Memory Hole

For about two years after 9/11, I kept a stack of news paper clippings related to it and the run up to the invasion of Iraq. The stack grew to eventually take over two shelves of a book case that sat by my bed. One day the thought hit me, what are the karmic consequences of having all that information a foot from where my head is when I sleep? When I first started clipping the reports, articles and editorials and keeping them, I didn't really know what to do with them. Or why for that matter. I felt a little like Richard Dreyfus in Close encounters of the third kind. I just knew I should hold onto these tangible examples of something going horribly wrong. It was evidence.
When I decided to move the pile of paper onto a shelf in a closet, I started to go through it all. As I did I started thinking about the classic book, 1984. If I just held onto these papers, then I had prof it was said. In 1984, whenever the government altered the historical facts, they had every reference to the contrary removed from the public record and thrown down a burning "memory hole."
A quick idea came together. Why not use 1984, and these clippings in a solo performance show?
Why not indeed.
The show was performed once in Chico. I held a shoe box of press clippings and pages from 1984.
It got laughs and nodding heads from the crowd.
The shoe box got placed on a shelf in my closet and somewhere along all the moves during the last few years, I lost it.
Well, it has returned. Not as a show, but as a data base for all the lies told to push us into war with Iraq. Click the link bellow. It will take you to the public integrity web site. The have put together a list of untruths spoken out loud by top Bush officials in the lead up to the war. Not only that, but they have crossed referenced them against official documents. In most cases, they have intelligence reports telling officials that they were wrong. However, days after receiving those documents, bush and company said almost the exact opposite of what those documents said. In short, they have demonstrated an orchestrated and sustained use of propaganda for the purposes of creating public consent for war.
A conspiracy to lie us into it.

Memory Hole