LIVE HARBOR SAMCAM

Orwell would recognize U.S.

Published/Last Modified on Wednesday, Sep 15, 2004 - 11:57:18 am PDT

Dear editor:

I know that over the summer some seniors at the high school have read Orwell's famous book - "1984". These seniors might be interested in viewing the documentary "Orwell Rolls in His Grave" now playing in San Francisco.

With forthright commentary from respected leaders in the industry, the documentary portrays how our present government has achieved power by controlling the media. (For instance, if a lie is presented enough times, people tend to believe it, even if it is false; such as weapons of mass destruction in Iraq). A handful of corporations now control radio, TV and newspapers across our country. As a result, people are "fed" the official news and other voices are silenced. This is not what a democracy is about. In a democracy reporters investigate and report the unbiased facts, even if it is messy: like the election results from Florida in 2000.

Nightly on television, we view the official "news" created from the top then handed down to the reporters who put on their makeup and stand up in front of the cameras and smile and say their prescribed lines. One can turn on the television and switch through all the stations and rarely find any complete analysis of our present war and occupation in Iraq. The pentagon has forbidden any pictures of the flag-draped caskets coming back home. But if one enters a search on the Internet for "dead in Iraq" there are sites, like www.thememoryhole.org where pictures of the caskets can be seen; there are sites, such as www.icasualties.org, where the numbers of those killed and wounded are listed; at the time of this writing, 973 of our soldiers killed, more than 6,497 wounded, and countless Iraqi children, women and men killed and wounded with destroyed homes and places of business. I think it is important that our present-day seniors look up these sites and be aware of what is going on.

And when we can no longer find the facts, when voices are silenced, then we have the making of a country our seniors have just read about in "1984." "Orwell Rolls in His Grave" is a shocking reminder of what we have to lose if this continues for four more years.

Evelyn Jess-Fulwiler

Moss Beach

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