In George Orwell’s 1984, The War Ministry was renamed the Ministry of Peace. Truth was Lies, Hate was Love. But author Lewis Carroll got there first.

In ‘Through the Looking Glass,’ first published in 1871, Humpty Dumpty tells Alice, and in rather a scornful manner, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice “whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that's all.”

Humpty Dumpty has indeed been put back together again, in our newsrooms and in the mouths of our politicians. As so often happens, it finds its apogee in Syria.

One man’s ‘terrorist’ is, of course, another man’s “freedom-fighter” – but now it’s becoming ridiculous. The so-called ‘Free’ so-called ‘Syrian’ so-called ‘Army’ –the FSA– are now being denounced all over the world for the savagery of their conduct in the Turkish incursions in north-east Syria.

The problem is that the Humpty Dumpties fulminating into their fountain-pens against it are the very same Humpties who told us for years that these were ‘moderate-rebels,’ ‘secular’ soldiers fighting for ‘democracy’ against ‘dictatorship’ in Syria. So much so, we had to give them the guns with which they are now reportedly gunning down Kurdish civilians, and over which we are now oh so appalled…

Those of us who drew attention to the fact that one of the FSA commanders had, in a former role, cut out a prisoner’s heart and eaten it on YouTube, were banned from social media-platforms, branded “Assad-apologists” or “Putin-apologists” or, in my case, both. That the so-called ‘democratic’ opposition was merely an alphabet-soup of Islamist fanatic forces in white-helmets wearing Mrs Clinton’s lipstick was a truth which simply could not be uttered.

This tragic farce is, in fact, ending as it began, when Hillary Humpty Dumpty Clinton's launch of the Coalition for a Democratic Syria literally died on her lips when it was pointed out that many of the countries in the coalition were the unfree-est, most anti-democratic countries on earth!

The name changed but the flow of guns, money, political and propaganda support never did.

Space and ennui precludes my adumbrating the full set of the false-teeth in the Syria story, so let me pay homage to Catalonia.

The democratic government of Spain in the democratic European Union has just handed out a hundred years of prison sentences on democratic Catalan politicians for organising a democratic vote in Catalonia. Worse, a “mob” of their supporters have advanced on...the airport in Barcelona! Commerce, holidays, trade are being WRECKED, wrecked I tell you, by this undemocratic form of protest.

But, when the exact same tactic is used in Hong-Kong, the demonstrators are NOT a mob, they are not wreckers, they are ‘democracy-protesters.’

When the Hong-Kong protesters confront the Chinese police with Molotovs, knives, even guns, it is the policeman stabbed in the neck who is the villain. When the French police literally disarm Yellow-Vest protesters –that is, to blow their hands off– even Humpty Dumpty runs out of words, so a complete media veil of secrecy is thrown over the removal of eyeballs, hands and even lives by the gendarmes.

George Orwell’s novel 1984 was supposed to be a dystopian work of fiction, a warning of the perversions of truth which would be required to sustain totalitarianism if we were not careful.

In 2019, it has become a User’s Manual, a play-book, and some of the worst hypocrites in the world – otherwise known as the free-media in free-countries – deploy it to the nodding approbation of the political-classes they serve.

As Humpty Dumpty said, “The question is, which is to be master – that’s all.”