主播大秀

"And what are called the Taliban insurgents are in reality a rebellion by the Pashtun majority in the country against that elite. And thus might represent the will of the majority."

While the Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, they contribute roughly 40% of the population. Which is not the majority. The Tadik-Uzbek-Hazara coalition is larger, between 45% and 50%.

Congrats with acquiring the 主播大秀's motherlode of Afghan reporting.

Oops. I meant Tajik, not Tadik.

I look forward to your new film about Afghanistan, and I'll just assume that it will be as excellent as your previous film essays.

Fantastic as always, thanks Adam.

Is that the project then? Will there be a history of Afghanistan in a series of films like The Trap etc? If so that is pretty damn exciting, can't wait.

I don't think the gunner is reading the manual for how to operate the gun; I believe that 'howitzers' which fire at targets out of sight of the gunner, need to be fired at a map reference or some other vector, maybe radio link to the forward spotter. This means constant referencing to a chart which gives the gunner windage and elevation values for adjusting targetting; hence the looking at chart, then looking through the sight, then winding the lever to the new position.

"The unedited rushes...",

So when our man Idema drops the F-bomb, was that you that beeped him Adam?

At the risk of making John Wayne a revolutionary, but he must be turning in his grave: This is a man's war, fought by a man's army... having a manicure!?

They may win a few purple hearts, dodging fire from angry American Tax payers.

When the 'conceptual arts' lecturer said: "You're saying this is not useful to humanity... what's your point?", it put me in mind of all those other relativist from left wing university campuses, who fail, as a badge of honour, to grasp common sense.

I recall from Yuri Bezmenov's YouTube lectures, on soviet subversion in the west, that such left wing groups were encouraged and supported by Moscow, to add to the western moral and ethical decline, prior to 'chaos', and subsequent communist take over. What if the west is trying the same thing?

Instead of: "Yet it is increasingly clear that we in the west have no real idea of what that thing was. Or is.", we could replace it with: The west appears to not know what it is doing, as a cover for deliberately provoking unrest, a la subversion.

The west wants to be in Afghanistan for strategic placement, between the oil rich middle east, Russia, China, and India. There is also an expensive amount of oil and gas to be transported from Uzbekistan via pipelines through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea, which will need protection.

Think of it as the suitors plaguing Penelope whilst Odysseus is away. Odysseus would be represented by a stable strong independent Afghanistan; whilst the suitors are represented by the chaos of deliberate provocation of the tribes and the cultures. If one group is removed, the suitors warn Penelope that she will be raped by those left, so you have to feed us all to be safe.

If the west appeared as smart as it is, then the ruse would be up.

This may seem a tedious or naive question, but why can't all 18TB of data be placed online somewhere for everyone to see, to annotate, to index and to collaboratively weave into the fabric of conversation online?

Having been peripherally involved in the 主播大秀s attempts in the past to open up their content to public access I understand the legal problems of releasing entire finished programs (licensed music and footage, legal releases from the subjects etc.) but since all this footage was shot by 主播大秀 cameramen, and is presumably completely owned by the corporation, surely there wouldn't be any legal issues?

As you point out, the value of an archive like this is extraordinary -but only if it can actually play a part in the conversation. The value of material like this increases the more it's seen, the more it becomes linked and edited and quoted and indexed.

@ stenkarazin

What exactly do you mean by 鈥渃ommon sense鈥�? When a man attacks conceptual artists (and presumably artists in general), but at the same time invokes John Wayne (or more accurately the artist formerly known as Marion, who never saw military service having been rejected by the US Naval academy and managing to avoid serving in WWII, who also went to university in California btw), and cannibalises the actors later guilt ridden political missives; it does leave one in some doubt that such a person is capable of defining common sense, much less of practising it. Oh, btw it's not good form to leave repeated posts in a line. It leaves you open to accusations that 鈥渢he empty can rattles the most鈥�. Is Jack Idema a friend of yours by any chance?
It's postings such as the above that make me appreciate all the more professional and highly intelligent commentators such as Adam Curtis.

It is strange how stenkarazin has such an issue with the artist, and yet the right wing nut Jack Idema gets a free pass. Kinda puts me in mind of all those other right wingers who fail, as a badge of honour, to grasp reality.
Or perhaps stenkarazin finds his story plausible? Do you? Or in your world is he also a "conceptual artist", but one that you just happen to approve of, so you apply a filter? Take your blinkers off mate.Yes, this particular artist is naive, but your failure to pick up on the fantasist and his parachuting spirit dog makes me wonder if you're really the sort of person who should be lecturing people on common sense.

