"The rushing torrents swept away the long-accumulated filth"

"Herakles cleans out the Augean stables" with an assist by Athena, right. Temple of Zeus, Olympia, Metope 12. (Photoshop-enhanced image from Lucy Scribner Library, Skidmore College)

"Our media’s errors and our media’s extraordinary resistance to admitting their errors, have contributed and continue to contribute to the serious problems that plague our globe in this young 21st century," write Richard Landes and Pedro Zúquete, proprietors of the Augean Stables blog and its sister website The Second Draft, where "we present the story the way the mainstream media initially told it, introduce further evidence, and let you decide what you think really happened." We had the good fortune of spending a couple of hours across a seminar table from Richard a couple of weeks back in a freewheeling discussion among local bloggers of why we blog. From Second Draft:

Richard Landes is a Professor in the History Department at Boston University. He was trained as a medievalist and wrote his first book on a series of forgeries that had fooled historians for centuries, even after a scholar in the 1920s had shown decisively that the texts were fiction. In addition to working on medieval peace movements and the relations between elites and commoners in 11th century France, he focuses on millennial and apocalyptic movements. In addition to courses on medieval history, he offers courses in "Communications Revolutions from Language to Cyberspace", "Europe and the Millennium," and "Honor-Shame Cultures, Middle Ages, Modern World." He is completing a book entitled Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience. It was as part of his research on this subject that he came upon the Pallywood tapes.

Talk about cosmic convergences.

[Augean Stables] takes its name from the Fifth Labor of Herakles, to clean the stables of Augeas, where thousands of cattle had left so much un-cleaned dung that the whole Peloponnesus smelled of it. At Second Draft, our discovery of both Pallywood and the Al-Durah Affair have led us to realize that -- at least where the Arab-Israeli conflict is concerned -- our MSM represent a veritable Augean Stables of accumulated misreporting which fills the world with its stench.

Hercules [Herakles] harnessed the forces of nature to cleanse the Augean Stables:

Two rivers, he observed, the Alpheus and the Peneus, flowed quietly nearby. Standing on the banks of one, the answer to his problem flashed upon his mind. With might and main he labored. By great exertions he succeeded in diverting both these streams from courses they had followed for decades. The Alpheus and the Peneus were made to pour their waters through the dung-filled stables of King Augeas. The rushing torrents swept away the long-accumulated filth. The realm was purged of all its fetid murk. Within a single day the task impossible had been performed.

Googling for a description of the judo technique of using an opponent's own weight and strength against him, we stumbled upon a most apt -- not to mention prescient -- Marine Corps Gazette article dated October 1989 :

Terrorists use a free society's freedom and openness, its greatest strengths, against it. They can move freely within our society while actively working to subvert it. They use our democratic rights not only to penetrate but also to defend themselves. If we treat them within our laws, they gain many protections; if we simply shoot them down, the television news can easily make them appear to be the victims.

That's exactly the point of the inquiry "Al Durah: What Happened?" at Second Draft:

People who followed Middle East news in 2000 cannot forget the image of Muhamed al Durah, gunned down in a hail of Israeli bullets at the very beginning of the Al Aqsa Intifada. The impact of this dramatic footage on global culture is close to incalculable. Its prominence goes far beyond any other image from this terrible conflict and its impact goes far beyond any of its other images, one of “the most powerful images of the past 50 years,” one of the shaping images of this young 21st century.

Bring on the rushing torrents of the blogosphere!

Comments

[sigmund, carl and alfred]

All the faux finishes in the world cannot obviate one reality -- we know what we are seeing is trompe l'oeil.

The same applies to the media and to those in the political sphere.

Once explained, once revealed, reality can no more be ignored than the genie can be stuffed back into the bottle.

Think about it: Journalists are regarded with the credibility and politicians as a group are all liars.

The exceptions to those rules are honest journalists and honest politicians- and now it is as if honesty is special.

[jessica jones]

Hello

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jessica

[Gayle Miller]

Is there hope? There are days when I wonder. Today isn't one of those days. Against all odds, that incredibly poor immigration bill has foundered on its own stupidities! Were the Senators statesmen? Maybe a few. Sen. Kyl maybe. Jeff Sessions, definitely.

WHY DON'T OUR LEGISLATORS LISTEN TO THEIR CONSTITUENTS?