doublethink
Why does Obama get a prize whilst Bush gets shoes?
Submitted by antarchi on October 10, 2009 - 16:13Today, when I came home from our nonviolent demonstration in Bil'in, after the soldiers shot tear gas and after seeing the violence of the Israeli soldiers, I heard that President Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize. When I heard this from the media I started to go crazy. I asked myself why. The Americans are still in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Palestine is still occupied. In the recent news I saw that the Israeli soldiers closed Jerusalem, and I heard that many people were injured. We haven't seen anything changed. Why didn't the committee give the prize to Bush? I remember nine years ago Bush had a good speech about the establishment of a Palestinian state in the year of 2005. We saw after the speech that Sharon invaded Al Aqsa mosque, and the American army invaded Iraq. Why didn't you give the prize to this man at that time, and he got shoes instead? This is injustice! I am so sorry Mr. Bush.
- antarchi's blog
- Login to post comments
- Read more
aerial bombardment intends to kill civilians
Submitted by antarchi on August 16, 2007 - 16:39To say that the civilian deaths from aerial bombardment are unintentional is sophistry, because if there is a probability that the bombs will hit civilian targets, then ipso facto the civilian deaths are not unintentional. This is tantamount to saying that a drunk driver who did not intend to kill someone in an "accident" should be set free for good motives; US law prosecutes drunk drivers regardless of whether they have been in an accident, because it recognizes that drunk driving is an inevitable accident. The same must be said of aerial bombardment. It always already intends to kill civilians, despite the best intentions of the military planners.
what did it matter who invented aeroplanes?
Submitted by antarchi on June 5, 2007 - 16:19Often Julia was ready to accept the official mythology, simply because the difference between truth and falsehood did not seem important to her. She believed, for instance, having learnt it at school that the Party had invented aeroplanes. And when he told her that aeroplanes had been in existence before he was born, and long before the Revolution, the fact struck her as totally uninteresting. After all, what did it matter who had invented aeroplanes?
George Orwell, 1984
What does it matter? And yet if it doesn't matter that we have been given the wrong facts, or not all of the facts; if it doesn't matter that there is a reason why the facts were hidden from us; if it doesn't matter that those who bothered to hide the facts from us (deliberately) continue to be 'believed', trusted - or at least in positions of authority; if it doesn't matter that others continue to believe in their lies, and that by those means, their lies become the 'truth'; if it doesn't matter, above all, that all of this doesn't matter to people - then what, in the end, matters?
Lying matters partly because you can't build trust on lies. But it also matters because the fact of lying - or holding back the truth - is nearly always a symptom of disrespect - or mistrust - towards others. Why otherwise do you not give them the story as you see it? Do you think they would not want to hear it? Or do you not trust them to hear it as you say it?
'To glorify democracy and to silence the people is a farce; to discourse on humanism and to negate people is a lie'
Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
- antarchi's blog
- Login to post comments
continued leadership on climate change
Submitted by antarchi on November 6, 2007 - 00:37Two senior White House officials published an open letter seeking to correct inaccurate stories in the press 'that the President's concern about climate change is new'. 'In fact', they reported, 'climate change has been a top priority since the President's first year in office'. To prove it, they had found 37 words he said about the subject in 2001; 46 words in 2002, and 32 words in January 2007. In January 2007, he had even managed to say 'climate change'. This demonstrated, the claimed, that he has shown 'continued leadership on the issue'.
