While looking at the stats for this blog, I noticed a few people had clicked from John Rentoul’s blog. Who? Apparently he is chief political commentator for The Independent on Sunday. As it turns out, he was quoting from my post Has Osama Bin Laden been dead for over seven years to use as an example of how silly people who are concerned about the ‘truth movement’ can be.

The reader comments so far don’t support the official line either.

I told Mr Rentoul, re. the Daily Mail’s piece which inspired my post,

I know Sue Reid has been trying to get articles like this published in the Mail for some time. At least their editor shows a bit of courage despite general MSM cowardice and compliance.

I compared the situation,

What makes you think this 21st Century Emmanuel Goldstein still lives? The object of our two minutes of hate has to be kept alive, at least until another as good (or bad) comes along or is fabricated.

Compare OBL to Goldstein in 1984:

“Despite being a key part of the story, he is never actually seen or heard, and may in fact be nothing more than a propaganda fabrication of the Ministry of Truth (“Minitrue”).” (Wikipedia)

To which someone replied,

Mr. Rentoul needs to pass you off as a freak to make his ‘journalism’ look mildly respectable in comparison, regardless of any evidence in either respect.

Someone else writes,

It does not matter if he is dead or alive…. As soon as the cold war ended a new bogeyman was required and Islam is the gift that keeps on giving.

A very clever chap wrote,

Stewart_Cowan is spot on with his comparison with Orwell’s Goldstein, though I fear that to suggest so in the present climate of fear and paranoia which our government has so carefully created is quite ungoodthinkful and most probably a thought crime.

He suggests we go one step further.

Does Al-Qaeda really exist?

What he doubts, of course, is that it is a genuine organisation and not one that western intelligence agencies have created.

“Ana raicha Al Qaeda” is colloquial for “I’m going to the toilet”. Would a genuine terrorist group call themselves al-Qaeda, or perhaps the CIA, unaware of Arabic colloquialisms?

Maybe the “Independent” will live up to its name one day and report the truth about bin Laden and state-sponsored terrorism. I guess it’s a lot easier for the average hack to take ten minutes writing about tin-foil hat-wearers then collecting their hefty salaries and comfy perks and expenses than spending a serious amount of time studying what they write about.