Ignorance is strength
JMD Morgan
06/25/09
Paul Craig Roberts
Thinking independently is rapidly becoming a serious Thoughtcrime.
Winston Smith was the only one among Big Brother�s subjects capable of
independent thought. His ability to think independently was discovered
and terminated. -Already we see that the US media is incapable of
independent thought. Independent thought in the universities, where
careers are dependent on government grants, is already half dead.
Independent thought does not exist in think tanks, which serve the
interests of donors. In America independent thought is rapidly becoming
an anti-American act, which is itself morphing into a terrorist act.
The American media�s one-sided and propagandistic coverage of the
Iranian election has made an American hero out of the defeated
candidate, Mousavi. This leaves one wondering if anyone anywhere in the
US media or US government knows that Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who served as
prime minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran from 1981 to 1989, the
decade following the overthrow of the American puppet government by
Khomeini, has been fingered as the Butcher of Beirut, responsible for
the bloody attacks on the US embassy and Marine Corps barracks in Beirut
during the Reagan administration that blew to pieces 241 US Marines,
sailors, and Army troops.
According to Jeff Stein writing in the June 22, 2009, CQ Politics,
Mousavi �personally selected his point man for the Beirut terror
campaign, Ali Akbar Mohtashemi-pur,� who presided over the terror cell
responsible for the attacks.
The National Security Agency had a tap on the Iranian ambassador to
Lebanon, according to Admiral James Lyons who was deputy chief of Naval
Operations at the time. Admiral Lyons told Jeff Stein that �the Iranian
ambassador received instructions from the foreign minister to have
various groups target US personnel in Lebanon, but in particular to
carry out a �spectacular action� against the Marines.�
Stein reports that Lyons �also fingered Mousavi for the 1988 truck
bombing of the US Navy�s Fleet Center in Naples, Italy.�
Bob Baer, a CIA Middle East field officer at the time, says that
Mousavi �dealt directly with Imad Mughniyah,� the person responsible for
both attacks.
All of these facts have gone into the Memory Hole. The US media and
government have turned Musavi, the bloody butcher of US servicemen, into
the would-be liberator of Iran from theocracy.
Only in America and in George Orwell�s fictional population in his
predictive book, 1984, can we find such citizen ignorance.
Every day in America, a.k.a. Oceania, we see the growing power of
Big Brother�s three slogans: WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE
IS STRENGTH.
From ignorance comes the strength to create a hero out of America�s
terrorist enemy, Mousavi.
From freedom comes the protection provided by being constantly
spied upon, no longer endangered by privacy which might keep Big Brother
from discovering a terrorist plot. This freedom from terrorists morphs
into the slavery of being held in indefinite detention without evidence
or charges. Habeas corpus has become the opposite of freedom as it
prevents our protection from terrorists.
On June 23, Big Brother Obama, following in the tradition of Big
Brothers Bush and Cheney, declared that Oceania and the �entire world�
are �appalled and outraged� by Iran�s violent efforts to crush protests
organized by Oceania�s interference in Iran�s election. Meanwhile,
Oceania continued its wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, crushing
people right and left while gearing up to bring peace to Iran. No one is
outraged at the violence. War is Peace. Those who don�t fight wars can�t
bring peace. Peace results when Big Brother�s hegemony extends over
those regions that do not understand that War is Peace, Freedom is
Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength.
�The face of Big Brother seemed to persist for several seconds
on the screen, as though the impact that it had made on everyone�s
eyeballs were too vivid to wear off immediately. The little sandy-haired
woman had flung herself forward over the back of the chair in front of
her. With a tremulous murmur that sounded like �My Savior!� she extended
her arms toward the screen.
�At this moment the entire group of people broke into a deep,
slow, rhythmical chant of �Big Brother, Big Brother, Big Brother!� over
and over again, very slowly, with a long pause between the first �B� and
the second -- a heavy, murmurous sound, somehow curiously savage, in the
background of which one seemed to hear the stamp of naked feet and the
throbbing of tom-toms. For perhaps as much as thirty seconds they kept
it up. It was a refrain that was often heard in moments of overwhelming
emotion. Partly it was a sort of hymn to the wisdom and Majesty of Big
Brother, but still more it was an act of self-hypnosis, a deliberate
drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise.� [1984]
The drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise sums up
well enough the performance of Oceania�s Ministry of Truth.
How long do Americans have before doubting Big Brother and the
Ministry of Truth is a Thoughtcrime?
�Whether he wrote �Down With Big Brother,� or whether he
refrained from writing it, made no difference. The Thought Police would
get him just the same. He had committed the essential crime that
contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it.�
The neoconservatives have set up in America Thoughtcrime watch
committees over professors. Academics who depart from or challenge the
neocon line are reported and are subjected to vilification campaigns.
Sami Al-Arian, a computer science professor at a Florida University, was
destroyed by the US Department of Justice [sic] because he gave the
Palestinian side of the story.
The neocon academic spy operation has been given a boost by Dennis
C. Blair, director of National Intelligence. Writing in CounterPunch
(June 23), David Price reports that Blair has announced plans for a
program to train intelligence officers, whose identities and activities
would not be known to professors or administrators, to conduct covert
missions in university classrooms.
This is as Orwellian is it comes. Thinking independently is rapidly
becoming a serious Thoughtcrime. Winston Smith was the only one among
Big Brother�s subjects capable of independent thought. His ability to
think independently was discovered and terminated.
Already we see that the US media is incapable of independent
thought. Independent thought in the universities, where careers are
dependent on government grants, is already half dead. Independent
thought does not exist in think tanks, which serve the interests of
donors. In America independent thought is rapidly becoming an
anti-American act, which is itself morphing into a terrorist act.
Newspeak handles effortlessly the morphing and transforming of
meaning. New generations born into the new system know no difference
and, thus, do not need to be silenced. Once the older generations are
brought to heel, truth is whatever Big Brother says.
Paul Craig Roberts [paulcrai...@yahoo.com] was Assistant
Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan�s first term. He was
Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous
academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for
Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior
Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded
the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. He is the
author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider�s Account of Policymaking
in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside
the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of
The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are
Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter
Brimelow�s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent
epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.
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