11 ms·

The Baby and the Baath Water

72 points by jgraeme 13y ago

curlyquote 13y ago
Everything Adam Curtis does is amazing. The ending to this article sums up western perspectives on the middle east very well, in my opinion.
- saljam 13y ago
  While I normally dislike Adam Curtis's work, I totally agree with you about the ending on that article. That's certainly the sentiment I sense, as an Arab currently in the UK.
  - gruseom 13y ago
    I'm curious. What do you dislike about Adam Curtis' work? He has a considerable gift for digging up and presenting historical material. For example, the stuff about Bernays and Freud at the beginning of Century of the Self is riveting. But some of the narratives into which he frames that material seem questionable. The one time I knew something independently about what he was presenting, I was surprised at how distorted it was. That was in his documentary about the Rand Corporation and game theory, when he included the radical Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing as an example of psychologists who worked to expand state control. To anyone who knows anything about Laing—a fascinating figure in his own right—that doesn't pass the laugh test.
    - RodericDay 13y ago
      Can you explain why it "doesn't pass the laugh test"?
      - gruseom 13y ago
        Laing was an anti-institutionalist who became famous for challenging the inhumane practices of psychiatry (his profession) and helping to set up safe houses where people having psychotic episodes could undergo them with emotional support from others without the intervention of medical or social authority. He became associated with a model of psychotic experience as a kind of inner process that some people go through. He was a charismatic guy and became a star of the 1960s counterculture, a bit like a Timothy Leary or Allen Ginsburg--an older mentor and kindred spirit to the hippies. He was also involved in the radical liberation politics of the time. Laing's work was about giving support to non-conformist experience and building a conceptual model in which it could exist on its own terms, speak in its own voice and so on, instead of immediately being reduced to mental illness, a brain disorder, delinquency, or what have you. This was a popular view in the late 1960s. The idea that at the same time he would have been consulting for the Rand Corporation on how to apply psychological principles to reinforce a docile consumerist society doesn't pass the laugh test. It would have been far out of character for him. If I recall correctly, Curtis brought up Laing in the context of game theory and how it was being (mis-)applied psychologically. There had been a massive bestseller called "Games People Play" in the mid 60s that applied some of these ideas to ordinary life. Many people became interested in the power dynamics of everyday relationships. This tied in to some of Laing's earlier work (especially about the power dynamics of family systems), so it was natural for him to use this language in his later work. My memory is that Curtis picked up on that and linked it to the mathematical game theorists of the Rand Corporation--and some of their more Strangelovian politics--in an entirely specious way. He simply juxtaposed them and said they were working on the same thing, with scary background music. No doubt it was very convincing, except to anyone who ever read Laing. He might as well have put J. Edgar Hoover together with the Beatles. I hope it's clear that my point isn't about R.D. Laing. It's rather that I randomly happened to have read him and so could instantly see that Curtis wasn't just a little off there, he was totally full of shit. So I can't help but wonder where else he might be. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_People_Play_(book) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_People_Play_(book)
        RodericDay 13y ago
        I think you're projecting a bit. You're talking about Curtis' The Trap. According to the wiki summary: A separate strand in the documentary is the work of R.D. Laing, whose work in psychiatry led him to model familial interactions using game theory. His conclusion was that humans are inherently selfish, shrewd, and spontaneously generate stratagems during everyday interactions. Laing's theories became more developed when he concluded that some forms of mental illness were merely artificial labels, used by the state to suppress individual suffering. This belief became a staple tenet of counterculture during the 1960s. [1] I don't remember Laing being particularly lambasted in the documentary as you do, and I don't recall Curtis simplifying things so much. If so, the above summary is being really charitable. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_%28television_documentary_series%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_%28television_document...
        gruseom 13y ago
        That's possible, because I don't remember the details. But I distinctly remember the feeling that Curtis' portrayal of Laing was badly distorted, and I recall that a commenter who had known Laing personally said the same thing. If I have time later, I'll try to take another look.
        RodericDay 13y ago
        If you go on YouTube and search for the doc (The Trap), and speed up to 36:50, they start on Laing. Quote from the doc: He was about to use his growing power to attack one of the most powerful professions in America: The Medical and Psychiatric establishment. The result would be dramatic, but the outcome would be very different from what Laing intended. His ideas would undermine the old controlling medical elite, but far from liberating people, what would actually emerge would be a revolutionary new system of order and control, driven by the objective power of numbers. He doesn't portray Laing as in cahoots with some evil plutocrats, although he does talk about the Rosenheim (sp?) experiment separately.
    - saljam 13y ago
