For All YOU Know

When I lived back in Vancouver, BC, a friend and I had a running 'inside' joke going for a couple of years that went like this; one of us would make a governmental-sounding statement (or sometimes, see it made on TV, or hear it on the radio), and then follow it with the phrase, "For All YOU know", in a heavy, fake, and bad Russian accent. Laughter would then ensue. This was, BTW, when the cold war was still on.

Example: "Mighty Soviet Union provides best health care and education for its citizens in all the world - For All YOU Know."

The point is, entities whether they be governments or corporations or whatever that make great effort to hide the truth may find their credibility to be less than sterling. I worked for a while with a very large corporation, in a customer-contact cubicle. You know, a phone room, in my particular case a help desk. The first act that one had to perform before being accepted as an employee of this firm was to sign a non-disclosure statement, vowing that you would never tell the public about the way the corporation worked internally. I think this was a good indication of the confidence they had in their good corporate citizenship. We, the little people used to refer to the corporatespeak tidbits that we were required to dispense daily thusly, " *** might call this a 'positioning statement'. I call it a lie".

How did I get so far into this post without mentioning George W. Bush and his current scandal with respect to the latest NSA wiretapping disclosure? If the American mainstream media was worth more than a pinch of shit, every story they reported on where the administration was completely devoid of outside scrutiny would be preceded AND followed by this phrase, "For All YOU Know". While Kira, Wolf, Britt, or whomever expounded on the supposed details of wiretapping, torture, renditions, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, ad nauseum, the same phrase, "For All YOU Know" would flash across the screen repeatedly. Every Republican apologist would be required to wear a sign around their neck, with the words "For All YOU Know" in letters a foot high.

Maybe then America would wake up. For all I know.



***=The name of a major North American computer manufacturer, who I am not at liberty to divulge. If I do, I think I signed away something that would allow them to put me in a cage full of wolverines, or something like that. I must confess, I didn't really read it that closely. I really needed a job.