in power politics. 607 00:43:53,200 --> 00:43:56,720 You know, politics today is a disease, it's a real addiction. 608 00:43:56,720 --> 00:43:58,520 Politics, politics, politics, politics. 609 00:43:58,520 --> 00:44:01,840 Don't politick, don't vote - these are old men's games. 610 00:44:01,840 --> 00:44:04,600 Impotent and senile old man that want to put you 611 00:44:04,600 --> 00:44:07,240 onto their old chess games of war and power. 612 00:44:07,240 --> 00:44:11,920 20 years later, the new networks of machines seemed to offer 613 00:44:11,920 --> 00:44:14,880 a way to construct a real alternate reality. 614 00:44:14,880 --> 00:44:17,400 Not just one that was chemically induced, 615 00:44:17,400 --> 00:44:19,480 but a space that actually existed 616 00:44:19,480 --> 00:44:22,120 in a parallel dimension to the real world. 617 00:44:24,920 --> 00:44:26,680 And like with acid, 618 00:44:26,680 --> 00:44:30,560 cyberspace could be a place where you would be liberated from the old, 619 00:44:30,560 --> 00:44:35,760 corrupt hierarchies of politics and power and explore new ways of being. 620 00:44:37,560 --> 00:44:42,640 One of the leading exponents of this idea was called John Perry Barlow. 621 00:44:42,640 --> 00:44:45,600 In the '60s, he had written songs for the Grateful Dead 622 00:44:45,600 --> 00:44:48,440 and been part of the acid counterculture. 623 00:44:48,440 --> 00:44:52,120 Now, he organised what he called "cyberthons", 624 00:44:52,120 --> 00:44:55,280 to try and bring the cyberspace movement together. 625 00:44:57,120 --> 00:45:00,320 Well, you know, the cyberthon as it was originally conceived 626 00:45:00,320 --> 00:45:02,880 was supposed to be... 627 00:45:05,200 --> 00:45:07,880 ..the '90s equivalent of the acid test 628 00:45:07,880 --> 00:45:12,040 and we had thought to involve some of the same personnel. 629 00:45:12,040 --> 00:45:15,840 - You and I and Timmy should sit down and talk. - OK. That is good. 630 00:45:15,840 --> 00:45:19,640 And it immediately acquired a financial quality 631 00:45:19,640 --> 00:45:22,600 or a commercial quality that was initially 632 00:45:22,600 --> 00:45:24,560 a little unsettling to an old hippy like me, 633 00:45:24,560 --> 00:45:28,160 but as soon as I saw it actually working, then I thought, 634 00:45:28,160 --> 00:45:31,480 "Ah, well, if you're going to have an acid test for the '90s, 635 00:45:31,480 --> 00:45:32,920 "money better be involved." 636 00:45:32,920 --> 00:45:36,840 Instead of having a glass barrier that separates you - 637 00:45:36,840 --> 00:45:39,640 your mind - from the mind of the computer, 638 00:45:39,640 --> 00:45:43,560 the computer pulls us inside and creates a world for us. 639 00:45:43,560 --> 00:45:46,880 Incorporates everything that could be incorporated. 640 00:45:46,880 --> 00:45:49,240 It incorporates experience itself. 641 00:45:50,960 --> 00:45:52,960 Barlow then wrote a manifesto 642 00:45:52,960 --> 00:45:57,560 that he called A Declaration Of Independence Of Cyberspace. 643 00:45:57,560 --> 00:45:59,800 It was addressed to all politicians, 644 00:45:59,800 --> 00:46:02,560 telling them to keep out of this new world. 645 00:46:03,880 --> 00:46:06,880 It was going to be incredibly influential, 646 00:46:06,880 --> 00:46:11,240 because what Barlow did was give a powerful picture of the internet 647 00:46:11,240 --> 00:46:14,640 not as a network controlled by giant corporations, 648 00:46:14,640 --> 00:46:18,240 but, instead, as a kind of magical, free place. 649 00:46:18,240 --> 00:46:22,040 An alternative to the old systems of power. 650 00:46:22,040 --> 00:46:25,440 It was a vision that would come to dominate the internet 651 00:46:25,440 --> 00:46:27,520 over the next 20 years. 652 00:46:31,600 --> 00:46:34,320 Governments of the industrial world, 653 00:46:34,320 --> 00:46:38,240 cyberspace does not lie within your borders. 654 00:46:38,240 --> 00:46:40,840 We are creating a world where anyone, 655 00:46:40,840 --> 00:46:44,760 anywhere, may express his or her beliefs, 656 00:46:44,760 --> 00:46:47,040 no matter how singular, 657 00:46:47,040 --> 00:46:49,920 without fear of being coerced 658 00:46:49,920 --> 00:46:52,720 into silence or conformity. 659 00:46:52,720 --> 00:46:57,160 I declare the global social space we are building 660 00:46:57,160 --> 00:46:59,760 to be naturally independent 661 00:46:59,760 --> 00:47:03,440 of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. 662 00:47:04,560 --> 00:47:09,520 We will create a civilisation of the mind in cyberspace. 663 00:47:09,520 --> 00:47:11,560 May it be more humane and fair 664 00:47:11,560 --> 00:47:15,400 than the world your governments have made before. 665 00:47:17,640 --> 00:47:19,040 It's begun. 666 00:47:24,360 --> 00:47:27,040 This is the key to a new order. 667 00:47:27,040 --> 00:47:29,080 This code disk means freedom. 668 00:47:33,960 --> 00:47:37,080 But two young hackers in New York thought that Barlow 669 00:47:37,080 --> 00:47:39,840 was describing a fantasy world, 670 00:47:39,840 --> 00:47:42,320 that his vision bore no relationship at all 671 00:47:42,320 --> 00:47:44,400 to what was really emerging online. 672 00:47:45,560 --> 00:47:48,400 They were cult figures on the early online scene 673 00:47:48,400 --> 00:47:50,960 and their fans followed and recorded them. 674 00:47:50,960 --> 00:47:54,840 They called themselves Phiber Optik and Acid Phreak 675 00:47:54,840 --> 00:47:58,080 and they spent their time exploring and breaking in 676 00:47:58,080 --> 00:48:00,880 to giant computer networks that they knew 677 00:48:00,880 --> 00:48:05,120 were the hard realities of modern digital power. 678 00:48:05,120 --> 00:48:10,480 My specific instance, I was charged with conspiracy 679 00:48:10,480 --> 00:48:14,720 to commit a few dozen "overacts", they called them. 680 00:48:14,720 --> 00:48:20,160 Among a number of things having to do with computer trespass and... 681 00:48:20,160 --> 00:48:23,600 and I guess computer eavesdropping, interception. 682 00:48:23,600 --> 00:48:26,680 Unauthorised access to federal interest computers, 683 00:48:26,680 --> 00:48:30,960 which is pretty vague law. 684 00:48:30,960 --> 00:48:33,800 Communications network computers and so on. 685 00:48:33,800 --> 00:48:39,320 In a notorious public debate online, the two hackers attacked Barlow. 686 00:48:39,320 --> 00:48:42,600 What infuriated them most was Barlow's insistence 687 00:48:42,600 --> 00:48:44,480 that there was no hierarchy 688 00:48:44,480 --> 00:48:47,560 or controlling powers in the new cyber world. 689 00:48:48,800 --> 00:48:52,680 The hackers set out to demonstrate that he was wrong. 690 00:48:52,680 --> 00:48:54,920 Acid Phreak hacked into the computers of 691 00:48:54,920 --> 00:48:57,720 a giant corporation called TRW. 692 00:48:57,720 --> 00:49:00,360 TRW had originally built the systems 693 00:49:00,360 --> 00:49:03,240 that ran the Cold War for the US military. 694 00:49:04,600 --> 00:49:07,760 They had helped create the delicate balance of terror. 695 00:49:08,760 --> 00:49:12,960 Now, TRW had adapted their computers to run a new system, 696 00:49:12,960 --> 00:49:15,040 that of credit and debt. 697 00:49:16,280 --> 00:49:20,200 Their computers gathered up the credit data of millions of Americans 698 00:49:20,200 --> 00:49:24,360 and were being used by the banks to decide individuals' credit ratings. 699 00:49:27,200 --> 00:49:30,320 The hackers broke into the TRW network, 700 00:49:30,320 --> 00:49:33,680 stole Barlow's credit history and published it online. 701 00:49:38,720 --> 00:49:42,520 The hackers were demonstrating the growing power of finance. 702 00:49:42,520 --> 00:49:45,120 How the companies that ran the new systems of credit 703 00:49:45,120 --> 00:49:47,080 knew more and more about you, 704 00:49:47,080 --> 00:49:51,480 and, increasingly, used that information to control your destiny. 705 00:49:52,640 --> 00:49:55,320 But the system that was allowing this to happen 706 00:49:55,320 --> 00:49:57,920 were the new giant networks of information 707 00:49:57,920 --> 00:50:00,200 connected through computer servers. 708 00:50:04,560 --> 00:50:08,080 The hackers were questioning whether Barlow's utopian rhetoric 709 00:50:08,080 --> 00:50:13,000 about cyberspace might really be a convenient camouflage 710 00:50:13,000 --> 00:50:16,720 hiding the emergence of a new and growing power 711 00:50:16,720 --> 00:50:19,120 that was way beyond politics. 712 00:50:49,600 --> 00:50:53,520 But cyberspace was not the only imaginary story being created. 713 00:50:54,560 --> 00:50:57,640 Faced with the humiliating defeat in the Lebanon, 714 00:50:57,640 --> 00:51:00,800 President Reagan's government was desperate to shore up 715 00:51:00,800 --> 00:51:03,080 the vision of a moral world 716 00:51:03,080 --> 00:51:06,920 where a good America struggled against evil. 717 00:51:06,920 --> 00:51:11,240 And to do this they were going to create a simple villain. 718 00:51:11,240 --> 00:51:13,800 An imaginary enemy, one that would free them 719 00:51:13,800 --> 00:51:17,880 from the paralysing complexity of real Middle-Eastern politics. 720 00:51:19,480 --> 00:51:22,960 The perfect candidate was waiting in the wings. 721 00:51:22,960 --> 00:51:25,920 Colonel Gaddafi, the ruler of Libya. 722 00:51:32,520 --> 00:51:35,720 The Americans were going to ruthlessly use Colonel Gaddafi 723 00:51:35,720 --> 00:51:38,440 to create a fake terrorist mastermind. 724 00:51:41,880 --> 00:51:44,760 And Gaddafi was going to happily play along, 725 00:51:44,760 --> 00:51:49,040 because it would turn him into a famous global figure. 726 00:52:04,840 --> 00:52:08,560 Colonel Gaddafi had taken power in a coup in the 1970s 727 00:52:08,560 --> 00:52:10,480 but from the very start, 728 00:52:10,480 --> 00:52:14,480 he was convinced that he was more than just the leader of one country. 729 00:52:14,480 --> 00:52:17,880 He believed that he was an international revolutionary 730 00:52:17,880 --> 00:52:21,240 whose destiny was to challenge the power of the West. 731 00:52:27,480 --> 00:52:29,400 Gentlemen, the Queen. 732 00:52:33,320 --> 00:52:37,440 GOD SAVE THE QUEEN PLAYS 733 00:52:37,440 --> 00:52:39,040 When he was a young officer, 734 00:52:39,040 --> 00:52:41,760 Gaddafi had been sent to England for training 735 00:52:41,760 --> 00:52:45,120 and he had detested the patronising racism 736 00:52:45,120 --> 00:52:48,640 that he said he had found at the heart of British society. 737 00:52:48,640 --> 00:52:52,200 Yes, I attended a course. 738 00:52:52,200 --> 00:53:00,040 I had been in England in 1966 from February to August. 739 00:53:00,040 --> 00:53:01,560 You had the best months. 740 00:53:01,560 --> 00:53:04,000 HE CHUCKLES 741 00:53:04,000 --> 00:53:06,000 I was in Beaconsfield, 742 00:53:06,000 --> 00:53:08,360 a village called Beaconsfield, 743 00:53:08,360 --> 00:53:11,640 in an army school. 744 00:53:14,120 --> 00:53:22,120 In fact, we were ill-treated in that place from some British officers. 745 00:53:24,360 --> 00:53:30,200 I think the officers were Jews, 746 00:53:30,200 --> 00:53:31,880 maybe Jews. 747 00:53:31,880 --> 00:53:34,160 Ill-treated in what sort of way? 748 00:53:36,000 --> 00:53:37,760 In many ways. 749 00:53:40,520 --> 00:53:43,760 They ill-treat us every time. 750 00:53:45,280 --> 00:53:48,480 By being rude or by bullying or...? 751 00:53:50,960 --> 00:53:57,120 In their own behaviour towards us, they ill-treated us. 752 00:53:57,120 --> 00:53:59,440 They hate us in there 753 00:53:59,440 --> 00:54:02,480 because of colonisation. 754 00:54:02,480 --> 00:54:04,280 It is the result of colonising. 755 00:54:08,640 --> 00:54:12,960 Once in power, Gaddafi had developed his own revolutionary theory, 756 00:54:12,960 --> 00:54:17,120 which he called the Third Universal Theory. 757 00:54:17,120 --> 00:54:21,040 It was an alternative, he said, to communism and capitalism. 758 00:54:21,040 --> 00:54:22,920 He published it in a green book, 759 00:54:22,920 --> 00:54:24,960 but practically no-one read it. 760 00:54:26,240 --> 00:54:29,160 He had sent money and weapons to the IRA in Ireland 761 00:54:29,160 --> 00:54:32,440 to help them overthrow the British ruling class. 762 00:54:32,440 --> 00:54:37,800 But all the other Arab leaders rejected him and his ideas. 763 00:54:37,800 --> 00:54:40,600 They thought that he was mad. 764 00:54:40,600 --> 00:54:45,200 And by the mid-1980s, Gaddafi was an isolated figure 765 00:54:45,200 --> 00:54:48,520 with no friends and no global influence. 766 00:54:50,360 --> 00:54:52,440 Then, suddenly, that changed. 767 00:54:56,480 --> 00:54:58,400 In December 1985, 768 00:54:58,400 --> 00:55:01,960 terrorists attacked Rome and Vienna airports simultaneously, 769 00:55:01,960 --> 00:55:03,880 killing 19 people, 770 00:55:03,880 --> 00:55:06,640 including five Americans. 771 00:55:06,640 --> 00:55:10,680 There was growing pressure on President Reagan to retaliate. 772 00:55:10,680 --> 00:55:13,160 It's time to rename your State Department 773 00:55:13,160 --> 00:55:15,240 the Capitulation Department. 774 00:55:15,240 --> 00:55:18,200 Get off of your stick, Mr President. 775 00:55:18,200 --> 00:55:21,960 The American people are sick and tired of being kicked around. 776 00:55:21,960 --> 00:55:23,560 You talk tough, 777 00:55:23,560 --> 00:55:26,560 let's see you use some of these billions and billions 778 00:55:26,560 --> 00:55:28,760 and billions of dollars' worth of weapons 779 00:55:28,760 --> 00:55:30,720 that you've asked us to approve. 780 00:55:30,720 --> 00:55:32,960 Your words are cheap talk. 781 00:55:32,960 --> 00:55:35,160 President Reagan immediately announced 782 00:55:35,160 --> 00:55:38,880 that Colonel Gaddafi was definitely behind the attacks. 783 00:55:38,880 --> 00:55:41,640 These murderers could not carry out their crimes 784 00:55:41,640 --> 00:55:43,800 without the sanctuary and support 785 00:55:43,800 --> 00:55:47,320 provided by regimes such as Colonel Gaddafi's in Libya. 786 00:55:47,320 --> 00:55:49,480 The Rome and Vienna murders are only the latest 787 00:55:49,480 --> 00:55:54,360 in a series of brutal terrorist acts committed with Gaddafi's backing. 788 00:55:54,360 --> 00:55:58,080 But the European security services who investigated the attacks 789 00:55:58,080 --> 00:56:01,200 were convinced that Libya was not involved at all 790 00:56:01,200 --> 00:56:05,400 and that the mastermind behind the attacks was, in fact, Syria - 791 00:56:05,400 --> 00:56:07,960 that the terrorists had been directed 792 00:56:07,960 --> 00:56:10,160 by the Syrian intelligence agencies. 793 00:56:11,880 --> 00:56:15,720 But the Americans say that the attack at Rome Airport 794 00:56:15,720 --> 00:56:20,280 was organised by Gaddafi, not by Damascus. What do you say? 795 00:56:20,280 --> 00:56:23,680 - No, we don't have any evidence... - You have no evidence? 796 00:56:23,680 --> 00:56:28,840 ..supporting such an...affirmation. 797 00:56:31,040 --> 00:56:33,800 The only evidence we have 798 00:56:33,800 --> 00:56:37,040 shows a Syrian connection. 799 00:56:37,040 --> 00:56:39,480 You say that it was Libya and the President 800 00:56:39,480 --> 00:56:44,240 - said the evidence of Libya's culpability was irrefutable. - Yeah. 801 00:56:44,240 --> 00:56:48,560 But the Italian authorities to whom I've spoken say emphatically 802 00:56:48,560 --> 00:56:52,080 on the record that their investigations have shown 803 00:56:52,080 --> 00:56:55,080 that it was entirely masterminded by Syria. 804 00:56:55,080 --> 00:56:56,760 I don't agree with that at all. 805 00:56:56,760 --> 00:57:00,240 Well, they interrogated the surviving terrorists. 806 00:57:00,240 --> 00:57:02,880 I must just say I don't agree with that. 807 00:57:02,880 --> 00:57:05,400 But you've no evidence that Libya was in on the planning either. 808 00:57:05,400 --> 00:57:09,680 Our evidence on Libya is circumstantial, but very strong. 809 00:57:09,680 --> 00:57:12,400 But why does the President then say it's "irrefutable", 810 00:57:12,400 --> 00:57:14,240 if you call it "circumstantial"? 811 00:57:14,240 --> 00:57:18,000 Well, people can be convicted and sentenced in our courts 812 00:57:18,000 --> 00:57:19,920 on circumstantial evidence. 813 00:57:19,920 --> 00:57:22,480 But what made it even more confusing 814 00:57:22,480 --> 00:57:24,600 was that although there seemed to be no evidence 815 00:57:24,600 --> 00:57:26,840 that Gaddafi had been behind the attacks, 816 00:57:26,840 --> 00:57:30,280 he made no attempt to deny the allegations. 817 00:57:30,280 --> 00:57:32,480 Instead, he went the other way 818 00:57:32,480 --> 00:57:35,240 and turned the crisis into a global drama... 819 00:57:35,240 --> 00:57:37,400 It is not a time of saying. 820 00:57:37,400 --> 00:57:39,000 It is a time of war, 821 00:57:39,000 --> 00:57:41,320 a time of confrontation. 822 00:57:41,320 --> 00:57:44,360 ..threatening suicide attacks against America. 823 00:57:46,200 --> 00:57:49,720 TRANSLATION: 824 00:58:09,760 --> 00:58:11,960 Gaddafi now started to play a role 825 00:58:11,960 --> 00:58:14,480 that was going to become very familiar. 826 00:58:14,480 --> 00:58:16,680 He grabbed the publicity that had been given to him 827 00:58:16,680 --> 00:58:19,320 by the Americans and used it dramatically. 828 00:58:20,680 --> 00:58:23,880 He promoted himself as an international revolutionary 829 00:58:23,880 --> 00:58:27,720 who would help to liberate oppressed peoples around the world, 830 00:58:27,720 --> 00:58:29,600 even the blacks in America. 831 00:58:33,080 --> 00:58:35,760 Gaddafi arranged for a live satellite link 832 00:58:35,760 --> 00:58:38,640 to a mass meeting of the Nation Of Islam in Chicago. 