Can't Get You Out of My Head 1x3

1. Oh, my God! Oh, my God. Please, God.

2. Please, God. Oh, my God!

3. Oh, my God, please, don't... Please, God, please.

4. I don't want to be in this tunnel.

5. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

6. DISTANT SIRENS, RUMBLING

7. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

8. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

9. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

10. Oh, my God! Please, God, please.

11. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Please let me out of here.

12. Please, God.

13. Please, God, please let me out of here.

14. Please, God, please.

15. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

16. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

17. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

18. Oh, my God. What am I doing?

19. One of the most complex systems ever created

20. was the pattern of detonations inside the atomic bomb

21. that began the chain reaction.

22. The scientist who created it, a physicist called John von Neumann,

23. said that there was only one thing as complex...

24. ..it was the world's climate.

25. Like the bomb, it was a mass of different forces

26. moving around a central globe.

27. Von Neumann then used an early computer

28. to build a model that simulated the world's climate system.

29. His aim was to use it to predict and manipulate the weather

30. as a weapon with which to attack the Soviet Union.

31. But what he began had another consequence.

32. In 1961, a scientist called Edward Lorenz

33. made a mistake which revealed something that astonished him.

34. Lorenz had built his own computer model of the world's climate.

35. Then, one day, he ran a programme that he had run many times before,

36. but missed out one tiny piece of data -

37. a change at the fourth decimal point.

38. For 30 days, everything went as before,

39. but then, suddenly, the computer began to predict weather conditions

40. never seen before on the planet.

41. Other scientists said that his model was at fault.

42. But Lorenz ran it again and again, with tiny variations,

43. and each time, it led to different, often very strange futures.

44. He began to wonder whether the world's climate

45. was not the stable, self-correcting system

46. that other scientists believed...

47. .. that it was unstable,

48. and that one tiny change somewhere in the world

49. could tip the whole system from one state into another.

50. In America, in the 1960s,

51. there was a man who was convinced that there was something frightening

52. hidden under the surface of the new modern suburbs.

53. Behind what looked like a confident individualism

54. that was rising up throughout America,

55. there were really hidden fears eating away at people from inside.

56. Oh, these are gorgeous!

57. Look! Salt and pepper.

58. There were feelings of anxiety, loneliness and emptiness.

59. And he was convinced he could make a lot of money out of these feelings.

60. He was called Arthur Sackler.

61. Sackler had trained as a psychiatrist

62. but in the 1950s

63. had turned to advertising drugs and medicines to doctors.

64. And more and more of the doctors he talked with

65. told him about people from the suburbs

66. coming to them with vague feelings of anxiety and fear...

67. .. something the doctors didn't know how to deal with.

68. And in 1963, the company Hoffman LaRoche

69. hired Sackler to promote a new drug called Valium.

70. He offered it to the doctors as an extraordinary new way

71. to treat these inner anxieties,

72. and he said it wasn't dangerous or addictive.

73. Valium became an amazing success.

74. By 1971, it was the most widely prescribed medication

75. in the western world.

76. Hoffman's plant in New Jersey turned out 30 million pills in 15 hours -

77. enough to satisfy global consumption for just five days.

78. Valium had touched on something inside human beings,

79. but nobody knew what it was.

80. The new wave of feminists pointed out that far more women than men

81. were taking Valium.

82. They said the drug was being used to blot out the feeling

83. that millions of women were having

84. that there was something badly wrong with their lives.

85. That when they did what they were supposed to do,

86. it didn't bring the happiness they had been promised.

87. And I thought to myself, well, I...

88. There's got to be a better way for me,

89. and I went about it in the way that I wanted to.

90. I did what I wanted, regardless of what society was saying.

91. And then, it all kind of caved in on me.

92. And I just figured, well, you know, what's the use?

93. And so I ended up in the state hospital.

94. But now that I'm on the road back, I found if I...

95. I don't see there is any solution,

96. because if I act the way society tells me to act,

97. and do abide by the rules, my life is fine and everybody's happy.

98. But Arthur Sackler suspected

99. that the drug had touched on something much deeper,

100. that the women who spent their days alone in their new suburban homes

101. were in a kind of laboratory of the future.

102. They had discovered before anyone else

103. the underlying weakness with the new individualism -

104. that you were free, but you were alone.

105. Women told researchers, "I feel empty somehow,"

106. or, "I feel as if I don't exist."

107. And Sackler knew

108. more and more men were also beginning to take the drug.

109. The women had just got there first.

110. The Dream Of The Red Chamber

111. is the most famous novel in China's history.

112. It was written 250 years before in the 18th century.

113. It tells the story of the rise and fall of two powerful families.

114. As their power declines,

115. the characters begin to find that the line between reality

116. and a dream world gets blurred.

117. They slip back and forth between the two.

118. Jiang Qing, the wife of Mao Zedong,

119. had always been fascinated by The Dream Of The Red Chamber...

