The purpose of this week's discussion is twofold.
Firstly, you'll begin to start thinking about the world you live in, and the world Winston lives in. Secondly, you'll learn how to focus a search by using specific keywords, or combinations of keywords. Consider using combinations of words rather than asking a question or typing a sentence.
Search the Internet and find a legitimate newspaper, magazine, or scholarly article that deals with the reality (social or political) portrayed in 1984. Consider articles which deal with comparing aspects of our world with that of Orwell's dystopia.
Once you've found an article, write a summary or response to the article. Your summary must follow the criteria set out for our class's blog.
Copy and paste the original article after your summary / response. Be sure to include the URL underneath your copy of the article.
NO DUPLICATED ARTICLES. ONE ARTICLE PER STUDENT.
Reserve your article by posting a comment to this thread, and state the URL, article title and author.
Search Engines of noticeable consideration:
Google - http://www.google.ca/
Google News - http://news.google.ca/
Google Scholar - http://scholar.google.ca/
Search Engine tips:
Read this amazing explanation http://www.google.ca/intl/en/help/basics.html#keywords
Use keywords
Use combinations of keywords
Do not type sentences or questions
Use quotations to force a word order
Use the + sign to force a connection
USE THE ADVANCED GOOGLE SEARCH
Keywords (I didn't think that I needed to do this, but given the responces ...)
1984
George Orwell
Orwellian
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
23 comments:
Drawing the Line: Modern Protection or Totalitarianism?
In Mathew Paulson’s 2006 article, titled Has 2006 Become “1984”? George Orwell’s Grim View of the Future May Be Closer Then You Think, Paulson uses a word that perfectly portrays the main message of Orwell’s genius book 1984, this word is authoritarianism. Authoritarianism is favouring complete compliance or helplessness to authority as opposed to our individual freedom. Winston Smith in Orwell’s novel is found in a society that is always under watch. His actions, his expressions and even his own thoughts can be used against him as a form of treason. Winston even finds himself in love and neglecting a very human feeling because he is unable to divorce from his former wife or even enjoy sexual intercourse with women. Paulson wants to see where the line that divides fair government laws and totally unjustified policies can be found. Our living is far from that in 1984 but with technology increasing, we could find ourselves in a scary world. I disagree that the society I live in has become deprived of freedom, but our privacy has for sure been broken into increasingly over the years. Where will it stop? When will it be illegal for telemarketers to know what we like to spend our money on? Are we slowly, but surely approaching a world of no freedom?
Some laws that Paulson has looked into that the U.S government has allowed to be put in place that question citizens privacy and freedom are laws such as the USA-PATRIOT act, the Military Commissions act and the removal of Habeas Corpus. The USA-PATRIOT act allows government to access a citizen’s house without the resident’s approval and even view your library records as a source of evidence. The Military Commissions act was just passed in 2006 and Paulson refers to an Anthony D. Romero quote who explains the rule perfectly, "The president can now, with the approval of Congress, indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, put people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions." Which leads into the removal of Habeas corpus. Habeas corpus is what allows the accused to question detainment by the government, without the ability to challenge this – victims are helpless. It is quite obvious some laws that have been put into place contradict main constitutions set down decades ago.
When the government is able to listen in on our private phone calls and they are able to stop victims from challenging, we are slowly losing more and more of our freedom which some people in our society fought for, and what we are rightful to have. Our world is still not that of Orwell’s 1984 where our thoughts, words or actions can wind us up dead – but if the government keeps slowly adding on laws like they have been, in the next hundred years or so, we could find ourselves in a society where everything we do becomes a complete stranger’s business. Where is this line? We know the line exists, but when do we start making it precedence to stop ignoring this line? The government will only make their country more unsafe if they continue to take freedom and privacy away from its citizens.
ARTICLE USED:
Has 2006 Become "1984"? George Orwell's Grim View of the Future May Be Closer Than You Think
George Orwell’s classic novel 1984 paints a bleak portrait of the future, in which citizens of the nation “Oceania” are being watched every moment by “Big Brother.” In this nightmarish world, dissenting thought was treason and the only reason citizens were allowed to exist was to serve the party. Daily propaganda messages from the party leadership were sent via large “telescreens” for all to consume. This is a world where authoritarianism is absolute and the word liberty has been taken out of the dictionary.
With the enactment of legislation designed to vastly broaden the federal government’s power at the September 11th terrorist attacks and private industries collecting and sharing information about us on a daily basis, some are beginning to question whether or not George Orwell’s future has come true. This is not to say that our society has crumbled to that of absolute authoritarianism like that of “1984,” however there is little doubt we are traveling down that road.
There have been a number of laws that have pushed us several miles down the road of authoritarianism in recent years. The USA-PATRIOT Act of 2003 allows the government to sneak into your house and look around without even telling you for a criminal investigation, to view your library records and a number of other things.
We were informed that the executive branch unilaterally began monitoring phone calls domestically for purposes of security late last year. Additionally, the National Security Agency was allowed to create a massive database of information about telephone calls. Major telecommunications companies handed millions of telephone records to this program without objection. Under a declaration of emergency, the executive branch has been tapping into a vast database of financial records that were supposed to be confidential and they have been doing this for the last five years.
There were suspected terrorist being held for years at Guantanamo Bay and other undisclosed military locations called “black sites” without ever being charged. At this camp there were three suicides and numerous allegation of mistreatment. This went on for five years until the Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan V. Rumsfield that the military tribunal were unlawful and many of the prisoners were transferred to other sites for trial.
The sliver of hope that we had turned around on the march toward authoritarianism was quickly forgotten after Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006. ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero said it best when he stated, "The president can now, with the approval of Congress, indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, put people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions."
Habeas Corpus is one of the fundamental tenets of our judicial system, and now it can be taken away at the whim of the government. Without having the fundamental right to challenge detainment by the government, what do we have left? What good does freedom of speech, press and religion have when we are sitting in a cell at gun point?
Every year the federal government dictates to us a new piece of legislation or a new federal program all for the goal of “keeping us safe” from foreign aggressors. Each year the government’s control over us grows ever so slightly and are freedoms are further restricted. Certainly a change in the military’s tactics to fight terrorism was necessary after September 11th, but we must ask ourselves, when has the government gone too far? Where is the line that separates us from George Orwell’s 1984? We have to make protecting liberties a major priority or soon the government will be a greater threat to our freedom than any one outside this country that wishes to harm us.
Monitoring the Masses
Shaban Sserunkuma wrote the article “Uganda: Chogm Cameras Heighten Suspicion” to bring attention to the amount of security governments are imposing on their people and, in turn, the lack of privacy humans have. The author’s main idea in the article is that people cannot move in public without being watched due to the government’s constant surveillance and uses three major points to prove this. He examines the public’s heightened suspicions, law and order for the common good and even espionage.
In the book Surveillance and Security: Technological Politics and Power in Everyday Life Torin Monahan provides an example of public views on surveillance. “Contrary to the popular discourse of surveillance as ensuring protection from external threats, both low-income public housing and affluent gated communities feel subjected to undesired individual scrutiny and policing of their behaviours, and both groups submit to this scrutiny as a consequence of living in their respective communities”. Sserunkuma and Monahan both feel the public deserve the right to be able to walk in the streets without being monitored. The only flaw with this argument is that when a person is, for example, walking down the street, they are not in the privacy of their own home but are in public and therefore take the risk of being seen by anybody whether they are three metres away or 500 kilometres away watching from the television screen. The minute you step out of your door you consent to having others see you and, if they choose to, watch your every move. The word “public” means just that: open to the view of all. In his article, Sserunkuma seems to only use one point of view which is that technological surveillance is getting too carried away and is infringing on people’s rights. Although the removal or banishment of such public surveillance tools would provide more privacy, it would take away both innovative technology like GPS as well as security and protection provided by security cameras.
The topic of security ties back into the argument of whether law and order is a reasonable excuse for observing public places. Sserunkuma tries to get the reader to decide whether privacy should be given up for protection and uses the “war on terror” as an example. The American government has the ability to keep tabs on many aspects of a citizen’s life including phone calls made and received, place of employment, or annual income, all in the name of security. The question is whether or not this invasion of privacy is justified by an attempt to weed out terrorists. The cameras placed in Kampala can help eliminate crime but on the other hand, they can also pinpoint someone’s exact daily routes on their way to work, to a mistress’s house, or the local Laundromat; things people do not generally feel is necessary for others to know. Data is constantly being gathered about you while in the public eye and more often than not, valid reasoning is not provided.
This collection of data is a constant part of the world happening every time a phone call is made or a picture is taken. Most people live out their lives in a state of bliss, not realizing that at any given time they may be within range of a microphone, having their picture taken, or simply being watched. The cameras in Kampala may not be hidden but that does not mean all cameras are in plain sight. Some may be disguised or perhaps too small for anyone to be aware of. Private companies who are paid large amounts of money to collect data for other companies or individuals are capable of using many different methods to get what they need. Your privacy to them is a job and their intention is to make your private life public, most likely without your knowledge.
The Party uses telescreens the same way governments use public cameras and microphones in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Telescreens are a way of controlling thoughtcrime and is no different than security cameras being used in Kampala to control crime. The general population is constantly being watched depriving them of freedom and the ability to exist with any sense of true privacy. “It is getting closer to the case of "big brother," not the reality TV show, but the character depicted in George Orwell's book, "Nineteen Eighty Four,” who has everyone under constant surveillance.” In today’s society, big brother is being replaced with any government or company monitoring your existence in some way. It is a method of control employed to ensure the stated rules or laws are being upheld and that nobody is free from the long arm of the law. Although most would write off Orwell’s dystopia as purely imaginative, the ideas mentioned in his book are almost perfectly mirrored in today’s world. Cameras exist in schools, stores, street corners, and apartment buildings, watching us at any given moment and we simply dismiss it as a precaution meant for watching others who break the rules. It does not matter whether we are the ones the cameras were originally intended for because either way we are being spied on.
Sserunkuma, being a consumer rights activist, is concerned with the overall risk someone undertakes when they do something as simple as buy groceries. He believes the right to privacy is removed the moment information regarding a purchase is available to an outside source. If nothing is done to hinder the evolution of privacy infringement, not before long a person’s home could be monitored whether it is known to the homeowner or not. Monitoring devices could be made mandatory to have in homes to prevent crime and for the “safety” of those living there or even inserted into houses unknown to the inhabitants “for their own good”. Hidden behind a picture perhaps?
Article:
Uganda: Chogm Cameras Heighten Suspicion
The Monitor (Kampala)
OPINION
30 October 2007
Posted to the web 29 October 2007
Shaban Sserunkuma
FOR those who have shopped at supermarkets, or at dismal retail stores that have hijacked the title, being under the watch of a closed circuit television camera is nothing new.
Perhaps, it is because consumers feel the men and women watching them on miniature screens are interesting in catching thieves and robbers.
Things have since changed. Many who work or often move through Kampala's metropolis are not comfortable anymore; now that similar cameras have been installed round street corners to watch every move you make, ahead of the much-touted Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (Chogm).
It is getting closer to the case of "big brother," not the reality TV show, but the character depicted in George Orwell's book, "Nineteen Eighty Four," who has everyone under constant surveillance.
Like you might expect, it is about the inalienable right to privacy at stake that is under threat of the "common" good of ensuring security and enforcing law and order. Much the same thing you hear from supporting 'faces' of the so-called 'war on terror.'
Are we seeing heightening suspicion, signs of ill-information about what goes on around us or are those whining about rights only bolting the proverbial stables after the horses have fled?
It is a mixed story. Yet, if you thought about it critically, does anybody living a 'modern' lifestyle really think they have any privacy worthy talking about?
Think about the mobile phone: your call data can be obtained very easily, in the process helping trace geographical locations you have been to.
For instance, if you slipped out of town and drove to, say Jinja, but while there you received or made a call off your mobile, someone who accesses your call history will know.
