you should read this before it slips down the "Orwellian Memory Hole"...
- From: 菩薩 <psychedelictourist@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 14:38:58 -0800
I think we agree, the past is over. - George W. Bush (May 10, 2000)
"The great crimes against most of humanity are justified by a
corrosive debasement of language and thought... [that] have fabricated
a linguistic world of terror, of demons and saviours, of axes of good
and evil, of euphemisms"
- James Petras
A Free Press or a Ministry of Truth?
By Paul Craig Roberts
July 16, 2007
http://www.vdare.com/roberts/070716_truth.htm
In his novel 1984, George Orwell portrayed a future time in which the
explanations of recent events and earlier history are continually
changed to meet Big Brother’s latest purpose. Previous explanations
disappear down “the memory hole.”
Sound familiar? Any American who pays attention can observe the
identical phenomenon occurring in the US today.
Think about the Bush Regime’s changing explanations for the failed US
occupation of Iraq. Shortly after Bush’s May 2003 announcement of
“mission accomplished,” the mission revealed itself to be very much
unaccomplished. Americans were told that the cause of the snafu was a
small Sunni insurgency of two or three thousand at the most inspired
by “die-hard Baath party remnants.” Remember the propagandistic deck
of cards identifying the most wanted down to the less wanted?
Americans were assured that once Saddam Hussein and his relatives and
henchmen were rounded up, our troops would be pelted with the promised
flowers instead of roadside bombs.
When the roundups, trials, and executions failed to fix the problem,
the “die-hard” explanation disappeared. A new explanation, with no
continuity to the old, took its place.
The new explanation was that Syria was allowing foreigners to cross
its border into Iraq to commit jihad against the American troops.
This explanation lasted until it became all too clear, despite the
propaganda, that the “foreign fighters” were remarkably well accepted
by, and concealed within, the Iraqi communities that were suffering
all the collateral damage of the conflict.
When it came time for the US to create an Iraqi government, it was
evident that it would be one dominated by Shi’ites. Then, for a
limited time, it was permissible to recognize that the insurgency was
popularly based in the Sunnis.
As the insurgency evolved into what the Iraq Study Group described as
a Sunni-Shi’ite civil war [ PDF ] with US troops unclear on which side
they stood, the Bush Regime and the captive media began blaming Al
Qaeda for the escalating violence. Americans were assured by the
Ministry of Truth that there wasn’t a civil war, just outsiders
stirring up conflict. This enabled Big Brother to deny that there was
a civil war and to revive fear of terrorist attacks in the US and UK,
the new Oceania.
The Al Qaeda explanation was soon discarded into the memory hole. The
explanation implied that Oceania’s invasion of Iraq had greatly
expanded the ranks and strength of Al Qaeda, thus contradicting big
Brother’s claim that his war in Iraq was making Oceanians safe by
stamping out terrorism. The Al Qaeda explanation had to depart for
another reason as well. Cheney, Israel, and the neocons, the rulers of
the new Oceania, plan to attack Iran, and so the insurgency in Iraq is
now being blamed on Iran.
The Ministry of Truth has accommodated the latest explanation, just as
it did all others before, without remarking on the funeral of the
previous explanation. All of a sudden, a new explanation appears and
is repeated until it, too, goes down the memory hole.
The American and British media work the same way as the Ministry of
Truth in Oceania. A day arrives when the “truth” no longer serves the
empire or hegemonic power or center of moral purpose in the world, or
for short, the regime. When that day arrives, a new explanation
appears and is repeated until it, too, is discarded down the memory
hole.
In recent weeks Americans have been fed a series of reports from
official sources that Iran is arming both Iraqi insurgents and the
Taliban in Afghanistan. Experts, both within the government and
without, who have been made more attentive by the Bush Regime’s false
charges of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, have disputed the news
reports.
But the reports keep on coming. As I write, the latest story is that
the US military “discovered a field of rocket launchers near a US army
base south of Baghdad armed with 34 Iranian-made missiles.” Can you
imagine? The insurgents went to the trouble of lugging powerful
missiles within striking distance of a US base and just left them
there unfired to be discovered by the Americans. To further serve
Cheney’s plan to attack Iran, the media report states: “Earlier this
month, US commanders stepped up the charges [against Iran], claiming
that senior leaders of Iran’s special forces and of the Lebanese
Shiite Hezbollah militia have trained Iraqi fighters and provided
other support.” [US finds Iranian rockets aimed at Iraq base, Agence
France Presse, July 14,2007]
Notice that none of the explanations fed to Americans over the years
have ever mentioned, even as a faint possibility, that the US invasion
and occupation of Iraq might be the cause of the violence in Iraq.
Allegedly, the US is a free and open country with a free press and a
government accountable to the people. Yet, the information fed to the
American people is as thoroughly false as that fed to the citizens of
Oceania by Big Brother through the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s
famous novel.
In Orwell’s novel, despite the totalitarian power of the government,
nothing happens to people as long as they accept the government’s
intrusive monitoring of their lives and do not become interested in
truth or facts.. In such a world, truth and individuality pass out of
human consciousness and become unimportant. Citizens survive by
accepting Big Brother’s ever-changing reality.
This is what the mainstream media in the US and UK are enabling the
new Oceania to accomplish. It is pointless to complain about a few
Judith Millers here and there at the New York Times, or the obvious
warmongers at the Weekly Standard, Fox “News,” and Wall Street Journal
editorial page. The entire corporate media is behaving as a Ministry
of Truth.
----------------
namaste;
bodhi
NEED A BUS TICKET TO HAWAII
http://psychedelictourist.blogspot.com
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