      > But some of the narratives into which he frames that material seem questionable. Mostly this. I think it's because he's essentially making entertainment out of history, which is pretty much impossible to do without missing part of the picture. Otherwise it would be too boring (like real history).
grey-area 13y ago
The original story has a bit more to it, this is just a relink to the older blog entry which is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/the_baby_and_the_baath_water http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/the_baby_and_the...
leokun 13y ago
The picture of the American military recreation room around the tomb of the founder of the Baath movement is pretty intense. Did they not know it was a tomb?
- mcantelon 13y ago
  Knew (given the guy's body is in there), but likely didn't care... just as they didn't care to stop the looting of Iraq's museums.
- sudomal 13y ago
  I would hazard a guess that those military personnel aren't well read on Iraqi and Syrian history.
  - cpursley 13y ago
    Nor do they 'Merican history.
  - bcoates 13y ago
    Why would you think that? Looks like they went out of their way to be disrespectful to the tomb of one of the intellectual leaders of their enemy. This is consistent with the US military policy of treating the various artifacts Saddam's government (up to and including the actual bodies of Saddam and his family) as illegitimate and not worthy of respect.
- minor_nitwit 13y ago
  It could have been a defensive shield, if the insurgents would not attack a national monument.
gruseom 13y ago
Miles Copeland, the CIA officer whose book Curtis relies heavily on in the article, was an interesting character. I've been meaning to look up that book for a while. Has anybody here read it? (He was also the father of Stewart Copeland, the drummer for the Police, not that that matters.)
alexeisadeski3 13y ago
God, is everything America's fault? How convenient that the author focuses on one American intervention, as if they were the first. Nothing of the Turks, the French? They conquered and ruled the area for (combined) centuries, but no - it's the Evil American Capitalists and their one short intervention to blame. And who's to say that Za'im wouldn't have launched a coup in absence of American suggestion?
- speeder 13y ago
  I am yet to see a US intervention that did not.resulted in disaster...
  - riggins 13y ago
    WWII
    - cstross 13y ago
      ... Which was pretty much won by the USSR.
      - Apocryphon 13y ago
        WWI, then?
        alexeisadeski3 13y ago
        Won by the Jews. /s
      - e40 13y ago
        * ... Which was pretty much won by the USSR.* Which has nothing to do with the GP comment to which you are replying: I am yet to see a US intervention that did not.resulted in disaster... It didn't say anything about winning.
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
D9u 13y ago
How about the USA clean up it's own act at home before trying to intervene in another nation which poses zero credible threat to the USA. Look at how Korea, Vietnam, Libya, etc, have ended up after US intervention. Such a horrendous track record should preclude repeat performances of a similar nature.
- natrius 13y ago
  The stated goal of military action in Syria isn't regime change. It's creating a powerful disincentive against the use of chemical weapons, agents of mass murder that kill indiscriminately. I didn't completely understand the need for action, so I did some Wikipedia reading on the history of chemical weapons, and now I'm more conflicted about it. I highly suggest doing the same.
  - powertower 13y ago
    When the government comes out and says - "The evidence and proof that Bashar was the one that ordered chemical weapons use is so obvious and unquestionable that you don't really need to see or ask for it... Because doing so would be irrational!" Start worrying. In a few weeks or months when it comes out that the chemical attack was really done by one of the 57 or so US and Al-Qaeda backed + funded insurgent groups operating in Syria, I really hope that Obama keeps his word on punishing those responsible (for crossing the red line). Though the best info I could get is saying right now that the rebel group that launched the attack didn't know what they had, and thought they were launching conventional rockets. So I'm not sure you can blame them the same way you could blame Bashar. The funny thing about all this is that if the US just came out and said we are doing this to secure the next 50-100 years of US energy needs and geo-political strategy - I'd be all for these middle-eastern wars because I understand the need for it. But I'm not sure the general public could shed its moral supremacy desires, nor understand complicated issues or how the world really turns.
    - pipy 13y ago
      Or, as another poster summed up [1]: Syria sits right in between the oilfields in the Middle East and the oil consumers in Europe, so when a pipeline is built connecting the two, Syria has a vote for or against its completion. Since oil pipelines are both necessary and quite profitable, this can lead to very large disputes. Al Jazeera covered this last year here [2] where it was suggested that the West would be inclined to usurp Assad for someone more favorable to the West's long term energy interests. It seems their prediction was correct as the US (along with Britain and Turkey) is escalating relations with Syria, using chemical attacks and civil rights violations as justification. The Guardian also has a great summary of the issue here. [3] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6313628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6313628 [2] http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/20128513344.. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/20128513344.... [3] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/au.. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/au....