The world of espionage would get your hairs standing. Wireless and portable "listening" devices have for long been known to be in action mainly around Kampala; they will intercept your voice calls off your mobile and record them. The work of security private spying agencies is a catalogue of privacy turned inside-out on payment of hefty contract sums of money.
Then there is the often ignored but significant world of amateur and adventurous gadget owners.
There are thousands of mobile phones with multimedia capabilities -still and motion picture cameras, sound recorders and real-time internet connections for instant data streaming in the hands of people who would easily trade your privacy for the fun of it.
How about the places we have become familiar with but that could be offensive to our privacy?
Many of the hotels, restaurants and buildings we visit are mounted with cameras but we don't seem to care. The traffic and criminal investigations departments of police normally use still and motion picture cameras to gather evidence in the field and our pictures end up in their hands, many times without our knowledge.
And that is not all. Is your bank data safe? Because it's stored in a 'secure' computer database doesn't mean it cannot be accessed. These things have happened before and will go on forever.
Related to this in terms of its hi-tech nature are cars mounted with satellite-monitored or navigation technology that uses the global positioning satellite system (GPS).
Are you aware that a GPS-monitored chip could be secretly installed in your car and no one will need to follow you physically? Don't dismiss this as a James Bond movie scene. If you can afford paying Kampala-based CarTrack to keep a digital 'eye' on your car, anybody who wants you monitored can do the same.
But that would pale in provoking consumer ire compared to the revolutionary but much-resisted radio-frequency identification technology being installed in super markets and on individual goods in the developed world.
To industry, it is about tracking goods and logging customer-related data. But to consumers, it's about intrusion into a domain traditionally jealously guarded - your shopping list, how much you spend, discounts you enjoy and where you shop.
They don't necessarily need to get your permission to do that. Chogm cameras, after considering the above, it would appear, should be much like an aftershock after a major earthquake.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200710291987.html
How much is too much?
The novel by George Orwell 1984 was a genius book written of how the government can be, and how he portrays it. He built up a government that had control over a person’s every way of living. This depiction seems to be relating to our time, and reality. It seems that the government is controlling very much of our lives, but do we even notice it? Did we before we read 1984? Well, to be honest not so much. It didn’t come to mind up until the matter entered our worries and wonders. This concept gets people thinking how much is our life style controlled? The totalitarianism seems to be increasing; now it leaves us wondering if 1984 is going to become reality.
In the article Happy New Year: It’s 1984, it talks about the similarities of the real world we live in and what was read in the novel 1984. As we all know in 1984 there is a never ending war to keep people controlled through fear. Well President Bush is also using that method of war, he affirmed a permanent war. Since he and his country have involved in so many warfare throughout many countries he has many dilemmas to deal with and solve, but solving such serious issues takes a while, and him saying there is a permanent war, who can object to that. In the article it says that George Bush has taken the role of Big Brother. It seems true as to how they both act and control their countries. Both different but alike, they have many similarities. Like Jacob Levich mentioned in his article that Bush would use maximum force against any individuals or nation he designates as enemies, it’s similar to Big Brother and his government of vaporizing anyone who seemed like a threat to him. It seems extreme that reality would have a permanent war, it just doesn’t seem needed, yet if you open your eyes it all makes sense now.
George W. Bush is very much like Big Brother, in many ways. The status of their countries, the control they have over the people, what they do, and even what they think. You may think its absurd that reality controls what man thinks but if you think deeper its true. For instance if you search something that is a threatening weapon of such linked to terrorism lets say a home made bomb, the government would detect that, and would be watching what you are doing and why you are looking at it, maybe because they think you are planning on an attack. They are taking extra caution or in other words totalitarianism.
Article:
Published on Saturday, September 22, 2001 by CommonDreams.org
Bush's Orwellian Address
Happy New Year: It's 1984
by Jacob Levich
Seventeen years later than expected, 1984 has arrived. In his address to Congress Thursday, George Bush effectively declared permanent war -- war without temporal or geographic limits; war without clear goals; war against a vaguely defined and constantly shifting enemy. Today it's Al-Qaida; tomorrow it may be Afghanistan; next year, it could be Iraq or Cuba or Chechnya.
No one who was forced to read 1984 in high school could fail to hear a faint bell tinkling. In George Orwell's dreary classic, the totalitarian state of Oceania is perpetually at war with either Eurasia or Eastasia. Although the enemy changes periodically, the war is permanent; its true purpose is to control dissent and sustain dictatorship by nurturing popular fear and hatred.
The permanent war undergirds every aspect of Big Brother's authoritarian program, excusing censorship, propaganda, secret police, and privation. In other words, it's terribly convenient.
And conveniently terrible. Bush's alarming speech pointed to a shadowy enemy that lurks in more 60 countries, including the US. He announced a policy of using maximum force against any individuals or nations he designates as our enemies, without color of international law, due process, or democratic debate.
He explicitly warned that much of the war will be conducted in secret. He rejected negotiation as a tool of diplomacy. He announced starkly that any country that doesn't knuckle under to US demands will be regarded as an enemy. He heralded the creation of a powerful new cabinet-level police agency called the "Office of Homeland Security." Orwell couldn't have named it better.
By turns folksy ("Ya know what?") and chillingly bellicose ("Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists"), Bush stepped comfortably into the role of Big Brother, who needs to be loved as well as feared. Meanwhile, his administration acted swiftly to realize the governing principles of Oceania:
WAR IS PEACE. A reckless war that will likely bring about a deadly cycle of retaliation is being sold to us as the means to guarantee our safety. Meanwhile, we've been instructed to accept the permanent war as a fact of daily life. As the inevitable slaughter of innocents unfolds overseas, we are to "live our lives and hug our children."
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. "Freedom itself is under attack," Bush said, and he's right. Americans are about to lose many of their most cherished liberties in a frenzy of paranoid legislation. The government proposes to tap our phones, read our email and seize our credit card records without court order. It seeks authority to detain and deport immigrants without cause or trial. It proposes to use foreign agents to spy on American citizens. To save freedom, the warmongers intend to destroy it.
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. America's "new war" against terrorism will be fought with unprecedented secrecy, including heavy press restrictions not seen for years, the Pentagon has advised. Meanwhile, the sorry history of American imperialism -- collaboration with terrorists, bloody proxy wars against civilians, forcible replacement of democratic governments with corrupt dictatorships -- is strictly off-limits to mainstream media. Lest it weaken our resolve, we are not to be allowed to understand the reasons underlying the horrifying crimes of September 11.
The defining speech of Bush's presidency points toward an Orwellian future of endless war, expedient lies, and ubiquitous social control. But unlike 1984's doomed protagonist, we've still got plenty of space to maneuver and plenty of ways to resist.
It's time to speak and to act. It falls on us now to take to the streets, bearing a clear message for the warmongers: We don't love Big Brother.
Security camera or eye spy?
In today’s society where murders happen as often as the sun comes up, the government is scrambling to connect a security camera on every street corner and in front of every entrance to a building. This idea is supposed to make the civilians feel safer and more secure. Many may think that this is exactly what the cameras do, but others do not tend to agree. The novel “1984” written by George Orwell is a masterpiece that places you in an orwellian environment, which is a country, called Oceania. In this novel the civilians are being watched constantly throughout the day with two-way televisions called telescreens. The leader of this country is called Big Brother. Big Brother is always watching you and they do not let you think, because thinking can be dangerous. The language that they speak is called newspeak, and their old language, which is called oldspeak, is slowly being dismembered. As a civilian in Oceania, you do not think or have emotions; you simply love nobody else but Big Brother. Now many may think that “1984” is a long shot form reality, but if you look around the world you will come to realize that the world today is in fact a composite of 1984.
The article “Big Brother is Watching: Not in 1984 but in 2002” gives us a very good understanding of how “1984” is reality. The article is about Britain and how their hefty increase in security cameras is supposed to make the people of Britain feel more secure, “Across London, these posters can be seen telling us all that we are 'Secure beneath The Watchful Eyes' of the Metropolitan Police.” How safe can one feel when they are constantly being monitored and watched without even knowing it? This is exactly how Winston felt in “1984” when everywhere he turned a telescreen was keeping a watchful eye out for him. In Britain the people are being monitored for a lot more then what they look like, “our Internet usage is logged for years due to the Draconian RIP Act, our locations detected via our mobile phones and logged”. As if having a camera pinned at your back is not enough, the location is being monitored as well as your Internet time. George Orwell hinted to us in “1984” that there is a great risk of this in our society and that we have to be careful of the control the government has on our freedom. If everyone lets fear stop them from questioning the government then the problem will build up and get increasingly worse. People have to question themselves of how much is too much, and start realizing that privacy is very valuable. If everyone started doing this then society would have a lot more privacy and everyone would feel a lot more comfortable in the one place they should; their own house.
Article used:
Across London, these posters can be seen telling us all that we are 'Secure beneath The Watchful Eyes' of the Metropolitan Police. I cannot tell you how much better that makes me feel. The imagery is pure 1930's/1940's and conjurors up the 'Golden Age of Totalitarianism'.
Britain is already a Police State in so far as the means for total repression are already well and truly in place. As the poster indicates all too well, Britain is the nation most under surveillance on Earth, Echelon monitors our domestic communications, our Internet usage is logged for years due to the Draconian RIP Act, our locations detected via our mobile phones and logged, all for the apparatus of state to access on very low level authority. Civilians are not just deprived of any firearms, in reality we are forbidden to defend ourselves and our property with so much as a broomstick. Our right to trial by Jury faces abridgement, even our ancient protection of Habeas Corpus is now a dead letter under European extradition laws.
Yes, we still have a fairly free press, in so far as the media are strong enough to prevent restrictions against their actions... yet do not dare to make an allegedly 'racist' remark or pour scorn on someone's religion or make a joke about Wales: if you do then expect to find yourself up in front of the Beak justifying yourself under threat of fine or gaol, and forget saying "I was just exercising my right to freedom of speech".
Is it any surprise that the powers that be feel they can dare put posters announcing that you are 'Secure beneath The Watchful Eyes'. Secure? From what? Surveillance increases daily at the same times as crime soars out of control, so if we are not 'secure' from crime, then what exactly is being secured? We face many threats in the modern world but the biggest comes from the people who would watch our every action so that the State may choose to judge us when it sees fit.
URL: http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/002285.html
Author: Perry de Havilland
Title: Big Brother is watching: Not in 1984 but in 2002
Security or Telescreen?
In George Orwell’s 1984, the Telescreen is a device used by the Party to keep an eye on the citizens of Oceania. Every inhabitant is closely supervised, day and night, in order for the Party to maintain power over every single individual. However abstract this situation may sound, it is one that is becoming reality for the citizens of Britain. In David Millward’s article entitled, “CCTV Creating ‘Orwellian’ Society”, he writes about the problems that arise with the installation of CCTV cameras throughout Britain. The article follows the deputy chief constable of Hampshire, Ian Redhead, as he expresses his concerns that his country may be headed into an Orwellian society.
One of Redhead’s main apprehensions comes with the apparent need to install security cameras in small villages where the crime rate is low. His concern is that if cameras are being used even in smaller villages, nothing will stop the government from having them at every street corner. Infact, Millward writes that there are approximately 4.2 million CCTV cameras throughout Britain, which averages out to one camera per fourteen people – so it is only a matter of time before every civilian has someone watching them from their living room. It is even said that certain individuals are pushing for talking CCTV cameras that are capable of instructing civilians as they pass by. Although supporters avow that the cameras are strictly used for the prevention of crime, when it can almost be guaranteed every person will be caught on camera at least once a day, it starts to turn into an invasion of privacy. It is the widespread use of these CCTV cameras that will inevitably lead the society to that of Orwell’s 1984.