Seriously though, can anyone think of a reason how some guy with 8 blokes chained up in his basement cannot be seen as anything other than abnormal? Am I missing something?

Maybe it's because I lack "common sense".

What makes a man risk his life for his culture? Even without completely answering that, I will suppose that the answer must include the inherent 'value' that the culture in question, holds for the desperate.

In our western culture, we have allowed Marcel Duchamp's 1917 urinal, to mean that 'art' is subjective to the artists freedom to stipulate. And that's ignoring the possibility that Duchamp was simply mocking the art of his day, in such a manner that the average Parisian would instantly understand. The west's art departments have lead the way with this 'relativism' to meaning in general; as much as it seems liberating to be free from conservative culture, this freedom to stipulate anything, divorces the student from their culture.

It is a great opportunity for western 'left-wing art types', to learn from a culture that still believes in itself, to the point where men will put their very existence on the line, in opposition to a culture that puts other peoples sons on the line, after they've had a refreshing manicure.

It's a tragedy that the strength of a culture, has to be proven by its destruction, and that those who support the alternative 'culture', are themselves not prepared to enter the front-line, but instead undermine their hosts with fifth column agitprop, under the metonymy of conceptual art.

I'd go as far to say this as close you'll get to Cin茅ma v茅rit茅. Interesting it's taken the relatively new median of the internet to fufill this movements initial intentions.

It's fascinating stuff for sure but to be fair it's not cinema verite really. It's more like the idea of Direct Cinema, as far as that is ever achievable.

If you check out Vertov stuff, or that damn Nanook film, there's style everywhere and the associations, the 'truths' are very clearly imposed by the filmmaker. The events are even consciously orchestrated. And like all film there are choices in terms of angles and lighting and tracking and most importantly of all, editing. So what goes in, what's cut out, what goes together. It's the heart of film, that's why they make you watch Regles De Joue 50,000 times when you study film (despite the fact I think I may have spelt it wrong).

From what I remember, Cinema Verite never claimed to be a objective record of events, it was supposed to subjective, that's the big misnomer about how the term is used. But it got this 'cinema of truth' tag so people assume it was the idea of this all-seeing, non-intrusive eye just watching; in fact it tries to do the opposite, it scrupulously tries to reveal truths through employing different elements of style. This is actually what most art does, but film has this unfortunate (because film is implicitly a modern and technological form I thin) association with some kind of absolute truth. This, coupled with how close it is to our everyday sensual experience of the world compared to other forms, is what makes it so powerful.

It actually occurs to me that the aesthetics and politics of Adam's films are closely related in some respect, that objective rational truths aren't everything, or perhaps even anything, and morality/truth derives from subjective human experience. Some of his stuff, although it's been a while since I saw it, reminds me of Man With The Movie Camera.

@ "If this is true it means that we in the west have become like foolish bit-players blundering around in a complex regional war that we do not understand."
In Britain the media wails that we will *let down our soldiers who have died, if we cut and run now*. Given that the soldier in a democracy has to remain apolitical, the only people who can speak up for him/her are the folks back home and if we choose to send more to die in order to pay respect to those who have died - then truly they will be lions led by donkeys.
Whatever military budget is focussed on Afghanistan should be ring-fenced into financial aid to this poor benighted country for the same duration as the military adventure was planned. I read someplace that America has spent more money on just building the roadways to service it's military bases, than has ever been spent on managed assistance for the Afghans to reconstruct their civilisation.
Time to start adding in the construction of the Spa's now, I guess............

"They installed a Tajik-Uzbek-Hazara regime that has little interest in democracy. And what are called the Taliban insurgents are in reality a rebellion by the Pashtun majority in the country against that elite. And thus might represent the will of the majority"--is a very simplistic and reductive argument, even though it has some vocal exponents. The biggest problem with this narrative is that Karzai himself is a Pushtun as are a significant number of cabinet ministers and parliamentarians (unless of course we get into the business of determining who the "true" Pushtun are).

In any case, I am happy with the find. Any chance the stash will be available publicly?

I love raw news footage, it's so much more interesting than the edited stuff on the news.

Reading this reminded me of a site that sadly no longer exists which was called www.fallujah.us.

