Iraq War Crimes: Tony Blair Should Be In Prison NOT Julian Assange (all this because almost no one knows the truth)

This video explores a significant issue: almost no one knows the truth about anything, and because of this, people feel a sense of impunity. This is why we see Oliver North on TV. Even the TV show American Dad made fun of him. 

Oliver North lied under oath, yet he is free and even seen as an authority figure that people should listen to. The same goes for Bush and Blair, who lied about a war and now receive peace praises and medals. Meanwhile, Julian Assange, who exposed the truth about these events, is not only absent from TV but is also rotting in the worst prison in the UK and soon in the US.

As long as most people remain uninformed, liars like Oliver North, Bush, and Blair will be praised and promoted, while truth-tellers like Assange and Snowden will be prosecuted.

The scariest thing is that it’s getting worse over time. Comparing the reactions to 9/11 and the Iraq War to the reactions to COVID, the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage, and the war in Ukraine reveals a decline in public awareness and critical thinking. Despite widespread access to computers and the internet, people spend their time on TikTok watching cat videos rather than learning and understanding current events. This behavior results in a population that is increasingly uninformed, just as Orwell predicted:

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end, we shall make thought-crime literally impossible because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. . . . The process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for committing thought-crime. It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end, there won’t be any need even for that. . . . Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?” ― George Orwell

Adam Gopnik echoes this sentiment:

“Precisely what we’ve seen is that you can achieve the same power of thought control through the compression of language and the elimination of argument. We live in an age of social media and Twitter, where the only people who can manipulate these means effectively are those with an autocratic or authoritarian vision. You may have heard of a leading politician in the country from which I flew last night who uses Twitter exclusively as his means of communication. Exactly because in the limited number of characters allowed on Twitter, our own Newspeak, it’s impossible to have what’s essential to liberal democracy: a developed argument. First this premise, then this evidence, and then this revision. No, all you can do is make an authoritarian assertion, and all you can do in return is make a counter-assertion. In the act of making that counter-assertion, you subscribe to the nature of authoritarian discourse. There’s no way you can have an extended, reasoned argument on Twitter; you can merely have a shouting match. Orwell understood how the corruption of language leads to the impossibility of real political argument.

The second thing Orwell understood, which he projects forward to us through all the specific details of 1984, is the power of hatred and the manipulation of memory. We always have to have another to hate, whether it’s East Asia, Eurasia, Islam, or the ‘bad hombres’ coming from Mexico. It’s essential to the authoritarian imagination that everyone focuses on the threatening ‘other’ and not on the powers that be, not on the structure of power. Orwell understood that the past becomes meaningless if we no longer have a regular and reliable grasp on our own history. At one moment in 1984, Winston is sure that he’s seen a potent piece of newspaper with a photograph of three purged inner party members who are now non-persons. He’s convinced that if he can share this information—this simple fact that things actually happened one way and not in any way that authority decrees—he can hold on to his sanity and his sense of self. But even with his beloved Julia, he can’t convey how essential it is to have a secure grasp of what happened once.”

• Adam Gopnik

None of this is accidental; we are reduced to simple automatons whose only role is mindless work and consumption. People often say, “Why should I care if I can’t do anything about it?” I’ve heard this from my ex-girlfriend, my father, and many friends. None of them realize that this is exactly what those in power want them to think. If people didn’t believe they were powerless, those at the top could face problems.

The biggest issue is that younger generations are becoming worse—less informed, less questioning, and more conditioned. This makes me worry about our future.

Devangi Vivrekar writes:

“Portraying the problem as one in which we just need to be more mindful of our interaction with apps can be likened to saying we need to be more mindful of our behavior while interacting with the artificial intelligence algorithms that beat us at chess. Equally sophisticated algorithms beat us at the attention game all the time.”

Billions of dollars and millions of engineers, programmers, designers, psychologists, and focus groups all spend their time working out how to attract our attention.

“in 1984, Winston is sure that he’s seen a potent piece of newspaper with a photograph of three purged inner party members who are now non-persons. He’s convinced that if he can share this information—this simple fact that things actually happened one way and not in any way that authority decrees—he can hold on to his sanity and his sense of self. But even with his beloved Julia, he can’t convey how essential it is to have a secure grasp of what happened once.”

For me, the newspaper Winston talks about is 9/11.