This, then, is what modern society is becoming. The excessive use of cameras is where it begins and it ends with the vaporization of “thought criminals”. It is easy to assume that modern society could never be subjected to the dystopia displayed in 1984, but the moment individuals fail to stand up for their privacy and civil rights is the moment civilization falls under government. What is being used in the name of “safety” is an obvious incursion into personal privacy and could quite easily be a way for the government to keep an invasive watch on its inhabitants. The only way to avoid an Orwellian society is to fight against it in its early stages. Civilians should not overlook situations like these, as they are the kind that could cause Orwell’s predictions to come true.
THE ARTICLE --------------------------------------------
CCTV creating 'Orwellian' society
By David Millward
Another senior police officer yesterday joined the growing clamour against the proliferation of CCTV cameras around the country.Ian Redhead, the deputy chief constable of Hampshire, said Britain risked moving toward an "Orwellian" society. While also calling for a review of speed cameras and the policy to retain DNA, he questioned the need on BBC1's The Politics Show for CCTV in villages with low crime levels."If it's in our villages, are we really moving towards an Orwellian situation where cameras are at every street corner?" he said. "I really don't think that's the kind of country that I want to live in."He was the second senior officer within days to express doubts about the CCTV programme. In an interview in the East Anglian Daily Times, Colin Langham-Fitt, the acting chief constable for Suffolk, called for a debate on the erosion of civil liberties, asking if people really felt safer as a result of being monitored wherever they went.There are an estimated 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain - one for every 14 people. Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, endorsed Mr Redhead's comments, saying: "Politicians like to present the police as ever hungry for more powers. Yet even the police are concerned that we are losing the value of privacy."Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrats' home affairs spokesman, said: "As John Reid pushes for the deployment of talking CCTV cameras barking instruction at passers-by, it is significant that senior police officers are starting to speak out."Something is wrong when police officers, rather than Government ministers, seem more concerned about the protection of our customary British liberties. This Government's obsession with new intrusive surveillance technologies and apparent indifference about our individual rights has demolished the ancient distinction between guilt and innocence."But supporters of the CCTV programme say they are a vital weapon in detecting crime.In Soham, Cambs, the council came under fire for failing to install extra cameras in the centre of town that could have provided vital information on the movements of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman before they disappeared.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/21/npolice121.xml
Bush: The brother of Big Brother?
Today’s world is one of permanent war, false war propaganda, unfit leaders, lack of privacy, and unnecessarily high security. These qualities are almost parallel to George Orwell’s novel 1984. Although today’s world is not exactly as terrible as the society in 1984, it is taking strides in that direction. By the way George Bush carries out actions in the American government, there are signs that each of these five qualities could become stricter than they already are, and could become what they are in 1984.
One way in which George Orwell’s 1984 relates to the present is the concept of permanent war. In 1984, the society is in a state of constant war so that the people are constantly driven by fear and hatred. Today’s world is no different. America has been at war with Afghanistan for a long time now, and there is no foreseeable end to it. What began as a search for Osama Bin Laden has turned into a country-wide hate against Afghanistan. This anger fuels the people of America, the same way war does in 1984.
False propaganda from the Ministry of Truth shaped the society of 1984. False propaganda from the American government also shapes their society. In 1984, history was falsified and was rewritten to erase any visible blemishes in the society. American government has begun showing signs that they are borrowing this idea from George Orwell. Old political transcripts are constantly being “sugar coated” to try and show that Americans never did anything wrong.
In 1984, Big Brother was to be worshiped. People were literally forced to love him, or they would be vaporized. George Bush is not as strong a leader as Big Brother, but he is still hungry for power. He gains power by ordering obedience from the people. This has been proven in a case at Ohio State, where Bush threatened people with arrest if they were to protest his speech. This shows the ignorance of today’s society and the lack of input that the people are allowed to have.
People in 1984 were constantly being watched and heard by many pieces of technology, such as telescreens and hidden microphones. If people are doing something wrong, saying something wrong, or even thinking something wrong, they were punishable by death. Today’s world has heavily increased in spy technology throughout the last decade. Airports, work buildings, and even restaurants are all equipped with surveillance cameras and microphones. Phone and internet conversations are also being spied on. This takes away almost all of the privacy away in a human being’s life. The only place where people today are safe from being spied on is in the safety of their own homes.
The one thing that the American government has not arrested people for is thought crime, but by the way things are looking more and more like George Orwell’s 1984, thought crime arrests could be possible in the future. There is no doubt that the American government has followed the formula set by 1984. This leads me to believe that George Bush could indeed be the “brother of Big Brother”.
Article Used
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/07/28/IN244190.DTL
Author: Daniel Kurtzman
Title: Learning to love Big Brother
Here's a question for constitutional scholars: Can a sitting president be charged with plagiarism?
As President Bush wages his war against terrorism and moves to create a huge homeland security apparatus, he appears to be borrowing heavily, if not ripping off ideas outright, from George Orwell. The work in question is "1984, " the prophetic novel about a government that controls the masses by spreading propaganda, cracking down on subversive thought and altering history to suit its needs. It was intended to be read as a warning about the evils of totalitarianism -- not a how-to manual.
Granted, we're a long way from resembling the kind of authoritarian state Orwell depicted, but some of the similarities are starting to get a bit eerie.
PERMANENT WAR
In "1984," the state remained perpetually at war against a vague and ever- changing enemy. The war took place largely in the abstract, but it served as a convenient vehicle to fuel hatred, nurture fear and justify the regime's autocratic practices.
Bush's war against terrorism has become almost as amorphous. Although we are told the president's resolve is steady and the mission clear, we seem to know less and less about the enemy we are fighting. What began as a war against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda quickly morphed into a war against Afghanistan, followed by dire warnings about an "Axis of Evil," the targeting of terrorists in some 50 to 60 countries, and now the beginnings of a major campaign against Iraq. Exactly what will constitute success in this war remains unclear, but the one thing the Bush administration has made certain is that the war will continue "indefinitely."
MINISTRY OF TRUTH
Serving as the propaganda arm of the ruling party in "1984," the Ministry of Truth not only spread lies to suit its strategic goals, but constantly rewrote and falsified history. It is a practice that has become increasingly commonplace in the Bush White House, where presidential transcripts are routinely sanitized to remove the president's gaffes, accounts of intelligence warnings prior to Sept. 11 get spottier with each retelling, and the facts surrounding Bush's past financial dealings are subject to continual revision.
The Bush administration has been surprisingly up front about its intentions of propagating falsehoods. In February, for example, the Pentagon announced a plan to create an Office of Strategic Influence to provide false news and information abroad to help manipulate public opinion and further its military objectives. Following a public outcry, the Pentagon said it would close the office -- news that would have sounded more convincing had it not come from a place that just announced it was planning to spread misinformation.
INFALLIBLE LEADER
An omnipresent and all-powerful leader, Big Brother commanded the total, unquestioning support of the people. He was both adored and feared, and no one dared speak out against him, lest they be met by the wrath of the state.
President Bush may not be as menacing a figure, but he has hardly concealed his desire for greater powers. Never mind that he has mentioned -- on no fewer than three occasions -- how much easier things would be if he were dictator. By abandoning many of the checks and balances established in the Constitution to keep any one branch of government from becoming too powerful, Bush has already achieved the greatest expansion of executive powers since Nixon. His approval ratings remain remarkably high, and his minions have worked hard to cultivate an image of infallibility. Nowhere was that more apparent than during a recent commencement address Bush gave at Ohio State, where students were threatened with arrest and expulsion if they protested the speech. They were ordered to give him a "thunderous ovation," and they did.
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING
The ever-watchful eye of Big Brother kept constant tabs on the citizens of Orwell's totalitarian state, using two-way telescreens to monitor people's every move while simultaneously broadcasting party propaganda.
While that technology may not have arrived yet, public video surveillance has become all the rage in law enforcement, with cameras being deployed everywhere from sporting events to public beaches. The Bush administration has also announced plans to recruit millions of Americans to form a corps of citizen spies who will serve as "extra eyes and ears for law enforcement," reporting any suspicious activity as part of a program dubbed Operation TIPS --
Terrorism Information and Prevention System.
And thanks to the hastily passed USA Patriot Act, the Justice Department has sweeping new powers to monitor phone conversations, Internet usage, business transactions and library reading records. Best of all, law enforcement need not be burdened any longer with such inconveniences as probable cause.
THOUGHT POLICE
Charged with eradicating dissent and ferreting out resistance, the ever- present Thought Police described in "1984" carefully monitored all unorthodox or potentially subversive thoughts. The Bush administration is not prosecuting thought crime yet, but members have been quick to question the patriotism of anyone who dares criticize their handling of the war on terrorism or homeland defense. Take, for example, the way Attorney General John Ashcroft answered critics of his anti-terrorism measures, saying that opponents of the administration "only aid terrorists" and "give ammunition to America's enemies. "
Even more ominous was the stern warning White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer sent to Americans after Bill Maher, host of the now defunct "Politically Incorrect," called past U.S. military actions "cowardly." Said Fleischer, "There are reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks like that; there never is."
What would it take to turn America into the kind of society that Orwell warned about, a society that envisions war as peace, freedom as slavery and ignorance as strength? Would it happen overnight, or would it involve a gradual erosion of freedoms with the people's consent?
Because we are a nation at war -- as we are constantly reminded -- most Americans say they are willing to sacrifice many of our freedoms in return for the promise of greater security. We have been asked to put our blind faith in government and most of us have done so with patriotic fervor. But when the government abuses that trust and begins to stamp out the freedom of dissent that is the hallmark of a democratic society, can there be any turning back?
So powerful was the state's control over people's minds in "1984" that, eventually, everyone came to love Big Brother. Perhaps in time we all will, too.
Victory Society? Orwellian Society
One of the most frightening administrations to rule over a land is that of a totalitarian government. A totalitarian government is one that is controlled by a single party, which is maintained by political suppression. (Funk and Wagnalls, Standard College Dictionary) Totalitarianism involves absolute power over the state and the dehumanizing of the entire society. George Orwell creates a world in which totalitarianism is displayed in the modern world in his novel, 1984. The novel is a warning and prediction about the future governments that will, and have, ruled over society. Orwell’s prediction could not be more precise. The article "Bush Creates Orwellian Society", written by Matthew Brophy, discusses how Orwell’s portrayed humanity is actually occurring in the United States through the elimination of certain civil rights, the restriction of knowledge on important issues, and the prolonged war against terrorism.
Basic human rights and freedoms are slowly being taken away in the United States. Brophy explains that in Orwell’s society, individuals can be detained for not only public speech, but for internal thoughts as well. This has become a reality in the United States as President George W. Bush has implemented the USA Patriot Act. This act allows the police to spy on citizens and immigrants by reading personal e-mails, tracking the amount of time one is on the Internet, and listening to private phone conversations. All of these acts can be done without ever presenting a search warrant. Brophy states that evidence is no longer required and that an individual may be arrested on utter suspicion. Bush’s Operation TIPS allows society to spy on their fellow citizens, “This program asks mail deliverers, utility meter readers, truckers and other citizens to spy on their neighbors and customers, and report any suspicious activity that could be related to terrorism,” and give information on any apparent treacherous individual. Such behaviour is displayed in Orwell’s novel, as comrades, colleagues, and children are believed to have the responsibility of notifying the thought police of any suspicious citizen, including one’s parents. In Bush’s America, thoughts cannot even be imagined without the fear of being deemed disloyal, which strips the American citizens of their right to freedom of speech. In the novel, an individual may be vaporized for such a felony, known as thoughtcrime. Basic human rights and freedoms are taken away to ensure political strength. A totalitarian government must keep its country blind and fearful, to an extent in which society has become ignorant to the truth.