833 00:58:39,760 --> 00:58:41,280 Brothers and sisters, 834 00:58:41,280 --> 00:58:44,520 it is with great honour and privilege that I present to you 835 00:58:44,520 --> 00:58:48,480 the leader of the al-Fateh Revolution from Libya, 836 00:58:48,480 --> 00:58:51,040 our brother Muammar al-Gaddafi. 837 00:58:51,040 --> 00:58:52,920 APPLAUSE 838 00:58:52,920 --> 00:58:56,200 Gaddafi told them that Libya was now their ally 839 00:58:56,200 --> 00:58:59,040 in their struggle against white America. 840 00:58:59,040 --> 00:59:05,320 ..To express my full support and support of my country 841 00:59:05,320 --> 00:59:09,400 to your struggle for freedom, for emancipation. 842 00:59:09,400 --> 00:59:11,960 Gaddafi promised that he would supply weapons 843 00:59:11,960 --> 00:59:15,560 to create a black army in America of 400,000 men. 844 00:59:16,600 --> 00:59:20,440 "If white America refuses to accept blacks as US citizens," 845 00:59:20,440 --> 00:59:23,040 he told them, "it must therefore be destroyed." 846 00:59:28,840 --> 00:59:32,400 Gaddafi also invited a group of German rocket scientists 847 00:59:32,400 --> 00:59:35,160 to come to Libya to build him a rocket. 848 00:59:35,160 --> 00:59:38,280 He insisted that it had no military purpose. 849 00:59:38,280 --> 00:59:41,120 Libya was now going to explore outer space. 850 00:59:43,920 --> 00:59:48,400 I think it is peaceful and civil... 851 00:59:48,400 --> 00:59:49,720 Civilian? 852 00:59:49,720 --> 00:59:52,160 ..civilian activity 853 00:59:52,160 --> 00:59:55,320 for investigation of space 854 00:59:55,320 --> 00:59:56,720 and something like this 855 00:59:56,720 --> 01:00:03,640 and it has nothing to do with any military things. 856 01:00:03,640 --> 01:00:05,560 But no-one believed him. 857 01:00:05,560 --> 01:00:09,280 Journalists warned that Gaddafi was really preparing to attack Europe, 858 01:00:09,280 --> 01:00:12,160 vividly dramatising the new danger. 859 01:00:12,160 --> 01:00:13,720 That is something like this 860 01:00:13,720 --> 01:00:15,960 which goes that way to put something into space. 861 01:00:15,960 --> 01:00:18,840 But the same device tilted, say, to an angle of 45 degrees 862 01:00:18,840 --> 01:00:21,800 could, of course, become something very different - 863 01:00:21,800 --> 01:00:24,240 a missile possibly carrying a warhead. 864 01:00:24,240 --> 01:00:28,120 That would put Libya within range of an enormous area. 865 01:00:28,120 --> 01:00:31,920 A chilling proposition with its range of 2,000km. 866 01:00:32,960 --> 01:00:36,200 The Americans and Gaddafi now became locked together 867 01:00:36,200 --> 01:00:38,480 in a cycle of mutual reinforcement. 868 01:00:40,160 --> 01:00:43,280 In the process, a powerful new image was created 869 01:00:43,280 --> 01:00:46,880 that was going to capture the imagination of the West. 870 01:00:46,880 --> 01:00:50,200 Gaddafi became a global supervillain, 871 01:00:50,200 --> 01:00:53,360 at the head of what was called a "rogue state" - 872 01:00:53,360 --> 01:00:56,640 a madman who threatened the stability of the world. 873 01:00:57,840 --> 01:01:00,920 And Gaddafi was loving every minute of it. 874 01:01:00,920 --> 01:01:02,760 So, you think, in the past, 875 01:01:02,760 --> 01:01:07,440 his decisions sometimes have been taken too quickly... 876 01:01:07,440 --> 01:01:10,560 - Maybe, maybe. - ..on world affairs? - Maybe. 877 01:01:12,400 --> 01:01:15,800 I think, sometimes, that is what has made people in the world 878 01:01:15,800 --> 01:01:17,720 - nervous of you, perhaps? - Maybe. 879 01:01:19,720 --> 01:01:22,720 HE CHUCKLES 880 01:01:37,880 --> 01:01:40,480 Then, there was another terrorist attack 881 01:01:40,480 --> 01:01:42,600 at a discotheque in West Berlin. 882 01:01:46,560 --> 01:01:50,920 A bomb killed an American soldier and injured hundreds. 883 01:01:50,920 --> 01:01:54,040 The Americans released what they said were intercepts 884 01:01:54,040 --> 01:01:56,040 by the National Security Agency 885 01:01:56,040 --> 01:01:59,800 that proved that Colonel Gaddafi was behind the bombing 886 01:01:59,800 --> 01:02:03,280 and a dossier that they said proved that he was also the mastermind 887 01:02:03,280 --> 01:02:05,560 behind a whole range of other attacks. 888 01:02:07,400 --> 01:02:09,920 President Reagan ordered the Pentagon 889 01:02:09,920 --> 01:02:12,280 to prepare to bomb Libya. 890 01:02:12,280 --> 01:02:13,960 But again, there were doubts - 891 01:02:13,960 --> 01:02:17,120 this time, within the American Government itself. 892 01:02:18,920 --> 01:02:21,800 There were concerns that analysts were being pressured 893 01:02:21,800 --> 01:02:24,520 to make a case that didn't really exist... 894 01:02:25,560 --> 01:02:29,560 ..and to do it, they were taking Gaddafi's rhetoric about himself 895 01:02:29,560 --> 01:02:33,040 as a global revolutionary and his manic ravings 896 01:02:33,040 --> 01:02:35,400 and then re-presenting them as fact. 897 01:02:36,680 --> 01:02:38,360 And, in the process, together, 898 01:02:38,360 --> 01:02:43,520 the Americans and Gaddafi were constructing a fictional world. 899 01:02:43,520 --> 01:02:48,480 The analysts were certainly, I'm convinced... 900 01:02:48,480 --> 01:02:53,160 pressured into developing a prima facie case 901 01:02:53,160 --> 01:02:55,320 against the Libyan Government. 902 01:02:55,320 --> 01:03:01,240 From the somewhat incoherent ravings of a maniac, 903 01:03:01,240 --> 01:03:06,120 both interceptions of a clandestine nature 904 01:03:06,120 --> 01:03:11,960 and interceptions of an open radio broadcast or whatever, 905 01:03:11,960 --> 01:03:15,360 as well as other sources, quotations of his, 906 01:03:15,360 --> 01:03:19,760 one can assemble a neatly-put-together package 907 01:03:19,760 --> 01:03:24,600 demonstrating that the man had violent interests 908 01:03:24,600 --> 01:03:28,000 against the United States and its European allies. 909 01:03:28,000 --> 01:03:30,320 The European intelligence agencies 910 01:03:30,320 --> 01:03:32,560 told the Americans that they were wrong, 911 01:03:32,560 --> 01:03:36,400 that it was Syria that was behind the bombing, not Libya. 912 01:03:36,400 --> 01:03:39,040 But the Americans had decided to attack Libya 913 01:03:39,040 --> 01:03:42,000 because they couldn't face the dangerous consequences 914 01:03:42,000 --> 01:03:43,440 of attacking Syria. 915 01:03:44,800 --> 01:03:47,200 Instead, they went for Gaddafi, 916 01:03:47,200 --> 01:03:49,080 a man without friends or allies. 917 01:03:50,400 --> 01:03:56,040 Libya had less downsided consequences, if you will. 918 01:03:56,040 --> 01:03:59,520 There's less Arab support for Gaddafi, 919 01:03:59,520 --> 01:04:02,880 we figured there would be less Soviet support for Gaddafi. 920 01:04:04,080 --> 01:04:10,440 There's no question that Libya was more vulnerable than Syria and Iran. 921 01:04:10,440 --> 01:04:13,760 - He was a soft target? - And that is certainly an element, of course. 922 01:04:17,200 --> 01:04:20,120 In April 1986, the Americans attacked Libya. 923 01:04:21,840 --> 01:04:24,920 Their targets included Colonel Gaddafi's own house. 924 01:04:25,960 --> 01:04:27,440 Immediately after the attack, 925 01:04:27,440 --> 01:04:31,320 Gaddafi appeared in the ruins to describe what had happened. 926 01:04:31,320 --> 01:04:35,280 - TRANSLATION: - The family were asleep and my wife 927 01:04:35,280 --> 01:04:37,720 was, that day, tied down to the bed 928 01:04:37,720 --> 01:04:40,000 because she had a slipped disc. 929 01:04:40,000 --> 01:04:41,720 I tried to rescue the children 930 01:04:41,720 --> 01:04:43,720 and the house started to collapse, 931 01:04:43,720 --> 01:04:45,160 as you can see. 932 01:04:45,160 --> 01:04:47,680 And the bombs started to land. 933 01:04:47,680 --> 01:04:50,120 They concentrated on the children's room 934 01:04:50,120 --> 01:04:53,560 so that they would kill all the children. 935 01:04:53,560 --> 01:04:56,120 Our small adopted daughter was killed 936 01:04:56,120 --> 01:04:58,840 and two of our children were injured. 937 01:04:58,840 --> 01:05:01,600 But, yet again, Gaddafi might have been lying. 938 01:05:01,600 --> 01:05:02,760 Ever since then, 939 01:05:02,760 --> 01:05:07,440 there have been rumours that his adopted daughter actually survived. 940 01:05:07,440 --> 01:05:10,040 But many other children were killed in the raid 941 01:05:10,040 --> 01:05:12,840 because the American bombing was so inaccurate. 942 01:05:14,280 --> 01:05:17,320 Gaddafi realised that the attention of the whole world 943 01:05:17,320 --> 01:05:19,200 was now focused on him 944 01:05:19,200 --> 01:05:22,760 and he grabbed the moment to promote his own revolutionary theory, 945 01:05:22,760 --> 01:05:26,840 The Third Way, as a global alternative to democracy. 946 01:05:28,360 --> 01:05:31,840 - TRANSLATION: - I feel that I'm really responsible 947 01:05:31,840 --> 01:05:35,000 for conveying the Third Way theory and the Green Book 948 01:05:35,000 --> 01:05:39,320 to the rising generations, to the young American and British people, 949 01:05:39,320 --> 01:05:41,840 so that we can rescue America and Britain 950 01:05:41,840 --> 01:05:45,760 and these generations of young people from this theory, 951 01:05:45,760 --> 01:05:47,920 this electoral party theory 952 01:05:47,920 --> 01:05:50,760 which enabled an imbecile like Reagan 953 01:05:50,760 --> 01:05:53,160 to rule the mightiest power on Earth 954 01:05:53,160 --> 01:05:56,240 and use it to destroy other people's homes 955 01:05:56,240 --> 01:06:00,560 and enabled a harlot like Thatcher to rule a great nation like Britain. 956 01:06:15,480 --> 01:06:19,120 - MAN: - Wow, look at that. What the heck is that? 957 01:06:20,520 --> 01:06:22,680 Oh, my God, look at that. 958 01:06:27,160 --> 01:06:28,680 Holy crap! 959 01:06:34,240 --> 01:06:38,720 It's just moving really slowly. Wow! 960 01:06:38,720 --> 01:06:41,240 - Look, look, look! Come here, come here! - What is it doing? 961 01:06:41,240 --> 01:06:42,560 What the heck?! 962 01:06:45,000 --> 01:06:46,440 Guys, it's... 963 01:06:46,440 --> 01:06:48,120 - Whoa! - Oh, my gosh! 964 01:06:48,120 --> 01:06:50,040 Wow! 965 01:06:50,040 --> 01:06:52,640 - What is happening? - Dude, what is happening?! 966 01:06:52,640 --> 01:06:55,760 - What is going on? - Oh, my gosh! 967 01:06:55,760 --> 01:07:01,600 - Oh, my God, guys! - Guys, is that a freaking UFO? 968 01:07:02,680 --> 01:07:07,040 - Wait, can you get a good video? - What is it? - What the hell? 969 01:07:09,320 --> 01:07:12,360 In the 1980s, more and more people in the United States 970 01:07:12,360 --> 01:07:15,800 reported seeing unexplained objects and lights in the sky. 971 01:07:17,560 --> 01:07:20,880 At the same time, investigators who believed in UFOs 972 01:07:20,880 --> 01:07:24,720 revealed that they had discovered top-secret government documents 973 01:07:24,720 --> 01:07:28,280 that stated that alien craft had visited Earth. 974 01:07:30,920 --> 01:07:33,720 The documents had been hidden for 20 years 975 01:07:33,720 --> 01:07:37,240 and they seemed to prove that there had been a giant cover-up. 976 01:07:39,240 --> 01:07:42,360 But, actually, the reality was even stranger. 977 01:07:42,360 --> 01:07:45,880 The American Government might have been making it all up, 978 01:07:45,880 --> 01:07:48,680 that they had created a fake conspiracy 979 01:07:48,680 --> 01:07:51,480 to deliberately mislead the population. 980 01:07:53,000 --> 01:07:55,560 The lights that people imagined were UFOs 981 01:07:55,560 --> 01:07:59,600 may, in reality, have been new high-technology weapons 982 01:07:59,600 --> 01:08:02,200 that the US Government were testing. 983 01:08:07,200 --> 01:08:09,240 The government had developed the weapons 984 01:08:09,240 --> 01:08:10,720 because they, in turn, 985 01:08:10,720 --> 01:08:14,600 imagined that the Soviet Union was far stronger than it was 986 01:08:14,600 --> 01:08:17,000 and still wanted to conquer the world. 987 01:08:19,160 --> 01:08:21,920 The government wanted to keep the weapons secret, 988 01:08:21,920 --> 01:08:25,760 but they couldn't always hide their appearance in the skies 989 01:08:25,760 --> 01:08:29,440 so it is alleged that they chose a number of people to use 990 01:08:29,440 --> 01:08:34,000 to spread the rumour that these were really alien visitations. 991 01:08:34,000 --> 01:08:36,440 One of those chosen was called Paul Bennewitz 992 01:08:36,440 --> 01:08:40,200 who lived outside a giant air base in New Mexico 993 01:08:40,200 --> 01:08:42,880 and had noticed strange things going on. 994 01:08:44,520 --> 01:08:46,600 Years later, 995 01:08:46,600 --> 01:08:49,160 I sat down with Paul at dinner 996 01:08:49,160 --> 01:08:52,840 and told Paul exactly that everything we did 997 01:08:52,840 --> 01:08:56,440 was a sanctioned counterintelligence operation to convince him 998 01:08:56,440 --> 01:08:58,840 that what he was seeing was UFOs 999 01:08:58,840 --> 01:09:01,240 and that what we didn't want him to know was 1000 01:09:01,240 --> 01:09:03,960 that he had tapped into something on the base 1001 01:09:03,960 --> 01:09:07,520 and we didn't want him to ever disclose that. 1002 01:09:07,520 --> 01:09:10,440 We kind of planted the seed in Paul 1003 01:09:10,440 --> 01:09:12,640 that what he was seeing and what he was hearing 1004 01:09:12,640 --> 01:09:15,200 and what he was collecting was, in fact, 1005 01:09:15,200 --> 01:09:16,800 probably, maybe, UFOs. 1006 01:09:16,800 --> 01:09:19,880 Bennewitz and others chosen by the agency 1007 01:09:19,880 --> 01:09:23,560 were, it is alleged, given a series of forged documents. 1008 01:09:23,560 --> 01:09:26,640 Many of them were top-secret memos by the military 1009 01:09:26,640 --> 01:09:30,400 describing sightings of unidentified aerial vehicles. 1010 01:09:32,520 --> 01:09:35,080 The documents spread like wildfire 1011 01:09:35,080 --> 01:09:38,280 and they formed the basis for the wave of belief in UFOs 1012 01:09:38,280 --> 01:09:41,880 that would spread through America in the 1990s. 1013 01:09:45,560 --> 01:09:47,800 - What the fuck is that? - That's a... 1014 01:09:53,640 --> 01:09:55,160 That's crazy, bro. 1015 01:09:58,480 --> 01:10:00,080 Is that that space, uh...? 1016 01:10:01,880 --> 01:10:05,200 And it also fuelled the wider growing belief 1017 01:10:05,200 --> 01:10:07,600 that governments lied to you - 1018 01:10:07,600 --> 01:10:09,720 that conspiracies were real. 1019 01:10:13,520 --> 01:10:16,080 What the Reagan administration were doing, 1020 01:10:16,080 --> 01:10:19,240 both with Colonel Gaddafi and with the UFOs, 1021 01:10:19,240 --> 01:10:22,120 was a blurring of fact and fiction 1022 01:10:22,120 --> 01:10:24,760 but it was part of an even broader programme. 1023 01:10:26,200 --> 01:10:29,440 The President's advisers had given it a name - 1024 01:10:29,440 --> 01:10:32,200 they called it "perception management" 1025 01:10:32,200 --> 01:10:35,000 and it became a central part of the American Government 1026 01:10:35,000 --> 01:10:36,520 during the 1980s. 1027 01:10:38,920 --> 01:10:43,680 The aim was to tell dramatic stories that grabbed the public imagination, 1028 01:10:43,680 --> 01:10:45,520 not just about the Middle East, 1029 01:10:45,520 --> 01:10:47,680 but about Central America 1030 01:10:47,680 --> 01:10:49,360 and the Soviet Union 1031 01:10:49,360 --> 01:10:53,240 and it didn't matter if the stories were true or not, 1032 01:10:53,240 --> 01:10:57,400 providing they distracted people and you, the politician, 1033 01:10:57,400 --> 01:10:59,320 from having to deal with 1034 01:10:59,320 --> 01:11:03,040 the intractable complexities of the real world. 1035 01:11:12,760 --> 01:11:14,200 Reality became less and less 1036 01:11:14,200 --> 01:11:16,600 of an important factor in American politics. 1037 01:11:16,600 --> 01:11:19,240 It wasn't what was real that was driving anything 1038 01:11:19,240 --> 01:11:21,320 or the facts driving anything. 1039 01:11:21,320 --> 01:11:23,760 It was how you could turn those facts or twist those facts 1040 01:11:23,760 --> 01:11:26,640 or even make up the facts to make your opponent look bad. 1041 01:11:26,640 --> 01:11:29,240 So, perception management became a device 1042 01:11:29,240 --> 01:11:32,920 and the facts could be twisted. Anything could be anything. 1043 01:11:32,920 --> 01:11:36,000 It becomes how can you manipulate the American people? 1044 01:11:36,000 --> 01:11:38,640 And, in the process, reality becomes what? 1045 01:11:38,640 --> 01:11:42,320 Reality becomes simply something to play with to achieve that end. 1046 01:11:42,320 --> 01:11:45,280 Reality is not important in this context. 1047 01:11:45,280 --> 01:11:47,880 Reality is simply something that you handle. 1048 01:11:52,120 --> 01:11:55,720 But something was about to happen that would demonstrate dramatically 1049 01:11:55,720 --> 01:12:00,840 just how far the American Government had detached from reality. 1050 01:12:00,840 --> 01:12:03,120 The Soviet Empire was about to implode. 1051 01:12:06,800 --> 01:12:09,360 And no-one, none of the politicians, 1052 01:12:09,360 --> 01:12:10,840 or the journalists, 1053 01:12:10,840 --> 01:12:12,640 or the think tank experts, 1054 01:12:12,640 --> 01:12:13,960 or the economists, 1055 01:12:13,960 --> 01:12:16,280 or the academics saw it coming. 1056 01:12:51,320 --> 01:12:53,040 That's it! Whoo! 1057 01:12:53,040 --> 01:12:55,280 Get ready to work out. 1058 01:13:34,280 --> 01:13:35,560 GUNSHOTS 1059 01:14:51,760 --> 01:14:53,640 The collapse of the Soviet Union 1060 01:14:53,640 --> 01:14:57,200 also had a powerful effect on the West. 1061 01:14:57,200 --> 01:15:00,400 For many, it symbolised the final failure of the dream 1062 01:15:00,400 --> 01:15:03,720 that politics could be used to build a new kind of world. 1063 01:15:06,000 --> 01:15:09,720 What was going to emerge instead was a new system that had nothing 1064 01:15:09,720 --> 01:15:11,360 to do with politics. 