Friday, February 10, 2006

Today's Topic : Porky Piars and the Porky Pies That They Tell


Y'know what. I'm inclined not to believe that there was a foiled attack on L.A. in 1992. It might have happened but I can't be sure. And what does that say about the governments that rule us?

I'm not a conspiracy nut. In fact I'm like a big dumb floppy labrador, willing to trust pretty much anyone until they prove they aren't worthy anyway.

But the lies and 'explanations' stack up. It's obvious that Bush's announcement of this attack on the nonexistent 'Liberty Tower' in LA is another branch of the campaign to turn the wiretapping story around. Oops - it appears the mayor of L.A. knew nothing of it in the 3 years since it happened. Nobody released Plame's details, except it was -oops Scooter. Mr Bush has never met Jack Abramoff, except -oops, those ten or twelve times. One of Bush's guys appointed to NASA resigns because-oops, he lied on his CV.

And that's just the last couple of days.

WMD's (has there ever been a more stupid abbreviation than this? An initialism that cuts an awfully unwieldy phrase by two syllables. I really think people would have paid more attention if they had come up with a snappier phrase) didn't exist. Oops - the intelligence was not actually intelligent (which often happens when you pay people loads of money to provide it for you. They tend to keep giving you what you want in return for your unmarked bills). The 2000 election debacle was -Oops, too complicated to sort out - let's just move on and forgeddaboudit. Oops - we kind of forgot to get clearance to wiretap. The head of privacy software at the DHS is-Oops, a bit vague on the ADVISE system, even though it's costing £50 million.

There are others.
Don't even get me started on this http://www.flight93crash.com/index.html
Of all conspiracies this is the one I find hard to dismiss as implausible and illogical

Perhaps there is a wider point here. I guess governments have always lied to us, except we live in a time where journalists crawl over the globe like ants. There are endless 24 hour news sources to feed. We have Wonkette and her ilk. Underground news isn't just inky duplicates found on Berkeley campus but instantly accesible worldwide by pretty much anyone, even if they don't have sandals or a beard. The news crews were in New Orleans before the government were even out of the shower.

Even 'small' Governments are big unwieldy slow moving creatures. Their lies didn't used to catch up with them so quickly, and by the time people realised that lies had been told it was often years later and the liars had been voted out in a natural political cycle. This is no longer the case. Porky Pies don't come back to haunt the bakers of them eventually any more, they exact their revenge by bouncing back immediately.

The only responsible response to this change in the way information is available is to NOT BLOODY LIE IN THE FIRST PLACE. Instead the tangled web becomes more and more tangled as the pace of 'spin' increases. Did these people not learn anything as children? A lie begets a lie begets a lie. Didn't anyone tell them in school or church that this was wrong?

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