On here you could watch raw news footage from the Fallujah, what did they call it?...Surge?

I used some of the footage in a video experiment you can watch here:

Watching Trying to Kill Hamid Karzai sent shiver down my spine. I was producing with Phil and correspondent Lyse Doucet that day. You can see me in a brown shirt grovelling on ground! Phil's filming is an astonishing achievement. At one stage he was in direct line of fire from American Special Forces. Later they said they would have shot him if it had been the optimum moment to down the assailant. The three men on the ground are still dying. Two are innocent: an afghan bodyguard and a civilian fan of the President, who both took on the Taliban man, who is in the green uniform. I took stills for myself because I was worried there would not be a record of the horror due to sanitising the images for British consumption. In the middle of the night after suddenly being sent down to Kandahar airbase by land as decoys for the president we had an uneasy flight to Kabul: US special forces on the Herc sitting next to the Afghan bodyguards -one of whom they had shot dead hours earlier.

Thanks Adam, I鈥檓 very excited both in anticipation of what you might do with all this footage, and also for you Adam. I am sure you will have many hours of fun looking through all this, I can鈥檛 think of a better person to have access to this treasure trove of video. Keep up the good work and good luck.

well done for drawing attention to phil's extraordinary work

Hello Adam, Amazing post!
Is it possible to contact you via email ?
ayatziv@gmail.com

Absolutely fascinating as always. Very much looking forward to the next series.

Well done Phil Goodwin and its good that Adam Curtis is in possession of this archive of raw material.
The video snippets Adam has put on his blog are surreal, enlightening and entertaining. Getting a manicure in a war zone + 鈥榞overnment troops trying to work out how to fire a big gun鈥�. Which one is Captain Mainwaring and didn鈥檛 Lance Corporal Jones do well with the lanyard to fire big gun!! I almost needed the conceptual urinal at that stage as I was pissing myself with laughter. But the truth is it鈥檚 all far too serious. All those life鈥檚 lost in aide of the power struggle mongers and the industrial war complex profiteers in a civil war the Americans and NATO are unwittingly taking sides in.
As for Jack Idema I鈥檓 sure Donald Rumsfeld would give him a job if he known what Jack was doing, as Donald said in his plausible deniability way about Jack 鈥楾here are known known鈥檚. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don鈥檛 know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don鈥檛 know, but if I had known Jack I would have given him full control of Task Force Sabre 7鈥�.
A least they have Edward Caraballo video evidence to prosecute Jack with鈥r do they! Perhaps Jack has a good lawyer and will get community service picking up the litter in the street of Kabul. If he did work for Donald he would be back in the motherland right now sipping on his military apple-pie beer-stein. As for Edward Caraballo, the moral of the story is never become an independent documentary film-maker. So much for fantasists in war zones! Anyhow justice must be seen to be done.

It鈥檚 no laughing matter, so Adam and production team, give us all one of those fascinatingly enlightening documentaries you are so renowned for and good at. 鈥�18 terabytes鈥�- Hope to see it soon.
Best regards, Alan.

I love the first one (I haven't watched the rest of them yet; hence the absence of gravitas in my post). I love watching the camera person's thought process as he/she is shooting. "Establish context," "Get potentially meaningful single shots," "Retake potentially meaningful shots," "Grab potentially meaningful pans," "A mirror - try to reflect on the internal lives of soldiers by showing one gazing at himself," "Wedding band to whole hand back to wedding band," etc. Interesting that the camera person didn't try to get anything introspective out of the women working at the salon, just the soldiers.

Are you sure Idema's not black ops? He was granted a pardon by President Karzai in 2007.

One more thing. Any chance, Adam, that you'll do a bibliographic post for your Kabul series? It would be great to get a list of sources.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

@vince kane
The pashtun are infact the majority, i implore you and any one else to check your demographics and check and check again and decide upon an average....

Wow. Pretty sure I recognise the conceptual art lecturer from gallery openings I've attended in London. I think she worked at the Tate. I may be projecting my own feelings, but she seems incredibly embarrassed by her role here.

By the way, since I think I've got to the end of the story so far, will further installments cover Abdul Haq, nicknamed 'Hollywood Haq' by the CIA? 29 Mujahideen leader who wanted to mount an uprising against the Taliban and was eventually killed in 2001. Some feel he was let down by Washington and the CIA. There was an interesting documentary about him a few years ago, probably shortly after his death, arguing this case. Might have been a Storyville.