1065 01:15:12,600 --> 01:15:15,800 A system whose aim was not to try and change things, 1066 01:15:15,800 --> 01:15:19,360 but rather, to manage a post-political world. 1067 01:15:24,920 --> 01:15:28,080 One of the first people to describe this dramatic change 1068 01:15:28,080 --> 01:15:31,680 was a left-wing German political thinker called Ulrich Beck. 1069 01:15:33,040 --> 01:15:36,120 Beck said that any politician who believed that they could take 1070 01:15:36,120 --> 01:15:39,160 control of society, and drive it forward to build 1071 01:15:39,160 --> 01:15:41,920 a better future, was now seen as dangerous. 1072 01:15:44,400 --> 01:15:47,800 In the past, politicians might have been able to do this. 1073 01:15:47,800 --> 01:15:51,280 But now they were faced with what he called "a runaway world." 1074 01:15:52,560 --> 01:15:55,280 Where things were so complex and interconnected, 1075 01:15:55,280 --> 01:15:59,200 and modern technologies so potentially dangerous 1076 01:15:59,200 --> 01:16:03,760 that it was impossible to predict the outcomes of anything you did. 1077 01:16:03,760 --> 01:16:07,000 The catalogue of environmental disasters proved this. 1078 01:16:08,760 --> 01:16:12,120 Politicians would have to give up any idea of trying to change 1079 01:16:12,120 --> 01:16:13,920 the world. 1080 01:16:13,920 --> 01:16:17,320 Instead, their new aim would be to try and predict the dangers 1081 01:16:17,320 --> 01:16:21,080 in the future, and then, find ways to avoid those risks. 1082 01:16:25,440 --> 01:16:27,920 Although Beck came from the political left, 1083 01:16:27,920 --> 01:16:30,720 the world he saw coming was deeply conservative. 1084 01:16:32,640 --> 01:16:33,880 The picture he gave 1085 01:16:33,880 --> 01:16:38,280 was of a political class reduced to trying to steer society 1086 01:16:38,280 --> 01:16:41,000 into a dark and frightening future. 1087 01:16:41,000 --> 01:16:42,800 Constantly peering forward 1088 01:16:42,800 --> 01:16:45,720 and trying to see the risks coming towards them. 1089 01:16:47,160 --> 01:16:50,560 Their only aim, to avoid those risks 1090 01:16:50,560 --> 01:16:52,960 and keep society stable. 1091 01:16:52,960 --> 01:16:55,720 It only lasted for a few seconds so you were basically shocked, 1092 01:16:55,720 --> 01:16:57,840 you really didn't know what was going on at the time. 1093 01:16:57,840 --> 01:17:00,280 Where were you in the building and where was the explosion? 1094 01:17:00,280 --> 01:17:02,800 - EXPLOSION - Oh, my God! 1095 01:17:04,240 --> 01:17:06,880 But a system that could anticipate the future 1096 01:17:06,880 --> 01:17:10,520 and keep society stable was already being built, 1097 01:17:10,520 --> 01:17:13,640 pieced together from all kinds of different, 1098 01:17:13,640 --> 01:17:16,200 and sometimes surprising, sources. 1099 01:17:16,200 --> 01:17:18,040 All of them outside politics. 1100 01:17:19,600 --> 01:17:22,600 One part of it was taking shape in a tiny town 1101 01:17:22,600 --> 01:17:26,640 in the far north-west of the United States called East Wenatchee. 1102 01:17:28,200 --> 01:17:29,720 It was a giant computer 1103 01:17:29,720 --> 01:17:32,760 whose job was to make the future predictable. 1104 01:17:41,880 --> 01:17:44,760 The man building it was a banker called Larry Fink. 1105 01:17:48,040 --> 01:17:49,200 Back in 1986, 1106 01:17:49,200 --> 01:17:52,000 Mr Fink's career had collapsed. 1107 01:17:52,000 --> 01:17:53,240 Shoot! 1108 01:17:55,000 --> 01:17:58,600 He lost 100 million in a deal and had been sacked. 1109 01:18:00,560 --> 01:18:03,320 He became determined it wouldn't happen again. 1110 01:18:07,640 --> 01:18:10,360 Fink started a company called BlackRock and built 1111 01:18:10,360 --> 01:18:12,720 a computer he called Aladdin. 1112 01:18:14,000 --> 01:18:16,080 It is housed in a series of large sheds 1113 01:18:16,080 --> 01:18:18,960 in the apple orchards outside Wenatchee. 1114 01:18:21,400 --> 01:18:24,880 Fink's aim was to use the computer to predict, with certainty, 1115 01:18:24,880 --> 01:18:27,960 what the risk of any deal or investment was going to be. 1116 01:18:29,680 --> 01:18:32,880 The computer constantly monitors the world 1117 01:18:32,880 --> 01:18:35,360 and it take things that it sees happening, 1118 01:18:35,360 --> 01:18:38,000 and then, compares them to events in the past. 1119 01:18:39,760 --> 01:18:42,800 It can do this because it has, in its memory, a vast history 1120 01:18:42,800 --> 01:18:47,640 of the past 50 years. Not just financial, but all kinds of events. 1121 01:18:49,280 --> 01:18:51,640 Out of the millions and millions of correlations, 1122 01:18:51,640 --> 01:18:54,520 the computer then spots possible disasters, 1123 01:18:54,520 --> 01:18:57,200 possible dangers lying in the future 1124 01:18:57,200 --> 01:19:01,160 and moves the investments to avoid any radical change 1125 01:19:01,160 --> 01:19:03,640 and keep the system stable. 1126 01:19:03,640 --> 01:19:07,240 Today, I'm going to deliver 1.8 million reports. 1127 01:19:07,240 --> 01:19:09,240 Execute 25,000 trades. 1128 01:19:09,240 --> 01:19:10,800 And avert 3,000 disasters. 1129 01:19:10,800 --> 01:19:13,440 I'm going to monitor interest rates in Europe. 1130 01:19:13,440 --> 01:19:16,080 - Silver prices in Asia. - Droughts in the Midwest. 1131 01:19:16,080 --> 01:19:18,680 I'm going to witness 4 billion shares change hands on the 1132 01:19:18,680 --> 01:19:20,000 New York Stock Exchange. 1133 01:19:20,000 --> 01:19:24,120 And record the effects on 14 trillion in assets 1134 01:19:24,120 --> 01:19:26,600 across 20,000 portfolios. 1135 01:19:26,600 --> 01:19:28,960 - I am Aladdin. - I am Aladdin. 1136 01:19:28,960 --> 01:19:32,440 And, today, I'll find the numbers behind the numbers. 1137 01:19:32,440 --> 01:19:34,640 I will see the trends the models don't. 1138 01:19:34,640 --> 01:19:36,320 - The connections. - The risks. 1139 01:19:37,440 --> 01:19:41,360 - I am Aladdin. - I am Aladdin, and I will get the data right. 1140 01:19:41,360 --> 01:19:43,240 I am 25 million lines of code. 1141 01:19:43,240 --> 01:19:45,280 Written by hundreds of people. 1142 01:19:45,280 --> 01:19:46,920 Across two decades. 1143 01:19:46,920 --> 01:19:48,760 I'm smarter than any algorithm. 1144 01:19:48,760 --> 01:19:50,760 More powerful than any processor. 1145 01:19:50,760 --> 01:19:52,000 Because I am Aladdin. 1146 01:19:52,000 --> 01:19:53,240 Because I am Aladdin. 1147 01:19:54,440 --> 01:19:55,720 I am Aladdin. 1148 01:19:55,720 --> 01:19:57,240 I am Aladdin... 1149 01:20:01,040 --> 01:20:04,160 Aladdin has proved to be incredibly successful. 1150 01:20:04,160 --> 01:20:06,560 The assets it guides and controls 1151 01:20:06,560 --> 01:20:08,600 now amount to 15 trillion, 1152 01:20:08,600 --> 01:20:12,080 which is 7% of the world's total wealth. 1153 01:20:18,000 --> 01:20:20,840 But Wenatchee was also a dramatic example 1154 01:20:20,840 --> 01:20:22,640 of another kind of craving 1155 01:20:22,640 --> 01:20:24,840 for stability and reassurance. 1156 01:20:24,840 --> 01:20:26,840 More of its citizens took Prozac 1157 01:20:26,840 --> 01:20:29,520 than practically any other town in America. 1158 01:20:31,440 --> 01:20:35,880 When a person's central nervous system is changed by an SSRI, 1159 01:20:35,880 --> 01:20:38,920 with that medicine they will view things differently 1160 01:20:38,920 --> 01:20:41,480 and they will be strangers. 1161 01:20:41,480 --> 01:20:43,200 They look at things differently. 1162 01:20:43,200 --> 01:20:45,320 I have a chemical up here that changes me. 1163 01:20:45,320 --> 01:20:46,480 I think differently. 1164 01:20:46,480 --> 01:20:49,320 For me it was like walking around like this for my whole life 1165 01:20:49,320 --> 01:20:52,160 and really not knowing that I was near-sighted. I mean, really. 1166 01:20:52,160 --> 01:20:54,120 I mean, no-one had ever offered me glasses. 1167 01:20:54,120 --> 01:20:56,640 And then, all of a sudden, here comes somebody that says, 1168 01:20:56,640 --> 01:20:59,160 "OK, now try these on. Try this Prozac on." 1169 01:20:59,160 --> 01:21:02,200 And I tried it on and for the first time in my life I went, 1170 01:21:02,200 --> 01:21:05,840 "Whoa! Is this the way reality really is?" 1171 01:21:05,840 --> 01:21:08,160 Your perception can be changed and it's frightening 1172 01:21:08,160 --> 01:21:10,000 and it's scary to people. 1173 01:21:10,000 --> 01:21:12,960 It speaks of science fiction almost. 1174 01:21:20,120 --> 01:21:24,760 Well, the medicine just kind of lets you listen to what needs to go on. 1175 01:21:24,760 --> 01:21:27,160 And then your doctor, every time you come back, says, 1176 01:21:27,160 --> 01:21:29,440 "You're looking so much better." 1177 01:21:29,440 --> 01:21:31,960 And then every time I go in he goes, 1178 01:21:31,960 --> 01:21:34,520 "You're so beautiful." You know? 1179 01:21:34,520 --> 01:21:37,640 He isn't even sucking up. He's being nice, you know? 1180 01:21:37,640 --> 01:21:40,200 "You're beautiful, you're nice, you're friendly. 1181 01:21:40,200 --> 01:21:44,080 "You've got so much going for you." I think, "Yeah, I do." 1182 01:21:44,080 --> 01:21:45,960 So, I go out and tell my friends, 1183 01:21:45,960 --> 01:21:48,240 "I feel so much better about myself." 1184 01:21:48,240 --> 01:21:51,360 Mom goes out, "Oh, I feel so much better about myself." 1185 01:21:51,360 --> 01:21:54,440 So, your friends start saying, "I've seen such an improvement. 1186 01:21:54,440 --> 01:21:56,320 "I've seen such improvement." 1187 01:21:56,320 --> 01:21:59,280 And everybody improves all the way around. They see improvement. 1188 01:21:59,280 --> 01:22:03,160 It's like everybody's brainwashing each other into being happy. 1189 01:22:05,720 --> 01:22:08,360 But there was a more effective way of reassuring people 1190 01:22:08,360 --> 01:22:12,160 that was being developed that did not involve medication. 1191 01:22:15,320 --> 01:22:18,160 It, too, came from computer systems 1192 01:22:18,160 --> 01:22:20,880 but this time, artificial intelligence. 1193 01:22:22,120 --> 01:22:25,080 But the way to do it had been discovered by accident. 1194 01:22:33,480 --> 01:22:36,160 Back in the 1960s, there had been optimistic dreams 1195 01:22:36,160 --> 01:22:38,800 that it would be possible to develop computers 1196 01:22:38,800 --> 01:22:40,840 that could think like human beings. 1197 01:22:43,640 --> 01:22:46,600 Scientists then spent years trying to programme the rules 1198 01:22:46,600 --> 01:22:48,360 that governed human thought... 1199 01:22:50,600 --> 01:22:52,120 ..but they never worked. 1200 01:22:59,040 --> 01:23:01,120 One computer scientist, at MIT, 1201 01:23:01,120 --> 01:23:05,080 became so disillusioned that he decided to build a computer programme 1202 01:23:05,080 --> 01:23:08,080 that would parody these hopeless attempts. 1203 01:23:09,320 --> 01:23:11,560 He was called Joseph Weizenbaum 1204 01:23:11,560 --> 01:23:16,240 and he built what he claimed was a computer psychotherapist. 1205 01:23:16,240 --> 01:23:19,800 Just like a therapist, people could come and talk to the machine 1206 01:23:19,800 --> 01:23:21,440 by typing in their problems. 1207 01:23:24,120 --> 01:23:26,640 Weizenbaum called the programme "Eliza". 1208 01:23:27,800 --> 01:23:30,880 He modelled it on a real psychotherapist called Carl Rogers 1209 01:23:30,880 --> 01:23:33,880 who was famous for simply repeating back to the patient 1210 01:23:33,880 --> 01:23:35,240 what they had just said. 1211 01:23:36,840 --> 01:23:38,360 And that is what Eliza did. 1212 01:23:39,400 --> 01:23:41,720 The patient sat in front of the screen and typed in 1213 01:23:41,720 --> 01:23:43,560 what they were feeling 1214 01:23:43,560 --> 01:23:46,920 and the programme repeated it back to them, 1215 01:23:46,920 --> 01:23:48,720 often in the form of a question. 1216 01:24:06,320 --> 01:24:09,000 He says I'm depressed much of the time. 1217 01:24:17,840 --> 01:24:19,560 Well, I need some help. 1218 01:24:19,560 --> 01:24:21,480 That much seems certain. 1219 01:24:21,480 --> 01:24:25,400 One of the first people to use Eliza was Weizenbaum's secretary 1220 01:24:25,400 --> 01:24:29,080 and her reaction was something that he had not predicted at all. 1221 01:24:30,480 --> 01:24:33,000 I asked her to my office and sat her down at the keyboard 1222 01:24:33,000 --> 01:24:34,920 and then she began to type and, of course, 1223 01:24:34,920 --> 01:24:37,200 I looked over her shoulder to make sure everything 1224 01:24:37,200 --> 01:24:40,160 was operating properly. After two or three interchanges 1225 01:24:40,160 --> 01:24:42,760 with the machine she turned to me and she said, 1226 01:24:42,760 --> 01:24:45,240 "Would you mind leaving the room, please?" 1227 01:24:45,240 --> 01:24:50,200 And yet she knew, as Weizenbaum did, that Eliza didn't understand 1228 01:24:50,200 --> 01:24:52,760 a single word that was being typed into it. 1229 01:24:54,080 --> 01:24:56,880 You're like my father in some ways. 1230 01:24:56,880 --> 01:25:00,440 - You don't argue with me. - Why do you think I don't argue with you? 1231 01:25:01,480 --> 01:25:05,200 - You're afraid of me. - Does it please you to think I'm afraid of you? 1232 01:25:06,200 --> 01:25:08,120 My father's afraid of everybody. 1233 01:25:10,840 --> 01:25:12,560 My father's afraid of everybody... 1234 01:25:12,560 --> 01:25:14,200 Weizenbaum was astonished. 1235 01:25:14,200 --> 01:25:18,960 He discovered that everyone who tried Eliza became engrossed. 1236 01:25:18,960 --> 01:25:21,240 They would sit for hours telling the machine 1237 01:25:21,240 --> 01:25:22,720 about their inner feelings 1238 01:25:22,720 --> 01:25:25,400 and incredibly intimate details of their lives. 1239 01:25:26,880 --> 01:25:29,000 They also liked it because it was free 1240 01:25:29,000 --> 01:25:31,240 of any kind of patronising elitism. 1241 01:25:32,480 --> 01:25:37,240 One person said, "After all, the computer doesn't burn out, 1242 01:25:37,240 --> 01:25:40,640 "look down on you, or try to have sex with you." 1243 01:25:44,840 --> 01:25:48,760 What Eliza showed was that, in an age of individualism, 1244 01:25:48,760 --> 01:25:50,640 what made people feel secure 1245 01:25:50,640 --> 01:25:53,720 was having themselves reflected back to them. 1246 01:25:55,320 --> 01:25:56,560 Just like in a mirror. 1247 01:26:07,440 --> 01:26:10,360 Artificial intelligence changed direction 1248 01:26:10,360 --> 01:26:13,720 and started to create new systems that did just that, 1249 01:26:13,720 --> 01:26:15,080 but on a giant scale. 1250 01:26:16,880 --> 01:26:19,080 They were called intelligent agents. 1251 01:26:20,080 --> 01:26:22,440 They worked by monitoring individuals, 1252 01:26:22,440 --> 01:26:26,280 gathering vast amounts of data about their past behaviour 1253 01:26:26,280 --> 01:26:29,120 and then looked for patterns and correlations 1254 01:26:29,120 --> 01:26:32,880 from which they could predict what they would want in the future. 1255 01:26:34,440 --> 01:26:36,800 It was a system that ordered the world in a way 1256 01:26:36,800 --> 01:26:39,200 that was centred around you. 1257 01:26:39,200 --> 01:26:42,200 And in an age of anxious individualism, 1258 01:26:42,200 --> 01:26:44,480 frightened of the future, 1259 01:26:44,480 --> 01:26:47,840 that was reassuring, just like Eliza. 1260 01:26:48,880 --> 01:26:50,760 A safe bubble that protected you 1261 01:26:50,760 --> 01:26:53,920 from the complexities of the world outside. 1262 01:26:59,080 --> 01:27:00,840 And the applications of this new direction 1263 01:27:00,840 --> 01:27:02,920 proved fruitful and profitable. 1264 01:27:04,280 --> 01:27:07,080 If you liked that, you'll love this. 1265 01:27:14,240 --> 01:27:16,280 What was rising up in different ways 1266 01:27:16,280 --> 01:27:19,520 was a new system that promised to keep the world stable. 1267 01:27:20,760 --> 01:27:23,960 Its tentacles reached into every area of our lives. 1268 01:27:25,240 --> 01:27:28,320 Finance promised that it could control the unpredictability 1269 01:27:28,320 --> 01:27:29,840 of the free market... 1270 01:27:30,880 --> 01:27:33,360 ..while individuals were more and more monitored 1271 01:27:33,360 --> 01:27:36,320 to stabilise their physical and mental states. 1272 01:27:37,520 --> 01:27:40,240 And, increasingly, the intelligent agents online 1273 01:27:40,240 --> 01:27:43,520 predicted what people would want in the future 1274 01:27:43,520 --> 01:27:45,400 and how they would behave. 1275 01:27:47,800 --> 01:27:50,160 But the biggest change was to politics. 1276 01:27:51,520 --> 01:27:55,160 In a world where the overriding aim was now stability, 1277 01:27:55,160 --> 01:27:59,520 politics became just part of a wider system of managing the world. 1278 01:28:01,680 --> 01:28:04,040 The old idea of democratic politics, 1279 01:28:04,040 --> 01:28:08,320 that it gave a voice to the weak against the powerful, was eroded. 1280 01:28:10,600 --> 01:28:14,520 And a resentment began to quietly grow out on the edges of society. 1281 01:28:48,680 --> 01:28:52,240 But the new system did have a dangerous flaw. 1282 01:28:52,240 --> 01:28:55,680 Because in the real world, not everything can be predicted 1283 01:28:55,680 --> 01:28:57,680 by reading data from the past. 1284 01:29:02,000 --> 01:29:04,480 And someone who was about to discover that, 1285 01:29:04,480 --> 01:29:06,480 to his own cost, was Donald Trump. 1286 01:29:12,040 --> 01:29:16,480 One day a man called Jess Marcum received a phone call. 1287 01:29:16,480 --> 01:29:17,920 It was from Donald Trump 1288 01:29:17,920 --> 01:29:20,000 and Trump was desperate for help. 1289 01:29:22,600 --> 01:29:25,400 Marcum was a strange, mysterious figure. 