120. .. because it seemed to show that it is the power of a ruling class

121. that shapes the very nature of reality itself.

122. And it was that idea that had driven her in the Cultural Revolution.

123. She had wanted to create a mass force

124. powerful enough to change

125. the very way millions of Chinese people saw the world.

126. But suddenly, Mao Zedong had turned on her.

127. He brutally dismissed all her ideas

128. and she began to realise that maybe he had been using her.

129. That Mao had used the mass frenzy that she had created

130. simply as a way of getting rid of his enemies.

131. It meant that everything that she had created -

132. the epic operas and ballets,

133. that promised a new kind of reality in the future -

134. had just been flimsy illusions

135. to disguise what had really been a brutal struggle for power.

136. And now, Mao had sent the Red Guards,

137. who had been the source of her power,

138. off to the distant deserts and mountains.

139. Jiang Qing was increasingly alone, and frightened,

140. because Mao was turning on all those who had helped him

141. in the Cultural Revolution.

142. He tricked the head of the People's Army, Lin Biao,

143. into plotting a coup.

144. Mao sent troops to arrest Lin,

145. but he and his family managed to escape on a plane.

146. But the plane ran out of fuel

147. and crashed in the desolate mountains of Mongolia.

148. Jiang Qing was terrified that she would be next.

149. She mounted anti-aircraft guns

150. on the roof of her house in the party compound.

151. She ate meals at random times to avoid being poisoned.

152. And she suspected the nurse who gave her sleeping pills

153. of being an assassin.

154. Jiang Qing's own sense of reality was beginning to dissolve.

155. But she also realised that, with Lin Biao destroyed,

156. she now had a much greater chance of taking power when Mao died.

157. In 1967, the Russians launched a space flight

158. to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Revolution.

159. It was called Soyuz 1.

160. Everything seemed to be going normally

161. but the astronaut knew that something terrible

162. was likely to happen.

163. He was called Vladimir Komarov.

164. Komarov's best friend was the Soviet hero Yuri Gagarin,

165. who had made the first human flight into space.

166. As they prepared for the launch,

167. Gagarin had inspected Komarov's spacecraft.

168. He discovered hundreds of faults in its construction.

169. He told Komarov what he had found,

170. that the spacecraft was a deathtrap.

171. Gagarin tried to get the launch stopped,

172. but the Communist Party leaders refused.

173. "The launch had to go ahead," they said,

174. "to celebrate the anniversary of the revolution."

175. Komarov went, but on one condition.

176. If he died, his body should be displayed in an open coffin.

177. Things went wrong from the start.

178. The spacecraft lost power.

179. Komarov tried to manually guide it back to Earth.

180. But then the parachutes failed to open.

181. An American listening post on the Russian border

182. recorded Komarov's final cries of rage

183. as he plunged to his death on the plains of Kazakhstan.

184. Komarov's remains were put into an open casket

185. at the space headquarters.

186. It was his revenge.

187. It showed in a shocking way how the power of the Soviet leaders

188. was crumbling,

189. and how deeply the communist dream had become corrupted.

190. Eduard Limonov grew up in Ukraine in the 1950s.

191. His father worked in a lowly position

192. in the Ministry of Internal Security.

193. They were in charge of watching and reporting on people,

194. to make sure that everyone was a good communist.

195. Limonov admired his father as a Soviet hero.

196. And often, his father would travel to Siberia by train for his work.

197. One evening after his father had been away,

198. Limonov went to the station to meet him as he returned.

199. But his father didn't appear.

200. Limonov searched,

201. and found another train hidden away in the sidings.

202. He watched dozens of men in handcuffs

203. being taken off the train and put into trucks.

204. Each one was called out by a man with a clipboard.

205. The man was his father.

206. Later that night, Limonov overheard his father tell his mother

207. that all the men were being sent to a prison to be shot

208. because they were against the system.

209. Limonov realised that there was another

210. violent hidden reality in the Soviet system

211. that reached everywhere, even into his own family.

212. And he decided he would be against the system.

213. He would become a dissident.

214. This coal train is symbolic of much of the dilemma of Appalachia.

215. Until very recently, the companies that mine the coal

216. owned all the mining communities.

217. They owned the mines themselves,

218. the tipples, the company towns,

219. the streets, the houses, the stores,

220. the commissaries, the hotels, the hospitals.

221. They even had their own brand of money, scrip,

222. which circulated only in company commissaries and stores.

223. This created a population that was totally dependent.

224. And the dependency lasted for more than 40 years.

225. Abruptly, a few years ago,

226. the company no longer needed its mining men,

227. it needed mining machines.

228. So the company withdrew its paternalism

229. in each of the mining valleys.

230. Millions, hundreds of millions,

231. even billions of dollars' worth of coal have gone out of these valleys.