72 points by jgraeme 13y ago

Everything Adam Curtis does is amazing. The ending to this article sums up western perspectives on the middle east very well, in my opinion.

saljam 13y ago
While I normally dislike Adam Curtis's work, I totally agree with you about the ending on that article. That's certainly the sentiment I sense, as an Arab currently in the UK.
- gruseom 13y ago
  I'm curious. What do you dislike about Adam Curtis' work? He has a considerable gift for digging up and presenting historical material. For example, the stuff about Bernays and Freud at the beginning of Century of the Self is riveting. But some of the narratives into which he frames that material seem questionable. The one time I knew something independently about what he was presenting, I was surprised at how distorted it was. That was in his documentary about the Rand Corporation and game theory, when he included the radical Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing as an example of psychologists who worked to expand state control. To anyone who knows anything about Laing—a fascinating figure in his own right—that doesn't pass the laugh test.
  - RodericDay 13y ago
    Can you explain why it "doesn't pass the laugh test"?
    - gruseom 13y ago
      Laing was an anti-institutionalist who became famous for challenging the inhumane practices of psychiatry (his profession) and helping to set up safe houses where people having psychotic episodes could undergo them with emotional support from others without the intervention of medical or social authority. He became associated with a model of psychotic experience as a kind of inner process that some people go through. He was a charismatic guy and became a star of the 1960s counterculture, a bit like a Timothy Leary or Allen Ginsburg--an older mentor and kindred spirit to the hippies. He was also involved in the radical liberation politics of the time. Laing's work was about giving support to non-conformist experience and building a conceptual model in which it could exist on its own terms, speak in its own voice and so on, instead of immediately being reduced to mental illness, a brain disorder, delinquency, or what have you. This was a popular view in the late 1960s. The idea that at the same time he would have been consulting for the Rand Corporation on how to apply psychological principles to reinforce a docile consumerist society doesn't pass the laugh test. It would have been far out of character for him. If I recall correctly, Curtis brought up Laing in the context of game theory and how it was being (mis-)applied psychologically. There had been a massive bestseller called "Games People Play" in the mid 60s that applied some of these ideas to ordinary life. Many people became interested in the power dynamics of everyday relationships. This tied in to some of Laing's earlier work (especially about the power dynamics of family systems), so it was natural for him to use this language in his later work. My memory is that Curtis picked up on that and linked it to the mathematical game theorists of the Rand Corporation--and some of their more Strangelovian politics--in an entirely specious way. He simply juxtaposed them and said they were working on the same thing, with scary background music. No doubt it was very convincing, except to anyone who ever read Laing. He might as well have put J. Edgar Hoover together with the Beatles. I hope it's clear that my point isn't about R.D. Laing. It's rather that I randomly happened to have read him and so could instantly see that Curtis wasn't just a little off there, he was totally full of shit. So I can't help but wonder where else he might be. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_People_Play_(book) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_People_Play_(book)
      - RodericDay 13y ago
        I think you're projecting a bit. You're talking about Curtis' The Trap. According to the wiki summary: A separate strand in the documentary is the work of R.D. Laing, whose work in psychiatry led him to model familial interactions using game theory. His conclusion was that humans are inherently selfish, shrewd, and spontaneously generate stratagems during everyday interactions. Laing's theories became more developed when he concluded that some forms of mental illness were merely artificial labels, used by the state to suppress individual suffering. This belief became a staple tenet of counterculture during the 1960s. [1] I don't remember Laing being particularly lambasted in the documentary as you do, and I don't recall Curtis simplifying things so much. If so, the above summary is being really charitable. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_%28television_documentary_series%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_%28television_document...
        gruseom 13y ago
        That's possible, because I don't remember the details. But I distinctly remember the feeling that Curtis' portrayal of Laing was badly distorted, and I recall that a commenter who had known Laing personally said the same thing. If I have time later, I'll try to take another look.
        RodericDay 13y ago
        If you go on YouTube and search for the doc (The Trap), and speed up to 36:50, they start on Laing. Quote from the doc: He was about to use his growing power to attack one of the most powerful professions in America: The Medical and Psychiatric establishment. The result would be dramatic, but the outcome would be very different from what Laing intended. His ideas would undermine the old controlling medical elite, but far from liberating people, what would actually emerge would be a revolutionary new system of order and control, driven by the objective power of numbers. He doesn't portray Laing as in cahoots with some evil plutocrats, although he does talk about the Rosenheim (sp?) experiment separately.
  - saljam 13y ago
    > But some of the narratives into which he frames that material seem questionable. Mostly this. I think it's because he's essentially making entertainment out of history, which is pretty much impossible to do without missing part of the picture. Otherwise it would be too boring (like real history).