1290 01:29:25,400 --> 01:29:27,640 He had been a nuclear scientist in the 1950s 1291 01:29:27,640 --> 01:29:31,320 and studied the effect of radiation from nuclear weapons 1292 01:29:31,320 --> 01:29:33,000 on the human body. 1293 01:29:35,920 --> 01:29:39,760 Then Marcum had gone to Las Vegas and become obsessed by gambling. 1294 01:29:40,840 --> 01:29:44,040 He had a photographic memory and he used it to instantly 1295 01:29:44,040 --> 01:29:47,680 process the data of the games as they were played. 1296 01:29:47,680 --> 01:29:50,800 From that, he could predict the outcome. 1297 01:29:50,800 --> 01:29:52,240 And he always won. 1298 01:29:54,240 --> 01:29:57,280 The Las Vegas gangsters were fascinated by him. 1299 01:29:57,280 --> 01:29:59,640 They called him "The Automat". 1300 01:29:59,640 --> 01:30:03,040 Where are we going? Let's go. Go, go, go. 1301 01:30:03,040 --> 01:30:06,360 Donald Trump was one of the heroes of the age. 1302 01:30:06,360 --> 01:30:09,520 But, in reality, much of this success was a facade. 1303 01:30:10,760 --> 01:30:12,880 The banks that had lent Trump millions 1304 01:30:12,880 --> 01:30:15,000 had discovered that he could no longer 1305 01:30:15,000 --> 01:30:17,400 pay the interest on the loans. 1306 01:30:17,400 --> 01:30:20,240 Trump's empire was facing bankruptcy. 1307 01:30:20,240 --> 01:30:24,240 His wife Ivana hated him because he was having an affair 1308 01:30:24,240 --> 01:30:26,520 with Miss Hawaiian Tropic 1985. 1309 01:30:29,840 --> 01:30:34,280 And then, a famous Japanese gambler called Akio Kashiwagi 1310 01:30:34,280 --> 01:30:36,480 came to one of Trump's casinos 1311 01:30:36,480 --> 01:30:38,600 and started to win millions of dollars 1312 01:30:38,600 --> 01:30:40,480 in an extraordinary run of luck. 1313 01:30:41,760 --> 01:30:44,280 Trump, who was desperate for money, 1314 01:30:44,280 --> 01:30:46,480 panicked as day-after-day he watched millions 1315 01:30:46,480 --> 01:30:48,600 being siphoned out of his casino. 1316 01:30:52,280 --> 01:30:55,560 So, he turned for help to Jess Marcum. 1317 01:30:55,560 --> 01:30:59,320 Marcum came to Trump's casino in Atlantic City. 1318 01:30:59,320 --> 01:31:03,280 He analysed all the data about the way the Kashiwagi had been playing. 1319 01:31:04,440 --> 01:31:07,920 He then told Trump to suggest a particular high-stakes game 1320 01:31:07,920 --> 01:31:11,320 that he knew the Japanese gambler could not resist. 1321 01:31:13,160 --> 01:31:17,440 His model, Marcum said, predicted that Kashiwagi had to lose. 1322 01:31:19,760 --> 01:31:23,160 And after five agonising days, he did. 1323 01:31:23,160 --> 01:31:26,480 Kashiwagi lost 10 million and he gave up. 1324 01:31:28,040 --> 01:31:29,880 Donald Trump was elated. 1325 01:31:29,880 --> 01:31:31,880 He thought he'd got his money back. 1326 01:31:45,600 --> 01:31:47,360 IN JAPANESE: 1327 01:31:52,040 --> 01:31:54,360 Before Kashiwagi could pay his debt, 1328 01:31:54,360 --> 01:31:57,640 he was hacked to death in his kitchen by Yakuza gangsters... 1329 01:31:59,160 --> 01:32:01,360 ..and Donald Trump didn't get his money. 1330 01:32:03,840 --> 01:32:05,680 Trump's business went bankrupt 1331 01:32:05,680 --> 01:32:09,040 and he was forced to sell most of his buildings to the banks. 1332 01:32:10,480 --> 01:32:12,600 And he married Miss Hawaiian Tropic. 1333 01:32:14,200 --> 01:32:17,120 In the future, he would sell his name to other people 1334 01:32:17,120 --> 01:32:18,480 to put on their buildings 1335 01:32:18,480 --> 01:32:22,120 and he himself would become a celebrity tycoon. 1336 01:32:32,880 --> 01:32:35,440 President Assad didn't want stability. 1337 01:32:35,440 --> 01:32:37,080 He wanted revenge. 1338 01:32:47,320 --> 01:32:48,960 In December 1988, 1339 01:32:48,960 --> 01:32:52,400 a bomb exploded on a Pan Am plane over Lockerbie in Scotland. 1340 01:32:53,800 --> 01:32:56,600 Almost immediately, investigators and journalists 1341 01:32:56,600 --> 01:32:58,240 pointed the finger at Syria. 1342 01:32:59,560 --> 01:33:03,000 "The bombing had been done," they said, "in revenge for the Americans 1343 01:33:03,000 --> 01:33:06,920 "shooting down an Iranian airliner in the Gulf a few months before." 1344 01:33:09,200 --> 01:33:12,560 And for 18 months, everyone agreed that this was the truth. 1345 01:33:14,560 --> 01:33:16,640 But then, a strange thing happened. 1346 01:33:18,000 --> 01:33:21,640 The security agencies said that they had been wrong. 1347 01:33:21,640 --> 01:33:23,240 It hadn't been Syria at all. 1348 01:33:24,320 --> 01:33:28,360 It was Libya who had been behind the Lockerbie bombing. 1349 01:33:28,360 --> 01:33:31,960 But many journalists and politicians did not believe it. 1350 01:33:31,960 --> 01:33:34,160 They were convinced that the switch had happened 1351 01:33:34,160 --> 01:33:36,040 for the most cynical of reasons. 1352 01:33:37,280 --> 01:33:40,720 That America and Britain desperately needed Assad as an ally 1353 01:33:40,720 --> 01:33:43,520 in the coming Gulf War against Saddam Hussein. 1354 01:33:45,080 --> 01:33:49,640 So, once again, they blamed Colonel Gaddafi as the terrorist mastermind. 1355 01:33:53,000 --> 01:33:55,520 Syria, of course, was, unfortunately, accused 1356 01:33:55,520 --> 01:33:59,120 of many terrorist outrages and of harbouring terrorist groups. 1357 01:33:59,120 --> 01:34:01,480 It appears that we have now restored relations with them, 1358 01:34:01,480 --> 01:34:04,080 as have the Americans. They're now our friends, 1359 01:34:04,080 --> 01:34:07,240 although we've got no real assurances on the past whatsoever. 1360 01:34:07,240 --> 01:34:09,840 It strikes me as very strange indeed that many of the things 1361 01:34:09,840 --> 01:34:12,840 we thought were previously the responsibility of Syria 1362 01:34:12,840 --> 01:34:15,560 have now, dramatically, become the responsibility of Libya. 1363 01:34:17,400 --> 01:34:19,680 But Assad was not really in control. 1364 01:34:19,680 --> 01:34:22,320 Because he had released forces 1365 01:34:22,320 --> 01:34:25,520 that no-one would be able to control. 1366 01:34:25,520 --> 01:34:27,400 The force that, ten years before, 1367 01:34:27,400 --> 01:34:31,120 he had brought from Iran to attack the West - the human bomb - 1368 01:34:31,120 --> 01:34:33,720 was now about to jump, like a virus, 1369 01:34:33,720 --> 01:34:35,760 from Shia to Sunni Islam. 1370 01:34:42,520 --> 01:34:45,600 In December 1992, the militant group Hamas 1371 01:34:45,600 --> 01:34:49,040 kidnapped an Israeli border guard and stabbed him to death. 1372 01:34:50,400 --> 01:34:53,360 The Israeli response was overwhelming. 1373 01:34:53,360 --> 01:34:56,280 They arrested 415 members of Hamas, 1374 01:34:56,280 --> 01:34:59,960 put them on buses and took them to the top of a bleak mountain 1375 01:34:59,960 --> 01:35:02,000 in southern Lebanon. 1376 01:35:10,560 --> 01:35:12,680 They left them there - 1377 01:35:12,680 --> 01:35:15,640 and refused to allow any humanitarian aid through. 1378 01:35:15,640 --> 01:35:18,000 THEY CHANT AND SHOUT 1379 01:35:20,640 --> 01:35:23,440 But the Israelis had dumped the Hamas militants 1380 01:35:23,440 --> 01:35:25,520 in an area controlled by Hezbollah. 1381 01:35:26,640 --> 01:35:28,640 They spent six months there, 1382 01:35:28,640 --> 01:35:31,280 and during that time, they learnt from Hezbollah 1383 01:35:31,280 --> 01:35:34,760 how powerful suicide bombing could be. 1384 01:35:34,760 --> 01:35:37,280 Hezbollah told them how they had used it 1385 01:35:37,280 --> 01:35:39,920 to force the Israelis out of Beirut 1386 01:35:39,920 --> 01:35:41,680 and back to the border. 1387 01:35:43,920 --> 01:35:46,720 The first sign that the idea had spread to Hamas 1388 01:35:46,720 --> 01:35:48,760 was when a group of the deportees 1389 01:35:48,760 --> 01:35:52,240 marched in protest towards the Israeli border, 1390 01:35:52,240 --> 01:35:55,280 dressed as martyrs, as the Israelis shelled them. 1391 01:35:57,320 --> 01:35:59,720 But it soon became more than just theatre. 1392 01:36:01,080 --> 01:36:04,080 Hamas began a wave of suicide attacks in Israel. 1393 01:36:05,960 --> 01:36:09,080 - REPORTER: - Just before nine, at the height of Tel Aviv's rush hour, 1394 01:36:09,080 --> 01:36:11,560 the bomb ripped apart a commuter bus. 1395 01:36:11,560 --> 01:36:15,360 An amateur cameraman recorded the scene in the moments afterwards 1396 01:36:15,360 --> 01:36:18,800 as a dazed woman was helped out of the smouldering wreckage. 1397 01:36:21,400 --> 01:36:25,520 I didn't want to believe that under my house there is a bomb. 1398 01:36:25,520 --> 01:36:27,280 And when I realised it's a bomb, I... 1399 01:36:29,160 --> 01:36:30,920 I started to cry. 1400 01:36:30,920 --> 01:36:34,560 Because it was the first time I saw it in Tel Aviv. 1401 01:36:34,560 --> 01:36:37,800 Hamas sent the bombers into the heart of Israeli cities 1402 01:36:37,800 --> 01:36:41,680 to blow themselves up and kill as many around them as possible. 1403 01:36:43,400 --> 01:36:47,600 In doing this, Hamas were going much further than Hezbollah ever had. 1404 01:36:47,600 --> 01:36:49,800 They were targeting civilians, 1405 01:36:49,800 --> 01:36:51,920 something Hezbollah had never done. 1406 01:36:53,120 --> 01:36:55,200 The tactic shocked the Sunni world. 1407 01:36:56,200 --> 01:36:59,800 This was something completely alien to its history. 1408 01:36:59,800 --> 01:37:02,600 Not only did the Koran forbid suicide, 1409 01:37:02,600 --> 01:37:05,960 but Sunni Islam did not have any rituals of self-sacrifice - 1410 01:37:05,960 --> 01:37:07,360 unlike the Shias. 1411 01:37:08,760 --> 01:37:11,520 The most senior religious leader in Saudi Arabia 1412 01:37:11,520 --> 01:37:12,840 insisted it was wrong. 1413 01:37:14,320 --> 01:37:16,560 But a mainstream theologian from Egypt 1414 01:37:16,560 --> 01:37:20,400 called Sheikh Qaradawi seized the moment. 1415 01:37:20,400 --> 01:37:23,000 He issued a fatwa that justified the attacks. 1416 01:37:24,000 --> 01:37:27,960 "And," he added, "it was also justified to kill civilians, 1417 01:37:27,960 --> 01:37:30,240 "because, in Israel, everyone - 1418 01:37:30,240 --> 01:37:33,160 "including women - serve as reservists. 1419 01:37:33,160 --> 01:37:35,880 "So, really, they are all part of the enemy army." 1420 01:37:41,040 --> 01:37:45,240 - TRANSLATION: - It's not suicide. It is martyrdom in the name of God. 1421 01:37:45,240 --> 01:37:47,960 Islamic theologians and jurisprudence 1422 01:37:47,960 --> 01:37:49,680 have debated this issue. 1423 01:37:49,680 --> 01:37:52,520 Israeli women are not like women in our society, 1424 01:37:52,520 --> 01:37:55,560 because Israeli women are militarised. 1425 01:37:55,560 --> 01:37:59,600 Secondly, I consider this type of martyrdom operation 1426 01:37:59,600 --> 01:38:04,320 as an indication of justice of Allah, our Almighty. 1427 01:38:04,320 --> 01:38:05,920 Allah is just. 1428 01:38:05,920 --> 01:38:07,560 Through his infinite wisdom, 1429 01:38:07,560 --> 01:38:11,320 he has given the weak what the strong do not possess. 1430 01:38:11,320 --> 01:38:14,800 And that is their ability to turn their bodies into bombs 1431 01:38:14,800 --> 01:38:17,000 like the Palestinians do. 1432 01:38:17,000 --> 01:38:19,720 Hamas kept sending the bombers into Israel. 1433 01:38:19,720 --> 01:38:21,480 Sometimes day-after-day. 1434 01:38:22,560 --> 01:38:24,880 The horror overwhelmed Israeli society 1435 01:38:24,880 --> 01:38:28,360 and it completely destroyed the ability of politics 1436 01:38:28,360 --> 01:38:30,280 to solve the Palestinian crisis. 1437 01:38:33,000 --> 01:38:36,440 Instead, in the Israeli election of 1996, 1438 01:38:36,440 --> 01:38:39,040 Benjamin Netanyahu took power. 1439 01:38:39,040 --> 01:38:43,320 He turned against the peace process, which was exactly what Hamas wanted. 1440 01:38:44,840 --> 01:38:48,120 And from then on, the two sides became locked together 1441 01:38:48,120 --> 01:38:50,520 in ever more horrific cycles of violence. 1442 01:38:50,520 --> 01:38:52,520 # Netanyahu! # 1443 01:38:52,520 --> 01:38:55,080 The human bomb had destroyed the very thing 1444 01:38:55,080 --> 01:38:57,440 that President Assad had first wanted. 1445 01:38:58,760 --> 01:39:02,320 A real political solution to the Palestinian question. 1446 01:39:04,120 --> 01:39:05,960 - REPORTER: - It was just after one o'clock 1447 01:39:05,960 --> 01:39:08,000 and the market was full of shoppers. 1448 01:39:08,000 --> 01:39:10,360 SIRENS WAIL 1449 01:39:10,360 --> 01:39:14,120 Streams of ambulances came to carry away the dead and the injured. 1450 01:39:15,720 --> 01:39:18,240 It was a place of appalling suffering. 1451 01:39:18,240 --> 01:39:19,720 But even with the first grief 1452 01:39:19,720 --> 01:39:23,840 came the immediate political impact on the peace process. 1453 01:39:23,840 --> 01:39:24,960 Peace impossible! 1454 01:39:24,960 --> 01:39:27,560 This moment, it will be the end! 1455 01:39:27,560 --> 01:39:30,680 It must be the end of this bloody peace process. 1456 01:39:42,160 --> 01:39:45,560 And, in America, all optimistic visions of the future 1457 01:39:45,560 --> 01:39:47,000 had also disappeared. 1458 01:39:48,200 --> 01:39:51,400 Instead everyone in society - not just the politicians - 1459 01:39:51,400 --> 01:39:55,200 but the scientists, the journalists, and all kinds of experts 1460 01:39:55,200 --> 01:39:59,360 had begun to focus on the dangers that might be hidden in the future. 1461 01:40:00,880 --> 01:40:03,640 This, in turn, created a pessimistic mood 1462 01:40:03,640 --> 01:40:07,960 that then began to spread out from the rational technocratic world 1463 01:40:07,960 --> 01:40:10,040 and infect the whole of the culture. 1464 01:40:13,600 --> 01:40:17,920 And everyone became possessed by dark forebodings, 1465 01:40:17,920 --> 01:40:20,480 imagining the very worst that might happen. 1466 01:40:31,080 --> 01:40:32,640 # Dream, baby, dream 1467 01:40:35,480 --> 01:40:37,520 # Dream, baby, dream 1468 01:40:38,640 --> 01:40:39,800 # Dream, baby, dream 1469 01:40:41,840 --> 01:40:43,680 # Dream, baby, dream 1470 01:40:44,760 --> 01:40:46,160 # Forever 1471 01:41:04,680 --> 01:41:06,720 # Oh, dream, baby, dream 1472 01:41:08,000 --> 01:41:09,800 # Dream, baby, dream 1473 01:41:11,520 --> 01:41:13,920 # Dream, baby, dream 1474 01:41:15,000 --> 01:41:17,080 # Dream, baby, dream 1475 01:41:18,440 --> 01:41:20,360 # Forever... # 1476 01:41:36,920 --> 01:41:38,480 SHATTERING EXPLOSIONS 1477 01:41:38,480 --> 01:41:40,800 # ..Dream, baby, dream 1478 01:41:40,800 --> 01:41:43,240 # Oh, baby, we gotta keep that dream alive 1479 01:41:44,680 --> 01:41:46,680 # Keep that dream alive 1480 01:41:46,680 --> 01:41:48,040 # Forever 1481 01:41:49,360 --> 01:41:53,000 # Oh, dream, baby, dream 1482 01:41:53,000 --> 01:41:54,760 # Dream, baby, dream 1483 01:41:54,760 --> 01:41:56,320 # Dream, baby, dream 1484 01:41:56,320 --> 01:41:58,160 # Dream, baby, dream 1485 01:41:58,160 --> 01:42:00,640 # Oh, dream, baby, dream, baby, dream, baby 1486 01:42:00,640 --> 01:42:03,160 # Dream, baby, dream, baby 1487 01:42:04,440 --> 01:42:06,560 # Oh, dream, baby, dream... # SCREAMING 1488 01:42:06,560 --> 01:42:09,080 PANICKED SCREAMS 1489 01:42:16,760 --> 01:42:18,680 RUMBLING, SHATTERING GLASS 1490 01:42:25,080 --> 01:42:27,520 # Oh, you keep that fire, burning, baby 1491 01:42:31,320 --> 01:42:34,040 # Oh, you gotta keep that flame burning brightly, baby... # 1492 01:42:34,040 --> 01:42:36,360 CRASHING EXPLOSIONS 1493 01:42:36,360 --> 01:42:38,400 SILENCE 1494 01:42:50,680 --> 01:42:53,520 DISTANT SIRENS 1495 01:43:00,080 --> 01:43:04,600 The attacks in September 2001 were suicide bombs, 1496 01:43:04,600 --> 01:43:06,040 but now on a huge scale. 1497 01:43:08,000 --> 01:43:11,400 They demonstrated the terrifying power of this new force 1498 01:43:11,400 --> 01:43:13,040 to penetrate all defences. 1499 01:43:14,040 --> 01:43:17,760 They had come to kill thousands of Americans on their own soil. 1500 01:43:24,320 --> 01:43:25,520 20 years before, 1501 01:43:25,520 --> 01:43:29,480 President Reagan had been confronted by the first suicide bombers. 1502 01:43:30,880 --> 01:43:33,800 They had been unleashed by President Assad of Syria 1503 01:43:33,800 --> 01:43:36,080 to force America out of the Middle East. 1504 01:43:37,720 --> 01:43:40,480 But rather than confront the complexity of Syria 1505 01:43:40,480 --> 01:43:43,240 and Israel and the Palestinian problem, 1506 01:43:43,240 --> 01:43:46,480 America had retreated and left Syria - 1507 01:43:46,480 --> 01:43:48,320 and suicide bombing - 1508 01:43:48,320 --> 01:43:50,160 to fester and mutate. 1509 01:43:51,920 --> 01:43:54,680 They had gone instead for Colonel Gaddafi 1510 01:43:54,680 --> 01:43:57,280 and turned him into an evil global terrorist. 1511 01:43:59,560 --> 01:44:02,640 But, in the process, this changed the way people saw 1512 01:44:02,640 --> 01:44:04,360 and understood terrorism. 1513 01:44:05,880 --> 01:44:09,760 Instead of a violence born out of political struggles for power, 1514 01:44:09,760 --> 01:44:14,240 it became replaced by a much simpler image of an evil tyrant 1515 01:44:14,240 --> 01:44:16,240 at the head of a rogue state 1516 01:44:16,240 --> 01:44:18,400 who became more like an archcriminal 1517 01:44:18,400 --> 01:44:20,400 who wanted to terrorise the world. 1518 01:44:25,320 --> 01:44:28,600 All the politics and power dropped away. 1519 01:44:28,600 --> 01:44:31,840 The problem was just them and their evil personalities. 