232. Appalachia has produced, essentially, two crops of people -

233. the rich, who have followed the coal,

234. and the poor, who have stayed here, in the Appalachian valleys.

235. Harry Caudill was a lawyer in the giant coal-mining area

236. that stretched across the Cumberland Mountains in Appalachia.

237. He had spent his life representing the miners -

238. taking on and fighting those who owned the mines.

239. But now he had realised that something fundamental was happening.

240. The power of the miners all around him

241. was beginning to dissolve and collapse.

242. He wrote a book called Night Comes To The Cumberlands.

243. He described how coal had not only brought wealth and power

244. to those who owned the mines,

245. but also to the miners themselves.

246. It gave them power because it brought thousands of them together.

247. And together, they could block the coal from leaving the valleys.

248. It gave them enormous collective power,

249. out of which, organised labour had come.

250. For 40 years, they had mounted strikes and blockades

251. and fought violent battles with the private armies of the mine-owners.

252. And out of that had come strong leaders,

253. who had used the collective power to change society for the better.

254. In 1946,

255. the United Mine Workers of America,

256. under the leadership of John I Lewis,

257. who is generally regarded as

258. the greatest labour statesman in American history,

259. undertook to raise the medical standards of this area.

260. Lewis had a very dramatic confrontation

261. with the American coal operators at Pittsburgh.

262. "You have," he said, "made dead more than half a million

263. "of your fellow citizens.

264. "The product you sell in the markets of the world

265. "is drenched with the blood of your workmen.

266. "It is salted with the tears of their widows and orphans."

267. And he said, "Beginning today, beginning immediately,

268. "and at this bargaining table,

269. "you will begin to redress this old injustice."

270. The United Mine Workers Health and Welfare Fund came into existence

271. the following year.

272. It was comparable in many respects

273. to the National Health Service in Great Britain.

274. But now, Caudill realised that that power had gone.

275. First, the machines had come

276. and replaced thousands of workers.

277. Helpless to save their jobs, they now lived in growing poverty,

278. supported only by welfare.

279. And then there was the other fossil fuel - oil.

280. Oil was now rising up to replace coal.

281. And more and more of it came from the Middle East.

282. In countries like Saudi Arabia, the Western oil companies

283. had created their own managed communities.

284. But these communities were for the managers,

285. who lived a dreamlike existence in the middle of the desert.

286. Their golf courses created by rolling crude oil into the sand...

287. .. while the workers were controlled by authoritarian governments.

288. They were no threat.

289. And across the world, the oil industry

290. was a scattered, diffused network,

291. where there was never any chance of enough workers

292. coming together to create a critical mass...

293. .. out of which would come collective action.

294. But at that very moment, something was revealed

295. in another remote part of the world

296. that was going to lead to a realisation that fossil fuels

297. could not only change the nature of power,

298. they could also change the whole structure of the planet.

299. On the top of the world, below the surface of a giant ice cap,

300. a city is buried.

301. Camp Century is buried below the surface of this ice cap.

302. Beneath it, the ice descends for 6,000 feet.

303. In this remote setting, Camp Century is a symbol

304. of man's unceasing struggle to conquer his environment.

305. Camp Century pretended to be a scientific base.

306. In reality, it was a disguise for Project Iceworm.

307. 600 nuclear missiles were going to be hidden

308. in hundreds of miles of tunnels under the ice,

309. targeted at Russia.

310. But as a part of the disguise,

311. climate scientists, working with army engineers,

312. began to drill hundreds of feet down into the ice

313. and bring up ice cores.

314. The ice sheet had been built up layer by layer

315. over hundreds of thousands of years.

316. That meant that it had within it a frozen record of the past.

317. What the scientists found in the cores astonished them.

318. That 11,000 years before, there had been a sudden cataclysmic shift.

319. The world's temperature had changed by ten degrees in just centuries.

320. Other ice cores then confirmed this.

321. That in the past, there had been repeated, sudden changes,

322. both heating and cooling,

323. of the world's climate at speeds that no-one thought possible.

324. This piece of ice records a spectacular cooling.

325. In fact, it's a quite new discovery for us

326. that the Earth can turn so cold so fast.

327. What was the reason?

328. We don't think that volcanic eruptions did it.

329. Maybe it was due to enormous breakout of Antarctic ice.

330. The problem is, could that happen again to us right now?

331. Or could we accidentally provoke such a catastrophe?

332. We must find the reason for this natural event long ago.

333. They believed that what the ice cores showed

334. was that the idea which dominated science,

335. that the world's climate was a stable,

336. self-correcting system, was wrong -

337. that it could suddenly shift into a completely different state...

338. .. which would have extraordinary consequences.

339. Richard Nixon came to power

340. because he had harnessed a new force.

341. He called it the silent majority.

342. They were the people in the suburbs

343. that were rapidly growing around every city in America.

