BSNEWS

Modern thought control is dependent on subliminal communication. Messages influencing key perceptions are delivered unseen, unnoticed, with minimal public awareness of what is happening or why.

For example, journalists tell us that Hugo Chavez was ‘divisive’, that Julian Assange and Edward Snowden are ‘narcissistic’, that George Galloway is ‘controversial’. But beneath their literal meaning, these adjectives communicate a hidden message: that these individuals are acceptable targets for negative media judgement; they are fair game.

One of my favorite language shifts over the years has been the move to “corrections facilities” from “jails” and “prisons.” What makes this verbal change so noteworthy and Orwellian is that jails and prisons have moved steadily away from any focus on rehabilitation to just getting prisoners out of circulation—that is, away from anything like “corrections.” It is reminiscent of the shift from Department of War to Department of Defense back in the late 1940s, coinciding with the shift in that Department’s real mission from defense to offense and expansion (i.e., “containment”).

“A state’s appetite for collecting intelligence expands in direct relationship to the failure of its media to hold it tenaciously to account.” And the emphasis is on “tenaciously”.

“My partnership with The Guardian has been extremely fruitful and fulfilling: I have high regard for the editors and journalists with whom I worked and am incredibly proud of what we achieved,” Greenwald said in an emailed statement. “The decision to leave was not an easy one, but I was presented with a once-in-a-career dream journalistic opportunity that no journalist could possibly decline.”