1520 01:44:37,880 --> 01:44:43,120 And after 9/11, this led to a new, and equally simple, idea. 1521 01:44:43,120 --> 01:44:46,600 That if only you could remove these tyrannical figures, 1522 01:44:46,600 --> 01:44:48,920 then the grateful people of their country 1523 01:44:48,920 --> 01:44:52,360 would transform naturally into a democracy, 1524 01:44:52,360 --> 01:44:55,000 because they would be free of the evil. 1525 01:44:55,000 --> 01:44:59,120 We owe it to the future of civilisation 1526 01:44:59,120 --> 01:45:03,080 not to allow the world's worst leaders 1527 01:45:03,080 --> 01:45:07,080 to develop and deploy, and therefore, 1528 01:45:07,080 --> 01:45:09,320 blackmail freedom-loving countries 1529 01:45:09,320 --> 01:45:11,280 with the world's worst weapons. 1530 01:45:11,280 --> 01:45:13,960 We know they've already got chemical and biological weapons there. 1531 01:45:13,960 --> 01:45:16,160 We know that they're certainly doing their best 1532 01:45:16,160 --> 01:45:17,960 to acquire nuclear weapons technology. 1533 01:45:17,960 --> 01:45:19,640 If we allow them to do that, 1534 01:45:19,640 --> 01:45:21,600 and do nothing about it, then, 1535 01:45:21,600 --> 01:45:25,200 I think, later generations will consider us deeply irresponsible. 1536 01:45:25,200 --> 01:45:30,120 Both Tony Blair and George Bush became possessed by the idea 1537 01:45:30,120 --> 01:45:33,000 of ridding the world of Saddam Hussein. 1538 01:45:33,000 --> 01:45:35,360 So possessed that they believed any story 1539 01:45:35,360 --> 01:45:38,080 that proved his evil intentions. 1540 01:45:38,080 --> 01:45:41,920 And the line between reality and fiction became ever more blurred. 1541 01:45:43,720 --> 01:45:48,520 In September 2002, the head of MI6 rushed to Downing Street 1542 01:45:48,520 --> 01:45:52,400 to tell Blair excitedly that they had finally found the source 1543 01:45:52,400 --> 01:45:55,000 that confirmed everything. 1544 01:45:55,000 --> 01:45:57,440 The source, he said, had "direct access" 1545 01:45:57,440 --> 01:46:00,440 to Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons programme 1546 01:46:00,440 --> 01:46:03,640 which was making vast quantities of VX and sarin nerve agents. 1547 01:46:05,240 --> 01:46:10,000 The nerve agents were being loaded into "linked hollow glass spheres". 1548 01:46:10,000 --> 01:46:11,760 But then someone in MI6 noticed 1549 01:46:11,760 --> 01:46:15,680 that the detail the source was describing was identical 1550 01:46:15,680 --> 01:46:18,880 to scenes in the 1996 movie The Rock, 1551 01:46:18,880 --> 01:46:21,400 starring Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage. 1552 01:46:28,960 --> 01:46:31,640 Really elegant string-of-pearls configuration. 1553 01:46:31,640 --> 01:46:34,400 Unfortunately, incredibly unstable. 1554 01:46:34,400 --> 01:46:36,320 What exactly does this stuff do? 1555 01:46:36,320 --> 01:46:37,680 If the rocket renders it aerosol, 1556 01:46:37,680 --> 01:46:39,720 it could take out the entire city of people. 1557 01:46:39,720 --> 01:46:41,720 - How? - It's a cholinesterase inhibitor. 1558 01:46:41,720 --> 01:46:45,160 Stops the brain from sending nerve messages down the spinal cord... 1559 01:46:45,160 --> 01:46:48,280 A later report into the Iraq War pointed out, 1560 01:46:48,280 --> 01:46:52,160 "Glass containers were not typically used in chemical munitions..." 1561 01:46:52,160 --> 01:46:54,880 ..seizes your nervous system... Do not move that! 1562 01:46:54,880 --> 01:46:56,720 "..and the informant had obviously seen 1563 01:46:56,720 --> 01:46:59,560 "a popular movie known as The Rock 1564 01:46:59,560 --> 01:47:02,600 "that had inaccurately depicted nerve agents being carried 1565 01:47:02,600 --> 01:47:04,200 "in glass beads or spheres." 1566 01:47:04,200 --> 01:47:06,240 ..that's after your skin melts off. 1567 01:47:06,240 --> 01:47:07,680 My God. 1568 01:47:07,680 --> 01:47:10,280 That there is a threat from Saddam Hussein 1569 01:47:10,280 --> 01:47:13,800 and the weapons of mass destruction that he has acquired, 1570 01:47:13,800 --> 01:47:15,440 is not in doubt at all. 1571 01:47:27,160 --> 01:47:30,880 Hafez al-Assad had died in 2000. 1572 01:47:30,880 --> 01:47:34,040 His son, Bashar, became the new president of Syria. 1573 01:47:35,440 --> 01:47:38,040 But he couldn't escape the inexorable logic 1574 01:47:38,040 --> 01:47:39,840 of what his father had started. 1575 01:47:41,640 --> 01:47:45,480 20 years before, his father had sent Shi'ite suicide bombers 1576 01:47:45,480 --> 01:47:47,560 to attack the Americans in Lebanon. 1577 01:47:49,160 --> 01:47:52,040 Now, as America and Britain invaded Iraq, 1578 01:47:52,040 --> 01:47:54,960 Bashar decided that he would copy his father. 1579 01:47:56,400 --> 01:48:00,920 But what he was about to let loose would tear the Arab world apart - 1580 01:48:00,920 --> 01:48:04,360 and then come back to try to destroy him. 1581 01:48:04,360 --> 01:48:06,560 STATELY FANFARE PLAYS 1582 01:48:14,400 --> 01:48:17,840 Bashar Assad had was never supposed to have been president. 1583 01:48:17,840 --> 01:48:21,360 It was always going to have been his elder brother, Bassel. 1584 01:48:21,360 --> 01:48:23,560 But then, Bassel had died in a car crash. 1585 01:48:24,880 --> 01:48:27,240 So now, Bashar took over the giant palace 1586 01:48:27,240 --> 01:48:29,720 that his father had built above Damascus. 1587 01:48:38,400 --> 01:48:42,280 Up to this point, Bashar had not been interested in politics. 1588 01:48:42,280 --> 01:48:44,960 He was fascinated by computers. 1589 01:48:44,960 --> 01:48:47,080 He founded the Syrian Computer Society 1590 01:48:47,080 --> 01:48:49,800 and brought the internet to the country. 1591 01:48:49,800 --> 01:48:53,640 His favourite band was the Electric Light Orchestra. 1592 01:48:55,360 --> 01:48:56,880 But now, he was president. 1593 01:48:59,400 --> 01:49:01,680 And he set out to attack America. 1594 01:49:09,360 --> 01:49:12,280 Bashar Assad was convinced that the invasion of Iraq 1595 01:49:12,280 --> 01:49:16,000 was just the first step of a plot by the Western powers 1596 01:49:16,000 --> 01:49:19,200 to take over the whole of the Middle East. 1597 01:49:19,200 --> 01:49:21,360 He knew that the invasion had outraged 1598 01:49:21,360 --> 01:49:24,080 many of the radical Islamists in Syria 1599 01:49:24,080 --> 01:49:28,000 and what they most wanted to do was to go to Iraq and kill Americans. 1600 01:49:29,080 --> 01:49:32,080 So, Bashar instructed the Syrian Intelligence Services 1601 01:49:32,080 --> 01:49:34,120 to help them do this. 1602 01:49:34,120 --> 01:49:36,880 Syrian agents set up a pipeline 1603 01:49:36,880 --> 01:49:40,440 that began to feed thousands of militants across the border 1604 01:49:40,440 --> 01:49:42,680 and into the heart of the insurgency. 1605 01:49:44,160 --> 01:49:45,680 And it grew. 1606 01:49:45,680 --> 01:49:48,320 Within a year, almost all of the foreign fighters 1607 01:49:48,320 --> 01:49:51,120 from across the world were coming through Syria... 1608 01:49:53,000 --> 01:49:56,280 ..and they brought suicide bombing with them. 1609 01:49:56,280 --> 01:50:00,720 The Americans estimated that 90% of the suicide bombers in Iraq 1610 01:50:00,720 --> 01:50:02,400 were foreign fighters. 1611 01:50:09,720 --> 01:50:11,640 But it began to run out of control. 1612 01:50:11,640 --> 01:50:16,080 Most of the jihadists had joined the group al-Qaeda in Iraq 1613 01:50:16,080 --> 01:50:20,120 that then turned to killing Shi'ites in an attempt to create a civil war. 1614 01:50:21,560 --> 01:50:25,040 And the force that had originally been invented by the Shi'ites, 1615 01:50:25,040 --> 01:50:27,360 suicide bombing, now returned 1616 01:50:27,360 --> 01:50:29,280 and started to kill them. 1617 01:50:33,080 --> 01:50:34,240 Then, this. 1618 01:50:34,240 --> 01:50:35,480 EXPLOSION 1619 01:50:35,480 --> 01:50:37,000 STUNNED SILENCE 1620 01:50:37,000 --> 01:50:40,640 A moment of silence before people realised what was happening. 1621 01:50:40,640 --> 01:50:42,240 SCREAMING 1622 01:50:42,240 --> 01:50:45,520 A few seconds ago, we just had repeated explosions 1623 01:50:45,520 --> 01:50:47,080 in the street below me. 1624 01:50:47,080 --> 01:50:48,680 People are now fleeing in terror 1625 01:50:48,680 --> 01:50:50,800 from the central square around the mosque. 1626 01:50:50,800 --> 01:50:53,000 - This is what everybody feared... - DISTANT EXPLOSION 1627 01:50:53,000 --> 01:50:55,240 We just heard another explosion in the distance. 1628 01:50:55,240 --> 01:50:58,160 ..that somebody would try to target this religious festival 1629 01:50:58,160 --> 01:51:01,200 to try to bring about a sectarian conflict in Iraq. 1630 01:51:01,200 --> 01:51:03,240 SCREAMING 1631 01:51:06,280 --> 01:51:07,400 There was panic. 1632 01:51:07,400 --> 01:51:09,400 A terrified stampede. 1633 01:51:12,400 --> 01:51:16,200 But some of these people were running into the next bombs. 1634 01:51:16,200 --> 01:51:18,080 EXPLOSIONS 1635 01:51:19,400 --> 01:51:22,440 We counted at least six separate explosions. 1636 01:51:23,720 --> 01:51:27,160 MUSIC DROWNS AUDIO 1637 01:51:36,520 --> 01:51:39,680 Tony Blair and George Bush were faced by disaster. 1638 01:51:39,680 --> 01:51:41,720 Iraq was imploding. 1639 01:51:41,720 --> 01:51:45,120 While, at home, they were being accused of lying to their own people 1640 01:51:45,120 --> 01:51:46,560 to justify the invasion. 1641 01:51:47,840 --> 01:51:50,920 What they desperately needed was something that would show 1642 01:51:50,920 --> 01:51:54,360 that the invasion was having a good effect in the Arab world. 1643 01:51:56,880 --> 01:52:00,320 So, they made an extraordinary decision. 1644 01:52:00,320 --> 01:52:03,720 They turned for help to the man who they had always insisted 1645 01:52:03,720 --> 01:52:06,280 was one of the world's most dangerous tyrants. 1646 01:52:08,080 --> 01:52:09,760 Colonel Gaddafi. 1647 01:52:12,120 --> 01:52:15,760 And, instead, they set out to make him their new best friend. 1648 01:52:16,960 --> 01:52:19,280 It was going to be the highest achievement 1649 01:52:19,280 --> 01:52:21,520 of Perception Management. 1650 01:52:21,520 --> 01:52:24,240 A man who had been created by the West 1651 01:52:24,240 --> 01:52:27,080 as a fake global supervillain 1652 01:52:27,080 --> 01:52:30,680 was now going to be turned into a fake hero of democracy. 1653 01:52:32,240 --> 01:52:36,320 And everyone, not just politicians, would become involved. 1654 01:52:36,320 --> 01:52:38,520 Public relations, academics, 1655 01:52:38,520 --> 01:52:41,720 television presenters, spies, and even musicians 1656 01:52:41,720 --> 01:52:44,760 were all going to help reinvent Colonel Gaddafi. 1657 01:52:46,400 --> 01:52:50,280 It would show just how many people in the Western Establishment 1658 01:52:50,280 --> 01:52:54,520 had, by now, become the engineers of this fake world. 1659 01:53:00,600 --> 01:53:03,480 Ever since he had been accused of the Lockerbie bombing, 1660 01:53:03,480 --> 01:53:06,480 Colonel Gaddafi had been a complete outcast. 1661 01:53:06,480 --> 01:53:08,800 The West had imposed sanctions on Libya 1662 01:53:08,800 --> 01:53:11,040 and the economy was falling apart. 1663 01:53:12,600 --> 01:53:17,680 But then, suddenly, Tony Blair broke live into the BBC evening news. 1664 01:53:18,760 --> 01:53:22,200 The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, is about to make a statement, 1665 01:53:22,200 --> 01:53:24,360 the BBC understands, from Downing Street. 1666 01:53:24,360 --> 01:53:26,000 It's of international significance. 1667 01:53:26,000 --> 01:53:28,120 He'll be making his statement at any moment now. 1668 01:53:28,120 --> 01:53:30,200 We can see pictures of him in Durham... 1669 01:53:30,200 --> 01:53:31,760 - This evening... - Here he is. 1670 01:53:31,760 --> 01:53:35,320 ..Colonel Gaddafi has confirmed that Libya has, in the past, 1671 01:53:35,320 --> 01:53:37,360 sought to develop weapons-of-mass-destruction 1672 01:53:37,360 --> 01:53:38,720 capabilities. 1673 01:53:38,720 --> 01:53:42,240 Libya has now declared its intention to dismantle 1674 01:53:42,240 --> 01:53:46,600 its weapons of mass destruction completely. 1675 01:53:46,600 --> 01:53:50,000 This decision by Colonel Gaddafi is a historic one, 1676 01:53:50,000 --> 01:53:52,040 and a courageous one, and I applaud it. 1677 01:53:52,040 --> 01:53:54,560 Today, in Tripoli, 1678 01:53:54,560 --> 01:53:57,000 the leader of Libya, 1679 01:53:57,000 --> 01:53:59,440 Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi... 1680 01:54:00,480 --> 01:54:05,120 ..publically confirmed his commitment to disclose and dismantle 1681 01:54:05,120 --> 01:54:09,320 all weapons-of-mass-destruction programmes in his country. 1682 01:54:09,320 --> 01:54:11,640 Colonel Gaddafi now became, 1683 01:54:11,640 --> 01:54:15,120 for Western politicians, a heroic figure. 1684 01:54:15,120 --> 01:54:18,480 His decision to give up his weapons of mass destruction 1685 01:54:18,480 --> 01:54:20,800 seemed to prove that the invasion of Iraq 1686 01:54:20,800 --> 01:54:22,720 could transform the Middle East. 1687 01:54:25,240 --> 01:54:28,840 And Tony Blair travelled to meet Gaddafi in his desert tent. 1688 01:54:30,960 --> 01:54:34,120 To welcome him back into what one journalist called, 1689 01:54:34,120 --> 01:54:36,720 "The community of civilised nations." 1690 01:54:44,880 --> 01:54:45,960 But, as in the past, 1691 01:54:45,960 --> 01:54:48,760 nothing was what it seemed with Colonel Gaddafi. 1692 01:54:51,160 --> 01:54:53,440 In reality, Gaddafi did not really have 1693 01:54:53,440 --> 01:54:55,600 the terrifying weapons of mass destruction 1694 01:54:55,600 --> 01:54:58,200 that he was promising to destroy. 1695 01:54:58,200 --> 01:55:02,000 His nuclear programme had stuttered to a halt long ago 1696 01:55:02,000 --> 01:55:05,080 and never produced anything dangerous. 1697 01:55:05,080 --> 01:55:08,240 He had managed to buy some equipment on the black market, 1698 01:55:08,240 --> 01:55:11,840 but his technicians had been unable to assemble it. 1699 01:55:11,840 --> 01:55:14,560 His biological weapons were non-existent. 1700 01:55:14,560 --> 01:55:18,800 All he had was some old mustard gas in leaking barrels. 1701 01:55:19,840 --> 01:55:25,040 But now, he had to pretend to have a terrifying arsenal of weapons. 1702 01:55:25,040 --> 01:55:27,160 And the West had to pretend 1703 01:55:27,160 --> 01:55:29,760 that they had avoided another global threat. 1704 01:55:33,480 --> 01:55:37,200 And then the made-up stories became even more complicated. 1705 01:55:37,200 --> 01:55:40,440 As part of the deal, the West said that if Gaddafi admitted 1706 01:55:40,440 --> 01:55:42,840 that Libya had done the Lockerbie bombing, 1707 01:55:42,840 --> 01:55:45,400 then they would lift the sanctions. 1708 01:55:45,400 --> 01:55:48,160 But many of those who had investigated Lockerbie 1709 01:55:48,160 --> 01:55:51,120 were still convinced that Libya hadn't done it. 1710 01:55:51,120 --> 01:55:52,840 That, really, it had been Syria. 1711 01:55:54,880 --> 01:55:57,600 But Colonel Gaddafi confessed. 1712 01:55:57,600 --> 01:56:00,360 His son, Saif, was interviewed about this confession. 1713 01:56:01,680 --> 01:56:04,240 He said that his father was simply pretending 1714 01:56:04,240 --> 01:56:06,200 that he had been behind the Lockerbie bombing 1715 01:56:06,200 --> 01:56:08,800 to get the sanctions lifted. 1716 01:56:08,800 --> 01:56:12,200 That new lies were being built on top of old lies 1717 01:56:12,200 --> 01:56:15,200 to construct a completely make-believe world. 1718 01:56:17,160 --> 01:56:20,440 You have to accept, or you had to accept at the time, 1719 01:56:20,440 --> 01:56:25,000 a responsibility, because you have to accept responsibilities, 1720 01:56:25,000 --> 01:56:28,520 you have to pay compensation in order to get rid of sanction. 1721 01:56:28,520 --> 01:56:32,240 We did that, not because we are convinced that we did it, 1722 01:56:32,240 --> 01:56:35,760 but because of the final exit out of this nightmare. 1723 01:56:35,760 --> 01:56:39,080 So, what you're saying is that you accept responsibility, 1724 01:56:39,080 --> 01:56:41,400 - but you're not admitting that you did it. - Yes. 1725 01:56:43,280 --> 01:56:46,040 And this is all a sham, 1726 01:56:46,040 --> 01:56:48,880 you're saying, just to get sanctions over with 1727 01:56:48,880 --> 01:56:53,000 so that you can start normal diplomatic relations with the West. 1728 01:56:53,000 --> 01:56:54,680 OK. OK. What's wrong with that? 1729 01:56:55,920 --> 01:57:00,440 It's a very cynical way to behave, as a country, isn't it? 1730 01:57:00,440 --> 01:57:03,600 - Many people would say... - First of all... 1731 01:57:03,600 --> 01:57:06,160 I mean, the Americans and the British, 1732 01:57:06,160 --> 01:57:07,760 they told us to write that letter. 1733 01:57:08,920 --> 01:57:12,000 They told us to pay compensation. 1734 01:57:12,000 --> 01:57:14,080 And then, they opened their embassies 1735 01:57:14,080 --> 01:57:16,000 and they restored their relation. 1736 01:57:16,960 --> 01:57:18,280 They came to us. 1737 01:57:19,800 --> 01:57:22,040 It was their game. Not our game. 1738 01:57:24,520 --> 01:57:28,600 Does the... Does the leader know there's a picture on the television? 1739 01:57:28,600 --> 01:57:30,560 - Will you tell him? - Oh, good. Thank you. 1740 01:57:30,560 --> 01:57:32,800 INDISTINCT CONVERSATION 1741 01:57:36,960 --> 01:57:39,560 Public relations companies then came to Libya 1742 01:57:39,560 --> 01:57:42,560 to do what they called "reframing the narrative". 1743 01:57:44,760 --> 01:57:48,080 One firm was paid 3 million to turn Gaddafi 1744 01:57:48,080 --> 01:57:51,760 into what they described as a modern world thinker. 1745 01:57:51,760 --> 01:57:53,440 CREW MURMURS 1746 01:57:53,440 --> 01:57:57,000 OK. We're going in ten. 1747 01:57:57,000 --> 01:58:00,440 They did this by bringing other famous world thinkers 1748 01:58:00,440 --> 01:58:03,600 and TV presenters out to Libya to meet the colonel 1749 01:58:03,600 --> 01:58:05,640 and discuss his theories. 