In the United States, Brophy suggests that the Bush administration is limiting the citizens’ knowledge on information about the war to maintain their ignorance. Journalists cannot witness the war overseas, and cannot interview any soldiers that have returned home. Control over government activity and media affairs has become an ordinary task, and such censorship laws have gone unnoticed. Brophy says that society is constantly reminded of the reason behind a war against terrorism, “CNN chairman, Walter Isaacson, for instance, ordered his news staff to limit reports of Afghan casualties and to use World Trade Center deaths to justify the killing abroad.” However, Americans are told very little about the details of the war. One of the motto’s in 1984, “ignorance is strength,” implies that the lack of understanding and information given to an individual will make them unaware of the deception occurring in the government, while still maintaining their continual loyalty.
The war against terrorism is a continuous battle, not against a particular nation or race, but to preserve the fear in the United States’ citizens. Orwellian society is similar. There is constant warfare against no specific country, as the war is fought merely to maintain governmental power. Brophy expresses Bush’s attitude toward disagreeing individuals, “…Bush spews monosyllabic propaganda, simplistically characterizing the terrorists’ purpose to be to ‘attack our freedom,’ and that those individuals and nations who oppose our polices are satanically ‘evil.’” However, in comparison to the nation in which the alleged war is against, Americans are led to wrongly believe that the United States is an honourable country whose past was never one that supported terrorism and dictatorship. In Orwell’s society, the past is unimportant, and constantly rewritten. The party is able to control the past and they are capable of convincing the population of Oceania to believe that history never happened. It is obvious that the Bush administration attempts to do the same. Most individuals consider the United States as a superior country and is to be admired for fighting a war against terrorism.
In the article, "Bush Creates Orwellian Society", the author, Matthew Brophy, compares the reality of the totalitarian government in George Orwell’s 1984, to that of present day America. Through the removal of certain rights and freedoms, the censorship of governmental affairs and media coverage, and the apparent war against terrorism, George W. Bush brings Orwellian fictitious society into existence. However, the totalitarian government portrayed in the novel is not only experienced in the United States, but has, and is, occurring in many other parts of the world today. The unfortunate problem is that many citizens do not even realize that their so-called democratic country is slowly becoming a totalitarian state. Be wary: war is peace, ignorance is strength, freedom is slavery.
ARTICLE
Bush creates Orwellian society
By Matthew Brophy
Freedom is Slavery; War is Peace; Ignorance is Strength. This is the motto heralded by Big Brother in George Orwell’s book, “1984.” This motto might as well be from the George W. Bush administration. Since the tragic Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has incrementally been seizing power, desecrating the U.S. Constitution and subordinating our civil rights in the name of national security.
We are told that to protect freedom, we must forfeit our liberties. To have peace, we must fight a prolonged war. To be strong, we must be kept ignorant of our government’s actions. In short, to be good Americans we must believe in apparent contradictions and submit to our government entirely.
The parallels between Orwell’s dystopian vision and Bush’s post-Sept. 11 governmental policies are so striking some journalists have facetiously accused Bush of plagiarism. Orwell’s book depicts a society dominated by a totalitarian government in which citizens’ liberties are suppressed on the basis of an endless war. In post-Sept. 11 America, the same reasoning is being used to justify turning our nation into a police state.
In Orwell’s society, a person can be arrested not just for public speech, but for their private thoughts as well. In our nation, this nightmare has come to life through Bush’s USA Patriot Act. This act enables law enforcement departments to spy on citizens and non-citizens alike: To read private e-mail correspondence, monitor Internet usage, tap into phone conversations, delve into computer files and conduct “sneak-and-peak” searches of homes and offices without immediately, if ever, presenting residents with a search warrant. Law enforcement no longer needs judicial oversight or probable cause. So, be careful: Big Brother is watching.
Furthermore, this act states that citizens and non-citizens can be detained on mere suspicion. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, more than 1,100 immigrants have been imprisoned. The charges against them remain undisclosed; even their names and identities remain largely unknown. The Bush administration admits these prisoners are not terrorists. So far, the FBI has racially profiled and interrogated more than 5,000 recent immigrants. Those immigrants Bush deems “terrorists” can be tried before closed military tribunals rather than in open court.
In Orwell’s society, citizens join the government in the suppression of speech and thought; citizens constantly monitor neighbors and coworkers, informing the government if a person seems “suspicious.” Bush’s “Operation TIPS” makes such paranoid spying a reality. This program asks mail deliverers, utility meter readers, truckers and other citizens to spy on their neighbors and customers, and report any suspicious activity that could be related to terrorism. A recent example of TIPS in action occurred just two weeks ago. Three men were detained, searched and interrogated for being overheard apparently joking about Sept. 11 at a restaurant in Georgia. Bush and a federal law enforcement official in Washington eventually exculpated the men, reporting they had no evident ties to terrorism.
Increasingly, it seems we must all be wary of saying or doing anything that could be construed as subversive; after all, your neighbor might turn you in to the thought police. The reach of the thought police has even extended to academia, where certain factions have attempted to stifle the free exchange of ideas. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, for example, has sought to “blacklist” more than 40 professors who were deemed “anti-American.” One professor, an emeritus from the University of Oregon, was blacklisted for recommending that “we need to understand the reasons behind the terrifying hatred directed against the U.S. and find ways to act that will not foment more hatred for generations to come.” Even one of the Daily columnists has received threatening letters for suggesting that U.S. foreign policy might be somewhat casually responsible for terrorism.
It seems that to be strong and united, we must silence all dissenting voices. Attorney General John Ashcroft has declared that critics of the Bush administration’s post-Sept. 11 measures “only aid terrorists” and “give ammunition to America’s enemies.” For this reason, the Bush administration has explained we need to “suspend” certain liberties for the duration of the war.
The message is clear: To criticize America, right or wrong, is either to be unpatriotic or, worse, to be a terrorist sympathizer (Does anyone smell McCarthyism yet?). It seems ignorant patriotism has become a virtue.
The Bush administration has heavily promoted the idea of ignorance as strength. On this basis, it is making sure the media and American public are kept ignorant. Invoking the excuse of national security, the Bush administration has imposed heavy restrictions on what we can know. For example, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security includes an exemption from the Freedom from Information Act. Additionally, the military has disallowed journalists from accompanying American forces fighting in Afghanistan and even from interviewing military personnel after their missions.
In addition to this governmental censorship, the media has even censored itself. CNN Chairman Walter Isaacson, for instance, ordered his news staff to limit reports of Afghan casualties and to use World Trade Center deaths to justify the killing abroad. Furthermore, the largest U.S. radio station owner, Clear Channel, sent out an internal memo prohibiting certain songs from being played on the air — including “Imagine” by John Lennon.
In Orwell’s society, the duration of the war is never-ending, waged against an enemy that is ever-changing and ambiguous. The same is true of Bush’s declared “war on terrorism.” This war has no fixed, geographical definition. It is directed against an expansive “axis of evil” and a shadowy faction known as al-Qaida. Moreover, this war has been estimated to continue indefinitely (current estimates say at least 10 years).
This ambiguous, protracted crusade is an efficient way to fuel the hatred and fear necessary to justify the Bush administration’s seize of power. With the winds of war behind him, and a 90 percent approval rating, Bush has hurdled the checks and balances of the other two governmental branches and has used “war” as an excuse to increase his dominance and serve his administration’s interests — for example, finishing his dad’s business in Iraq or squelching opposition to NAFTA and the WTO.
To rally the war cry, Bush spews monosyllabic propaganda, simplistically characterizing the terrorists’ purpose to be to “attack our freedom,” and that those individuals and nations who oppose our policies are satanically “evil.” We, of course by contrast, are righteous and good. Disregard our past alliances with these “evil” regimes, our training and financing of radical Islamist terrorists, our forcible replacements of democracies with dictatorships or any instances of our past foreign policy that might be relevant to understanding why the United States is resented in many parts of the world.
Terrorism isn’t what terrifies me. I fear fear itself. As a result of our nation’s fear, our constitution is being desecrated, civil rights are being trampled, and our democratic nation is degenerating into a fascist regime. Disturbingly, it seems the only inaccuracy of Orwell’s prescient book is that it was 17 years off.
Surely we must make some sacrifices in times of war, yet we must not sacrifice the very principles upon which the United States was founded. In the words of one of our founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
© 2002 The Minnesota Daily
http://foi.missouri.edu/bushinfopolicies/bushorwellian.
Orwellian Dystopia = 2007?
The novel 1984 written by George Orwell gives insight as to what would happen if a country was completely ruled by a totalitarian government. The article entitled “Orwellian Dystopia” by Hannah Naiditch explains that, “George Orwell wasn’t the only one conjuring twisted terms to describe the opposite of reality”. Naiditch’s article goes on to describe the similarities between the society that Orwell created in 1984 and the society that George W. Bush has created for the Americans.
When Orwell was young he, like many people today, was taught to always have his guard up, and to trust no one. He detested totalitarianism and anything similar to it. Comparable to the majority of people today, Orwell was confused about political speech, and therefore he had his doubts about it, “…he felt [it] was too often propaganda speech, the spinning of ideas to fit a special agenda such as winning an election or gaining people’s support for going to war”. It seems that Orwell was able to see the future, as this is exactly what is still going on around the world, obviously not as extreme as 1984 was, but almost as close. George Bush is constantly presenting speeches that make the population believe that war is a good thing, and that they are going to win, “…George W. Bush has carried these deceptions and absurdities to new heights. The increase in our troops in Iraq became a “surge”; it sounds more dramatic, more hopeful, more like a new strategy”. Even Orwell’s concept of doublethink still lingers, people know something as a fact, but choose to believe something else, “Political leaders insisting we could only save Vietnam by destroying it”. All of this “propaganda speech” is an example of how 1984 still exists today. Naiditch clarifies that, “It seems [Orwell’s] vision was more prophecy than fiction, even more relevant today than it was during his own time”. It is true then, that even the smallest insignificant things people do are being observed.
In Orwell’s novel the Party has telescreens in order to keep everyone in control, what then, is the modern version of a telescreen? Perhaps the security cameras at every corner? Or the “points cards” that allow government officials to know when and where people have purchased specific items? Yes, in fact almost everything people do is documented or recorded. The Canadian and American populations are being supervised at an all time high and the governments now have more information about the people who are living in their countries.
_______________Article___________
Orwellian dystopia
George Orwell wasn’t the only one conjuring twisted terms to describe the opposite of reality
By Hannah Naiditch
George Orwell was born in 1903 and died in 1950 after a long struggle with tuberculosis. Early in life he learned to be suspicious of authority and to hate empire while developing a compassion for the poor. In 1936 he joined the Spanish Civil War, like thousands of volunteers who joined the Lincoln Brigade to fight on the side of the republic against fascist Gen. Francisco Franco and his Falange Party. More than half of the volunteers died in battle. Orwell was injured and nearly died.
Orwell rejected all forms of totalitarianism and dogma. He remained a lifelong democratic socialist with a passion for justice who detested both Stalin and Hitler. He advised writers to avoid euphemisms, metaphors and similes. Avoid long words and long sentences, he would say; try to communicate, not to confuse. He distrusted political speech, which he felt was too often propaganda speech, the spinning of ideas to fit a special agenda such as winning an election or gaining the people’s support for going to war.
Politicians often choose their language in an attempt to conceal reality. Their speeches are murky and often meaningless and absurd, but the obscurity is intentional.
Take, for example, “collateral damage” — code for “killing innocent civilians.” The phrase was coined by the Pentagon during the Gulf War in 1991. But it applies to the two deadly atomic bombs — cutely named “Fat Man” and “Little Boy” — that the United States dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945, killing hundreds of thousands of men, women and children.
Or consider “Department of Defense,” once called the “War Department” — a much more honest description. “Downsizing” means firing people. “Compassionate conservative” has always been an oxymoron.
Bush is busy “spreading democracy” while we are rapidly losing ours. Freedom is a vague concept that is being overused in political speech. We tend to accept it in the abstract, but not when it comes to specific examples.