344. But it was a fragile power base,

345. because it wasn't like the old collective power

346. that had driven political parties in the past.

347. It was millions of individuals

348. who not only felt isolated and alone,

349. but also increasingly fearful of the chaos in America

350. as a result of the Vietnam War.

351. We were sitting in the living room watching the Miss Ohio pageant,

352. and all of a sudden, I heard a smack at the front

353. and I run out and heard something hit a window here in the back.

354. And I tore around the driveway here

355. and I looked all over, but I didn't see a thing.

356. I didn't see one guy.

357. You know, you can put up with this crap just so long

358. and then - pow! - somebody's going to get it.

359. There are those who say, "How do we answer those who engage in violence?

360. "How do we answer those who try to shout down a speaker?"

361. And my answer is, don't answer in kind.

362. It's time for the great silent majority

363. just to stand up and be counted!

364. Nixon promised to represent the silent majority.

365. But the truth was that he was also uncertain,

366. and frightened, too, just like them.

367. Nixon had been to see a psychiatrist about his feelings of dread.

368. He told the psychiatrist

369. that when he looked in the mirror in the morning,

370. it was as if there was no-one there.

371. He was also suspicious and paranoid.

372. Nixon was convinced that there was a conspiracy,

373. by what he called the liberal establishment, to destroy him.

374. In 1971, he told his aides to start what he called, the enemies list.

375. It included dozens of liberal journalists, academics

376. and even film stars.

377. Nixon had a tape machine running all the time in the White House.

378. And on it, he left a record of this paranoia.

379. But Nixon soon found that the chaos created by the Vietnam War

380. was also going to stop him delivering the new, stable America

381. that he had promised.

382. The cost of the war was huge, and America was deeply in debt.

383. In 1971, it forced Nixon to give up

384. one of the great symbols of America's global power -

385. the control of all the world's currencies.

386. Ever since the Second World War,

387. the value of all currencies in the world

388. had been fixed to the dollar.

389. They were backed by the gold reserves held in Fort Knox.

390. But then, overnight, Nixon let that go.

391. And suddenly, there was no fixed value for any currency

392. anywhere in the world.

393. What was that mark, John?

394. 8.38-8.43.

395. 8.38-8.43, I can deal with you in sterling mark.

396. And dollars? Just a second. Dollars, Chris?

397. 2.44.59. 2.44.59 dollar sterling.

398. There was immediately confusion as banks around the world

399. struggled to come to terms with the new reality.

400. They set up new, improvised dealing rooms

401. buying and selling currencies

402. as, minute by minute, they went up and down in value.

403. But then President Nixon did something

404. that seemed to show he still had power to change the world.

405. He went to China.

406. His arrival was broadcast live in America.

407. Journalists compared it to the moon landings

408. because Nixon was going to a giant, mysterious country

409. that had been cut off from the rest of the world for decades.

410. And he was going to bring it into the modern global system.

411. By now, Mao could hardly walk.

412. The Americans had sent medical equipment ahead

413. in case of an assassination attempt on Nixon.

414. But the Chinese took it and used it instead to resuscitate Mao.

415. The meeting lasted for only an hour.

416. Mao went back to bed and Nixon didn't see him again.

417. Instead, he went with Mao's wife, Jiang Qing,

418. to see one of her revolutionary operas.

419. On the surface, Jiang Qing seemed confident.

420. But underneath, she realised she could be destroyed at any minute.

421. It wasn't just Mao.

422. By now, the whole system of authority in China

423. was beginning to fall apart.

424. As many of those in power realised that the revolution had failed.

425. But while Jiang Qing was preoccupied with real enemies,

426. Nixon, sitting next to her, had now become obsessed

427. with plotting to destroy his imaginary enemies.

428. He had set up a conspiracy, based in the White House.

429. It was run by a group of ex intelligence agents,

430. and they were already planning to bug, burgle

431. and blackmail Nixon's opponents.

432. Behind his smile, he was preoccupied with plotting and scheming.

433. Jiang Qing and Richard Nixon

434. were two of the most powerful people in the world at that moment.

435. But what they shared was a sense that power

436. was now slipping from their grasp.

437. While the new force that Nixon had unleashed - money -

438. was eating away at the idea that there was a fixed,

439. predictable system that any politician could control.

440. Because the bankers had realised that currencies could be traded

441. globally, like any other asset.

442. And what that had created was a fluid, constantly-changing reality

443. that no-one was fully in control of.

444. Try 35.42, then!

445. Hello? 35.42.

446. It dropped 100 points. We don't know why.

447. It just dropped down in points when everything else was staying still.

448. Right, 30 other way! 30 other way!

449. Change it! Change!

450. Eduard Limonov had now left Ukraine and come to Moscow.

451. He became part of what was called the underground -

452. writers and painters who saw themselves

453. as the opponents of the regime.

