"Propaganda & Spinning the News", an article by Peter Vilbig, discusses the use of propaganda in the mass media, especially related to wartime events. Propaganda, which is the "ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause" is seen throughout Bush’s war on Terrorism in Afghanistan and bin Laden’s battle against the United States. During the earlier stages of the war, the American’s stopped at nothing to gain public support of Afghani’s, by dropping over "385,000 slips of paper containing a picture of an American soldier shaking hands with an Afghan man". Yet, although the U.S put millions of dollars and countless hours into winning over Afghanistan, bin Laden, a propaganda master, was urging his fellow Muslims to not give up the fight. Reports on civilian losses were "wildly exaggerated" to Afghani's, giving the impression that more were injured than in actuality. Both the U.S and bin Laden are fighting a war that will only result in tragedy, since neither side seems to be giving up any time soon.

Perhaps the most influential and popular song off the White Album is called Revolution. Revolution talks about the intense corruption that took place during the late 1960’s, when violence and destruction was at an all-time high and support for the Vietnam War was at an all-time low. The lines, "You say you want a revolution/But when you talk about destruction/Don't you know you can count me out", discusses how the government was desperately trying to win the war at all costs, thus, ‘revolutionizing the world’. Yet, the people would have nothing to do with the massive amounts of bombings and deaths that took place because of the need for ‘evolution’. Vilbig’s article talks about how the Bush administration kept fighting, even though public support was very low, which is exactly what Revolution mentions in its opening chorus. As the saying goes, those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it and that is exactly what is happening now.

When Orwell wrote Animal Farm, he had one event in mind: the Russian Revolution. Like Squealer who used propaganda to get the animals to keep working hard by announcing the farm was doing poorly, (when in reality it was flourishing), bin Laden used propaganda to win over Muslims by broadcasting false casualty statistics. He claimed that 11 Afghani's had died, when actually only 3 had perished, to make the Americans look like monsters. Moreover, when The Beatles sing, "You ask me for a contribution/We're doing what we can/But when you want money for people with minds that hate/All I can tell you is brother you have to wait", they are talking about how few dollars the government had and how much more money they needed. The government had to rely on the public to assist them in the war, yet fed up with the continual violent, the people outright refused. This is akin to Animal Farm, where Napoleon 'asked' the animals to contribute to the building of the windmill, suggesting they always do more than they can. The final result of both efforts: everything came toppling down.

Finally, Orwell's use of foreshadowing in Animal Farm can summarize every event in history to date. His simple example of the pigs stealing the milk alludes to the slow corruption of the powerful, which is always the case in history. bin Laden's taste of power came when he destroyed the Twin Tower's; Bush's came when he invaded Afghanistan and Iraq; Johnson: Vietnam; Hitler: Poland and Mussolini: Italy. Foreshadowing, which the reader can always see, occurs in every day life, where an individual can see one key event that generally leads to greater tragedy. As is always the case, the greater tragedy could have been avoided with the intervention of one person.

[ main page ] . [ guestbook ] . [e-mail ]