None of this is true

Does the European Union have a urinary-tract infection?  I ask this as the EU passes a resolution that seeks “to counter disinformation campaigns and propaganda from countries, such as Russia.”  And, again, it reminds me of that classic line by John Vernon from the Clint Eastwood movie ‘The Outlaw Josie Wells’: “Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining”.

All jokes aside, as the US, EU and UK regimes look to limit supposed ‘Russian Propaganda’, they put us all on a slippery-slope of Soviet-era control over freedom of speach.

The real gripe Western powers have is struggling to come to terms with an end to their monopoly on ‘truth’.  As John Vernon suggests, they have been peeing down our backs for decades with much of the population content; nay happy to un-zip their fly and crook their neck at the optimal angle.

Let’s take a quick review of some classic ‘back-peeing’ examples from just this millennium.  Having been fed a constant diet of bollocks in the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq war, an October 2003 study from the University of Maryland on American public opinion regards the then proposed Iraq invasion found that 57% of mainstream media viewers believed that Iraq gave substantial support to Al-Qaeda while 69% believed that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the September 11 attacks.  (Only three years later in 2006 the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded “there was no evidence of ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda”.  A further 22% of Americans believed that weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq, even after the publication of the post-war Duelfer Report which concluded that in pre-war 2002 Iraq had “only small stockpiles of chemical [weapons], the numbers being inadequate to pose a militarily significant threat”.  For Fox News watchers, 80% had one or more of those perceptions; all proven to be false in the years since 2003.

The UK in particular is forgetting two pioneers of free speech, John Milton (1608 – 1674) and Evelyn Hall (1868 – 1956).  Hall, a staunch supporter of free speech, and who; being a woman ironically went by the pseudonym S. G. Tallentyre, famously said: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" while Milton, in pushing back against the notion of a Government-engineered ‘truth’ said: “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties”.

The EU resolution and similar moves by the UK and US to thwart freedom of speech hark back to the bad old days of the Soviet Union and flies in the face of one of the corner-stones of democracy; freedom of speech.  Fortunately, these initiatives are doomed.  While it seems many older Westerners have become accustomed to the soothing warmth of corporate-news-urine running between their shoulder blades, John Milton and Evelyn Hall would be thrilled that more and more people are rejecting the standard line and are both willing and able to question and find for themselves the truth as they see it.  So in that vein, don’t believe out of hand any of this blog; nor any other ‘news’ source, but question, argue and find your own truth.