454. Limonov became a poet.

455. And one night, at a party, he met a girl

456. who he fell passionately in love with.

457. She was called Yelena Shchapova.

458. And together, they became a glamorous couple

459. in the underground world.

460. But what Limonov began to discover

461. was that most of the dissidents did not have a clear idea

462. of what alternative they wanted.

463. They, too, were trapped by the Soviet ideology.

464. The most famous dissident was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

465. He was secretly writing a novel

466. that was going to expose the horror behind the communist facade.

467. It was called The Gulag Archipelago.

468. But in the novel, Solzhenitsyn also confronted the fact

469. that, faced by the failure of the revolutionary dream,

470. it was now difficult to believe in anything.

471. That maybe ideology itself was the problem.

472. The evildoers in Shakespeare, he said,

473. killed just a few dozen in their struggle for power.

474. But then came the belief that you could find a theory

475. that would create an ideal world.

476. The agents of the Inquisition, he said, invoked Christianity.

477. The great empires, like Britain,

478. justified it by the idea of civilisation.

479. The Nazis did it by race.

480. And the revolutionaries, both in France and in Russia,

481. justified it by equality, brotherhood

482. and the happiness of future generations.

483. But in every case, he said,

484. thousands, and often millions, were killed.

485. Solzhenitsyn's book contained a damning conclusion,

486. which was going to be one of the foundations

487. of the counter-ideology that dominates the world today.

488. It said that the only way to escape from that horror

489. was to stop trying to change the world.

490. Stop trying to reshape reality.

491. Instead, the safest thing to do in the future

492. was to believe in nothing.

493. Limonov scorned Solzhenitsyn.

494. He saw him as part of an older generation

495. trapped by their literary elitism.

496. Ever since his time in Ukraine,

497. he had been fascinated by what he saw as the real outsiders.

498. Those who refused in any way to be a part of the Soviet system.

499. Above all, the thousands of criminals

500. who lived most of their lives in the Russian prisons.

501. They were called the Vory v Zakone - thieves in law.

502. They had their own codes and hierarchies

503. that were expressed in the complex tattoos on their bodies.

504. The tattoos also expressed their fundamental belief

505. that in a society where ideology controlled the minds of everyone,

506. the only way to step outside the system

507. was through violent crime.

508. A singer called Arkady Severny

509. had secretly recorded what were called prison songs.

510. Songs from the Vory v Zakone inside the jails,

511. that attacked not just the Soviets,

512. but the whole Russian empire.

513. But then, at the start of 1974,

514. the Soviet leaders discovered what Solzhenitsyn had been writing.

515. They debated whether to shoot him,

516. but decided instead to expel him to the West.

517. They also decided to take the opportunity

518. to get rid of some of the other dissidents, as well.

519. Eduard Limonov and Yelena were summoned to KGB headquarters

520. and told that they were being sent to New York.

521. While many of the leading criminals, the Vory v Zakone

522. were taken from the prisons and put on planes to New York, as well.

523. The Soviets told the Americans that they were another group of Jews

524. who were being allowed to emigrate.

525. I bet you can't hit me. Why don't you try?

526. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

527. You're going to miss. You're going to miss. Yes, you are!

528. Most of the Russian criminals set up home in Brighton Beach,

529. just outside New York.

530. They created their own organisation, called the Potato Bag Gang.

531. It was the start of the modern Russian mafia in America.

532. Limonov and Yelena

533. were helped by Russian emigre writers and artists

534. already in Manhattan.

535. And they soon became a glamorous couple,

536. invited to parties by rich Americans

537. who wanted to meet Soviet dissidents.

538. But the New York Limonov had arrived in

539. was not the city of his dreams.

540. Much of it was falling apart

541. with gangs burning down whole buildings for insurance claims.

542. But a strange, unreal mood spread through the ruins.

543. Well, this morning, on our way into work, we had a report that

544. the police had located a carcass

545. in a street on 172nd and Bryant.

546. It turned out to be a, er... stripped carcass of a gorilla.

547. It was headless and the, er... fur was removed,

548. the skin was removed.

549. South Bronx!

550. There was also a mood of paranoia spreading through America.

551. Nixon's own paranoia had been exposed by the Watergate scandal.

552. But in its wake, all kinds of other revelations came out,

553. of dark secrets in the political world

554. that had been kept hidden from the people.

555. That for 20 years, the CIA had been planning assassinations

556. and overthrowing leaders of foreign governments all around the world,

557. using poisons and specially-made secret weapons.

558. Don't... don't point it at me!

559. Does... does this... does this pistol, er... fire the dart?

560. Yes, it does, Mr Chairman.

561. And a special one was developed which would be able to

562. enter the target without perception.

563. As a murder instrument,

564. that's about as efficient as you can get, isn't it?

565. Yes.

566. The uncertainty even infected those

567. who had previously ridiculed all conspiracy theories.

