"Why, then, does present-day language seem so impotent, so ineffectual? Why has talk become cheap? What has happened to that original language with its creative power? How has the creative breath devolved into the ubiquitous matrix of lies we find ourselves in today?" — Charles Eisenstein, Ascent of Humanity

We begin with a suggestion that the "Ubiquitous Matrix Of Lies" described by Charles Eisenstein, introduced in ug#464 is integral to what David Graeber terms "The Vast Machine to Perpetuate Hopelessness". Our first speaker is "Nurse Nayirah", a young Kuwaiti woman presented to the US Congress as part of a multi-million dollar PR campaign orchestrated by Hill & Knowlton. Her emotional eyewitness testimony of Iraqi brutality in Kuwait, as influential as it was fictitious, provides a classic example of the primary lie. This provides a backdrop for scrutiny of "Dr. Rola", another purportedly altruistic healthcare worker who testified anonymously to atrocities by would be targets of UK and US aggression. As we hear, the BBC slipped up badly, being caught editing the soundtrack and more seriously still, broadcasting multiple takes of the same scene, revealing that the purported live action sequence was in fact scripted. Is such fakery exceptional? A brief RT report suggests that faked war reports from Syria by BBC, CNN and Al Jazheera are a routine matter.

Next we hear powerful testimony from Steve Wilson and Jane Akre, fired for refusing to lie on air about a matter of public safety. The FoxBGH scandal, which we reported on back in episode 12 marked the official end of an era as the legal rulings resultant from it established that, as Project Censored put it, "The Media Can Legally Lie".

What to do when faced with a system of lies? Ironically, more BBC material, "Ministry of Truth", illustrates the folly of seeking redress within the system itself. The 2007 Misrepresentation of the People Act, aiming to make it a criminal offense for politicians to deceive the electorate, has so far been supported by only 37 out of 646 MPs. Can we realistically expect a corrupt, top-down system dominated by psychopaths and sociopaths to fix itself?

Former BBC journalist, Tony Gosling, takes us into the second hour with a wide ranging speech loosely centered on the phone hacking as an example of the BBC's use as a political tool. His 18 minutes speech is peppered with leads to follow up, glitches in the ubiquitous matrix of lies. He points out, for example, that the new leader of the Church Of England (who has been standing up for senior bank executives, by the way) was appointed after only one year's experience as a bishop, but over a decade in the oil industry.

As an illustration of some of the essential pieces of the puzzle which commercially-controlled media is not telling us, and a 2007 recording of some important news from inside the US military machine. Retired 4-star general Wesley Clark tells how he learned in 2001 of a Pentagon plan to destroy the governments of 7 countries in 5 years:- Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.

A reading of the Wikipedia lead on Depleted Uranium provides an example of how, nowadays, their entries are sanitized and rarely present any large glitches in the ubiquitous matrix of lies. The WHO it reports, gives a clean depleted uranium a clean bill of health. This fits with an interview of Michael Keefer on an anonymously produced 6 weeks ago report from the Iraqi Ministry of Health with the collaboration of the WHO which claims that Iraq has in effect no problem with increased birth defects. Keefer terms the report a "pretty classic cover-up", noting its flawed methodology and that it has been "universally condemned" by medical health researchers, many of whose peer reviewed studies proving dramatically increased risks of birth defects in Iraq.
The last word on the "Ubiquitous Matrix of Lies" goes to Charles Eisenstein, who suggests that the root of the problem stems from the inevitable standardization of words and the removal of words from their context, causing them to appear to have a meaning independent of their speaker and their audience. The ubiquitous matrix is both cause and symptom of our separation.
Thanks to Redeye for the Michael Keefer interview.

This episode rebroadcasts content from UG#12 & UG#464.
This episode tackles similar topics to UG#662 & UG#670.