Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Free Press or a Ministry of Truth?

It's Far Beyond a Few Judith Millers

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
CounterPunch

"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.......

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.....

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......

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."

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