Political propaganda speech has always been with us, especially during wars, but George W. Bush has carried these deceptions and absurdities to new heights. The increase in our troops in Iraq became a “surge”; it sounds more dramatic, more hopeful, more like a new strategy. Illegal immigrants became “undocumented immigrants,” which sounds more legal. According to Bush, an increase in terrorism proves that they are desperate and we are winning. “You are either with us or you are with the terrorists,” he warned — nothing in between. The “PATRIOT Act” is an un-American and unconstitutional document and a tyrant’s dream.
We have arrested thousands of Iraqis in their own land, but they are not considered “prisoners,” granted certain rights by the Geneva Convention. They are “detainees.”
And what about the battle cry that we must “support our troops”? Is there any better way to support our troops than to get them out of harm’s way in a war that cannot be won, and to bring them home alive and not maimed or in a coffin?
In July 2004, in a speech in Oak Ridge referring to the Iraq War, Bush explained, “And so I had a choice to make: Either take the word of a madman or defend America.”
One of the latest Bush absurdities and contradictions is “We will only withdraw from a position of strength and success.” “Cut and run” would be closer to the truth.
Toward the end of George Orwell’s life he finally tasted success with the publication of his two most famous works, “Animal Farm” and “1984.” Certain concepts became part of Orwell’s legacy. “Doublethink” means to hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time. Consider as examples: “Work makes you free.” Nuclear missiles dubbed “peace missiles.” Political leaders insisting we could only save Vietnam by destroying it.
The Ministry of Truth, an invention of Orwell’s in “1984,” illustrates the well-known fact that “Truth is the first casualty of war.” Propaganda abounds during war.
“Big Brother is watching you” has become a frightening reality in our lives as our privacy is under daily assault. Security cameras are everywhere, hidden cameras take our picture when we run a red light and our government wants to know what books we buy and what books we read. Sneak-and-peek warrants allow FBI spies to break into our homes without our knowledge. Spying on Americans is at an all-time high. It is all done in the name of “national security.”
Orwell’s nightmare was a television set that could not be turned down or off. It seems his vision was more prophecy than fiction, even more relevant today than it was during his own time.
10-25-07
URL: http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/article.php?id=5247&IssueNum=95
Smile! You’re on Camera over Three Hundred Times a Day!
George Orwell’s novel 1984 has touched on several issues regarding dystopia in the world. As far as Orwell is concerned, it was only a matter of time before everything we do is monitored, including our thoughts and emotions. Though the views in the novel were portrayed in its extremes, it is evident that George Orwell’s predictions were fairly accurate. The idea of a telescreen in every room is slowly becoming a reality as people tend to have one, if not more than one television set in their home. Furthermore, the constant surveillance is becoming a reality in many different cities. In fact, currently in Britain, there are approximately 4.2 million CCTV cameras, which is roughly one camera per fourteen people. The article, “George Orwell, Big Brother is watching your house” by This Is London talks about the increasing amount of cameras in London, and how citizens feel about this issue.
Currently in London, there are approximately 4.2 million CCTV cameras, which are scattered across London in various places. With the average citizen being caught on camera roughly three hundred times a day, it is clear that “Big Brother” is always watching. Cameras have been placed at every intersection, and even in places such as public parks. Additionally, some citizens are even placing cameras upon their own free will. An owner of a dry cleaner spent four hundred pounds on his two camera security system. He has to know exactly what is going on in his store at all times. The grocery store three doors down actually has three security cameras that monitor the whole store. The grocery store owner comments, “They are for our security and safety. Without them, people would steal from the shop. Although this is a nice area, there are always bad people who cause trouble by stealing.” Why must everybody be living in a constant fear? This is exactly what Orwell was stating in 1984. The war was constantly putting everybody in a state of fear, and everybody is being paranoid. Regardless of the fact that the neighborhood is safe, the grocery store owner feels safer because there are cameras to monitor everything.
Though citizens seam to appreciate the increased surveillance, article also states the possible consequences of the increased amount of surveillance going on in London. Eventually, these cameras can be used as bribery, which would lead to more crime being covered up. The purpose of the cameras is to prevent crime, and to make those who want to commit crime think otherwise. This could rebound negatively as people would be getting personal gain out of the cameras, and the cameras would no longer serve their purpose. Furthermore, should there ever be a mass computer hacking, these cameras could be used for the work of organized crime. Should somebody hack into these cameras, they now are able to see all that is going on in London. For these reasons, the cameras could be used for negative purposes, but overall, it will be closely monitored.
Looking beyond the article, people will assume that London is in a constant state of fear because of the increase in security cameras. Is it not the same as a regular surveillance system in any retail store? At any store you walk into now, the first thing you see normally is a camera monitoring the entrance or exit to the store. It is possible that George Orwell was right? We are constantly living in a state of fear and paranoia. The cameras are there as deterrents for crime, and will be used whenever necessary. This simply shows that we do live in a constant state of fear! Canadians do not have to worry, as this is never going to happen here. On the contrary, it is already happening. In another article, City TV news discusses the installation of cameras on every bus, streetcar, and bus stop that relates to the TTC. These cameras will be used to prevent assault on operators or people waiting for public transportation, but it may be abused as the privacy of people’s privacy is slowly diminished. Of course, those who have nothing to hide, have nothing to fear.
It is clear that George Orwell fairly accurately predicted what the future would be like. Wheather we notice it or not, we are always being watched by something. Even now, Google has a satellite that is publicly accessible through the internet that allows you to zoom in on pepople’s homes. In the future, it may even be possible for the footage seen on these cameras to be publicly accessed. We can see evidence of this in the article from This Is London, and even in our everyday lives around us. The TTC is placing many cameras for safety reasons, as some drivers may be afraid to work without the protection of the camera. Similarly, citizens even feel safer working under monitored conditions, and ordinary retail stores all contain cameras. Like the telescreen, cameras, and microphones in 1984, the cameras of today will also be used to prevent crime. Unfortunately, such powers may be abused in the future, causing this ideology to become corrupt. Slowly though, our sense of freedom is slowing being taken away. Even if someone is not doing anything wrong, the thought of someone always watching you can simply be a deterrent for being human. If we are being watched, and do not act on our own thoughts and will, we become the dead.
Article Used:
George Orwell, Big Brother is watching your house
31.03.07
The Big Brother nightmare of George Orwell's 1984 has become a reality - in the shadow of the author's former London home.
It may have taken a little longer than he predicted, but Orwell's vision of a society where cameras and computers spy on every person's movements is now here.
According to the latest studies, Britain has a staggering 4.2million CCTV cameras - one for every 14 people in the country - and 20 per cent of cameras globally. It has been calculated that each person is caught on camera an average of 300 times daily.
Use of spy cameras in modern-day Britain is now a chilling mirror image of Orwell's fictional world, created in the post-war Forties in a fourth-floor flat overlooking Canonbury Square in Islington, North London.
On the wall outside his former residence - flat number 27B - where Orwell lived until his death in 1950, an historical plaque commemorates the anti-authoritarian author. And within 200 yards of the flat, there are 32 CCTV cameras, scanning every move.
Orwell's view of the tree-filled gardens outside the flat is under 24-hour surveillance from two cameras perched on traffic lights.
The flat's rear windows are constantly viewed from two more security cameras outside a conference centre in Canonbury Place.
In a lane, just off the square, close to Orwell's favourite pub, the Compton Arms, a camera at the rear of a car dealership records every person entering or leaving the pub.
Within a 200-yard radius of the flat, there are another 28 CCTV cameras, together with hundreds of private, remote-controlled security cameras used to scrutinise visitors to homes, shops and offices.
The message is reminiscent of a 1949 poster to mark the launch of Orwell's 1984: 'Big Brother is Watching You'.
In the Shriji grocery store in Canonbury Place, three cameras focus on every person in the shop. Owner Minesh Amin explained: 'They are for our security and safety. Without them, people would steal from the shop. Although this is a nice area, there are always bad people who cause trouble by stealing.'
Three doors away, in the dry-cleaning shop run by Malik Zafar, are another two CCTV cameras.
'I need to know who is coming into my shop,' explained Mr Zafar, who spent £400 on his security system.
This week, the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE) produced a report highlighting the astonishing numbers of CCTV cameras in the country and warned how such 'Big Brother tactics' could eventually put lives at risk.
The RAE report warned any security system was 'vulnerable to abuse, including bribery of staff and computer hackers gaining access to it'. One of the report's authors, Professor Nigel Gilbert, claimed the numbers of CCTV cameras now being used is so vast that further installations should be stopped until the need for them is proven.
One fear is a nationwide standard for CCTV cameras which would make it possible for all information gathered by individual cameras to be shared - and accessed by anyone with the means to do so.
The RAE report follows a warning by the Government's Information Commissioner Richard Thomas that excessive use of CCTV and other information-gathering was 'creating a climate of suspicion'.
URL: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23391081-details/George%20Orwell,%20Big%20Brother%20is%20watching%20your%20house/article.do?expand=true#StartComments
SUMMARY:
Did the title of George Orwell’s novel, 1984, have any special meaning?
David Goodman starts his article off by describing major political and war powerhouse countries of the new millennium. He these countries to those countries from the novel 1984. And uses sarcasm to describe the tactics used by the government in 1984, he describes the leader as having true goodness, and is unbiased.
Big Brother is always watching you. But yet, Big Brother never appears in public, only on the telescreen. And the government creates such fear that anyone but a prole, is scared of their own thoughts. Oh, and the government is always watching you; through the telescreen or other people that are going to tell the thought police about you. This frightful image George Orwell creates in 1984 did come true.
David Goodman draws the comparison betweens Oceania dropping bombs on their own country to keep them inline and the “terrorist” attacks on September 11, 2001. After 9/11, the “USA Patriot Act” was passed. This act increased the United States ability to search telephone and e-mail communications and medical, financial and other records, allowed the US to gather more intelligence of foreign countries, and reduced rights of immigrants.
This world George Orwell created in his novel is coming true 20 years after the name of his book. But why? George Orwell wrote the book in 1948, and therefore was a play on words some speculate. Others believe that he named it in honor of The Fabian Society. Orwell was in this society and it was founded in 1884. Therefore he named it 100 years afterwards.
The title of his book and the date of when it was published is irrelevant. 1984 was simply a forecast for the years of the millennium. What is important is that this revolution has begun, and there is nothing we can do to prevent it. The reason we cannot prevent it is because some critics believe this book is a joke. This ignorance will turn them into proles.
ARTICLE:
Orwell's 1984: the future is here: George Orwell believed the stark totalitarian society he described in 1984 actually would arrive by the year 2000, thanks to the slow, sinister influence of socialism - Special report: a commentary
Insight on the News, Dec 31, 2001 by David Goodman
Suppose someone 50 years ago had drawn a picture of the future that looked something like this: You live under the governance of an international alliance composed of a North American Union, China and Europe. Major powers are waging permanent low-level urban warfare. Rocket bombs soar over cities to crash into buildings. There are conflicts involving armies, but they are limited to border regions. Large banners fly downtown to celebrate victory over the nation's enemies.
This is a totalitarian state under a benevolent leader in which citizens are detained and arrested on the merest suspicion of espionage. But the benevolent leader is seen only on television; he never appears in public. Personal surveillance is unceasing and relentless: TV cameras that receive and transmit simultaneously are everywhere. The political-correctness police listen in on every conversation to match speakers to the profile of a potential saboteur. Ordinary citizens live in constant fear of arrest and imprisonment for terrorist activities.
No, this is not the implementation of the antiterrorist USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, which Congress just passed in the throes of the anthrax attacks without even reading it (see "Police State" Dec. 3), and whose very name evokes the memory of the late George Orwell's sci-fi masterpiece, 1984. It is the scenario of Orwell's book itself, written in 1948 and published in 1949. It is ironic that the character he calls Big Brother was not meant as a symbol for a U.S. administration but likely for the future of Britain under progressive socialism. What gives pause is that the book clearly satirizes the consequences of Fabian socialism exactly 100 years after its birth in the salons of London.
