|
Ref. : Local Newsbriefs
Ref. : Letters to the editor
03.05 Open Letter to Congressman Bart Stupak
Video National Health Care Systems In Other Countries
03.20 The Death of American Populism
03.18 Pressure Drop: Brave Sir Dennis Ran Away
03.12 Slick Barry and the $100-Billion Medicaid/Medicare Fraud Claim
03.09 Kill Bill: Death to Obamacare!
03.09 Obama’s Rhetoric May Be “Fiery,” But His Health Care Reform Is Still Lukewarm
03.17 CNN Scrapes Bottom of Right-Wing Barrel With Erickson Hire
03.16 WPost Blames Obama First, on Israel
03.16 Letter to the New York Times' Editor: Stovepiping To Persia
03.12 Cud and Complicity: Burying the Alternatives to Empire's Dominion
03.11 NYT and the ACORN Hoax
03.05 Sorry, Rove, Bush Did Lie About Iraq
03.03 It's Snow News
03.03 The Woeful Washington Post
Ref. : The Daily Howler
02.26 America's Supremes: Court Over Constitution
03.11 Power Rangers: Policing the System With the "Fightin' Progressives"
03.09 Thinking About Countings
03.07 Unnatural Acts: Breaking the Fever of Militarism
02.25 Future Shock: A Better World Beyond the Imperium
03.19 Israel's Troubling Tilt Toward Apartheid
03.18 The Lawfare Project's Anti-Democratic Agenda
03.16 America's Secret Prisons
03.13 Palestinian Dispossession in East Jerusalem
03.12 Israeli Settlement Expansions Continue
03.11 Brutalizing Palestinian Children
03.08 The Russell Tribunal on Palestine: Barcelona Session
03.05 Targeting Israeli Apartheid
03.01 America's Permanent War Agenda
02.25 Global Sweatshop Wage Slavery
03.19 The Growing Movement For Publicly-Owned Banks
03.19 America's "Houdini Recovery" under IMF-Type Austerity
03.14 The Crisis in America's Telecommunications Network
03.09 The Business of Water: Privatizing An Essential Resource
03.05 Is the Recovery Real?
03.04 IMF-Style Austerity Measures come to America: What “Fiscal Responsibility” Means To You
03.04 Barry C. Lynn's "Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and Economics of Destruction"
03.01 Thinking About Fees
03.15 Peace Process Hypocrisy: Stillborn from Inception
03.03 Muslim Disunity
03.02 Funding Israeli Militarism, Belligerence and Occupation
02.26 Iran Captures a 'Good' Terrorist
MAINSTREAM NEWS INDICTMENT:
A Free Press or a Ministry of Truth?
Sound familiar? Any American who pays attention can observe the identical phenomenon occurring in the U.S. today.
Think about the Bush regime'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.
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 [.pdf] described as a Sunni-Shi'ite civil war 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 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 U.S. 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."
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 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.
This commentary is republished in the Baltimore Chronicle with the permission of the author.
Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent.
This story was published on July 17, 2007.
