Lies with Long Legs. Prodosh Aich

enough to distinguish between “Milosevics” and innocent Yugoslav children and women. We may still remember those press conferences from the “White House” during the “Campaign” against international terrorism in Afghanistan, another “unavoidable military attack” to destroy the evil. There too we were to believe that US bombs do not kill human beings, but only the “bin Ladens”. Well, there were a few “collateral damages”. Collateral damages? Moreover, the civilised “international community” never drops bombs. Those were only punishing “air-strikes” to restore freedom and peace. Enduring peace. And what has really been achieved? This will become evident later in Iraq or in Syria, in Somalia or in Sudan or in Iran or in North Korea. And then?

      Do we still remember what happened in the “Gulf War”? Do we remember its end? Our “mind–memory” does not seem to have any capacity left for the “Gulf War”. This has apparently been deleted as trash. Today we may be prejudiced enough to think at best that the Iraqi children born after 1990 are responsible for Saddam Hussein still being in power. In spite of the “Gulf War”. How are we otherwise to understand the continuous missile and bomb attacks on Iraq by the British and US forces? Are these attacks approved by resolutions of the United Nations or by any proforma decisions of the “civilised International Community”?

      Can we still recall what happened on the Falkland Islands? Or the military coup in Chile? Or the defoliation of the Ho–Chi–Min–path, dropping tons of dioxin because democracy and humanism in Asia were at stake? Who was behind the ”Six-Days-War”? What happened in the Congo and how was the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjoeld, killed? Who killed the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh after he had nationalised the oil industry in Iran? Who was John Foster Dulles and which policies did he pursue? From which blue sky did the fugitives in Palestine fall, who are confined in camps even today since 1948? What happened in Hiroshima and in Nagasaki? Who fought the second and the First World War? What happened in the so-called colonies? Why is “America” called America? How was the name of this continent before it was named “America”? What was the name of the people there before the Christian-European butchers did the whole job? Or in “Australia”, or in “New Zealand”? Do we still know how many “fugitives” left Europe in the last 500 years and what they did do in the whole world? Were they refugees? If we had had answers to all these questions, would we have looked at the “modern pioneers of a campaign” against world evil with different eyes?

      Does anyone still remember the following anecdote? A journalist asked the Foreign Secretary of the “USA” John Foster Dulles, if he had only one wish, what would that be? “Free flow of information” was the answer. The journalist did not ask for further clarifications. But we are mulling over the answer. What did John Foster Dulles really mean? Is it not a well-known fact that anything that flows, flows in one direction only? Don’t we have too many of these “John Foster Dulles”? They have successfully erased our memory on the long and elaborate UNESCO–discussions on media–monopoly. Those years in the seventies and early eighties.

      Well, never ending questions arise whenever we reflect upon the interrelationship between “media growth” and “collective amnesia” in “modern societies”. Reflect upon high-level-politics as well as upon the vagaries of everyday life. And we know: We are, what we know. And we only know what we have been told.

      If the tale is consistent, if it does not cause uneasiness, if it does not obviously contradict our previous experiences, we accept it, categorise and save it on the “hard disk” of our mind. Naturally stories from far afield are accepted more willingly. And if the stories are new? We get accustomed to them. Mostly we do not even have enough time to ask, who the narrator is, how the narrator got hold of his story, how he earns his living, what could be the after-effects of the story, who will benefit, whom it will harm, and a lot more.

      These are the reasons, these are the backgrounds that made our search for answers to our rather harmless questions so difficult, so complicated: who the “Aryans” are, the “Indogermans” and the “Indoeuropeans”? Who they are, since when has their existence been known, how has it become known that they existed, who discovered them, and how, why and for what purpose? But we have made progress in our search. With the help of our unusual questions. And as it seems, we have banged on Pandora’s Box and it is open now.