568. Six years before, Kerry Thornley had begun Operation Mindfuck.

569. He and his friend Greg Hill had planted fake conspiracy theories

570. in the press and in underground magazines,

571. alleging that the Illuminati

572. were the secret organisation behind all the assassinations in America.

573. Their aim was to make people see how absurd all such theories were.

574. But one day in New York,

575. Thornley thought that he recognised a picture

576. of one of the Watergate burglars on a magazine stand.

577. He was certain he had met him 20 years before in New Orleans.

578. Back then, Thornley had been friends with Lee Harvey Oswald.

579. They had met when they were Marines together.

580. Thorney had then lived in New Orleans,

581. the same city that Oswald had lived in before the assassination.

582. And he had met people there

583. who later became suspects in the Kennedy conspiracy.

584. Thornley had always seen these as coincidences,

585. but in the new mood, he started to doubt.

586. I had met Guy Banister, a figure, a suspect in the Garrison probe,

587. I had met Clay Shaw two weeks before the assassination

588. and a discussion of my book about Oswald,

589. The Idle Warriors was involved.

590. I had even worked in a restaurant where Oswald

591. had lived in his youth with his mother right upstairs

592. in the same building.

593. So there were meaningful coincidences

594. and meaningless coincidences,

595. but I could not explain all these weird coincidences.

596. But at the same time, the fake conspiracy theories that Thornley

597. had been spreading into American culture with Operation Mindfuck

598. ever since the late 1960s, started to be believed as well.

599. Because the real conspiracies were so extraordinary.

600. Stories about the Illuminati and a plot to create a new world order

601. began to get mixed up with revelations

602. about brainwashing and secret mind control programmes run by the CIA.

603. The line between the reality of political corruption

604. and a dream world of conspiracy theories

605. started to get blurred in America.

606. But the sense of uncertainty, and a feeling that systems

607. might be out of control, was also creeping into other areas.

608. A group of climate scientists had begun to argue that the world

609. might be on the edge of another dramatic change.

610. That there might be a cataclysmic crisis coming.

611. And that the reason this time was human activity.

612. In the 1970s, there seemed to be dramatic shifts happening

613. in the climate.

614. In regions near the equator

615. there were droughts and famines,

616. but in the Arctic regions, it was getting colder.

617. Something was happening, but no-one knew what.

618. One group said that there was going to be a dramatic cooling

619. because the dust and smoke spreading around the world

620. was blocking out the sunlight.

621. A man-made dust pall is spreading over the Earth.

622. This dust blots out the sun and causes cooling

623. on a worldwide scale.

624. Not all scientists agree with this theory.

625. I hope it's wrong myself, but there is no doubting

626. its seriousness for if this is correct,

627. millions of people will be destined for chronic famine.

628. But others said the very opposite was about to happen.

629. There was more and more carbon dioxide being pumped

630. into the atmosphere.

631. That would trap the heat, but the world would grow hotter.

632. And the key force behind that was the hydrocarbon - oil.

633. In the mid 1970s, oil was about to play a crucial role

634. that would increase the uncertain mood that today has come to dominate

635. Western societies -

636. a feeling that we are somehow surrounded

637. by global systems, both natural and those made by humans themselves,

638. that are beyond control.

639. Systems so complex and unpredictable that they make a mockery of the idea

640. that national governments can shape and control the world.

641. 100 years before, coal had done the same.

642. It had brought millions of people into the new industrial cities

643. where they worked for the men who owned the vast wealth

644. that the coal had created.

645. And that money was so powerful that it seemed to control everything -

646. not just people's lives, but politics as well.

647. But slowly, out of that, came a challenge to that power,

648. based on the workers organising together.

649. And from that came the idea of mass democracy.

650. That the role of politicians

651. was to represent the mass of the people against the powerful.

652. But now oil was about to start something

653. that was going to undermine that idea.

654. This is King Faisal of Saudi Arabia.

655. He's going to have a great deal to say in the next few years

656. about the way you live.

657. He rules over a desert kingdom of six million people.

658. In this decade of the oil shortage,

659. he's one of the most powerful men in the world.

660. Under these sands, there are proved deposits

661. of 160 billion barrels of oil.

662. Starting in 1973, the Arab countries, led by King Faisal,

663. decided to use oil as a weapon.

664. They wanted to force America to stop supporting Israel.

665. They did with oil just what the miners had done with coal

666. in the past.

667. The Arabs blocked supplies

668. and then suddenly raised the price four times.

669. It was a dramatic exercise of power.

670. And it caused chaos in the American economy.

671. As a friend of the United States,

672. we are deeply concerned

673. that if the United States does not change its policy in the Middle East

674. and continues to side with Zionism, then I'm afraid, such course

675. of action will affect our relations with our American friends

676. because it will place us in an untenable position in the Arab world

677. and vis a vis the countries which Zionism seeks to destroy.

