The Mythical Al Zarqawi moves on to Baghdad

[WCGreen]

From 1984.....

"As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed on to the screen. There were hisses here and there among the audience. The little sandy-haired woman gave a squeak of mingled fear and disgust. Goldstein was the renegade and backslider who once, long ago (how long ago, nobody quite remembered), had been one of the leading figures of the Party, almost on a level with Big Brother himself, and then had engaged in counter-revolutionary activities, had been condemned to death, and had mysteriously escaped and disappeared. The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party’s purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters, perhaps even—so it was occasionally rumoured—in some hiding-place in Oceania itself."

http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/


So what is passing for reporting in the media is they are simply taking the word of the administration and reassembling it into their own words. After all, the press release is much easier to rework than actually going into the field and trying to find out if the threat from the elusive Jordanian really exists.

Stay in New York or Atlanta and just pass on the party line....

Or stand in the Pentagon Briefing Room and reword the words of the spokesperson and pretend that you a reporter just because you have a seat in the press room.....

Orwell had it exactly right.......

[UL_Approved]

1. What, you think that faith is really that bad...

Good observation. Has anybody seen a picture of him lately? Now how many people have seen him in PERSON? How many people have actually taken an interview with him??

This brings to light one sorry and sad fact. In a totalitarian regime, it is the bold and maniacal scope of the fiction that keeps it alive in people's minds. After all, what do we know other than what we've been told?

[WCGreen]

2. Especially when the press abdicates it;s responsibility.....

[UL_Approved]

3. The whores of tyranny

What else could seal the deal for a dictator other than a complicit press? What else could offer the necessary re-affirmation of lies and deception? The source of Orwell's hold in 1984 is the press.

The American press is divided. One faction embraces the coming darkness that is totalitarian rule. The other has learned from the experiences of the past, namely 1930-present, and has no intention of giving in to the scam. The problem lies in the fact that the group with the vast majority of resources happens to be the complicit group of spin artists that support our wonderfully tragic situation.

[WCGreen]

4. The only difference between 1984 and 2004

is that there is more than one central media, at least for now........

[UL_Approved]

5. We need to make sure it stays that way

There is no one "media". That in itself is further spin and deception of the forces of totalitarianism. The idea contradicts itself in its very existence.

Every publication, author, department, organization, or association is different. This is crucial to ANY effort in having transparency and accountability. Our efforts have been to dissuade the major crap spigots from pouring their rhetoric on the world. We need to spend as much time or more on fostering independent and impartial organizations that have a real basis in journalism. We cannot overlook this safeguard and asset of freedom.

[WCGreen]

6. I'm talking to a potential investor in a left leaning think tank

geared toward the midwest..

A sort of populism that is reminiscent of the late 19th century.....

If I set it up right and I think I can, it won't really cost him any capital, just divert some earnings into an organization that will give him what he really wants; a legacy that isn't just about making money.....