US July '98

The media play a particularly malevolent part in the continuation of the Status Quo in present day American society. Ironically enough it was a group of journalists who uncovered the details of the Watergate scandal, thus donating the real powers that be a patsy with whom to burden all the blame, and the American public with a villain on whom to vent their discontent. In would be pleasant, though I fear a little naive, to believe that these journalists acting on their own initiative uncovered the scoop of the century. I fear that that truth lies more in a nod and a wink in the right place allowing the floodgates to open and an unprecedented impeachment of the head of state to ensue. This cleverly took the heat off the more camera-shy allowing them to continue about their sinister business, just as in the Kennedy assassinations the previous decade. The latter example proving beyond doubt that if the National Security Council / CIA wish to keep certain details quiet, their is no Freedom of Information act that will make them comply, they are ‘above the law’.

Uncomfortable as it may be for the Americans to contemplate, there are many state actions in their recent history that do not add up. The electorate seem eager to accept the state version of events and believe justice to have been done, unfortunately it merely prolongs the time-bomb as sooner or later the facts will have to be faced and dealt with. A particular incident I find disquieting is the spate of ‘Communist’ Witch-hunts at the hands of Senator Macarthy in the 1950’s, one could draw parallels here with the Stalin purges, also an example of Dictatorship getting rid of possible enemies on the grounds of a whiff of suspicion. The example in many ways stops here, for in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe there was, for good or bad, no illusion of free speech or freedom of information in spite of hollow constitutional promises as the American citizens appear to believe they have in their own country. My heart goes out to those families whose loved ones fought against fascism in the Second World War, surviving only to perish at the hands of a more subtle version of it later in the so-called civilised world.