-Caveat Lector-
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: July 18, 2007 12:08:49 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Subject: Fwd: The "Free Press," or Orwell's "Ministry of Truth"?
Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL.com.
From: "Jim S." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: July 18, 2007 2:29:00 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: A Free Press or a Ministry of Truth?
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18021.htm
*A Free Press or a Ministry of Truth?*
By Paul Craig Roberts
07/17/07
"ICH" -- 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 U.S. today.
Think about the Bush Rfegime’s changing explanations for the failed
U.S.
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 Ba'ath
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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S.
and U.K., 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 U.S. 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
U.S. 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, U.S. commanders stepped up the charges [against Iran],
claiming that
senior leaders of Iran’s special forces and of the Lebanese Shi'ite
Hezbollah
militia have trained Iraqi fighters and provided other
support." ["U.S. 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 U.S. invasion and
occupation of
Iraq might be the cause of the violence in Iraq.
Allegedly, the U.S. 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 U.S. and U.K. 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.
COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
Paul Craig Roberts ( paulcraigroberts @ yahoo.com ) was Assistant
Secretary of
the Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He is the author of
"Supply-Side
Revolution: An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington,"
"Alienation and
the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy," and is
the co-author
with Lawrence M. Stratton of "The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How
Prosecutors and
Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice."
------------------------
"America is a nation founded on the principle that all human life
is sacred…
Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not
ethical."-- G.W.
Bush on the occasion of vetoing Congressional bill on stem cell
research…
June 20, 2007
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