We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, December 11, 2016

‘Fake News’: Who is Really Making the War on Truth?

Click here to access article by Michael Jabara Carley from Strategic Culture Foundation

When referring to David Ignatius and his recent interview with Richard Stengel, a State Department official responsible for "public diplomacy, Carley writes:
The more the State Department official goes on, the more surreal his narrative becomes. Let’s call it, "truth speak", borrowing from Orwell’s prophetic dystopian novel 1984. Poor Ignatius is as far from a muckraker as you can get, and swallows the whole State Department gob without blinking. Somebody has got "to restore the currency of truth," says the State Department man. He mentioned Twitter and YouTube deleting several hundred thousand accounts.

There’s the cue for policing "the truth". Shut up the people who don’t speak it, according to State Department lights. Just yesterday, the German chancellor Angela Merkel, said "truth" has to be protected and action contemplated against Alternate Media which could threaten "the stability of our familiar order". Is the groundwork being laid in the west for censorship of discordant narratives?
Carley refers to Seymour Hersh as the only major muckraking journalist left in the US. Hersh, of course, is especially noted for his exposés of the Mai Lai massacre, the development of nuclear weapons by the Israelis, the lies of George Bush and David Rumsfeld regarding their promotion of the invasion of Iraq, torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and the very important article entitled "Redirection" that reported on the secret policy plans of the Bush administration to contain Iran and support Sunni extremist groups that espoused a militant vision of Islam which later evolved into ISIS. 

What Carley omits is that Hersh, like many other US journalists, have been forced to seek out independent media abroad to express their views. Hersh no longer publishes his articles in The New Yorker, instead he now has his writings published in the London Review of Books. Other US independent journalists (like Carley) are welcome to express their critical views in foreign media outlets such as RT, Strategic Culture Foundation, teleSUR, etc., in addition to domestic alternative media.

It appears that 1984 arrived a little late, but there is little doubt of its existence now. 

Note: You might also be interested in an article entitled "Washington Post admits article on 'Russian propaganda' and 'fake news' based on sham research" published on RT (another website that is on PropOrNot's blacklist).