678. For almost three decades, we have

679. been the richest, most powerful nation on Earth.

680. Now, a nation of six million warns us we must change our foreign policy

681. if we want full gas tanks.

682. It had a dramatic effect.

683. Money suddenly poured into the Arab world.

684. Within three years, Saudi Arabia had more foreign currency

685. than Japan, Germany and the United States put together.

686. But the Arab governments had no idea what to do

687. with this vast new wealth.

688. So they turned for help to the Western banks.

689. The banks realised that they could take these petrodollars and turn

690. them into a new kind of international currency,

691. free of all government control.

692. And soon, politicians from all around the world were coming

693. to the new headquarters of the Western banks

694. to elaborate signing ceremonies

695. where they borrowed billions of the petrodollars.

696. And that global financial system that President Nixon had created

697. by accident a few years before,

698. now became a giant force -

699. one that held the destiny of millions of people in its hands

700. and politicians became increasingly convinced they couldn't control.

701. And the money started to take charge of politics once again.

702. But it was only the beginning, because another component

703. was about to be fitted into this growing new system of power.

704. In China, as Mao approached death,

705. Jiang Qing was still determined to take his place as the leader.

706. But there was one person who is equally determined to stop her.

707. He was called Deng Xiaoping.

708. Deng was one of the original revolutionaries

709. and he had been sidelined during the Cultural Revolution.

710. But now, Deng believed that if Jiang Qing was allowed to take power,

711. it would be a disaster for China and the country

712. could splinter into civil war.

713. An anonymous poem appeared on a wall in Tiananmen Square.

714. It was obviously addressed to Jiang Qing.

715. "Lady X," it said, "you are insane.

716. "To be empress is your ambition.

717. "Instead, take this mirror and see what you are really like.

718. "You deceive your superiors and you delude your subordinates.

719. "Yet for types like you, good times won't last."

720. Then Mao died.

721. Jiang Qing came on her own, dressed in black.

722. She was already preparing to take power with three others

723. of the leadership.

724. They were called the Gang of Four.

725. But another group backed by Deng Xiaoping set out

726. to destroy them.

727. Wall posters went up all across China attacking the Gang of Four,

728. claiming that as well as being corrupt,

729. they were really working for the CIA to undermine China.

730. When Jiang Qing came to Tachai,

731. there seemed to be no end to her whims.

732. Now she wanted her room sprayed with perfume.

733. Then she wanted more carpets on the floor and for curtains,

734. she wanted to have special ones of a particular dark colour.

735. Jiang Qing and company demanded complete quietude.

736. No-one should laugh or talk loudly.

737. Planes at a nearby airport had to stop their sorties.

738. People had to be sent uphill to beat the woods to drive the birds away.

739. And four weeks after Mao's death, army units came in the middle

740. of the night and arrested Jiang Qing.

741. She was put in an underground cell,

742. next to the refrigeration unit that was holding Mao's body.

743. She later tried to commit suicide

744. by hitting her head against the wall.

745. So the soldiers covered the walls with rubber.

746. Within 18 months, Deng Xiaoping defeated all other rivals

747. and he took power in China.

748. The first thing he did was wipe the past everywhere.

749. In Shanghai, the giant sign that said, "Long live the victory

750. "of Chairman Mao's Revolutionary Road" was taken down.

751. While outside the Department of Public Tranquillity in Beijing,

752. which in reality was the headquarters of the secret police,

753. the thoughts of Chairman Mao were also removed.

754. Deng then set out to create a new kind of revolution.

755. He was going to bring capitalism into China,

756. but the state would control and manage the whole system.

757. His aim was simple.

758. Money would replace the old revolutionary dreams -

759. it was less dangerous.

760. But he was going to use it to restore China's power.

761. Deng Xiaoping knew that in the 19th century,

762. the British had used drugs to control the Chinese.

763. They had brought opium to China.

764. It led to what the Chinese called the century of humiliation.

765. Now, Deng was determined to reverse that, to reassert China's power.

766. You couldn't use drugs

767. because the Americans already had their own drugs.

768. Instead, he was going to use the mass mobilisation

769. of the Chinese people to invent

770. another force that would be the equivalent of opium.

771. A kind of mass consumerism never seen before in the world -

772. driven by goods so cheap that

773. everyone in the West would want them.

774. Whole cities were going to be built in China that made just one

775. kind of product.

776. They would be shipped in vast quantities to the West.

777. You gave up on utopian ideas about the future

778. and didn't believe in anything any longer,

779. apart from the money.

780. And his allies in this would be the Western banks

781. and their new system of global lending.

782. Because the banks would lend millions of people in the West

783. the money to buy the Chinese goods,

784. just like they had been lending to governments all around the world.

