A comment on 1984

[ThomWV]

I have read 1984 a dozen times over the years, and learned from it every time. Just recently something about it occurred to me that might be worthy of a good discussion. Notice in the book that Winston works for a Government Agency that has the task of adjusting history to match its own line of propaganda. Winston speaks of the futility of the task early in the book but what occurred to me is today no such agency would be at all necessary and that for all practical purposes our news sources already do it for Government.

It is not so much that everything said on FOX, for instance, is a bald-faced lie, its that they have such a reservoir of those lies built up over the years and repeated so often that the other news sources treat them as fact. History is rewritten all the time by ABC. CBS, NBC, and all of late night radio. And the fact that we have no civic memory makes it simple for any commentator to create a narrative out of the whole cloth of quotes and news stories from the past that can lead to any conclusion the commentator wishes - independent of verifiable fact that goes undisclosed. Government never had to hide the truth, its simply distorted or not reported not only when it was fresh but even more so when dated.

But the point is that Orwell got it wrong, it wasn't Government that was going to create a history congenial with its own views, it turns out to be the Press that is doing it instead. And what makes that important is Orwell's ominous statement, "He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future." So just who does control our future; is it the Government that we seem to believe is of our own creation, or is it the media that holds any version of our history it choses to divulge in its hands? Constitutionally this is interesting too. There is that pesky 1st Amendment.

[Billy Burnett]

1. Yes. Prime example: N.O. was destroyed by a natural disaster.

No one seems to remember that the morning after Katrina that N.O. was OK, until the Ninth Ward levee failed.

Down the memory hole.

[truedelphi]

11. Greatnew documentary is coming out this week or next week:

"The Big Uneasy" with Harry Shearer having a part in its production.

Not a mockumentary but a real documentary.

And it addresses the exact situation you are discussing.

Namely the levees. And how the Army Corps of Engineers got millions and millions from the government to keep N.O. safe, yet in their stupidity, ineptitude and corruption, failed to do it.

[superconnected]

2. He also didn't realize it was corporations behind the government

causing the real wars and carnage, and likely has been through history. Politicians are only corporate puppets.

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. Actually corporations are a relatively new animal

so are states. States are about 500 years old. Corporations about 300 years old.

Speaking of history and knowing it.

[superconnected]

5. Well, good info!

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. The FIRST corp that fits some of the modern

characteristics is the Corporation that settled Virginia. They needed a royal charter (which placed them in the middle ages), but actually sold stock to investors. That is about 1610... not until the East India Company did you see the forming into a modern corporation. Yes, they still had the Royal Grant, but it was a different government type that issued that... a far more limited one. They also had insurance, something the Virginia Grantees did not.

<---------- readying all that crap again for a little project on the history of labor.

[Hannah Bell]

12. First british east india company chartered 1600. Dutch East india company chartered 1602.

muscovy company 1555:

The Muscovy Company (also called Russian Company or Muscovy Trading Company, Russian: Московская компания), was a trading company chartered in 1555. It was the first major chartered joint stock company, the precursor of the type of business that would soon flourish in England, and became closely associated with such famous names as Henry Hudson and William Baffin. The Muscovy Company had a monopoly on trade between England and Muscovy until 1698 and it survived as a trading company until the Russian Revolution of 1917. Since 1917 the company has operated as a charity, now working within Russia.<1>

The Muscovy Company was given a monopoly charter on whaling by Queen Elizabeth I in 1577. The primary and most profitable whaling grounds of this joint-stock company came to be centered around Spitsbergen in the early 17th Century, and the company's royal charter of 1613 granted a monopoly on whaling in Spitsbergen, based on the (erroneous) claim that Hugh Willoughby had discovered the land in 1553.<2><3> Initially the English tried to drive away competitors; but after a few years, they claimed only the waters south of these Arctic islands.<4>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscovy_Company



The East India Company (also the East India Trading Company, English East India Company,<1> and then the British East India Company)<2> was an early English joint-stock company<3> that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China. The oldest among several similarly formed European East India Companies, the Company was granted an English Royal Charter, under the name Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies, by Elizabeth I on 31 December 1600.<4>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company


Statistically, the VOC eclipsed all of its rivals in the Asia trade. Between 1602 and 1796 the VOC sent almost a million Europeans to work in the Asia trade on 4,785 ships, and netted for their efforts more than 2.5 million tons of Asian trade goods. By contrast, the rest of Europe combined sent only 882,412 people from 1500 to 1795, and the fleet of the English (later British) East India Company, the VOC’s nearest competitor, was a distant second to its total traffic with 2,690 ships and a mere one-fifth the tonnage of goods carried by the VOC. The VOC enjoyed huge profits from its spice monopoly through most of the 1600s. <3>

The Dutch East India Company remained an important trading concern for almost two centuries, paying an 18% annual dividend for almost 200 years


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company


hudson's bay company 1670

[SweepPicker]

3. Sorry...............

I thought you meant Van Halen 1984

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. Well it also helps that Americans WILLFULLY mind you

do not remember last week, let along five years ago. When Doggie was repeating his lies and conveniently ignoring the Office of Special Plans... reality is that like Smith, a small fraction of those listening, or for that matter interviewers, realized just how deeply he was lying.

Oh and Orwell was talking about the Soviet Union. After the war in particular he became quite disenchanted with it. A matter of context helps too, since the USSR did what the Ministry of Truth was doing in the novel.

[Greyhound]

8. You have to consider two things; George O was British and the government did control

the media. And it was 1948 so he didn't predict that so few corporations would eventually own the entire media.

$.02

[truedelphi]

9. dare I mention that the news media has as one major propaganda point that

There are no chem trails.

Except that last April (ie, 2009,) the Obama Administration came out and said that the nation had the capability to use chem trails to offset Global Climate Change, and that perhaps they would start to do it.

Well, those of us who are upset about the health risks of the chem trails, we knew a long time ago the nation had the ability to do this. One only has to read a paper issued by Ed Teller in 1997 to see that it could be done and it could be done here.

So one day, the populace is reprimanded if they look up and say "Look! Chem Trails!" and told no, that is just normal contrails (condensation) leaking from the planes' engines. But on the very next day, "Oh! Look! Chem Trails!" and the government says, "Yep we were able to do this all along!"

[jimlup]

10. You should read Chomsky and Herman's "Manufacturing Consent"