grey-area 13y ago

The original story has a bit more to it, this is just a relink to the older blog entry which is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/the_baby_and_the_baath_water http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/the_baby_and_the...

leokun 13y ago

The picture of the American military recreation room around the tomb of the founder of the Baath movement is pretty intense. Did they not know it was a tomb?

mcantelon 13y ago
Knew (given the guy's body is in there), but likely didn't care... just as they didn't care to stop the looting of Iraq's museums.
sudomal 13y ago
I would hazard a guess that those military personnel aren't well read on Iraqi and Syrian history.
- cpursley 13y ago
  Nor do they 'Merican history.
- bcoates 13y ago
  Why would you think that? Looks like they went out of their way to be disrespectful to the tomb of one of the intellectual leaders of their enemy. This is consistent with the US military policy of treating the various artifacts Saddam's government (up to and including the actual bodies of Saddam and his family) as illegitimate and not worthy of respect.
minor_nitwit 13y ago
It could have been a defensive shield, if the insurgents would not attack a national monument.

gruseom 13y ago

Miles Copeland, the CIA officer whose book Curtis relies heavily on in the article, was an interesting character. I've been meaning to look up that book for a while. Has anybody here read it? (He was also the father of Stewart Copeland, the drummer for the Police, not that that matters.)

alexeisadeski3 13y ago

God, is everything America's fault? How convenient that the author focuses on one American intervention, as if they were the first. Nothing of the Turks, the French? They conquered and ruled the area for (combined) centuries, but no - it's the Evil American Capitalists and their one short intervention to blame. And who's to say that Za'im wouldn't have launched a coup in absence of American suggestion?

speeder 13y ago
I am yet to see a US intervention that did not.resulted in disaster...
- riggins 13y ago
  WWII
  - cstross 13y ago
    ... Which was pretty much won by the USSR.
    - Apocryphon 13y ago
      WWI, then?
      - alexeisadeski3 13y ago
        Won by the Jews. /s
    - e40 13y ago
      * ... Which was pretty much won by the USSR.* Which has nothing to do with the GP comment to which you are replying: I am yet to see a US intervention that did not.resulted in disaster... It didn't say anything about winning.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]

D9u 13y ago

How about the USA clean up it's own act at home before trying to intervene in another nation which poses zero credible threat to the USA. Look at how Korea, Vietnam, Libya, etc, have ended up after US intervention. Such a horrendous track record should preclude repeat performances of a similar nature.

natrius 13y ago
The stated goal of military action in Syria isn't regime change. It's creating a powerful disincentive against the use of chemical weapons, agents of mass murder that kill indiscriminately. I didn't completely understand the need for action, so I did some Wikipedia reading on the history of chemical weapons, and now I'm more conflicted about it. I highly suggest doing the same.
- powertower 13y ago
  When the government comes out and says - "The evidence and proof that Bashar was the one that ordered chemical weapons use is so obvious and unquestionable that you don't really need to see or ask for it... Because doing so would be irrational!" Start worrying. In a few weeks or months when it comes out that the chemical attack was really done by one of the 57 or so US and Al-Qaeda backed + funded insurgent groups operating in Syria, I really hope that Obama keeps his word on punishing those responsible (for crossing the red line). Though the best info I could get is saying right now that the rebel group that launched the attack didn't know what they had, and thought they were launching conventional rockets. So I'm not sure you can blame them the same way you could blame Bashar. The funny thing about all this is that if the US just came out and said we are doing this to secure the next 50-100 years of US energy needs and geo-political strategy - I'd be all for these middle-eastern wars because I understand the need for it. But I'm not sure the general public could shed its moral supremacy desires, nor understand complicated issues or how the world really turns.
  - pipy 13y ago
    Or, as another poster summed up [1]: Syria sits right in between the oilfields in the Middle East and the oil consumers in Europe, so when a pipeline is built connecting the two, Syria has a vote for or against its completion. Since oil pipelines are both necessary and quite profitable, this can lead to very large disputes. Al Jazeera covered this last year here [2] where it was suggested that the West would be inclined to usurp Assad for someone more favorable to the West's long term energy interests. It seems their prediction was correct as the US (along with Britain and Turkey) is escalating relations with Syria, using chemical attacks and civil rights violations as justification. The Guardian also has a great summary of the issue here. [3] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6313628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6313628 [2] http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/20128513344.. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/20128513344.... [3] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/au.. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/au....