{"id":244651,"date":"2023-09-25T12:00:14","date_gmt":"2023-09-25T11:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=244651"},"modified":"2023-09-22T06:18:24","modified_gmt":"2023-09-22T05:18:24","slug":"the-mass-media-memory-hole-blair-ukraine-and-libya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/09\/the-mass-media-memory-hole-blair-ukraine-and-libya\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mass-Media Memory Hole \u2013 Blair, Ukraine and Libya"},"content":{"rendered":"

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20 Sep 2023 <\/em>– A key function of state-corporate media is to keep the public pacified, ignorant and ill-equipped to disrupt establishment power.<\/p>\n

Knowledge that sheds light on how the world operates politically and economically is kept to a minimum by the \u2018mainstream\u2019 media. George Orwell\u2019s famous \u2018memory hole\u2019 from \u2018Nineteen Eighty-Four\u2019 signifies the phenomenon brilliantly. Winston Smith\u2019s work for the Ministry of Truth requires that he destroys documents that contradict state propaganda:<\/p>\n

“When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.”<\/em><\/p>\n

(Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four<\/em>, 1949, Penguin edition, 1982, p. 34)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The interests of power, hinging on the domination of an ignorant population, are robustly maintained:<\/p>\n

\u2018In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

(Ibid., p. 36)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As the Party slogan puts it:<\/p>\n

\u2018Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

(Ibid., p. 31)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In today\u2019s<\/em> fictional \u2018democracies\u2019, the workings of propaganda are more subtle. Notably, there is a yawning chasm<\/a> between the rhetoric of leaders\u2019 professed concern for human rights, peace and democracy, and the realpolitik<\/em> of empire, exploitation and control.<\/p>\n

As Declassified UK observed<\/a> earlier this year, the UK has planned or executed over 40 attempts to remove foreign governments in 27 countries since the end of the Second World War. These have involved the intelligence agencies, covert and overt military interventions and assassinations. The British-led coup in Iran 70 years ago is perhaps the best-known example; but it was no anomaly.<\/p>\n

If we broaden the scope to British military interventions<\/a> around the world since 1945, there are as many as 83 examples. These range from brutal colonial wars and covert operations to efforts to prop up favoured governments or to deter civil unrest, including British Guiana (now Guyana) in 1953, Egypt in the 1950s, Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011 (more on this below).<\/p>\n

The criminal history of the US<\/a> in terms of overthrowing foreign governments, or attempting to do so, was thoroughly documented by William Blum, author of \u2018Killing Hope<\/a>: US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II\u2019 and \u2018Rogue State<\/a>: A Guide to the World\u2019s Only Superpower\u2019.<\/p>\n

These multiple invasions, coups and wars are routinely sold to the public as \u2018humanitarian interventions\u2019 by Western leaders and their propaganda allies of the \u2018mainstream\u2019 media.<\/p>\n

A Feted War Criminal<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tony Blair, the arch British war criminal, is largely treated by the UK political and media classes as a wise elder statesman<\/a> on domestic and world affairs. It sums up the way this country is run by a corrupt and blood-soaked establishment. Proving the point, the Financial Times recently tweeted<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u2018Sir Tony Blair is back. Once vilified as a \u201cwar criminal\u201d by some in Labour, his influence within the party is growing again under Sir Keir Starmer. The FT speaks to the former UK premier: https:\/\/on.ft.com\/3PDkIpE<\/a>\u2019<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You\u2019ve got to love the FT\u2019s insistence on using \u2018Sir\u2019, as though that bestows some measure of respectability on a man who waged devastating wars of first resort in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Costs of War project, based at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, estimates<\/a> that the total death toll in post-9\/11 wars \u2013 including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen \u2013 could be at least<\/em> 4.5-4.7 million. Blair is one of the Western leaders who shares complicity for this appalling death toll. That fact has been essentially thrown down the memory hole by propaganda outlets who welcome him<\/a> with open arms.<\/p>\n

Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark once explained<\/a> how, following the 9\/11 attacks, the US planned to \u2018take out\u2019 seven countries in five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran. It is remarkable that this testimony, and compelling footage, has never been deemed credible evidence by \u2018mainstream\u2019 media.<\/p>\n

The notion that Blair was \u2018once vilified\u2019 as a war criminal \u2013 and let\u2019s drop those quotation marks around \u2018war criminal\u2019 \u2013 as though that is no longer the case<\/em> is ludicrous. In any case, what does the carefully selected word \u2018vilify\u2019 actually mean? According<\/a> to the online Merriam-Webster dictionary, it can mean two things:<\/p>\n