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The Memory Hole keeps scarce knowledge alive
The Memory Hole Website rescues knowledge in danger of being forgotten, ignored, or suppressed.
http://www.thememoryhole.org
In George Orwell's novel 1984, news articles containing inconvenient facts were thrown down a memory hole to be incinerated. Now The Memory Hole Website rescues knowledge in danger of being forgotten, ignored, or suppressed.
"The reason that literal memory holes don't exist," says Russ Kick, the site's editor and publisher, "is that they don't need to. Thanks to litigiation, spin control, self-censorship, media laziness, and info-glut, a lot of important facts are buried. Websites disappear. Articles from the Associated Press are changed. The New York Times buries a major revelation in the 18th paragraph of an article on page A23. The FBI withholds evidence. Transcripts of Congressional hearings go out of print after a week. Crucial government documents are never put online. Citizens have to pay hundreds of dollars for a single Freedom of Information Act request. Investigative books reveal startling facts, but who has time to read 900-page exposes? There are lots and lots of reasons why important facts often don't get the exposure they deserve."
Kick is the author and editor of five books and regularly writes for the Village Voice. He was first to report on the US military's proposal for and development of illegal bioweapons. His latest book is the anthology Everything You Know Is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to Secrets and Lies. In it, dozens of contributors--including Greg Palast, Howard Zinn, Naomi Klein, Paul Krassner, Arianna Huffington, Noreena Hertz, William Blum, and Thomas Szasz--reveal startling information about the World Bank, the Vatican Bank, mad cow disease, Ritalin, the Drug War, the 9/11 attacks, corrupt cops, and other hot-button topics. Kick feels his Website is of a piece with this book and his other work.
"The whole point of all that I do is to bring facts to light. I've done it in several ways--writing books and articles, editing anthologies, and running Websites. The Memory Hole is the latest part of the process. I want it to serve as a central respository for important material that's in danger of being actively suppressed or killed through neglect."
The Website will contain material ranging in length from one paragraph to over a thousand pages. "We live in a world of limited time, frazzled attention spans, and information overload, so a lot of the pages at The Memory Hole are very short. They might highlight a crucial passage from a Congressional report, an interview, or even a drug warning label. But for people with a deep interest in a subject, there will be longer material--entire books, government files that run hundreds of pages."
The Memory Hole will be updated several times a week. On its first day, it contained eight features:
| | - A Congressional report which states that the CIA commits over 100,000 serious crimes each year.
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| | - Unreleased crime-scene maps from the Columbine massacre.
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| | - A German newspaper article in which intelligence officials say the NSA knew about plans for the September 11 attacks.
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| | - A US soldier telling his hometown newspaper that he was ordered to kill women and children in Afghanistan.
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| | - Legendary Justice William O. Douglas writing that the Supreme Court and the White House are bugged.
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| | - New warnings on the label of the antidepressant Paxil.
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| | - A photograph of Henry Ford being presented with the Grand Cross--the Nazis' highest honor.
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| | - A photograph of a whale bleeding to death at Sea World.
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Among the items to watch for in the near future:
| | - 350 pages of declassified FBI documents on the Columbine massacre. These files were recently released due to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by The Memory Hole.
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| | - The legendary Kerry hearings on drug trafficking
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| | - Enron memos, tobacco industry reports, and internal documents on the Exxon Valdez disaster
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| | - A patent in which pharmaceutical scientists admit that fluoride causes gum and mouth disease
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| | - Information on the Russians' atomic bomb in Washington DC, the two schoolgirls recently killed by the US Army in Korea, and the fraud lawsuit against the Vatican.
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How does The Memory Hole pay for itself? "It doesn't," says Kick. "It's totally non-commercial--no ads, no selling, no subscriptions. It won't earn a dime. Of course, I don't mind if people who find the site useful or important send me donations."
"There's a lot in the pipeline," says Kick. "I don't want to jump the gun by revealing too much right now. Keep an eye on the site, and get the email updates. There are some major releases in the works."
The Memory Hole is at <http://www.thememoryhole.org>.
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