Space Forum / Astronomy / December 2006

Go To Hell... I dont want a new Dark age.

In her historical mystery, "The Daughter of Time," Josephine Tey (a pen
name of Elizabeth MacKintosh), has Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Grant,
while confined to his hospital bed, solve the 15th century murder of
the two York princes in the Tower of London. The princes were murdered
by Henry VII, and the crime was blamed on Richard III in order to
justify the upstart Tudor's violent seizure of the English throne.

Tey makes the point that if a 20th century mystery writer can detect
the truth about a 15th century murder, historians have no excuse to
persist in writing in school textbooks that Richard murdered his
nephews. British historians remained loyal to the Tudor propaganda long
after the Tudors were no longer around to be feared or served.

At the beginning of the scientific era, men had the hope that the
ability to discover truth would free mankind from superstition, dogma,
and the service of power. The belief in truth was powerful. Truth would
deliver justice and bring an end to status-based privileges and the
falsehoods propagated by privilege. The faith in truth was short-lived.
Today propaganda is everywhere in the ascendency.

Every week another apologist for President Bush compares "Bush's fight
for Iraqi freedom" to Abraham Lincoln's "fight to free the slaves." The
American civil war was not fought to "free the slaves," as Thomas
DiLorenzo and other scholars have thoroughly documented, any more than
the purpose of Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq was to "bring freedom to
Iraqis." The freedom excuse was invented after it became impossible to
maintain the fictions about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and
Saddam Hussein's connections to Osama bin Laden. Bush has yet to tell
the real reason he invaded Iraq.

In the US today, demonization and propaganda substitute for facts and
analysis. Professors and journalists are quick to lend their names and
voices to the untruths that rule our lives. Just as Hitler's foreign
policy was based in propaganda, so is Bush's and Blair's.

The success of propaganda enhances government's illusion that it has a
monopoly on truth. It is the monopoly on truth that gives the Bush
regime the right to define the "Iran problem," the "Syria problem," the
"Lebanon problem," and the "Korea problem" and to apply coercion in
place of understanding and negotiation.

Secure in its possession of truth, the Bush administration refuses to
talk to the enemies it has manufactured. It will only fight them.

When scholars, such as John Walt and Stephen Mearsheimer, or President
Jimmy Carter who has tried harder than anyone else to achieve
Arab-Israeli peace, point out that Israel's mistreatment of
Palestinians is a cause of Middle East turmoil, they are immediately
denounced as anti-semites. Columnists and academics who know nothing
about the Middle East or its troubles nevertheless know what they are
supposed to say whenever anyone mentions Israel in any critical
context. And they have no compunction about saying it, the truth be
damned.

Without commitment to truth, science, justice, and debate falter and
disappear.

The belief in truth is fading from our society. It is unclear that
scientists themselves any longer believe in truth or the ability to
discover it.

The discovery of truth is no longer the purpose of our criminal justice
system. Once prosecutors believed that it was better for ten guilty men
to go free than for one innocent person to be wrongfully convicted.
Today prosecutors believe in high conviction rates to justify their
budgets and re-election.

In the past police solved crimes. Today they round up suspects and
pressure them.

There was no debate in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, and none
today in the US. Many Americans, who imagine themselves to be
conservatives even though they have never read, nor could they
identify, a conservative writer, equate truth-telling with hatred of
America. They are of Bush's mindset: "you are with us or against us."
Bush supporters respond to factual articles about Iraq and the rending
of the US Constitution by suggesting that as the writer hates America
so much, he should move to Cuba or China.

In America today each faction's "truths" are defined by the faction's
dogma or ideology. Each faction bans factual analysis that it doesn't
want to hear. This is as true within the universities as it is at
political rallies. The old liberal notion that "we shall follow the
truth wherever it may lead" has long departed from America. Think tanks
reflect the views of the donors. Studies are no longer independent of
their financing. In America, truth has become partisan.

All societies have elements of myth, untruths that nevertheless serve
to unite a people. But many myths serve as camouflage for evil. One of
the greatest myths is that "GIs have died for our freedom." GIs have
died for American empire, for the American elite's commitment to
England, and for the military-industrial complex's profits. Some may
have died in Korea for the freedom of South Koreans, and some may have
died trying to save South Vietnamese from the North Vietnamese
communists. But it is hogwash that GIs died for our freedom.

There was no prospect of North Korea attacking America in the 1950s or
Vietnam attacking America in the 1960s and none today. The Nazis were
defeated by Russia before US troops landed in Europe. The US never
faced any threat of invasion from Germany, Italy, or Japan.

America's wars have created hysteria that endanger our freedom. Abraham
Lincoln shut down the freedom of the press and arrested editors and
state legislators. Woodrow Wilson arrested war critics. Franklin
Roosevelt interred American citizens of Japanese descent. George W.
Bush has destroyed most of the Bill of Rights. In 2006 Congress
appropriated funds for building concentration camps in the US.

Recently, Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House, said that
freedom of speech is inconsistent with "the war on terror" If it takes
a police state to fight terror, the country is lost even if Muslim
terrorists are defeated. Americans have far more to fear from a
homeland police state than from terrorists.

The vast majority of the world's terrorists are the recent creations of
Bush's invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and of Israel's invasion of
Lebanon and brutality toward the Palestinians. Bush is simultaneously
creating terrorists and a police state. It serves no one but the police
to make their power unaccountable.

On December 26 Jeff Cohen explained on Truthout how war propaganda took
over TV news and demonized everyone who spoke the truth about Iraq,
while pushing war fever to a frenzy. Fox "News" was the worst with its
ranks of generals and colonels who sold their integrity for dollars and
TV exposure. One of Fox's loudest voices for war was a retired general
who sat on the board of a military contractor.

When the Clinton administration allowed the media concentration in the
1990s, the independence of the American media was destroyed. Today
there are a few large conglomerates whose values depend on broadcast
licenses from the government. The conglomerates are run by corporate
executives who are not journalists and whose eyes are on advertising
revenues. They publish and broadcast what is safe. These conglomerates
will take no risks in behalf of free speech or truth.

The challenges that America faces are not terrorism and oil supply. The
challenges that we face are the police state that Bush has created and
the disrespect for truth that is endemic in government, the
universities, and the media. The US has entered a dark age of dogmas
and unaccountable power.

we are living in 'New Rome' with 'Dark Age' to follow if Imam Hassan
doesn't show Up, and save us from monster who control our daily life...

The life and Dead of Saddam was was long fortold... as the children of
the Prophete... Search for the truth, and you will see that I am Right.