Love Thy Neighbours

“Apocryphal stories would not be worth worrying about if their inventors stuck to the spoken word. What’s a bit of bragging or slander among friends? But when these tales reach print they become accepted fact. No matter how implausible or self-serving, how spiteful or absurd, they are believed.”

- Chinki Sinha

Martha Gellhorn, war correspondent who covered the Spanish War and wrote The Face of War

WHO is going to witness anything anymore? Who can witness anything anymore? Like all journalists, we walk a thin line between truth and lies, losses and gains, evasions and press notes and propaganda.

There is no moral high ground to concede to anyone here. No history is ever clean or moral. No history can stand the test of absurdity. Those who invoke it are perhaps choosing to be oblivious to the fact that no war has ever brought any peace.

Some things need to be repeated. Over and over again. As a safeguard against the apocryphal stories we hear.

Newsrooms have become VFX studios, with anchors and reporters trying to build narratives to glorify and commodify war with lies and deceit.