1750 01:58:07,400 --> 01:58:11,680 Hello, and welcome to Libya In The Global Age, 1751 01:58:11,680 --> 01:58:16,280 A Conversation With Muammar Gaddafi. 1752 01:58:16,280 --> 01:58:22,760 But first, let's get the story so far of Libya. 1753 01:58:22,760 --> 01:58:26,440 One world thinker was called Lord Anthony Giddens. 1754 01:58:26,440 --> 01:58:30,440 Coincidentally, he had a theory which he called "The Third Way" 1755 01:58:30,440 --> 01:58:32,800 which had inspired Tony Blair. 1756 01:58:32,800 --> 01:58:38,120 Colonel Gaddafi's own theory was called "The Third Universal Theory." 1757 01:58:38,120 --> 01:58:40,400 Lord Giddens later wrote about his talks 1758 01:58:40,400 --> 01:58:42,440 with the Libyan leader. 1759 01:58:42,440 --> 01:58:45,000 "Colonel Gaddafi likes my term 'the third way' 1760 01:58:45,000 --> 01:58:47,400 "because his own political philosophy 1761 01:58:47,400 --> 01:58:48,920 "is a version of this idea. 1762 01:58:49,960 --> 01:58:53,360 "He makes many intelligent and perceptive points. 1763 01:58:53,360 --> 01:58:55,640 "I leave enlivened and encouraged." 1764 01:58:58,320 --> 01:59:03,120 That for 40 years, the leader of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi... 1765 01:59:03,120 --> 01:59:06,800 And then, Colonel Gaddafi achieved his lifelong dream. 1766 01:59:06,800 --> 01:59:10,160 He was invited to address the United Nations. 1767 01:59:10,160 --> 01:59:14,840 He spent almost two hours explaining his Third International Theory. 1768 01:59:14,840 --> 01:59:16,880 And also demanding an investigation 1769 01:59:16,880 --> 01:59:20,920 into the shootings of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King. 1770 01:59:22,440 --> 01:59:25,280 When he was in New York, Gaddafi was offered a tent, 1771 01:59:25,280 --> 01:59:27,480 just like the one he had at home, 1772 01:59:27,480 --> 01:59:29,520 in the gardens of a grand mansion. 1773 01:59:29,520 --> 01:59:33,280 The man who made the offer was Donald Trump. 1774 01:59:33,280 --> 01:59:35,200 - TRUMP: - 'I've dealt with everybody. 1775 01:59:35,200 --> 01:59:37,480 - 'And by the way, I can tell you something else!' - What? 1776 01:59:37,480 --> 01:59:39,480 'I've dealt with Gaddafi.' 1777 01:59:39,480 --> 01:59:44,280 - What did you do? - 'Excuse me. I rented him a piece of land. 1778 01:59:44,280 --> 01:59:47,680 'He paid me more for one night than the land was worth 1779 01:59:47,680 --> 01:59:49,720 'for the whole year or for two years. 1780 01:59:49,720 --> 01:59:51,360 'And then, I didn't let him use the land! 1781 01:59:51,360 --> 01:59:53,960 - 'That's what we should be doing.' - Was that over in New Jersey? 1782 01:59:53,960 --> 01:59:56,360 'I don't want to use the word "screw", but I screwed him. 1783 01:59:56,360 --> 01:59:57,840 'That's what we should be doing!' 1784 02:00:15,320 --> 02:00:17,520 People in Britain and America now began to 1785 02:00:17,520 --> 02:00:19,120 turn away from politics. 1786 02:00:20,440 --> 02:00:23,960 The effect of the Iraq war had been very powerful. 1787 02:00:23,960 --> 02:00:26,960 Not only did millions of people feel that they had been lied to 1788 02:00:26,960 --> 02:00:28,960 over the weapons of mass destruction, 1789 02:00:28,960 --> 02:00:32,120 but there was a deeper feeling - that whatever 1790 02:00:32,120 --> 02:00:33,840 they did or said had no effect. 1791 02:00:35,320 --> 02:00:38,960 That despite the mass protests, and the fears and the warnings - 1792 02:00:38,960 --> 02:00:40,600 the war had happened anyway. 1793 02:00:44,240 --> 02:00:47,200 Liberals, radicals and a whole new generation 1794 02:00:47,200 --> 02:00:48,800 of young people retreated. 1795 02:00:50,240 --> 02:00:54,320 They turned instead to another world that was free of this hypocrisy 1796 02:00:54,320 --> 02:00:56,840 and the corruption of politics 1797 02:00:57,840 --> 02:00:59,440 They went into cyberspace. 1798 02:00:59,440 --> 02:01:03,800 # Once upon a time it was you by the door 1799 02:01:24,000 --> 02:01:25,280 # I... # 1800 02:01:32,360 --> 02:01:34,560 By now cyberspace had become even more 1801 02:01:34,560 --> 02:01:37,640 sophisticated and responsive to human interaction. 1802 02:01:39,000 --> 02:01:40,880 The online world was full of algorithms 1803 02:01:40,880 --> 02:01:43,680 that could analyse and predict human behaviour. 1804 02:01:45,320 --> 02:01:46,880 The man behind much of this was 1805 02:01:46,880 --> 02:01:49,480 a scientist called Judea Pearl. 1806 02:01:49,480 --> 02:01:52,760 He was the godfather of modern Artificial Intelligence. 1807 02:01:54,000 --> 02:01:56,640 Pearl's breakthrough had been to use what were 1808 02:01:56,640 --> 02:01:58,640 called Bayesian Belief Networks. 1809 02:01:59,680 --> 02:02:02,520 They were systems that could predict behaviour, 1810 02:02:02,520 --> 02:02:05,000 even when the information was incomplete. 1811 02:02:07,680 --> 02:02:10,760 But to make the system work, Pearl and others had imported 1812 02:02:10,760 --> 02:02:13,520 a model of human beings drawn from economics. 1813 02:02:15,040 --> 02:02:18,040 They created what were called rational agents, 1814 02:02:18,040 --> 02:02:20,640 software that mimicked human beings 1815 02:02:20,640 --> 02:02:22,360 but in a very simplified form. 1816 02:02:23,720 --> 02:02:27,200 The model assumed that the agent would always act rationally in 1817 02:02:27,200 --> 02:02:30,520 order to get what it wanted. Nothing more. 1818 02:02:32,200 --> 02:02:34,520 One of the early utopians of cyberspace, 1819 02:02:34,520 --> 02:02:37,480 Jaron Lanier, warned of the implications of this. 1820 02:02:39,480 --> 02:02:41,400 "The agent's model of what you are 1821 02:02:41,400 --> 02:02:44,280 "interested in will always be a cartoon. 1822 02:02:45,680 --> 02:02:48,120 "And in return you will see a cartoon 1823 02:02:48,120 --> 02:02:50,880 "version of the world through the agent's eyes." 1824 02:02:53,880 --> 02:02:57,040 And, he added, "It will never be clear 1825 02:02:57,040 --> 02:03:02,080 "who they are working for - you or someone else." 1826 02:03:12,400 --> 02:03:15,200 New technology began to allow people to upload 1827 02:03:15,200 --> 02:03:18,000 millions of images and videos into cyberspace. 1828 02:03:19,200 --> 02:03:21,600 And the web - which up to that point had seemed 1829 02:03:21,600 --> 02:03:24,440 like an abstract otherworld - began to 1830 02:03:24,440 --> 02:03:26,400 look and feel like the real world. 1831 02:03:26,400 --> 02:03:27,440 INDISTINCT 1832 02:03:29,000 --> 02:03:30,760 No, not yet. 1833 02:03:32,360 --> 02:03:34,240 From videos of animals, personal moments of 1834 02:03:34,240 --> 02:03:36,400 experience, extraordinary events, 1835 02:03:36,400 --> 02:03:39,720 to horrific terror videos, more and more was uploaded. 1836 02:03:39,720 --> 02:03:40,760 HIP-HOP MUSIC PLAYS 1837 02:03:59,120 --> 02:04:01,080 And in a strange, sad twist, 1838 02:04:01,080 --> 02:04:03,840 the first terrorist beheading video that was 1839 02:04:03,840 --> 02:04:05,800 posted online was that of 1840 02:04:05,800 --> 02:04:08,720 Judea Pearl's own son, Daniel Pearl. 1841 02:04:10,040 --> 02:04:11,240 He was a journalist for the 1842 02:04:11,240 --> 02:04:13,800 Wall Street Journal and had been kidnapped by 1843 02:04:13,800 --> 02:04:15,680 radical Islamists in Pakistan. 1844 02:04:17,040 --> 02:04:19,840 They recorded what they said was his confession... 1845 02:04:20,920 --> 02:04:22,320 ..and then his killing. 1846 02:04:26,280 --> 02:04:27,880 My name is Daniel Pearl. 1847 02:04:27,880 --> 02:04:29,440 I'm a Jewish-American. 1848 02:04:29,440 --> 02:04:33,400 I come from... On my father's side of the family, are Zionists. 1849 02:04:34,600 --> 02:04:36,320 My father is Jewish. 1850 02:04:36,320 --> 02:04:38,960 My mother is Jewish. I'm Jewish. 1851 02:04:38,960 --> 02:04:44,120 Only now do I think about some of the people in Guantanamo Bay 1852 02:04:44,120 --> 02:04:46,240 must be in a similar situation. 1853 02:04:49,160 --> 02:04:52,040 This was a new world that the old systems of power 1854 02:04:52,040 --> 02:04:55,120 found it very difficult to deal with. 1855 02:04:55,120 --> 02:04:56,920 In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, 1856 02:04:56,920 --> 02:05:00,040 the security agencies secretly collected data from 1857 02:05:00,040 --> 02:05:01,640 millions of people online. 1858 02:05:02,880 --> 02:05:06,960 One programme was called Optic Nerve. It took stills from 1859 02:05:06,960 --> 02:05:10,240 the webcam conversations of millions of people across the world, 1860 02:05:10,240 --> 02:05:13,320 trying to spot terrorists planning another attack. 1861 02:05:14,800 --> 02:05:18,040 The programme did not discover a single terrorist. 1862 02:05:18,040 --> 02:05:20,120 But it did discover something else. 1863 02:05:21,640 --> 02:05:23,520 A top secret assessment said... 1864 02:05:55,640 --> 02:05:57,520 But increasingly, people were using 1865 02:05:57,520 --> 02:06:00,000 the internet in other ways - to present themselves as 1866 02:06:00,000 --> 02:06:01,320 THEY wanted to be seen. 1867 02:06:02,880 --> 02:06:04,760 I guess the video blog is about me. 1868 02:06:08,360 --> 02:06:10,680 I don't really want to tell you where I live 1869 02:06:10,680 --> 02:06:14,120 because you could, like, stalk me. 1870 02:06:14,120 --> 02:06:17,000 The web drew people in because it was mesmerising. 1871 02:06:17,000 --> 02:06:19,520 It was somewhere that you could explore 1872 02:06:19,520 --> 02:06:21,600 and get lost in in any way you wanted. 1873 02:06:23,240 --> 02:06:26,080 But behind the screen, like in a two-way mirror, 1874 02:06:26,080 --> 02:06:28,240 the simplified agents were watching and 1875 02:06:28,240 --> 02:06:31,120 predicting and guiding your hand on the mouse. 1876 02:06:32,280 --> 02:06:34,280 Stop... 1877 02:06:34,280 --> 02:06:36,960 I nearly... threw my phone away! 1878 02:06:36,960 --> 02:06:39,000 Stop! Stop! 1879 02:06:39,000 --> 02:06:41,320 - Pose. - Pose. And snap a selfie... 1880 02:06:41,320 --> 02:06:42,520 PHONE CAMERA WHIRS 1881 02:06:42,520 --> 02:06:43,880 - There you go. - There you go. 1882 02:06:55,440 --> 02:06:57,880 They play with themselves. 1883 02:06:57,880 --> 02:06:59,440 But what they don't know... 1884 02:07:24,560 --> 02:07:26,960 As the intelligent systems online gathered 1885 02:07:26,960 --> 02:07:30,440 ever more data, new forms of guidance began to emerge. 1886 02:07:32,200 --> 02:07:34,560 Social media created filters - 1887 02:07:34,560 --> 02:07:36,480 complex algorithms that looked at what 1888 02:07:36,480 --> 02:07:39,320 individuals liked - and then fed more of the same 1889 02:07:39,320 --> 02:07:40,360 back to them. 1890 02:07:43,200 --> 02:07:45,280 In the process, individuals began to 1891 02:07:45,280 --> 02:07:48,360 move, without noticing, into bubbles that 1892 02:07:48,360 --> 02:07:51,800 isolated them from enormous amounts of other information. 1893 02:07:53,120 --> 02:07:55,400 They only heard and saw what they liked. 1894 02:07:57,280 --> 02:07:58,960 And the news feeds increasingly 1895 02:07:58,960 --> 02:08:01,360 excluded anything that might challenge people's 1896 02:08:01,360 --> 02:08:02,760 pre-existing beliefs. 1897 02:08:05,880 --> 02:08:09,720 # And now it's all right 1898 02:08:09,720 --> 02:08:14,720 # I know my own lie 1899 02:08:14,720 --> 02:08:18,640 # Is coming to say 1900 02:08:18,640 --> 02:08:21,680 # You will call out 1901 02:08:21,680 --> 02:08:24,760 # Yourself 1902 02:08:24,760 --> 02:08:27,520 # I know I thought 1903 02:08:27,520 --> 02:08:32,840 # Makes my face and hands cold 1904 02:08:32,840 --> 02:08:34,360 # And I 1905 02:08:34,360 --> 02:08:36,680 # Ooh 1906 02:08:36,680 --> 02:08:38,400 # Ooh 1907 02:08:38,400 --> 02:08:41,360 # Ooh... # 1908 02:08:53,880 --> 02:08:55,720 The version of cyberspace that was 1909 02:08:55,720 --> 02:08:57,880 rising up seemed to be very much like 1910 02:08:57,880 --> 02:08:59,960 William Gibson's original vision. 1911 02:09:01,480 --> 02:09:03,920 That behind the superficial freedoms of the web 1912 02:09:03,920 --> 02:09:07,920 were a few giant corporations with opaque systems that controlled 1913 02:09:07,920 --> 02:09:10,520 what people saw and shaped what they thought. 1914 02:09:13,040 --> 02:09:15,160 And what was even more mysterious was 1915 02:09:15,160 --> 02:09:19,400 how they made their decisions about what you should like. 1916 02:09:19,400 --> 02:09:21,400 And what should be hidden from you. 1917 02:09:23,560 --> 02:09:28,240 But then, the other utopian vision of cyberspace re-emerged. 1918 02:09:35,360 --> 02:09:37,400 Taking over the roadway. 1919 02:09:37,400 --> 02:09:40,360 CHANTING 1920 02:09:42,360 --> 02:09:44,080 Take it! 1921 02:09:44,080 --> 02:09:47,840 CHEERING AND WHOOPING 1922 02:09:47,840 --> 02:09:50,880 CHANTING 1923 02:09:50,880 --> 02:09:53,960 After the financial crash of 2008 1924 02:09:53,960 --> 02:09:55,880 the politicians saved the banks. 1925 02:09:57,000 --> 02:09:59,640 But they did practically nothing about the massive corruption 1926 02:09:59,640 --> 02:10:01,680 that was revealed in its wake. 1927 02:10:01,680 --> 02:10:03,720 And the reason they gave was that it might 1928 02:10:03,720 --> 02:10:05,160 destabilise the system. 1929 02:10:06,760 --> 02:10:11,000 Public anger burst out. The Occupy movement took over Wall Street 1930 02:10:11,000 --> 02:10:13,640 and then the Senate in Washington. 1931 02:10:13,640 --> 02:10:16,040 The issue is that certain individuals 1932 02:10:16,040 --> 02:10:19,840 that are very wealthy, have pretty much corrupted our political system 1933 02:10:19,840 --> 02:10:21,680 and this is the heart of it. 1934 02:10:21,680 --> 02:10:23,360 This is the Senate building. 1935 02:10:23,360 --> 02:10:26,320 These people have been cut off and they've corrupted our democracy 1936 02:10:26,320 --> 02:10:27,880 and it's literally killing people. 1937 02:10:27,880 --> 02:10:30,440 I'm an Iraqi war vet. I went to Iraq in 2009. 1938 02:10:30,440 --> 02:10:33,120 I've seen what happens first hand when we let corruption 1939 02:10:33,120 --> 02:10:36,280 rule our elected government and democracy. We're coming here today 1940 02:10:36,280 --> 02:10:37,800 just to raise awareness. 1941 02:10:37,800 --> 02:10:40,000 What drove the Occupy movement was the 1942 02:10:40,000 --> 02:10:42,200 original dream of the internet that people 1943 02:10:42,200 --> 02:10:45,760 like John Perry Barlow had outlined in the early 1990s. 1944 02:10:47,480 --> 02:10:50,640 In his Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, 1945 02:10:50,640 --> 02:10:54,200 Barlow had described a new world free of politics and the 1946 02:10:54,200 --> 02:10:56,560 old hierarchies of power. 1947 02:10:56,560 --> 02:11:00,760 A space where people connected together as equals in a network 1948 02:11:00,760 --> 02:11:03,080 and built a new society without leaders. 1949 02:11:04,720 --> 02:11:07,160 Now, the Occupy movement set out to 1950 02:11:07,160 --> 02:11:09,720 build that kind of society in the real world. 1951 02:11:11,840 --> 02:11:14,200 The camps were to be the models. 1952 02:11:14,200 --> 02:11:18,000 All the meetings used the idea of the human microphone. 1953 02:11:18,000 --> 02:11:19,960 People throughout the crowd repeated a 1954 02:11:19,960 --> 02:11:22,560 speaker's words so everyone could hear them. 1955 02:11:22,560 --> 02:11:25,280 - ALL: - We are now going to vote... 1956 02:11:25,280 --> 02:11:29,000 - SPEAKER: - ..on whether to stay here for the next two hours... 1957 02:11:29,000 --> 02:11:32,760 - ALL: - ..on whether to stay here for the next two hours... 1958 02:11:32,760 --> 02:11:34,880 - SPEAKER: - ..or leave now. 1959 02:11:34,880 --> 02:11:36,360 - ALL: - ..or leave now. 1960 02:11:36,360 --> 02:11:39,400 But if someone wanted to challenge the speaker, 1961 02:11:39,400 --> 02:11:42,760 the human amplifiers also had to repeat THEIR words 1962 02:11:42,760 --> 02:11:45,320 so their voice had equal power. 1963 02:11:45,320 --> 02:11:46,960 - SPEAKER: - ..what she said... 1964 02:11:46,960 --> 02:11:48,440 - ALL: - ..what she said... 1965 02:11:48,440 --> 02:11:51,640 - SPEAKER: - ..was that... - ALL: - ..was that... - SPEAKER: - ..the proposal... 1966 02:11:51,640 --> 02:11:54,880 Each person was an autonomous individual who expressed 1967 02:11:54,880 --> 02:11:57,080 what they believed. 1968 02:11:57,080 --> 02:12:00,920 But together they became components in a network that organised itself 1969 02:12:00,920 --> 02:12:05,480 through the feedback of information around the system. 1970 02:12:05,480 --> 02:12:09,160 You could organise people without the exercise of power. 1971 02:12:09,160 --> 02:12:10,840 CHANTING 1972 02:12:10,840 --> 02:12:11,960 CAR HORNS BLARE 1973 02:12:11,960 --> 02:12:14,520 The crisis in Egypt. 1974 02:12:14,520 --> 02:12:17,800 CHANTING AND SHOUTING 1975 02:12:20,080 --> 02:12:22,080 A march through our main streets. 1976 02:12:22,080 --> 02:12:25,000 Looks like chaos. Looks like 1977 02:12:25,000 --> 02:12:26,680 police is running around 1978 02:12:26,680 --> 02:12:31,000 and a few hundred people walking down the street. 1979 02:12:32,840 --> 02:12:35,720 Then, almost immediately, the Arab Spring began. 1980 02:12:37,200 --> 02:12:38,920 The first revolution started in Tunisia, 1981 02:12:38,920 --> 02:12:40,960 but it quickly spread to Egypt. 1982 02:12:42,640 --> 02:12:46,160 On January 25th 2011, thousands of Egyptians 1983 02:12:46,160 --> 02:12:48,720 came out in groups across Cairo and then 1984 02:12:48,720 --> 02:12:51,000 started moving towards Tahrir Square. 1985 02:12:53,720 --> 02:12:56,800 It seemed like a spontaneous uprising but the internet 1986 02:12:56,800 --> 02:12:59,480 had played a key role in organising the groups. 