George Orwell’s 1984 has been rendered obsolete by the realities of the modern security state. Big Brother, perhaps the most important metaphor of the twentieth century, has now ascended through the proliferation of the Internet, its essential place in modern life.
Winston Smith was, if you remember, a newspaper editor. His job at the Ministry of Truth was to erase all news from all archives that conflicted with the current “reality.” By precisely excising offending passages and throwing them down the “Memory Hole,” to an incinerator, the newspapers maintained the “truth” that the all-powerful state fabricated on a day by day basis.
Those were the old days.
Look what the BBC just deleted from its own website:
The short of it is that the “Free Syrian Army” (sic) use prisoners as unwitting suicide bombers, a war crime. These rebels have committed numerous other war crimes against civilians, but this one is striking in its actual broadcast and then scrubbing from history. It got the Winston Smith treatment (MORE).
Lest you assume this is a purely British matter, The New York Times was also caught erasing passages from its reporting concerning CIA support to the Al-Qaeda connected “Free Syrian Army” (sic).
So far NINE versions of the NYT article, “France Says It Would Recognize Provisional Syrian Government” have appeared on the Times’ website.
VERSION 3:
While the United States, Britain and other Western countries have called on Mr. Assad to resign and have supported the opposition with nonlethal aid — and American intelligence agents have helped funnel arms to rebel groups — they have not explicitly stated they would recognize a provisional government formed by Mr. Assad’s array of political enemies.
VERSION 4:
While the United States, Britain and other Western countries have called on Mr. Assad to resign and have supported the opposition with nonlethal aid — and American intelligence agents have helped to identify the rebel groups that receive arms — they have not explicitly stated they would recognize a provisional government formed by Mr. Assad’s array of political enemies.
A fictitious “reality” is maintained. The CIA doesn’t actually “funnel” arms to the heavily-armed, western-supported Syrian mercenaries and Jihadists. Does anyone actually believe that? Numerous reports show heavy US involvement, and of course the involvement of close US allies and client states like Saudi Arabia. In what universe is the US not responsible for arming these rebels that it supports in every conceivable way, including UN resolutions introduced to bomb Syria on their behalf as was done in Libya in 2011.
The complicity of major corporate media outlets like the New York Times and the BBC in this cover-up and publishing of an endless stream of war propaganda, is arguably a war crime in and of itself. The war propaganda enables the warmakers to initiate and follow through with hostilities against foreign targets, actions that are Crimes Against the Peace under international law, a clear breach of the UN Charter.
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