If Orwell's totalitarian state seems to be arriving about 20 years late, it is not because he mistargeted the book by naming it 1984. A careful review of the literary evidence reveals that he was aiming at the period immediately following the year 2000 but wanted to memorialize the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Fabian Society.
With Orwell's stark vision of a totalitarian society having for more than half a century sent shivers down the collective spine of the prestigious Western intelligentsia, one might assume in the roil of current events that scholars worldwide would be combing the pages of 1984 for triggering incidents of a kind that might lead to the predicted Orwellian world. Yet literary and social critics long have avoided coming to grips with the implications of Orwell's profound insight that socialism, despite its claim to benevolence, would deliver Orwell's 1984 by A.D. 2000.
The major facts about Orwell and the origins of 1984 lay as enshrouded in mystery as when his London publisher, Secker and Warburg, first brought out the book in 1949. In the beginning, he is supposed to have been a committed socialist, a close observer of the founders of the socialist Fabian Society, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, and of the famous socialist futurist H.G. Wells. Taking as a theme the strategy of the Roman general Quintus Fabius Cunctator, who famously delayed battle with the Carthaginians while exhausting them with endless harassments, the Fabians argued that the grand aim of socialism could be achieved bit by bit, through moderate increments, making small changes in society so as not to alarm the defenders of individual responsibility.
The Fabian Society was founded in 1884, according to its Website, and continues to play a prominent role through the Socialist International in developing the policies of the Labour Party in Britain, of which Orwell once was an active member, and of allied Clintonian liberals in the United States.
But when Orwell wrote 1984, it was more than a show of dislike for the Fabian socialists; it was humorous, biting, Swiftian satire against the socialist and liberal intellectuals. The leftist elites, then as now, praised the book for the wrong reasons. They applauded Orwell's resistance to the loss of civil liberties but refused, and continue to refuse, to see the book as a mirror held up to the totalitarian face of the left-wing intelligentsia. They tiptoe away from such questions as: Why choose the year 1984 as the title? Is it really just a science-fiction fantasy or is it political satire; and, if so, against whom is it directed? Finally, what are the likely sources of Orwell's dystopia?
The critics try to explain away the hot spots. The title, 1984, is said to be simply the reversal of the final two digits in 1948, the year he was writing the book. Some critics say it is not even a serious book but just derivative science fiction on par with Soviet writer Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, a book Orwell had read in translation and reviewed for literary journals.
Indeed, even the latest of Orwell's authorized biographers get it wrong. Orwell led a much fuller, richer life than is acknowledged in, say, Peter Davison's 1996 biography, George Orwell: A Literary Life, or in Peter Huber's 1993 book, Orwell's Revenge. They see in 1984 both melodrama and a touch of satire. The satire, they say, is aimed against the Soviet Union (a safe target, now, even for socialists). They assert that Josef Stalin is Big Brother and that Stalin's Five-Year Plans buttressed by concocted statistics are other satirical targets of the book.
The esteemed professors writing the major interpretive biographies of Orwell identify the character Emmanuel Goldstein, the book's traitorous leader of the Brotherhood, with Soviet apostate Leon Trotsky. Another dubious theory is that Orwell got the material for the melodramatic novel from his personal experiences while writing and producing programs for the Overseas Service of the government-run British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) and as a journalist during the war, working for the press baron Lord Astor. These low-level journalistic jobs, they intimate, never gave him access to classified information.
At first glance, the just-a-writer-working-for-the-wartime-BBC explanation appears credible; but on examination it may reveal the real truth. The biographers ignored the research of W.J. West, which puts an end to the dumb-journalist theory. West rummaged through the BBC archives and found 11 scripts for a show hosted by Orwell and broadcast by short-wave to the Indian subcontinent. It was called "A.D. 2000."
West reports that Orwell, who had served in the imperial police in Burma and chronicled his adventures in Burmese Days and in the essay, "Shooting an Elephant," enjoyed a distinguished reputation in India. As a result, the BBC asked him to produce programs about the glorious future of A.D. 2000 under British rule. For this series, Orwell interviewed celebrated futurists, scientists and technologists, getting live responses to questions about the future of agriculture, science and technology. For another BBC broadcast, Orwell produced an analysis of one of his favorite books, Jack London's 1908 novel, The Iron Heel, a fanciful description of the perfect fascist state, Asgard, which reaches its full power to crush the people in ... 1984.
A further source of information for the book 1984 that appears never to have been adequately examined is the matter of Orwell's job during the war. Another Orwell biography, Bernard Crick's George Orwell, A Life, accepts at face value his claim that he got bored in September 1943 and just up and left BBC. Or was that an official cover story?
Certainly the account does not ring true. Orwell was a skilled writer and a supreme patriot who wrote the stirring, down-home narrative The Lion and the Unicorn to describe the plight of the British nation struggling against Adolf Hitler. What patriot could just leave in the middle of a war? It seems more likely that for years he worked for a branch of British intelligence (as did his second wife), was working undercover and had signed an oath never to reveal operations in which he participated.
The question to ask then is whether Orwell all along was an undercover participant in Britain's secret propaganda effort against communists and fascists. At the beginning of the war the BBC for which Orwell worked was part of the British Ministry of Information, which produced both "white" and "black" information services. After internal fights, most "black information" was put into another unit, the Political Warfare Executive (PWE). Orwell's friend Richard Crossman, a Fabian socialist and later a prominent postwar Labour Party minister, was head of the German division of the PWE propaganda-warfare unit.
A cadre of researchers has insisted that Orwell never worked undercover for British overseas intelligence, or MI6. But an equally vocal contingent says he in fact worked for MI5 -- British counter-intelligence. Their theories have earned such plausibility that The Economist put them on the cover of the magazine. Indeed, the definitive edition of Orwell's complete works gives documentary evidence that at the end of his life Orwell was spying on left-wing friends and reporting to the government which of them were most likely to fall under the sway of Soviet communism.
So did the title 1984 have any special meaning in Orwell's mind, or did he do something so unimaginative as simply reversing the last two digits of 1948, the year he wrote the book? One theory, put forth by William Steinhoff, an American professor, in his book George Orwell and the Origins of 1984, points the finger at Orwell's fascination with London's description of a fascist state that achieves flower in calendar year 1984.
Interesting. But it makes more sense to look to socialism rather than fascism as the butt of Orwell's satire, especially after Animal Farm, his 1945 satire of socialist revolution. Then, in the microfilm files of The Times of London for 1947 (when Orwell was working on his first drafts of 1984), this reporter turned up an account of the progressive-socialist Fabian Society belatedly celebrating that year as its 75th anniversary, three years late because of the war.
Now Orwell was an occasional platform speaker for the Fabians and a close observer of the Webbs. Yet Orwell also was a truth-teller. In writing a satire that portrays a Ministry of Truth vigorously promoting lies, he well may have been pondering the logical outcome of applying the principles of the Fabian Society as the world might be during its centenary celebration. The Fabian logo was the turtle, not the hare. Fabians believed they could be successful in taking over national governments incrementally even if it took 100 years. So why wouldn't Orwell take them at their word?
When asked about the world he had described in 1984, Orwell responded that he was not saying such a future would occur, but that a future something like it could happen because that was the direction in which the world was going.
So why would this Swiftian satire be unleashed against the gentle Fabian socialists? One reason is that they weren't all that gentle. The redoubtable Webbs had traveled in 1932 to Stalin's Soviet Union with Fabian playwright George Bernard Shaw to see socialism at work, and they were Potemkinized if not directly recruited by the NKVD, the Soviet secret police that preceded the KGB. The gushing Webbs claimed to have seen no evidence of famine, hardship or slave camps.
In 1933 they published an account of their trip titled Soviet Russia: A New Civilization. Two years later they put out a revised edition even more obsequious, to which they added an exclamation point, as in Soviet Russia: A New Civilization! According to the archives of the Soviet intelligence services, the book was entirely written by the NKVD. The aging Webbs now were working to create in England a replica of the Soviet Union, and Orwell was watching them.
When the Webbs lived at Passmoor Corners, they kept a large picture of Stalin prominently on the wall of an alcove. In 1984, the protagonist Winston Smith climbs the stairs to his flat, on each landing of which hangs a poster of Big Brother. And the first Fabian pamphlet appeared on April 4, the date on which 1984 begins. More provocatively, Orwell labels the party in power by the six letters INGSOC, an acronym that brings to the eye a grammatical present-progressive tense that suggests English progressive socialism.
I once inquired through a literary agent who was a friend of Sonia Orwell, the writer's second wife, whether 1984 might be a satirical polemic directed at the Fabians. She giggled nervously and remarked that perhaps that was right. And the Fabian Society once more has catapulted itself into the picture because, upon the death of Sonia Orwell, rights to George's estate fell under control of -- the Fabian Society. According to representatives of HarperCollins, the Fabians will be in control of the 1984 copyright and name through the year 2025 and will do their best to block unauthorized investigative research about Orwell's anti-socialist works.
The deepest twist of Orwell's satire is that Sidney Webb, cherubic-faced as he was, large-headed, always intellectual, is the physical model for Emmanuel Goldstein, who wrote "The Book" within the story line of 1984. Goldstein is the primal traitor against Big Brother. As a member of Parliament, Sidney was disparaged for being Jewish, though he was not. Again there are some interesting parallels. In 1984, Orwell refers to brainwashed and fuzzy-headed intellectuals, such as Webb, conversing in a private language called "duck speak" -- bringing to mind webbed feet.
Another parallel appears in the experience of Sidney Webb as Lord Passmoor in Parliament. When he rose to speak in his annoying monotone, back benchers (in the rude fashion of English parliamentary tradition) arose at times to bleat like sheep or goats. Indeed with his pince-nez spectacles balanced precariously on his prominent nose, Webb did resemble a billy goat -- at least to certain members of Parliament. In 1984, when the traitorous Goldstein appears on the telescreen, party members hiss and toss books at his image. Then, amid the riotous chaos, comes the baaing sound of a herd of sheep that grows and grows, filling the screen. A wolf in a sheepskin is part of the shield of the Fabian Society.
All of which suggests that Orwell's 1984 was written as a forecast scenario for the year 2000, but titled 1984 to bring to mind the centenary of the Fabian Society. Orwell's satirical approach assumes that the leaders of future governments would be Fabian successors of Beatrice and Sidney Webb, whom H.G. Wells with arcane foresight referred to as the global "New Machiavellians."
These are a breed of international socialists who might be recognized in 2000 as, say, Hillary and Bill Clinton and British Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair.
“If you are doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear.”
It is nothing new to our society. Security cameras are everywhere we go, malls, schools, workplaces, even in front of homes, but when do we say enough is enough? Constantly new cameras are being put up but nothing is being done to protect our privacy. What happened to our personal right of freedom? The general idea that is said to keep us quiet is, “If you are doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear,” but that is not the point. We do not have to be monitored constantly just to ensure that we are not committing a crime or causing any other sort of trouble.
After reading the article I chose, I began to feel violated in a sense that I cannot even be alone when walking through a mall, or even going for a walk in my neighbourhood because I am are constantly being watched by scared neighbours protecting their properties. I was shocked to hear that Britain has installed listening devices in public places. Where does this nonsense end? Soon enough it will be mandatory to have telescreens in our homes, watching our every move and listening to everything we say to our families. I believe that having security cameras in some public places is a good idea. About a month ago in Toronto, a security camera in a townhouse complex helped to see the identity of a robber and to warn the public about this criminal. There are many benefits that come with security cameras, but where do we draw the line? Governments are just going to keep adding more cameras in even more obscured places until the people stand up for their rights.
Another thing that really shocked me was that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was offering municipalities grants to buy surveillance equipment. This is just more proof that the government is increasing the push for even small towns, with relatively small budgets, to set up security devices in every street corner. There is now no excuse left to the U.S. government for not having your small town surrounded with cameras.
