What does the BBC do when it transmits a mendacious, factually risible, tendentious piece of spiteful propaganda that reinforces irrationality and prejudice and harms the west? Why, it repeats it, of course! The BBC website tells us that it is going to transmit for the second time the three-part series The Power of Nightmares (see Diary post November 9 2004) which told us that the American neo-cons were a conspiracy to lie to the public about communism, Clinton and al Qaeda. Not only that, despite the monumental falsehoods in this series, its producer Adam Curtis has written a manipulative defence of it on the BBC website. But if you want to really cheer yourselves up, read the readers' comments beneath it.