Many may wonder what in today’s world can writers and investigative journalists actually change. At the very least, they can chronicle the truth. And that’s no mean feat. The truth matters. Dissention can not only provide an alternative to official propaganda, but also a historical account for future generations of the deceptions and barbarity currently being carried out in the names of justice and freedom.

Today, more than ever, it is essential to counter powerful governments and corporations that have access to huge financial resources and are able to manipulate the media at will. Given that US military commander General Petraeus is on record as saying US strategy is to conduct a war of perceptions continuously through the news media, imagine for one moment if the prevailing view of world forwarded by the mainstream media and swallowed by most people is based on a pack of lies. It’s an issue worth bearing in mind because it probably actually is.

Take British politician George Galloway’s comments to a US senate committee hearing in 2005 concerning the invasion of Iraq. He told Senator Norm Coleman that he gave his heart and soul to oppose the policy that Coleman had promoted and his political life's blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq which killed one million Iraqis. Galloway told the senator that Iraq, contrary to his claims, did not have weapons of mass destruction. He also told Coleman that, again contrary to his claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaida and no connection to the atrocity on 9/11, 2001.

Galloway concluded by saying, "Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong, and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1,600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies."

And that pack of lies became a common sense version of reality for the masses as the media cheer-leaded the invasion of Iraq based on false claims about Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction. Think Iraq then. Think Iran now.

But that’s just a small part of what may well be a larger pack of lies. Consider an alternative reality for a moment.

How about the notion that al-Qaida does not really exist as an organized, unified entity and is just a loose list of Islamist fighters that the US funded against the Russians in Afghanistan and still uses for its strategic aims today, whether in Libya or Syria? Or that events surrounding 9/11 were a false flag operation to gain US public support for an ongoing ‘war on terror’ (against the convenient, ever-present al-Qaida ‘threat’) that purposively destroys civil liberties at home, while justifying military plunder in one resource rich country after another?

They couldn’t make such things up? But maybe they could and they are.

How about the Lockerbie airline bombing being a false flag operation too to cover up the CIA’s involvement in drug running? And when Gadhafi reacted by putting the squeeze on US oil companies in 2010 in response to Libya having to fork out compensation to Lockerbie victims, as former CIA ‘asset’ Susan Lindauer claims, lies about Gadhafi slaughtering civilians, just like many of the lies surrounding the Assad regime in Syria right now, were forwarded to justify military intervention.

Some may say these are merely conspiracy theories gone wild. There is in fact a great deal of supporting evidence for the cases mentioned above. The point is that they are highly credible alternative versions of reality that hardly ever (if at all) receive any airtime or column inches in the mainstream media. If they were to appear and people then began to question the mainstream media’s depiction of recent history and events, then the pack of lies about a war on terror, a simplistic made-for-TV Hollywoodesque good versus evil view of the world or removing tyrants from power under the lie of humanitarian interventionism would soon come tumbling down.

Modern day myths that have ordinary people lining up in support of ‘anti-terror’ wars or suchlike would then be in tatters and the actual reality seen for the bloody imperialism that it is. It is not without reason that a document by the British Ministry of Defence leaked to WikiLeaks describes investigative journalism as a "threat" greater than terrorism.

Pronouncements by the US and its allies on democratic principles, human rights and respect for international law would then be seen for what they really are too: arrogant, duplicitous rhetoric aimed at legitimizing policies that use taxpayers’ money to line the pockets of the Chevrons, Occidental Petroleums and Halliburtons of the world, but which have nothing whatsoever to do with democracy or human rights.

The truth matters, especially when it reaches a mass public audience. It is then that the US can become extremely jittery. Look no further than the impact of WikiLeaks and the subsequent plight of Julian Assange to appreciate this. The US government is also aware that the truth matters. That’s why it tries to bury truth and the carriers of it at every available opportunity.

Colin Todhunter : Originally from the northwest of England, writer Colin Todhunter has spent many years in India. He has written extensively for the Deccan Herald (the Bangalore-based broadsheet), New Indian Express and Morning Star (Britain). His articles have on occasion also appeared in the Kathmandu Post, Rising Nepal, Gulf News, North East Times (India), State Times (India), Meghalaya Guardian, Indian Express and Southern Times (Africa). Various other publications have carried his work too, including the London Progressive Journal and Kisan Ki Awaaz (India's national farmers' magazine). A former social policy researcher, Colin has been published in the peer-reviewed journals Disability and Society and Social Research Update, and one of his articles appears in the book The A-Z of Social Research (Sage, 2003). He blogs at East by Northwest at http://colintodhunter.blogspot.in/

Hollywood Wars, Modern Myths & A Pack of Lies: Truth Matters