As I mentioned earlier, security cameras come with many benefits but there is also the question of who is watching at the other end of the camera. This I believe is what causes so much fear when we see a new camera being installed at the corner of our street. We cannot be sure as to who is sitting there watching what we are doing, which in turn is a very scary thought.
ARTICLE -------
Times Writers Group: Big Brother is watching all of us
The rapid spread of surveillance cameras throughout the world evokes fears of an Orwellian society — a totalitarian state characterized by continual monitoring of thoughts and behaviors.
In London, they have listening devices in public places. Even though the information obtained from eavesdropping is not admissible in court (without a warrant) it is gathered to help police determine where crime might possibly occur. It may be more for gang activity than terrorism.
The laws of Britain do not protect privacy to the extent the United States does. Nonetheless, government policies post-9/11 have portrayed various actions as necessary infringements on privacy to keep us safe. From the original Patriot Act to the current debate about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, government is fighting against going to courts to gain permission to survey and spy.
Perhaps one believes these acts are necessary, and I am not arguing they have no value, but they nonetheless seem to open the door for more intrusive acts.
On campus
Take, for example, the use of surveillance cameras at St. Cloud State University. According to the Oct. 18 issue of the University Chronicle, 48 cameras have been added on campus since last summer. They are in dorms, parking lots, the library and outdoor areas. Four more are scheduled to be installed in the Recreational Center.
According to the university's public safety security coordinator, Jennifer Furan, "It all provides additional support for the code (of conduct.)"
In other words, St. Cloud State is looking to find someone doing something wrong.
However, don't Jimmy and Jamie have a right to steal a kiss on the Riverwalk without fearing notice from Big Brother? Did they really surrender their property rights by deciding to live on campus?
"It helps the staff of residential halls and assists with safety for us," Furan notes.
The implication is if you are doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear. But isn't this the argument used to rationalize a totalitarian regime such as the former Soviet Union, or the fictional Oceania portrayed in George Orwell's "1984"?
Perhaps of greatest concern is the apathy that greets mass surveillance: According to an ABC/Washington Post poll in August, 71 percent of Americans support the use of video cameras to improve public safety in public places. About 25 percent opposed it.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is offering municipalities grants with which they can buy surveillance cameras. So for example, putting in cameras in Whitney Park using federal dollars, just in case a fight breaks out on the soccer field or a drug deal might happen by the river, seems OK.
The cameras aren't expensive and we could always use a little more safety, right? Ben Franklin observed that those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Small steps
Often the loss of freedom is incremental rather than cataclysmic. Freedom given up for security is hard to reclaim. When East and West Germany reunited, they discovered all the records the security police (Stasi) had collected on people. They eventually opened the records for people to see who had spied on whom. At one point, one in 66 East Germans worked for the Stasi. From the records, people found out who worked and spied on whom. Those who were persecuted are in essence persecuted again.
"There was no physical torture as such, but the psychological treatment of the inmates was soul-destroying," Mario Falcke told Spiegel Online International in a June report on East German spying. Falcke is the Web editor for Stasiopfer, a support group for former East Germans persecuted by the secret service. He was imprisoned twice in the 1980s.
In "1984," the issue for Winston Smith isn't so much that he's being watched but that the government is watching and recording every single move. Once they've collected the records on you, how can you ever be safe again?
By: Barbara Banaian
November 02, 2007
http://www.sctimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071102/OPINION/111020042/1006/NEWS01
[Sorry I didn't include the article, my bad]
Is Technology Creating a Dystopia?
In the article Who's afraid of 1984?, Richard A. Muller argues that the future Orwell had foreseen in his novel, started around the year 1989 and has been developing over the past years into the dystopia portrayed in the 1984.
Orwell foresaw in his novel an international event that eventually came to pass which was the Cold War, in the book it is called The Revolution. He also portrays the results this war could have had if the Communists and their idealism had not been stopped. Many people argue that if Stalinism had not been stopped, Communists would had used their technological advancements to help them destroy the freedom of individuals which is basically what occurs in Oceania. Muller however, says that these ideas were wrong because totalitarianism began to disappear between the years of 1989 and1991, years in which democracy started spreading along with the freedom it provided to its members.
One of the most controversial topics presented to the audience in Orwell's novel, is that technology develops at a rate at which no one can control it. Even though in the novel the Party uses technology to keep in constant vigilance the population of Oceania to restrict liberty, Muller argues that Orwell's prediction of a future in which the government uses technology to obliterate liberty was incorrect.
The flaw Orwell did not see in his vision was that technology could not only be used as a weapon to monitor the citizens of a country and spread false propaganda, but that technology can also be used as a tool people have access to to spread information faster and more efficiently to more people on the planet, it can be used to raise awareness about certain issues and to provide knowledge to whoever seeking it. That is why it is stated in the article that totalitarianism was destroyed by the technology they hoped to use to control the population. The example used is the radio which was used by the Communists to spread false propaganda but that also gave access to people living under Communist regime, to information about the world outside their totalitarianism walls, allowing them to see the truth about their society.
Muller argues that Orwell's mistake was that he assumed that only the government would be able to afford good technology and the example he provides to disprove this statement, is that of the US military. In the 1970's the economic force driving the development of electronic technology in America, was the US military, but that is hardly the case nowadays since the consumer market is now providing electronic companies with more earnings.
The article concludes by restating that technology is a force that is developing a faster rate than it can be controlled and does not always lead man down the path he wants to go. But it is a powerful force when it comes to spreading a truth that needs to be heard.
---- ARTICLE USED -----
1984, that dreaded Orwellian year, has finally arrived. The phenomenon George Orwell predicted reached full bloom around 1989, and has been straggling to completion ever since. Few people noticed, however, because of a simple error in Orwell's prediction. His analysis was right, but he got the sign wrong.
His novel 1984, written in 1948, contained the foremost prophecy of the cold war: that technological advancement would render Stalinism unstoppable, with individual liberty the inevitable casualty. However, when the technologies that would enable this totalitarian global village reached fruition, the victim was not democracy, but totalitarianism itself. What went right?
When the eponymous year arrived it spawned numerous essays, most arguing either that the dreaded era had actually come, if only we looked closely, or that it was imminent. But they were wrong. In the initial decades of the cold war, the totalitarianism envisioned by Orwell conquered much of the world, but then, like the Martians in H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, began to die as if from a mysterious disease. Indeed, in the period from 1989 to 1991 we watched democracy and liberty spread (like a plague-to Communists) first through the Soviet satellites and then into the heart of the Soviet Union itself.
Ever since Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, futurists-including Orwell-have worried that technology's growing avalanche would overwhelm all attempts to control it. On that point, Orwell was right. But he mistakenly prophesied that governments would successfully use technology as a weapon to obliterate liberty. Communications would spread propaganda-the "Big Lie"-and electronics would be used for surveillance and thought control. Radio had spread Hitler's evil eloquence to millions of Germans, many more than could have been reached by the unamplified human voice. By 1948, Stalin had effectively used technology to achieve god-like status in the Soviet Union. Orwell extrapolated the trend, and that's where he went wrong.
Technology-especially infomation and communications technology-has been the most liberating force in history. It is the Frankenstein monster, but it kills tyrants; it is ultimately benevolent to the populace because it gives access to knowledge. The Big Lie fails when truth is also heard. Short-wave radios provide news, and the news rings true. It proved to be much more expensive and difficult for the communists to jam radio broadcasts than for the Radio Free Europe to set up new ones at difference frequencies. Meanwhile, short-wave radios shrank in size and cost. Information leaked, and then poured, across the walls built by totalitarianism. People learned that their "worker's paradise" was far inferior to the capitalist world outside, and that the gap was growing.
The technology of liberation in China was initially the fax machine, used to send foreign newspaper reports; the government just barely, and perhaps only temporarily, won the battle. It cannot resist forever. In fact, realizing that the Internet is necessary just to compete in the world markets, the government has begun to spend large amounts of money on getting the country wired. Cheap cell phones, too, are invading the developing world.
Orwell's error was remarkably simple: he assumed that only the state would be able to afford high-tech-an assumption shared by virtually every prophet, science-fiction writer, and futurist. But it has proven to be wrong. As late as the 1970s, the driving force for electronic technology in the U.S. was the military; now the Department of Defense has difficulty getting industry to respond to its needs, since they are dwarfed by the consumer market. The military, whenever possible, now orders commercial off-the-shelf technology rather than "mil spec." Many of the GPS receivers used in Desert Storm were bought at Radio Shack. Radios have become so inexpensive that Intel is now planning to engrave a miniature one on the corner of every silicon microchip, at no extra cost (see "Radio Ready Chips," TR July/August 2002). Most of us cannot even count the number of computers we own, because we don't know how many are hidden in our microwave ovens and automobiles.
To be sure, technology has introduced problems. Like anything out of control, it does not always lead us where we want to go. It is particularly difficult to predict its long-term effect on the environment. But in a time when technology is frequently under attack, it is worthwhile to notice its role in spreading truth. It was not Stalinism, but the flow of information that proved to be unstoppable.
The Daily Mail
Big Brother is shouting at you
September 16, 2006
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=405477&in_page_id=1770
“Now we can see you”
The Searching of homes, the scanning of mail and the accusing of innocent people, all took place in George Orwell’s novel, 1984. It is not a stretch to relate this to today’s society, and the passing of the Patriot Act in the United States, which allows the searching of homes, the scanning of e-mail and internet browsing, and innocent citizens being accused for things such as terrorism if they do not follow the views of the masses. In Rick Gee’s article, “The Arrival of Orwellian America”, he explains the overwhelming similarities of today’s society and the society depicted in 1984. Gee explains how the American government shares little differences with that of ‘The Party’, and shows how we are slowly turning into a totalitarian society.
In the article, many bridges are made between the totalitarian society of 1984, and the world we live in today. One of which concerns a war that does not have an end date, (‘The War against Terrorism’) and another that talks about how our society has a Goldstein in Osama bin Laden. We all thrust our hate toward one person that symbolizes evil, and will never be caught. This person, along with endless warfare, keeps us living in fear, and when people live in fear, they can easily be controlled by the government. Ultimately the goal of both, the United States government (George Bush) and ‘The Party’ (Big Brother) is to keep people living in the state of fear.
The art of Newspeak, invented by Orwell as a type of simplified language keeping people from having to think, has been put forth by the government and politicians in whom we trust today. The politicians will speak with short forms or abbreviations that the ‘average Joe’ holding a vote, cannot understand. In 1984’s “The Principles of Newspeak”, Orwell talks about how these misleading political speeches have been occurring for ages, “Even in the early decades of the twentieth century, telescoped words and phrases had been one of the characteristic features of political language; and it had been noticed that the tendency to use abbreviations of this kind was most marked in totalitarian countries and totalitarian organizations.” (320) In saying this, Orwell explains how citizens can be mislead to believe certain things, said by people in power, when the opposite is implied. For example, in “The Arrival of Orwellian America”, it is explained how the United States government named an act which dishonors the publics privacy, The Patriot Act. This type of political conniving continues to repeat, all over the world, just like in the totalitarian state shown in 1984. George Orwell goes on to say, “And rightly so, since what was required, above all for political purposes, were short clipped words of unmistakable meaning which could be uttered rapidly and which roused the minimum echoes in the speaker’s mind.” (321) which explains further, the effect of Newspeak in the world of politics, in keeping society less educated about what goes on in the government.
Everything that we consume in the world today, is pre-thought out, by people in power, who have a shocking amount of control over the masses. In the article, “The Arrival of Orwellian America”, this power and control over the public, is brought to our attention. As Gee relates our society with that of the totalitarian society of that shown in 1984, we begin to see where our society is headed if we continue to be brain washed by the government. If something does not change soon, it is clear that the phrases, “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.” will be repeated, and believed by future generations.
