On Thu, Feb 09, 2017 at 03:50:07PM +0100, No wrote:

let's see how long it takes before the usual suspects start bashing eachothers worldviews. nazis, nazis everywhere and oh hitler and ... sigh

Godwin's law on top of the thread? Don't remember ever seeing this before :)

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 02/09/2017 09:50 AM, No wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fny99f8amM

aka inception asto propaganda about propaganda +_+

Opinions about ^

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13603570

let's see how long it takes before the usual suspects start bashing eachothers worldviews. nazis, nazis everywhere and oh hitler and ... sigh Hypernormalisation

I recently watched Adam Curtis' latest documentary, Hypernormalisation. Being a long time fan of Curtis' work, I found Hypernormalisation a little disconcerting. Mainstream historians often do very well at exposing the "important but neglected" details of once-controversial political events. But when their accounts directly involve living persons in positions of power their standards of evidence may take a holiday. As an example, Overthrow: America's Century Of Regine Change by Stephen Kinzer stands out as a remarkably complete and insightful work until it arrives at the first Bush Administration. From there, the author begins repeating the U.S. propaganda line contradicting well documented, readily available factual evidence. It now appears that Adam Curtis has also found a need to exercise discretion in truth-telling. I may change my mind tomorrow. Maybe there's something ironic or Mobius-self-referential behind the narrative of Hypernormalisation that I just don't get. But right now I question the wisdom of Curtis even starting this project, which accepts current propaganda narratives, rejected by a consensus of independent journalists, as plain facts. This is largely accomplished by dancing around the ground truth of key turning point events central to the narrative's accounts of the present wars in Libya and Syria. In a film whose message might be summed up as "civilization has gone insane and no one knows what is real any more," gross misattribution of the origins of the wars against Libya and Syria casts a long shadow: Had more factual views of the role of US/NATO powers in these events been acknowledged, however briefly, that shadow would not be quite so dark: But as the presentation stands, it proves its own point by hiding information essential to understanding reality, depriving the audience of insights with regard to fact vs. fiction on the world stage - a definition of insanity. I don't expect Mr. Curtis to be a superhero or a martyr. But I have come to expect better work than Hypernormalisation from him. Parts of the show were really quite excellent. But the more he built on the central themes of the presentation, the more disjointed and dissonant the narrative looked to me, until Curtis appeared to prove his own point about the world going insane as the narrative itself went off the rails and broke contact with reality. I do not expect a Call To Action at the end of a Curtis story, but an implicit statement that our only option is to "just give up," reinforced by an object lesson in same, is a call to action of its own sort. I appreciate and recommend the whole Curtis canon of documentaries, and my expectations for the future are not diminished: I can easily believe that in this case, the material Curtis was working with bit back and he did the best he could to salvage a no-win situation. So I do suggest that readers who are not familiar with Adam Curtis check out The Power Of Nightmares and/or The Century Of The Self before viewing Hypernormalisation. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux) iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJYnJnZAAoJEECU6c5Xzmuq02MIALQ8xIJM5Jvc9llJX8OmQgHQ RF3zUtv+EpGxKRFmXx4+Jle293Qxf1IDMqAochdUu6UbwNc4d5f6FshDIGibvOyv ZN6Sulmm49w5pdOagSAKu/4i+hZescb/rbHJ6qtmFR9+pTt6AKSKzYsLCkBV3u3+ ACn1/rGJUNw62ZXkqa8t4BsQR6Nkk9p4yzhSWYLChF8h1TlGFFmEk2rQDqGrSn9R kOKi1VyxYK/UDXU0eALWR9i9w3bEHFHAyz4yR9EqcoJqdGo0L89P3PhHqBnuMhjB fcU9wURQ5nDSPeewUeUDRV0UZxIJJgjm/9AjkRh84RVTkwsbhQsynPP8u7e6VKI= =ie8Q -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----