Libby Spencer writes about Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and the press. He’s trying to change history and in Iran his words carry some weight. We know that history is supposedly written by the victors, but that’s only if you think in a war metaphor which has an end. While Mahmoud is in authority, journalists in Iran will no doubt wish to avoid displeasing his administration, and history has a way of being concealed by those with a secret to protect. Current history, that is to say our view of it, is determined by current circumstances of access.
And we might face this in our country, as people of a certain mindset even now deny the atrocities of the present administration in Washington. So we in blogtopia (y!sctp) are documenting events as they happen, and making the record available to everyone who can preserve a copy. It is not enough that we survive the present regime but that no future regime can come to power on a platform that the American government never tortured anyone, never started a war on false pretenses, never detained people indefinitely without charges, never rounded up immigrants, never committed any of the war crimes which ought to be the subject of public trials.
If you doubt the history of Adolf Hitler’s Germany, Nuremberg provides a record. There’s a reason those trials were held. And anywhere the truth can reach, we can point people at that record.
