The Ministry of Truth — Minitrue, in Newspeak — was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air. From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
George Orwell, 1984
Truth is unalterable, eternal, and unambiguous. It can be unrecognized, but it cannot be changed. It applies to everything that God created, and only what He created is real. It is beyond learning because it is beyond time and process. It has no opposite, no beginning, and no end. It merely is.
Daily Kos’ Meteor Blades has a great post about Rupert Murdoch’s purchase of Dow-Jones (publisher of the Wall Street Journal) and what it means, centering on Keith Olbermann’s recent interview with the perceptive Rachel Maddow. A small excerpt:
KO: And the Daily Kos today reminded its readers of a lawsuit that had been filed by two employees against a Fox News station in the Tampa area in 2003. They had been fired by the station – this is opposed to the national network – for refusing to distort a story, they said. And Fox News actually argued in the appeal that broadcasters have the First Amendment right to lie or deliberately distort news reports on the public airwaves, and Fox News – Fox Corporation anyway – won, although on slightly narrower grounds than that. First Amendment protections are strong, but Fox is brash enough to claim we can lie and the Constitution says we can lie?
RM: This is getting, I think, to the really big issue here, the really big story. Because this is not just about media consolidation. It’s not just about supporting Republican candidates or conservative policies. The big issue here is, and the big agenda here, I think, is to just make news worse. To undermine the idea of a discoverable truth about information that can be researched, and conveyed and believed in. When you bill the work of Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly as news, when you call that the Fox News channel, you’re degrading the very idea of news. You’re making news something that should be questioned alongside propaganda or opinion. You’re putting the very idea of news in the gutter where it lives with equal stature to propaganda. It simply undermines the very idea of journalism as something that deserves respect. It gets us very much back to the Bush Administration’s assertions about the reality-based community being something that should be questioned by people who live outside that reality-based community. That’s the big agenda here, undermining the whole idea of journalism, and that’s the real thing to worry about.
KO: The good old Ministry of Truth has another outlet …
Yes dear Moonbat,
CNN is brought to us by Lockheed Martin and Boeing.
The war machine is greased, and “freedom is on the march” tm.
Orwell missed by 20 years, and it took me 20 years to figure it out.
THEY HATE US FOR OUR FREEDOMS!
..and they’ll follow us home.
Speaking of 1984.. Is it my prolonged usage of Cannabis Sativa that is creating the difficulty in comprehending the following passage, or is it just your basic Orwellian doublespeak that’s baffling me? For me, it’s in the throw the horse over the fence some hay category.
On Saturday, Petraeus told The Times:
“We are very likely to have some recommendations on the way ahead. I am reluctant to try and put down timelines. I will come in with recommendations at some point that do lay out certain force structures over time, missions over time based on certain assumptions about continued progress.”
Swami #3, this is challenging even for the advanced elucidating/penetrating qualities of sativa. I definitely detect doublespeak, but also a sincerity about some of it. Petreus seems to be hypnotized by his own bullshit.
Moonbat, I admit to a little disappointment here. I thought it was going to be a post about Barnabas Collins.
With Murdoch as the owner, The Wall Street Journal needs a name-change. “Pravda” seems to fit. Sure it’s been used before. But for the same reason – propoganda . So, why not.
BTW – “pravda” in Russian means truth. And little of that was printed in the newspaper.
The Soviets were the ones who inspired Orwell. They inspired the Bushies, too.
“Fair and Balanced,” my ass….