A Lie Told Often Enough...

Sorry to keep banging on about the Australian government but these people make me so angry sometimes.

What would you say the purpose of government was? I’d say it had the function of managing and distributing power to people who want it, in return for which they administer the law and distribute the resources for the rest of us. The function of democracy is to ensure that the people with the power have to consider the rest of us while they’re having their fun. That’s why it’s a Good Thing.

The trouble with democracy though, is that it works effectively only when the people doing the voting are well-educated and well-informed. So it has become one of the common tricks of governments to manipulate education and information so that they can get away with more.

In the past few years, we have seen this policy in action on a grander scale than usual with the Bush administration (mis)leading the people of the USA (and its lapdog allies) into an invasion of Iraq, and attempting to silence scientists attempting to warn us about global warming. Why did they really want to invade Iraq? Because they had the harebrained idea that they could democratize the Middle East by force. Why have they been trying to hide the evidence for climate change? Because the big energy corporations don’t want the American public voting for a government that might pull their snouts out of the trough.

If you want to find out more about what American foreign policy is all about, read Noam Chomsky. For the story behind how the American government has been gagging its own climate scientists, visit the sites of the Government Accountability Project and their joint report on this topic (PDF 2.5 MB).

And what has this to do with the Australian government? Well, today in parliament, Prime Minister John Howard said that the connection between human activity and global warming was ‘still unproven’.

Now why would the little weasel say that?

(PS The quotation in title of this piece is by Vladimir Lenin. The full quote is, "A lie told often enough becomes the truth. ")