785. It was going to be the perfect system.

786. Eduard Limonov was now all alone in New York.

787. He had published an article attacking the other emigres,

788. so they all dropped him.

789. Then Yelena, the woman he loved more than anything else in the world,

790. met a photographer who promised to make her a model.

791. He seduced her and she left Limonov.

792. Without love or money, Limonov became destitute.

793. He lived in the cheapest hotel

794. surrounded by prostitutes and drug addicts.

795. And he spent his days and nights wandering the city alone...

796. The call car, yeah.

797. .. while all around him

798. the newly powerful banks were building

799. their headquarters among the old ruins.

800. Then one day in Central Park, looking at the people

801. all around him, Limonov decided that he was going to write a novel,

802. but one that would have him as the central figure.

803. It would be about the real experience of America,

804. not the fake democracy.

805. In the book, he described watching Americans in a cafe

806. where he was working as a waiter.

807. "It is they," he wrote, "who have introduced a plague into this world.

808. "The plague of money, the disease of money, the plague of buying

809. "and selling is their handiwork.

810. "I hate this system, and I am not ashamed that my hatred has sprung

811. "from my wife's betrayal.

812. "I clear away your leftovers while my wife fucks

813. "and you amuse yourself with her,

814. "for the sole reason that there is an inequality.

815. "She has a cunt for which there are buyers, you,

816. "and I don't have a cunt.

817. "I'm going to blow up your world."

818. The book, called It's Me, Eddie, gave a picture of a new reality

819. that Limonov saw emerging from under the surface

820. of America's everyday life.

821. People think they are free, but really they are becoming

822. like simplified robots, following the rules of money,

823. limited to satisfying only those desires that can be bought and sold.

824. Every publisher he sent it to refused to publish it.

825. But there was another person at the very top of America

826. in the White House itself who was also about to expose

827. a frightening reality underneath the surface of the society.

828. In 1978, the president's wife, Betty Ford, revealed

829. that she had become addicted to Valium.

830. An addiction that she said had taken her into a strange state

831. where even her sense of time had become dislocated.

832. As I look back, it was December,

833. about a year ago when I realised...

834. .. that there were some sort of

835. blank spots where I had

836. a hard time putting...

837. ..events in their separate slots

838. in time.

839. To me, it was marvellous

840. and beautiful, but to the family,

841. I was beginning to show signs

842. of overmedication.

843. Betty Ford's admission had a dramatic effect.

844. In its wake, stories began to pour out of people all across America

845. who were also addicted to Valium.

846. It seemed that there was a private, hidden world of anxiety

847. behind the public faces that affected millions of people.

848. But Arthur Sackler, who in the 1960s had promoted Valium

849. as beneficial and non-addictive, was unrepentant.

850. And the company that he and his two brothers had started

851. was about to develop a new drug -

852. a synthetic form of opium called OxyContin.

853. And that was going to deal with the next wave of anxiety

854. that would hit America.

855. Over the next 20 years, as more and more factories closed

856. because of the cheap goods coming from China,

857. millions of people in the communities would take OxyContin...

858. .. because it made them feel safe,

859. in a bubble,

860. protected from the growing uncertainties around them.

861. And Harry Caudill,

862. who had represented the miners in Appalachia,

863. became certain that the anger under the surface there

864. was going to grow.

865. "One day," he said, "it would break out and infect

866. "the whole of America."

867. How are you, Mrs Melchor? All right, thank you. How are you?

868. In 1990, he discovered he had Parkinson's, and he shot himself.

869. While Kerry Thornley had become convinced that the coincidences

870. in his past were not coincidences -

871. that the CIA had somehow manipulated him to set up

872. Operation Mindfuck, but he had no idea why, he had become lost.

873. 20 years before,

874. he and his friend Greg Hill had been early individualists.

875. They believed that they could shape reality

876. the way they wanted.

877. But now, faced with the revelations about how intricate and complex

878. power had become in the modern world, they felt powerless and lost.

879. Thornley had retreated into a dream world of conspiracies,

880. while Greg Hill had become an alcoholic and was equally lost.

881. He wrote a letter to Thornley about how he had come

882. to believe in nothing.

883. "It is not injustice that overwhelms me now," he wrote,

884. "but my sheer damn inability

885. "to know anything with any deep level of certainty.

886. "When despair is deep enough, even death seems pointless.

887. "Now I live without justice.

888. "I don't know why. I just live it.

889. "So be it."

890. And Eduard Limonov would finally get his novel, It's Me, Eddie,

891. published in Russia.

892. It would cause a sensation and its dark vision of the reality

893. behind the rhetoric of American democracy is going to influence

894. an entire generation in Russia.

895. It was the generation to whom the Americans would then try

896. and sell the idea of democracy.

897. All the talk of democracy, the book told them, was just a sham.

898. Really, it was all about the money.

899. Starry Eyes by Cigarettes After Sex