1987 02:13:01,040 --> 02:13:02,520 One of the main activists was 1988 02:13:02,520 --> 02:13:05,480 an Egyptian computer engineer called Wael Ghonim. 1989 02:13:06,560 --> 02:13:08,160 He worked for Google in Egypt 1990 02:13:08,160 --> 02:13:11,080 but he had also set up the Facebook site that 1991 02:13:11,080 --> 02:13:14,160 played the key role in organising the first protests. 1992 02:13:16,040 --> 02:13:18,240 As hundreds of thousands took over Tahrir Square, 1993 02:13:18,240 --> 02:13:20,720 Ghonim gave an interview on Egyptian TV. 1994 02:14:04,120 --> 02:14:06,680 But Ghonim was also overwhelmed by the power 1995 02:14:06,680 --> 02:14:08,520 this new technology had, 1996 02:14:08,520 --> 02:14:12,080 that a computer engineer with a keyboard could call out 1997 02:14:12,080 --> 02:14:14,120 thousands of people... 1998 02:14:14,120 --> 02:14:17,000 some of whom then died in the midst of the protests. 1999 02:14:50,960 --> 02:14:53,440 Many liberals in the West saw this as proof 2000 02:14:53,440 --> 02:14:56,800 of the revolutionary power of the internet. 2001 02:14:56,800 --> 02:14:58,960 Again it seemed to be able to organise 2002 02:14:58,960 --> 02:15:00,680 a revolution without leaders. 2003 02:15:02,040 --> 02:15:05,000 A revolution powerful enough to topple a brutal dictator 2004 02:15:05,000 --> 02:15:08,160 who had been backed by America and the West for 30 years. 2005 02:15:15,720 --> 02:15:17,520 But the internet radicals were not the 2006 02:15:17,520 --> 02:15:19,880 only ones who saw their dreams being fulfilled 2007 02:15:19,880 --> 02:15:21,000 in the Arab Spring. 2008 02:15:22,080 --> 02:15:24,720 Many of the political leaders of the West also 2009 02:15:24,720 --> 02:15:27,560 enthusiastically supported the revolutions 2010 02:15:27,560 --> 02:15:31,280 because it seemed to fit with their simple idea of regime change. 2011 02:15:32,760 --> 02:15:34,840 It might have failed in Iraq 2012 02:15:34,840 --> 02:15:37,800 but now the people, everywhere, were rising up to rid 2013 02:15:37,800 --> 02:15:40,560 themselves of the evil tyrants. 2014 02:15:40,560 --> 02:15:42,360 And democracy would flourish. 2015 02:15:56,160 --> 02:15:58,480 So when an uprising began in Libya, 2016 02:15:58,480 --> 02:16:00,960 Britain, France and America supported it. 2017 02:16:02,320 --> 02:16:04,760 And suddenly, Colonel Gaddafi stopped being 2018 02:16:04,760 --> 02:16:05,920 a hero of the West. 2019 02:16:09,040 --> 02:16:13,040 All the politicians, and the public relations people, and the academics 2020 02:16:13,040 --> 02:16:15,920 who had all promoted him as a global thinker 2021 02:16:15,920 --> 02:16:17,320 suddenly disappeared. 2022 02:16:18,520 --> 02:16:23,320 And Gaddafi became yet again an evil dictator who had to be overthrown. 2023 02:16:25,360 --> 02:16:28,400 His son Saif said, "The way these people are 2024 02:16:28,400 --> 02:16:31,040 "disowning me and my father is disgusting. 2025 02:16:32,680 --> 02:16:34,840 "Just a few months ago, we were being treated as 2026 02:16:34,840 --> 02:16:36,760 "honoured friends. 2027 02:16:36,760 --> 02:16:40,120 "Now that rebels are threatening our country, these cowards 2028 02:16:40,120 --> 02:16:41,360 "are turning on us." 2029 02:16:42,440 --> 02:16:45,600 Colonel Gaddafi retreated to the ruins of the house that 2030 02:16:45,600 --> 02:16:49,840 the Americans had bombed 30 years before and addressed the world. 2031 02:16:49,840 --> 02:16:53,400 - TRANSLATION: - Muammar Gaddafi is the glory. 2032 02:16:53,400 --> 02:16:55,720 If I had a position, if I were a president, 2033 02:16:55,720 --> 02:16:56,880 I would have resigned. 2034 02:16:56,880 --> 02:16:59,680 I would have thrown my resignation in your face. 2035 02:16:59,680 --> 02:17:02,360 But I have no position, no post. 2036 02:17:02,360 --> 02:17:04,080 I have nowhere to resign from. 2037 02:17:04,080 --> 02:17:08,120 I have my gun, I have my rifle to fight for Libya. 2038 02:17:10,080 --> 02:17:12,400 Withdraw your children from the streets. 2039 02:17:14,320 --> 02:17:16,080 Take your children back. 2040 02:17:16,080 --> 02:17:18,400 They are drugging your children. 2041 02:17:18,400 --> 02:17:20,200 They are making your children drunk 2042 02:17:20,200 --> 02:17:23,120 and they are sending them to hell. 2043 02:17:23,120 --> 02:17:25,400 Your children will die. What for? 2044 02:17:36,240 --> 02:17:41,240 In November 2011 a large convoy was spotted driving at high speed 2045 02:17:41,240 --> 02:17:44,000 away from Colonel Gaddafi's home town of Sirte. 2046 02:17:45,360 --> 02:17:46,560 An American drone, 2047 02:17:46,560 --> 02:17:49,160 controlled from a shed outside Las Vegas, 2048 02:17:49,160 --> 02:17:50,400 was sent to follow it. 2049 02:17:51,360 --> 02:17:53,080 CAR HORN BEEPS 2050 02:17:54,200 --> 02:17:57,240 CAR HORNS BEEP 2051 02:17:58,920 --> 02:18:02,400 The operator fired a missile at the lead car of the convoy. 2052 02:18:13,520 --> 02:18:16,480 Gaddafi then fled - looking for shelter from 2053 02:18:16,480 --> 02:18:18,080 the oncoming rebel forces. 2054 02:18:19,320 --> 02:18:21,600 He hid under the road in a drainage pipe. 2055 02:18:56,960 --> 02:18:59,040 But instead of becoming a democracy, 2056 02:18:59,040 --> 02:19:01,040 Libya began to descend into chaos. 2057 02:19:10,240 --> 02:19:13,160 And the other revolutions were also failing. 2058 02:19:13,160 --> 02:19:16,920 The Occupy camps had become trapped in endless meetings. 2059 02:19:16,920 --> 02:19:18,920 And it became clear that there 2060 02:19:18,920 --> 02:19:22,040 was a terrible confusion at the heart of the movement. 2061 02:19:22,040 --> 02:19:23,680 The radicals had believed that if 2062 02:19:23,680 --> 02:19:26,520 they could create a new way of organising people 2063 02:19:26,520 --> 02:19:29,120 then a new society would emerge. 2064 02:19:29,120 --> 02:19:31,960 But what they did not have was a picture of what that 2065 02:19:31,960 --> 02:19:35,040 society would be like, a vision of the future. 2066 02:19:37,080 --> 02:19:40,360 The truth was that their revolution was not about an idea. 2067 02:19:41,520 --> 02:19:43,520 It was about how you manage things. 2068 02:19:46,600 --> 02:19:48,760 And those who had started the revolution 2069 02:19:48,760 --> 02:19:52,000 in Egypt came face-to-face with the same terrible fact. 2070 02:19:53,440 --> 02:19:54,480 Social media had helped 2071 02:19:54,480 --> 02:19:56,960 to bring people together in Tahrir square. 2072 02:19:58,000 --> 02:20:00,800 But once there, the internet gave no clue as 2073 02:20:00,800 --> 02:20:03,880 to what kind of new society they could create in Egypt. 2074 02:20:05,240 --> 02:20:06,560 The movement stalled. 2075 02:20:08,160 --> 02:20:10,440 And a group that DID have a powerful idea - the 2076 02:20:10,440 --> 02:20:13,320 Muslim Brotherhood - rushed in to fill the vacuum. 2077 02:20:14,640 --> 02:20:16,920 The Brotherhood took power in an election 2078 02:20:16,920 --> 02:20:19,800 and one of them, Mohamed Morsi, became President. 2079 02:20:22,600 --> 02:20:24,880 The liberals and the Left were shocked. 2080 02:20:24,880 --> 02:20:26,760 And, bit by bit, they turned back to 2081 02:20:26,760 --> 02:20:30,040 the military, protesting, asking them to save 2082 02:20:30,040 --> 02:20:32,920 the revolution from being captured by Islamists. 2083 02:20:36,520 --> 02:20:40,720 In the spring of 2013, the military took action. 2084 02:20:40,720 --> 02:20:42,600 They arrested the President and 2085 02:20:42,600 --> 02:20:45,480 killed hundreds of his supporters who protested. 2086 02:20:47,120 --> 02:20:50,960 And an extraordinary spectacle unfolded in Tahrir Square. 2087 02:20:51,960 --> 02:20:54,040 Thousands of the liberal activists who 2088 02:20:54,040 --> 02:20:56,360 had begun the revolution two years before, 2089 02:20:56,360 --> 02:20:59,440 summoned by social media, now welcomed the 2090 02:20:59,440 --> 02:21:02,440 military back by waving their laser pens at the 2091 02:21:02,440 --> 02:21:04,240 helicopters flying overhead. 2092 02:21:10,440 --> 02:21:13,720 The crowd had been summoned there once again by Facebook. 2093 02:21:42,560 --> 02:21:44,560 After the failure of the revolutions, it was not 2094 02:21:44,560 --> 02:21:47,480 just the radicals - no-one in the West had 2095 02:21:47,480 --> 02:21:49,720 any idea of how to change the world. 2096 02:21:51,080 --> 02:21:53,520 At home, the politicians had given so much of their 2097 02:21:53,520 --> 02:21:56,360 power away, to finance and the ever-growing 2098 02:21:56,360 --> 02:21:59,680 managerial bureaucracies, that they in effect 2099 02:21:59,680 --> 02:22:01,600 had become managers themselves. 2100 02:22:03,320 --> 02:22:06,080 While abroad, all their adventures had failed. 2101 02:22:07,200 --> 02:22:10,040 And their simplistic vision of the world had been exposed 2102 02:22:10,040 --> 02:22:11,840 as dangerous and destructive. 2103 02:22:16,840 --> 02:22:18,960 But in Russia, there was a group of men who 2104 02:22:18,960 --> 02:22:21,000 had seen how this very lack of belief in 2105 02:22:21,000 --> 02:22:23,640 politics, and dark uncertainty about the 2106 02:22:23,640 --> 02:22:25,960 future could work to their advantage. 2107 02:22:28,040 --> 02:22:30,880 What they had done was turn politics into a strange 2108 02:22:30,880 --> 02:22:33,720 theatre where nobody knew what was true or 2109 02:22:33,720 --> 02:22:35,160 what was fake any longer. 2110 02:22:38,760 --> 02:22:41,280 They were called political technologists and they were 2111 02:22:41,280 --> 02:22:43,440 the key figures behind President Putin. 2112 02:22:44,640 --> 02:22:47,800 They had kept him in power, unchallenged, for 15 years. 2113 02:22:50,440 --> 02:22:52,600 Some of them had been dissidents back in the 1970s 2114 02:22:52,600 --> 02:22:55,480 and had been powerfully influenced by the 2115 02:22:55,480 --> 02:22:58,640 science fiction writings of the Strugatsky brothers. 2116 02:23:00,280 --> 02:23:01,920 20 years later, when Russia fell 2117 02:23:01,920 --> 02:23:05,000 apart after the end of communism, they rose up 2118 02:23:05,000 --> 02:23:06,720 and took control of the media. 2119 02:23:08,080 --> 02:23:11,560 And they used it to manipulate the electorate on a vast scale. 2120 02:23:13,440 --> 02:23:15,680 For them, reality was just something that 2121 02:23:15,680 --> 02:23:18,800 could be manipulated and shaped into anything 2122 02:23:18,800 --> 02:23:19,920 you wanted it to be. 2123 02:23:34,520 --> 02:23:37,560 GLASS THUDS 2124 02:23:39,360 --> 02:23:43,040 But then a technologist emerged who went much further. 2125 02:23:43,040 --> 02:23:44,960 And his ideas would become central to 2126 02:23:44,960 --> 02:23:46,280 Putin's grip on power. 2127 02:23:48,280 --> 02:23:51,200 He was called Vladislav Surkov. 2128 02:23:51,200 --> 02:23:54,520 Surkov came originally from the theatre world and those who have 2129 02:23:54,520 --> 02:23:57,280 studied his career say that what he did was take 2130 02:23:57,280 --> 02:23:59,800 avant-garde ideas from the theatre and bring 2131 02:23:59,800 --> 02:24:01,840 them into the heart of politics. 2132 02:24:03,160 --> 02:24:06,600 Surkov's aim was not just to manipulate people 2133 02:24:06,600 --> 02:24:09,760 but to go deeper and play with, and undermine 2134 02:24:09,760 --> 02:24:12,600 their very perception of the world so they are 2135 02:24:12,600 --> 02:24:14,720 never sure what is really happening. 2136 02:24:21,920 --> 02:24:23,920 Surkov turned Russian politics into 2137 02:24:23,920 --> 02:24:27,960 a bewildering, constantly changing piece of theatre. 2138 02:24:27,960 --> 02:24:29,560 He used Kremlin money to sponsor 2139 02:24:29,560 --> 02:24:34,000 all kinds of groups - from mass anti-fascist youth organisations, 2140 02:24:34,000 --> 02:24:36,560 to the very opposite - neo-Nazi skinheads. 2141 02:24:40,280 --> 02:24:42,080 And liberal human rights groups who 2142 02:24:42,080 --> 02:24:44,320 then attacked the government. 2143 02:24:44,320 --> 02:24:47,120 Surkov even backed whole political parties that were 2144 02:24:47,120 --> 02:24:49,000 opposed to President Putin. 2145 02:24:50,840 --> 02:24:54,720 But the key thing was that Surkov then let it be known that this 2146 02:24:54,720 --> 02:24:56,760 was what he was doing. 2147 02:24:56,760 --> 02:24:59,960 Which meant that no-one was sure what was real or what was fake 2148 02:24:59,960 --> 02:25:01,000 in modern Russia. 2149 02:25:03,000 --> 02:25:04,760 As one journalist put it, 2150 02:25:04,760 --> 02:25:08,200 "It's a strategy of power that keeps any opposition 2151 02:25:08,200 --> 02:25:09,840 "constantly confused - 2152 02:25:09,840 --> 02:25:13,840 "a ceaseless shape-shifting that is unstoppable 2153 02:25:13,840 --> 02:25:15,720 "because it is indefinable." 2154 02:25:20,080 --> 02:25:23,400 Meanwhile, real power was elsewhere - 2155 02:25:23,400 --> 02:25:24,960 hidden away behind the stage, 2156 02:25:24,960 --> 02:25:28,120 exercised without anyone seeing it. 2157 02:25:32,280 --> 02:25:36,920 And then the same thing seemed to start happening in the West. 2158 02:25:38,080 --> 02:25:40,600 By now it was becoming ever more clear 2159 02:25:40,600 --> 02:25:43,040 that the system had deep flaws. 2160 02:25:43,040 --> 02:25:45,640 Every month there were new revelations, 2161 02:25:45,640 --> 02:25:49,440 of most of the banks' involvement in global corruption, 2162 02:25:49,440 --> 02:25:52,520 of massive tax avoidance by all the major corporations, 2163 02:25:52,520 --> 02:25:55,240 of the secret surveillance of everyone's e-mails 2164 02:25:55,240 --> 02:25:57,920 by the National Security Agency. 2165 02:25:57,920 --> 02:26:00,400 Yet no-one was prosecuted, 2166 02:26:00,400 --> 02:26:03,200 except for a few people at the lowest levels. 2167 02:26:04,280 --> 02:26:05,880 And behind it all, 2168 02:26:05,880 --> 02:26:08,640 the massive inequality kept on growing. 2169 02:26:08,640 --> 02:26:11,760 Yet the structure of power remained the same. 2170 02:26:11,760 --> 02:26:14,960 Nothing ever changed - 2171 02:26:14,960 --> 02:26:19,160 because nothing could be allowed to destabilise the system. 2172 02:26:19,160 --> 02:26:21,600 But then the shape-shifting began. 2173 02:26:22,680 --> 02:26:25,000 CHEERING 2174 02:26:25,000 --> 02:26:27,280 Thank you very much. So nice. 2175 02:26:27,280 --> 02:26:30,880 So amazing. So amazing. 2176 02:26:30,880 --> 02:26:33,040 - WOMAN: - We love you. - What? That's OK. 2177 02:26:33,040 --> 02:26:34,400 I love you more, OK? 2178 02:26:34,400 --> 02:26:35,880 CHEERING 2179 02:26:35,880 --> 02:26:37,760 The campaign that Donald Trump ran 2180 02:26:37,760 --> 02:26:40,440 was unlike anything before in politics. 2181 02:26:40,440 --> 02:26:41,920 Nothing was fixed. 2182 02:26:41,920 --> 02:26:44,040 What he said, who he attacked 2183 02:26:44,040 --> 02:26:49,480 and how he attacked them was constantly changing and shifting. 2184 02:26:49,480 --> 02:26:51,320 Trump attacked his Republican rivals 2185 02:26:51,320 --> 02:26:54,960 as all being part of a broken and corrupt system - 2186 02:26:54,960 --> 02:26:58,080 a politics where everyone could be bought, 2187 02:26:58,080 --> 02:27:02,360 using words that could have come from the Occupy movement. 2188 02:27:02,360 --> 02:27:05,280 You've also donated to several Democratic candidates, 2189 02:27:05,280 --> 02:27:07,800 Hillary Clinton included, Nancy Pelosi. 2190 02:27:07,800 --> 02:27:10,840 You explained away those donations saying you did that 2191 02:27:10,840 --> 02:27:13,200 to get business-related favours. 2192 02:27:13,200 --> 02:27:15,640 And you said recently, "When you give, 2193 02:27:15,640 --> 02:27:18,840 "they do whatever the hell you want them to do." 2194 02:27:18,840 --> 02:27:22,200 - You'd better believe it. - So what specifically did they do? 2195 02:27:22,200 --> 02:27:24,600 If I ask them, if I need them... 2196 02:27:24,600 --> 02:27:26,480 You know, most of the people on this stage, 2197 02:27:26,480 --> 02:27:29,320 I've given to, just so you understand, a lot of money. 2198 02:27:29,320 --> 02:27:31,800 I will tell you that our system is broken. 2199 02:27:31,800 --> 02:27:33,760 I give to many people. 2200 02:27:33,760 --> 02:27:36,160 Before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman. 2201 02:27:36,160 --> 02:27:38,720 I give to everybody. When they call, I give. 2202 02:27:38,720 --> 02:27:41,360 And you know what, when I need something from them, 2203 02:27:41,360 --> 02:27:43,880 two years later, three years later, I call them. 2204 02:27:43,880 --> 02:27:47,240 - They are there for me. - So what did you get? - And that's a broken system. 2205 02:27:47,240 --> 02:27:50,440 But at the same time, Trump used the language 2206 02:27:50,440 --> 02:27:53,520 of the extreme racist right in America, 2207 02:27:53,520 --> 02:27:55,960 connecting with people's darkest fears - 2208 02:27:55,960 --> 02:27:59,560 pushing them and bringing those fears out into the open. 2209 02:27:59,560 --> 02:28:01,800 Get the fuck out of here! 2210 02:28:01,800 --> 02:28:04,240 Our country, motherfucker! 2211 02:28:04,240 --> 02:28:05,760 Our country! 2212 02:28:05,760 --> 02:28:07,400 Proud fucking American! 2213 02:28:07,400 --> 02:28:09,040 Made in the USA, bitch! 2214 02:28:09,040 --> 02:28:11,720 Made in the fucking USA! 2215 02:28:11,720 --> 02:28:14,120 Don't fucking come back, burrito bitch! 2216 02:28:16,760 --> 02:28:19,920 Go fucking right back to jail, motherfucker! 2217 02:28:19,920 --> 02:28:22,920 Build that fucking wall for me! 2218 02:28:22,920 --> 02:28:25,240 Trump! Donald Trump! 2219 02:28:25,240 --> 02:28:27,720 Fuck you! I love my country! 