http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-pope/the-ministry-of-truth-str_b_28031.html

08.25.2006

The Ministry of Truth Strikes Again, and Again, and Again...

The reactionary campaign against knowledge and information is reaching
frightening new heights.

The Environmental Protection Agency has been ordered by the White House
to "shut down [its] libraries, end public access to research materials
and box up unique collections on the assumption that Congress will not
reverse President Bush's proposed budget reductions."

Fifteen states will lose library service immediately, the rest will
follow, and the public is to be turned away as soon as possible.

Unsurprisingly, EPA scientists are protesting, saying that the lack of
access to data will impair their research and scientific capabilities.

The Administration says its plan is to "centralize" control of all
data; EPA scientists say the real goal is to "suppress information on
environmental and public health-related topics."

The Administration is not yet burning books, but they are getting very
close.

They're not much fonder of telling the truth -- the whole truth -- over
at the Defense Department.

The Department has refused to complete congressionally ordered studies
of the potential security threat to radar systems from wind turbines.

Until it finishes that study, Defense is blocking all new wind turbines
that might help reduce our dependence on what the President calls our
"addiction" to oil and natural gas "often from insecure places."

The Sierra Club sued and demanded that Defense finish the study.

(Of course, if wind turbines actually were a threat to our air defense
systems, you would think that the Department of Defense would be
rushing to prove it and make us safer by dealing with the thousands
that already exist.)

But Defense has refused to respond to the Club's motion.

Now, Defense has informed us that it will miss the 60-day deadline for
that response and will need an additional five weeks to answer the
complaint.

In other words, the Department claims that it needs more than three
months to tell a Court why it cannot finish what was supposed to be a
six-month study.

This is giving stonewalling a whole new meaning.

Nor will the Department of Defense tell us how many wind projects it
has stopped, even though it has issued "don't proceed" orders to each
one, so the information is obviously available.

According to media reports, at least 15 wind farm proposals in the
Midwest alone have already been shut down.

The list of stalled projects includes one outside of Bloomington,
Illinois, that would have been the nation's largest source of wind
energy -- generating enough electricity to power 120,000 homes in the
Chicago area.

But scientists are good for one thing -- as scapegoats.

Only a few weeks ago, reactionary columnist Peggy Noonan was setting up
the climate science community to take the fall for Bush Administration
inaction on global warming.

According to Noonan, if only global warming scientists weren't such
obvious liberal hacks, the world would have acted in time.

Scientists, Noonan said, are responsible, "for refusing to be honest,
for operating in cliques and holding to ideologies. For failing to be
trustworthy."

She could not, however, cite a single example of such behavior.

Perhaps all her evidence had already all been hidden away under lock
and key in the EPA's "deaccessed" library system.

__________________________________________________________

"We expect there to be transparency. People who have something to hide
make us nervous."

George "Dimwit" Bush -- Speaking about Iraq, Anchorage, Alaska, Feb.
16, 2002

Harry
(see all of Harry Hope's excellent posts as they break, put this link
in your browser, use it, this is a search on google groups, on the
author Harry Hope sorted by date... nothing fancy):
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=&start=0&scoring=d&enc_author=-nIhFBQAAACtBOUGAhN9cSve8yYdFJBuOPANdqfI6prRsqjc7uCt1A&

With history moving so fast these days you might also want to sort
Harry Hope's posts by "relevance" particulary if the lies and
misdirection that we are all being sujected to by the extensive Bush
Crime Family Propagand machine are confusing you. Using the "sort by
relevance" option has a way of letting you take in the big picture.
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=&start=0&enc_author=-nIhFBQAAACtBOUGAhN9cSve8yYdFJBuOPANdqfI6prRsqjc7uCt1A&