Friday 2 January 2009

Quote of the Day



" The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses."

Malcom X




" During a war, news should be given out for instruction rather than information."

Joseph Goebbels




" The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary."

Gabriel Garcia-Marquez




" If they give you lined paper, write the other way."

William Carlos Williams



When is a Terrorist not a terrorist?

Has anyone else noticed how “terrorists” are suddenly “militants”?

I first noticed it when all the UK news channels suddenly seemed to start referring to the terrorists who attacked Bombay as “Militants”. Murdering scum encapsulates it nicely for me. Certainly they are terrorists. Undoubtedly Islamicist ones as well.

Difficult to think what else to call them but terrorists.

The term “militants” brings to mind the industrial unrest of the 70s in the UK, maybe Arthur Scargill’s lamentable comb over look and donkey jackets. The unions generally didn’t go in for suicide bombings, rocket attacks, or tote Kalashnikovs. Even the IRA drew the line at suicide bombings.

Now the people firing missiles into Israel, who seem to be the proximate cause of the recent flair up, are also “militants”, at least to the mainstream media.

It is difficult to imaging two such organisations as the BBC and Sky randomly and spontaneously starting to use the term at the same time, or to understand why they might - so one must presume it is not spontaneous.

Who’s agenda then? Unless they are running some sort of news cartel then logically it is likely to be the UK Government.

Why would it suit New Labour to phase out the term terrorist? News-Speak? Or more NewSpeak?

What don’t they want us thinking now…