2220 02:28:27,720 --> 02:28:30,920 Yeah! I'll fuck like at least ten of you up in one session, 2221 02:28:30,920 --> 02:28:32,760 you fucking pussy! 2222 02:28:32,760 --> 02:28:35,600 Many of the facts that Trump asserted 2223 02:28:35,600 --> 02:28:37,840 were also completely untrue. 2224 02:28:37,840 --> 02:28:39,960 But Trump didn't care. 2225 02:28:39,960 --> 02:28:42,920 He and his audience knew that much of what he said 2226 02:28:42,920 --> 02:28:45,120 bore little relationship to reality. 2227 02:28:46,680 --> 02:28:49,800 This meant that Trump defeated journalism - 2228 02:28:49,800 --> 02:28:52,160 because the journalists' central belief was that 2229 02:28:52,160 --> 02:28:56,360 their job was to expose lies and assert the truth. 2230 02:28:56,360 --> 02:28:58,520 With Trump, this became irrelevant. 2231 02:29:00,440 --> 02:29:04,000 Not surprisingly, Vladimir Putin admired this. 2232 02:29:05,000 --> 02:29:07,280 MAN SPEAKS RUSSIAN 2233 02:29:52,840 --> 02:29:55,600 The liberals were outraged by Trump. 2234 02:29:55,600 --> 02:29:58,440 But they expressed their anger in cyberspace, 2235 02:29:58,440 --> 02:30:00,120 so it had no effect - 2236 02:30:00,120 --> 02:30:03,640 because the algorithms made sure that they only spoke to people 2237 02:30:03,640 --> 02:30:05,200 who already agreed with them. 2238 02:30:06,560 --> 02:30:10,800 Instead, ironically, their waves of angry messages and tweets 2239 02:30:10,800 --> 02:30:14,840 benefitted the large corporations who ran the social media platforms. 2240 02:30:16,320 --> 02:30:21,000 One online analyst put it simply, "Angry people click more." 2241 02:30:25,240 --> 02:30:27,080 It meant that the radical fury 2242 02:30:27,080 --> 02:30:29,480 that came like waves across the internet 2243 02:30:29,480 --> 02:30:32,880 no longer had the power to change the world. 2244 02:30:32,880 --> 02:30:35,600 Instead, it was becoming a fuel 2245 02:30:35,600 --> 02:30:38,400 that was feeding the new systems of power 2246 02:30:38,400 --> 02:30:40,400 and making them ever more powerful. 2247 02:30:45,000 --> 02:30:47,800 But none of the liberals could possibly imagine 2248 02:30:47,800 --> 02:30:50,520 that Donald Trump could ever win the nomination. 2249 02:30:50,520 --> 02:30:53,000 It was just a giant pantomime. 2250 02:30:56,440 --> 02:30:58,520 Then of course there's Donald Trump. 2251 02:30:58,520 --> 02:31:00,960 Donald Trump has been saying that he will run for president 2252 02:31:00,960 --> 02:31:02,920 as a Republican, which is surprising, 2253 02:31:02,920 --> 02:31:05,040 since I just assumed he was running as a joke. 2254 02:31:05,040 --> 02:31:08,560 LAUGHTER 2255 02:31:13,400 --> 02:31:16,840 Donald Trump often appears on Fox, which is ironic, 2256 02:31:16,840 --> 02:31:19,760 because a fox often appears on Donald Trump's head. 2257 02:31:19,760 --> 02:31:21,320 LAUGHTER 2258 02:31:27,440 --> 02:31:29,640 Donald Trump owns the Miss USA Pageant, 2259 02:31:29,640 --> 02:31:31,240 which is great for Republicans 2260 02:31:31,240 --> 02:31:33,880 because it will streamline their search for a vice president. 2261 02:31:33,880 --> 02:31:35,400 LAUGHTER 2262 02:31:40,920 --> 02:31:44,480 Donald Trump said recently he has a great relationship with the blacks. 2263 02:31:44,480 --> 02:31:47,200 though unless the Blacks are a family of white people, 2264 02:31:47,200 --> 02:31:49,640 I bet he's mistaken. 2265 02:31:49,640 --> 02:31:51,080 LAUGHTER 2266 02:32:01,160 --> 02:32:03,320 But underneath the liberal disdain, 2267 02:32:03,320 --> 02:32:07,640 both Donald Trump in America, and Vladislav Surkov in Russia 2268 02:32:07,640 --> 02:32:09,920 had realised the same thing - 2269 02:32:09,920 --> 02:32:13,520 that the version of reality that politics presented 2270 02:32:13,520 --> 02:32:15,680 was no longer believable, 2271 02:32:15,680 --> 02:32:19,400 that the stories politicians told their people about the world 2272 02:32:19,400 --> 02:32:22,120 had stopped making sense. 2273 02:32:22,120 --> 02:32:25,920 And in the face of that, you could play with reality, 2274 02:32:25,920 --> 02:32:28,800 constantly shifting and changing, 2275 02:32:28,800 --> 02:32:31,960 and in the process, further undermine and weaken 2276 02:32:31,960 --> 02:32:33,800 the old forms of power. 2277 02:32:33,800 --> 02:32:35,640 CHILDREN SING 2278 02:33:00,360 --> 02:33:03,880 And there was another force that was about to dramatically reveal 2279 02:33:03,880 --> 02:33:07,200 just how weak politics had become in the West - 2280 02:33:07,200 --> 02:33:08,560 Syria. 2281 02:33:08,560 --> 02:33:10,560 CHILDREN SING 2282 02:33:31,320 --> 02:33:34,400 The attack happened here at a central police station 2283 02:33:34,400 --> 02:33:35,800 in Damascus. 2284 02:33:35,800 --> 02:33:39,160 Police say the bomber came up the stairs, 2285 02:33:39,160 --> 02:33:41,720 police then opened fire, 2286 02:33:41,720 --> 02:33:44,840 and then police say he detonated the explosives. 2287 02:33:44,840 --> 02:33:46,600 And the damage is here to see. 2288 02:33:46,600 --> 02:33:51,560 Behind me, the pockmarked walls where the ball bearings hit. 2289 02:33:51,560 --> 02:33:55,040 Blood splattered on the walls. 2290 02:33:55,040 --> 02:33:59,040 And the force of the blast caused walls to collapse. 2291 02:33:59,040 --> 02:34:03,760 And everything is topsy-turvy, everything destroyed. 2292 02:34:10,040 --> 02:34:14,040 By now Syria was being torn apart by a horrific civil war. 2293 02:34:14,040 --> 02:34:16,960 What had started as part of the Arab Spring 2294 02:34:16,960 --> 02:34:19,680 had turned into a vicious battle to the death 2295 02:34:19,680 --> 02:34:23,000 between Bashar Assad and his opponents. 2296 02:34:23,000 --> 02:34:24,960 And at the heart of the conflict 2297 02:34:24,960 --> 02:34:28,440 was the force that his father had first brought to the West - 2298 02:34:28,440 --> 02:34:30,680 suicide bombing. 2299 02:34:30,680 --> 02:34:32,760 THEY SPEAK IN OWN LANGUAGE 2300 02:34:36,600 --> 02:34:37,840 Back in the 1980s 2301 02:34:37,840 --> 02:34:41,080 Bashar Assad's father had seen suicide bombing 2302 02:34:41,080 --> 02:34:42,920 as a weapon he could use 2303 02:34:42,920 --> 02:34:46,480 to force the Americans out of the Middle East. 2304 02:34:46,480 --> 02:34:49,880 But over the next 30 years it had shifted and mutated 2305 02:34:49,880 --> 02:34:53,320 into something that had now ended up doing the very opposite - 2306 02:34:53,320 --> 02:34:55,720 tearing the Arab world apart. 2307 02:34:59,120 --> 02:35:03,720 Hafez al-Assad's dream of a powerful and united Arab world 2308 02:35:03,720 --> 02:35:05,440 was now destroyed. 2309 02:35:05,440 --> 02:35:10,000 In Iraq, extremist Sunni groups had used suicide bombing 2310 02:35:10,000 --> 02:35:13,520 as a way to start a sectarian war. 2311 02:35:13,520 --> 02:35:18,560 And now groups like Isis brought the same techniques into Syria 2312 02:35:18,560 --> 02:35:22,160 to attack not just Assad's son but his fellow Shi'ites. 2313 02:35:28,640 --> 02:35:32,120 And like his father, Bashar Assad retaliated 2314 02:35:32,120 --> 02:35:34,160 with a vengeful fury. 2315 02:35:34,160 --> 02:35:35,960 And the country fell apart. 2316 02:35:38,680 --> 02:35:40,520 - MAN: - Allahu Akbar. 2317 02:35:40,520 --> 02:35:42,040 WHOOSHING 2318 02:35:46,440 --> 02:35:48,760 Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. 2319 02:35:56,520 --> 02:35:58,080 ROARING 2320 02:36:03,640 --> 02:36:05,200 My fellow Americans... 2321 02:36:05,200 --> 02:36:08,200 tonight I want to talk to you about Syria - 2322 02:36:08,200 --> 02:36:12,720 why it matters and where we go from here. 2323 02:36:12,720 --> 02:36:16,680 Faced by the war, western politicians were bewildered. 2324 02:36:16,680 --> 02:36:20,400 They insisted Bashar Assad was evil. 2325 02:36:20,400 --> 02:36:23,920 But then it turned out that his enemies were more evil 2326 02:36:23,920 --> 02:36:25,680 and more horrific than him. 2327 02:36:25,680 --> 02:36:27,840 The question before the House today 2328 02:36:27,840 --> 02:36:30,880 is how we keep the British people safe from the threat 2329 02:36:30,880 --> 02:36:32,520 posed by Isil. 2330 02:36:32,520 --> 02:36:36,000 This is not about whether we want to fight terrorism, 2331 02:36:36,000 --> 02:36:37,720 it's about how best we do that. 2332 02:36:39,240 --> 02:36:41,680 So Britain, America and France 2333 02:36:41,680 --> 02:36:45,240 decided to bomb the terrorist threat. 2334 02:36:45,240 --> 02:36:48,600 But the effect of that was to help keep Assad in power. 2335 02:36:50,400 --> 02:36:51,920 WHOOSHING 2336 02:36:53,600 --> 02:36:55,320 CLATTERING 2337 02:36:55,320 --> 02:36:58,000 Then it became more confusing. 2338 02:36:58,000 --> 02:37:00,920 Suddenly, the Russians intervened. 2339 02:37:02,120 --> 02:37:05,280 President Putin sent hundreds of planes and combat troops 2340 02:37:05,280 --> 02:37:07,720 to support Assad. 2341 02:37:07,720 --> 02:37:11,840 But no-one knew what their underlying aim was. 2342 02:37:11,840 --> 02:37:14,160 They seemed to be using a strategy that 2343 02:37:14,160 --> 02:37:16,960 Vladislav Surkov had developed in the Ukraine. 2344 02:37:18,200 --> 02:37:20,880 He called it non-linear warfare. 2345 02:37:20,880 --> 02:37:24,200 It was a new kind of war - where you never know 2346 02:37:24,200 --> 02:37:26,520 what the enemy are really up to. 2347 02:37:26,520 --> 02:37:28,760 - MAN: - Allahu Akbar. 2348 02:37:28,760 --> 02:37:32,640 The underlying aim, Surkov said, was not to win the war, 2349 02:37:32,640 --> 02:37:35,720 but to use the conflict to create a constant state 2350 02:37:35,720 --> 02:37:37,800 of destabilised perception - 2351 02:37:37,800 --> 02:37:40,520 in order to manage and control. 2352 02:37:40,520 --> 02:37:42,480 MAN BREATHES HEAVILY 2353 02:37:43,400 --> 02:37:44,840 Allahu Akbar. 2354 02:37:44,840 --> 02:37:46,880 ORCHESTRA PLAYS 2355 02:37:50,280 --> 02:37:54,640 In March 2016 the Russians suddenly announced with a great fanfare 2356 02:37:54,640 --> 02:37:57,000 that they were leaving Syria. 2357 02:37:57,000 --> 02:38:00,000 And a concert was held in the ruins of Palmyra 2358 02:38:00,000 --> 02:38:01,640 to celebrate the withdrawal. 2359 02:38:03,880 --> 02:38:07,480 But in reality, the Russians never left. 2360 02:38:07,480 --> 02:38:08,680 They are still there, 2361 02:38:08,680 --> 02:38:12,040 and still no-one knows what they want. 2362 02:38:12,040 --> 02:38:14,160 HE SPEAKS IN OWN LANGUAGE 2363 02:38:21,440 --> 02:38:25,080 And within Syria there was a new Islamist ideologist 2364 02:38:25,080 --> 02:38:28,240 who was determined to exploit the growing uncertainties 2365 02:38:28,240 --> 02:38:30,600 in Europe and America. 2366 02:38:30,600 --> 02:38:33,720 He was called Abu Musab al-Suri - 2367 02:38:33,720 --> 02:38:35,720 the Syrian. 2368 02:38:37,520 --> 02:38:39,360 HE SPEAKS IN OWN LANGUAGE 2369 02:38:45,360 --> 02:38:49,600 Al-Suri had originally worked with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, 2370 02:38:49,600 --> 02:38:52,320 but he had turned against him. 2371 02:38:52,320 --> 02:38:55,080 Al-Suri gave lectures that had a powerful effect 2372 02:38:55,080 --> 02:38:56,560 on the Islamist movement. 2373 02:38:56,560 --> 02:38:59,720 He argued that bin Laden had been wrong 2374 02:38:59,720 --> 02:39:01,640 to attack the West head on, 2375 02:39:01,640 --> 02:39:04,600 because it created a massive military response 2376 02:39:04,600 --> 02:39:07,880 that had almost destroyed Islamism. 2377 02:39:07,880 --> 02:39:09,880 Instead, al-Suri said, 2378 02:39:09,880 --> 02:39:12,360 independent groups or individuals 2379 02:39:12,360 --> 02:39:15,280 should stage random, small-scale attacks 2380 02:39:15,280 --> 02:39:17,920 on civilians in Europe and America. 2381 02:39:17,920 --> 02:39:20,080 The aim was to spread fear, 2382 02:39:20,080 --> 02:39:22,360 uncertainty and doubt - 2383 02:39:22,360 --> 02:39:26,320 and undermine the already failing authority of western politicians. 2384 02:39:46,880 --> 02:39:50,560 The effect of the attacks shocked Europe and America 2385 02:39:50,560 --> 02:39:55,640 and gave powerful force to the new politics of uncertainty and anxiety. 2386 02:39:57,200 --> 02:39:59,840 I'm sure that you, with me, 2387 02:39:59,840 --> 02:40:04,080 share the absolute horror and total revulsion 2388 02:40:04,080 --> 02:40:07,440 at what happened in Paris last Friday. 2389 02:40:07,440 --> 02:40:09,200 And I'm afraid there is, 2390 02:40:09,200 --> 02:40:12,000 and we have to be honest and frank about this 2391 02:40:12,000 --> 02:40:15,320 and talk about these things without being fearful, 2392 02:40:15,320 --> 02:40:21,960 there is a problem with some of the Muslim community in this country. 2393 02:40:21,960 --> 02:40:24,480 There is a problem. And we have to be honest about it. 2394 02:40:24,480 --> 02:40:27,520 Our politicians, I'm afraid, haven't had the guts. 2395 02:40:27,520 --> 02:40:31,360 APPLAUSE 2396 02:40:31,360 --> 02:40:34,160 This could be the great Trojan horse of all time, 2397 02:40:34,160 --> 02:40:37,840 because you look at the migration... Study it, look at it. 2398 02:40:37,840 --> 02:40:40,680 Now they'll start infiltrating with women and children. 2399 02:40:40,680 --> 02:40:43,840 Both the Brexit campaign in Britain 2400 02:40:43,840 --> 02:40:45,720 and Donald Trump in America 2401 02:40:45,720 --> 02:40:48,600 did exactly what al-Suri had predicted. 2402 02:40:48,600 --> 02:40:51,920 They used the fear to dramatise a world where everything - 2403 02:40:51,920 --> 02:40:55,240 even going to a restaurant - had become a risky event. 2404 02:40:56,400 --> 02:41:00,560 And what had been seen as doomed campaigns on the fringes of society 2405 02:41:00,560 --> 02:41:03,040 that could never win became frighteningly real. 2406 02:41:04,560 --> 02:41:08,440 I am genuinely freaked out right now about this whole Brexit thing. 2407 02:41:08,440 --> 02:41:11,400 Because we'd all been told that it wasn't going to happen, 2408 02:41:11,400 --> 02:41:13,960 like it was going away, it was going away from Brexiting 2409 02:41:13,960 --> 02:41:15,440 and on to the staying. 2410 02:41:15,440 --> 02:41:18,440 And because I had this, like bedrock belief... 2411 02:41:18,440 --> 02:41:20,960 I have friends who, like, live and work in London, 2412 02:41:20,960 --> 02:41:24,400 and they said, "Don't worry, we're a very sensible people." 2413 02:41:24,400 --> 02:41:25,560 LAUGHTER 2414 02:41:25,560 --> 02:41:27,640 "This isn't going to happen. It's a lot of talk, 2415 02:41:27,640 --> 02:41:29,800 "but we don't do that sort of stuff here." 2416 02:41:29,800 --> 02:41:32,280 Um...they were wrong. 2417 02:41:32,280 --> 02:41:33,840 LAUGHTER 2418 02:41:33,840 --> 02:41:38,840 And that really kind of crushes my view of, 2419 02:41:38,840 --> 02:41:40,560 like, what can happen that is bad 2420 02:41:40,560 --> 02:41:42,680 that we don't think is going to happen. 2421 02:41:42,680 --> 02:41:44,600 Like it's just not supposed to happen. 2422 02:41:48,560 --> 02:41:50,320 CROWD GASPS 2423 02:41:56,080 --> 02:41:58,040 CLANKING 2424 02:41:58,040 --> 02:42:00,360 DRIPPING 2425 02:42:00,360 --> 02:42:02,040 CLANKING 2426 02:42:03,480 --> 02:42:06,120 I fear that we are watching 2427 02:42:06,120 --> 02:42:10,640 the stirrings of fascism in Europe again. 2428 02:42:10,640 --> 02:42:15,520 And I genuinely never thought it would be my country 2429 02:42:15,520 --> 02:42:16,880 that did that. 2430 02:42:16,880 --> 02:42:18,960 I thought this would be America. 2431 02:42:18,960 --> 02:42:22,600 I thought America was the people who were so filled with hate. 2432 02:42:22,600 --> 02:42:24,160 Not us. 2433 02:42:24,160 --> 02:42:28,480 And I'm so disappointed. 2434 02:42:28,480 --> 02:42:30,280 I'm so hurt. 2435 02:42:34,960 --> 02:42:36,320 Zee. 2436 02:42:38,520 --> 02:42:41,120 MUSIC: Standing Room Only by Barbara Mandrell. 2437 02:42:51,800 --> 02:42:57,640 # You must think my bed's a bus stop 2438 02:42:57,640 --> 02:43:02,960 # The way you come and go HE COUGHS 2439 02:43:02,960 --> 02:43:07,240 # I ain't seen you with the lights on 2440 02:43:08,800 --> 02:43:12,240 # Two nights in a row 2441 02:43:13,840 --> 02:43:17,880 # So pack your rusty razor 2442 02:43:19,200 --> 02:43:22,760 # Don't bother with goodbye 2443 02:43:24,840 --> 02:43:28,520 # Your cup runneth open 2444 02:43:29,800 --> 02:43:35,240 # But mine is always dry 2445 02:43:37,440 --> 02:43:40,680 # Standing room only 2446 02:43:41,800 --> 02:43:45,400 # I can't stand no more 2447 02:43:48,240 --> 02:43:52,520 # Standing room only 2448 02:43:52,520 --> 02:43:57,000 # Outside my door 2449 02:44:00,240 --> 02:44:04,280 # Don't help me set the table 2450 02:44:05,640 --> 02:44:10,120 # Cos now there's one less place 2451 02:44:12,160 --> 02:44:17,120 # I won't lay Mama's silver 2452 02:44:17,120 --> 02:44:21,520 # For a man who won't say grace 2453 02:44:22,680 --> 02:44:25,520 # If home is where the heart is... # 2454 02:44:25,520 --> 02:44:27,840 This is my right to free speech going on here, OK? 2455 02:44:27,840 --> 02:44:32,320 # Then your home's on the streets 2456 02:44:33,800 --> 02:44:37,760 # Me, I'll read a good book 2457 02:44:39,080 --> 02:44:43,480 # Turn out the lights and go to sleep 2458 02:44:45,920 --> 02:44:48,400 # Standing room only 2459 02:44:50,120 --> 02:44:55,360 # I can't stand no more, no more 2460 02:44:56,920 --> 02:45:00,440 # Standing room only 2461 02:45:02,160 --> 02:45:05,040 # Outside my door... # 2462 02:45:05,040 --> 02:45:07,480 TINNY MUSIC PLAYS 2463 02:45:07,480 --> 02:45:09,520 INDISTINCT SPEECH 2464 02:45:20,080 --> 02:45:21,520 Oh. 2465 02:45:23,640 --> 02:45:25,120 - You're on video. - Oh. 2466 02:45:28,960 --> 02:45:31,400 Say bye, Heather. 2467 02:45:31,400 --> 02:45:32,680 VIDEO OFF