---ARTICLE---
The Arrival Of Orwellian America
by Rick Gee, 1 Jan 2002
In George Orwell's classic novel 1984, Oceania is in a state of perpetual war with Eurasia. Even though the "Big Brother" state of Oceania insists that such has always been the case, the protagonist, Winston Smith, remembers that the states were in fact at one time aligned. The same is true of the United States and Osama bin Laden/Afghanistan. The CIA provided funding and arms to bin Laden during the decade-long proxy war with the Soviet Union. Now bin Laden, "The Evil One," has become the Goldstein character, who is held up as the "Enemy of the People." And our rulers readily admit that the War on Terrorism will last indefinitely.
To keep the masses in line and to suppress opposition, Oceania developed a language called Newspeak, which actually reduced the number and variety of words in use to render dissenting thought obsolete. Closely related to Newspeak is doublethink, in which someone is conditioned to either say the opposite of what he thinks or think the opposite of what is true.
The U.S. government has engaged in such obfuscations with the passage of the Uniting and Strengthening America Act by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism. Yes, it's the USA PATRIOT Act. Clearly the name of the bill was concocted to fit the acronym. The purpose of this acronym is two-fold. One, it makes it politically dangerous for politicians to vote against it ("He voted against the Patriot Act? Who can we nominate to run opposite this traitor in the next election?"). Two, it stifles opposition among the American people. "You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists."
Since we are all in favor of stopping acts of terrorism, we should all be in favor of this legislation, right? But this legislation -- which was not available for members of Congress to read before they had to vote on it -- will do nothing to prevent future terrorism and much to increase the power of government over its subjects. The legislation, among other things:
• Allows law enforcement agencies to search homes and offices without notifying the owner for days or weeks after, not only in terrorism cases, but in all cases -- the so-called "sneak and peek" authority.
• Allows government agents to collect undefined new information about Web browsing and e-mail.
• Overrides existing state and federal privacy laws, allowing the FBI to compel disclosure of any kind of records upon the mere claim that they are connected with an intelligence investigation.
If you believe that the government could never use these unconstitutional powers against you because you're not a Middle Eastern "raghead," you are unfamiliar with history. J. Edgar Hoover's FBI became a de facto domestic political police force. Franklin Delano Roosevelt used the FBI to spy on his political enemies, especially antiwar groups.
The PATRIOT Act does not restrict its provisions to terrorism investigations. In fact, they may be used against anyone, whether or not he is a suspect related to terrorism. On the other hand, the act broadens the definition of terrorism to "an offense that is calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion; or to retaliate against government conduct." While the PATRIOT Act ostensibly protects Americans against terrorism, in reality it protects the government against its own people.
With this new expanded, nebulous definition of terrorism now the law of the land, will I be considered a terrorist because I do not blindly follow everything George W. Bush and John Ashcroft decree; because I dare to write columns that question the actions of government? Do I "intimidate" government functionaries by exposing their duplicitous dealings? Will the editors of Strike-the-Root now be deemed terrorists for publishing my columns?
Earlier this month, John Ashcroft testified before Congress regarding President Bush's Executive Order that allows the president to try "terrorists" before military tribunals rather than in open court. Ashcroft's appearance was largely a dog-and-pony show, a political exercise designed to allow some Democrats on Capitol Hill to criticize the administration without disparaging President Bush directly, something they clearly cannot do in light of Dubya's 90% approval rating.
During the appearance, Ashcroft, who has recently engaged in an authoritarian power grab that would make Torquemada blush, uttered the following:
"To those who pit Americans against immigrants, citizens against non-citizens, to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. Our efforts have been crafted carefully to avoid infringing on constitutional rights, while saving American lives."
By now, the theme should be clear: you are either with us, or you are with the terrorists. Ashcroft attempts to manipulate "peace-loving people" into doublethink with some crafty doublespeak. It is Ashcroft and his minions who attempt to scare us with their alerts of impending terrorism, always based on "credible information," of course. And unfortunately, the loss of liberty is all too real.
As for his claim that constitutional rights will not be infringed upon and that American lives will be saved, this goes well beyond mere obfuscation; it is an outright lie. We already know that the government failed to save thousands of American lives on September 11, and the Constitution has taken a severe thrashing ever since.
Ashcroft concluded, "Charges of kangaroo courts and shredding the Constitution give new meaning to the term fog of war."
No, Mr. Ashcroft -- it is not those who oppose your encroaching police state and global hegemony that perpetrate a "fog of war." It is you and your cohorts in government who wage the war -- both the bombing campaigns abroad and the war on liberty at home -- who are responsible for the "fog of war." And it is up to the lovers of freedom everywhere to lift the veil of euphemism in which we are assured, as were the people of Oceania, that "War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength."
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/linkscopy/Arrival.html
1984 IN THE REAL WORLD
The idea of a controlling and secretive society has been played out in history many times and is still being used in the world until this very day. A dystopian society where the citizens are kept in the dark and are controlled and oppressed by the government is nothing new and has been tried many times with various methods and outcomes.
The Soviet Union was an ideal model of a dystopian society. The USSR was a model of efficiency in its early years with its plan laid down by Lennon and Trotsky the Soviets had a solid plan to bring their country into the forefront of world and become a force to be reckoned with. The USSR was built around a strong workers union and a booming economy that was being carried over from pre World War II and with its major contribution in the war it had a lot to rebuild but it didn’t hinder their prosperity.
The USSR inspired many other counties to follow its beliefs and ideas such as Vietnam, China and Cuba. Though not exactly the same in the way they were run those countries shared the same benefits and flaws as the USSR. This is comparable to Airstrip One in 1984 in many ways. Both the USSR and Airstrip One are both ran like a machine with the workers as the driving force of the machine. Both of them also wanted to emphasize their accomplishments so as to increase the morale of the workers and downplay or even ignore any of the downfalls or any negative press. Also the citizens live in an oppressed state, but at the same time they have to conform and believe everything the leaders say and do.
They are both Dystopian societies and both lead their people with a blind faith and deceitful lies. This can only lead to a downfall in the system and it begins with people.
The Soviet Accomplishment
The Soviet Union was the product of the first, and so far only, successful workers’ revolution in history. Led by V.I.Lenin and Leon Trotsky, the young Russian workers’ state defeated the White armies and their imperialist allies in a protracted civil war. The early Bolshevik regime laid the basis for a planned economy by expropriating foreign and domestic capital and imposing a monopoly of foreign trade. The ascendency in the mid-1920s of an anti-working class caste headed by Joseph Stalin grotesquely distorted the operation of the economy. Nonetheless, the institutions of collectivized property proved dynamic enough to transform the USSR from a predominantly peasant country into a modern industrial state.
Cold War ideologues who used to portray the USSR as a sinister, totalitarian dynamo threatening to overwhelm the “free world,” now claim that, for 70 years, the Soviet Union teetered on the brink of collapse. The truth is that despite the bureaucratic deformations, the Soviet economy grew rapidly for a considerable historical period. Between 1928 and 1938, while the imperialist countries were gripped by the Great Depression, manufacturing output expanded 600 percent in the USSR (The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Paul Kennedy).
Contrary to Hollywood, the decisive battles of World War II were fought on the Eastern Front, where Hitler’s best divisions were ground up by the Red Army and pushed all the way back to Berlin. After recovering from the massive devastation of the war, the USSR resumed its rapid economic growth. The successful launch of Sputnik in 1957, the world’s first satellite, alarmed the imperialist general staffs. One of the themes of John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign was the need to catch up with Soviet growth rates. Through the 1950s and early 1960s, the Soviet model was one that many “third-world” rulers sought to emulate.
While various demoralized leftists and bourgeois political science hacks claimed that Stalin’s Russia represented some new sort of class society, Trotsky recognized that the rule of the bureaucracy was a historically transitory phenomenon:
“either the bureaucracy, becoming ever more the organ of the world bourgeoisie in the workers’ state, will overthrow the new forms of property and plunge the country back to capitalism; or the working class will crush the bureaucracy and open the way to socialism.”
—Transitional Program
Trotsky regarded the Stalinist oligarchy as an obstacle to the survival of the workers’ state which must be removed. He explicitly linked his defense of the degenerated Soviet workers’ state against capitalist restoration to the call for workers’ political revolution to oust the bureaucrats and restore the direct, democratic rule of the working class. Only in this manner could the road to genuinely socialist development be opened.
For seven decades the degenerated Soviet workers’ state posed a global counterweight to the hegemony of Western imperialism. Despite the Soviet bureaucracy’s futile search for “peaceful coexistence” with imperialism, the USSR provided important material support for the deformed workers’ states that resulted from insurrectionary movements in China, Cuba and Vietnam.
Trotsky asserted that the restoration of capitalism in the USSR would be the most serious defeat ever suffered by the international workers’ movement, just as the overthrow of capitalism in the former Czarist empire had been its greatest victory. The social disaster that has befallen the peoples of the former Soviet Union has amply confirmed this view.
http://www.bolshevik.org/1917/no24/USSR_Article.html
Is George Orwell’s book 1984 prophetic of where the world if headed?
In the book 1984, the author George Orwell illustrates a created world, known as Oceania that is ruled by a totalitarian government where famines are common and poverty is a lifestyle. In a community where people work for their particular party and are categorized in cliques, society is kept in an endless state of fear by secret cops, known as Thought Police. So what happens to the fear when the secret police aren’t around? Telescreens do the job of monitoring and detecting every persons move and speech. I agree with the author Dave Atkins to a certain degree, that our freedoms are diminishing and being attacked. The horrific event of 9/11 and the fear of another terrorist attack have definitely increased the amount of surveillance cameras and security procedures in airports. It is now required that shoes be removed and people be scanned by machines. Intersections have cameras to make sure speed limits are obeyed. Lastly, plans are being made to install cameras on buses, subways and street cars so that authorities will have the ability to view daily activities and respond should there be any threat. Dave Atkins is correct that civil liberties are declining, but is it true that this is an invasion of people’s privacy?
Security and precautions taken today have certainly changed over the years. Dave Atkins has made it clear in his article that he sees this as a violation of people’s privacy, especially for those who aren’t involved in terrorism. He states that “Stop and search laws applied to Britain's Muslim communities will simply polarise those groups.” The treatment towards a Muslim compared to people of other cultures is different. It is sad that this culture is scrutinized and judged. However violence is expressed openly in this culture and it is only wise to pay extra attention to them. This is simply an example of mandatory safety precautions. Without surveillance cameras authorities have no means of monitoring people of interest. This is a step towards more protection, not less freedom and privileges.
With crimes being more prevalent than before, basic security will no longer provide the value of protection needed. Whether or not the advancement of security is seen as an intrusion of people’s privacy, these measures are definitely making our world a safer place to live in.
ARTICLE USED:
Tony Blair has turned Britain into a land where we are all prisoners
by CHRIS ATKINS
- 13th June 2007
Even George Orwell would be shocked. He described the sinister machinations of a totalitarian police state in his novel, 1984, and laid bare the danger of eroding our basic civil liberties, including the right to freedom of speech and the right to privacy.
Although he famously coined the phrase 'Big Brother is watching you', even Orwell cannot have foreseen just how prescient those words would prove to be.
Today, in Tony Blair's Britain - which I naively voted into power ten years ago - we have witnessed a breath-taking erosion of civil liberties.
The truth is we are fast becoming an Orwellian state, our every movement watched, our behaviour monitored, and our freedoms curtailed.
Between May 1997 and August 2006, New Labour created 3,023 new criminal offences - taking in everything from a law against Polish potatoes (the Polish Potatoes Order 2004) to one which made the creation of a nuclear explosion in Britain officially illegal.
Then there has been the incredible number of CCTV cameras - a total of 4.2 million, more than in the rest of Europe put together.
And, yesterday, we learnt that the Government has agreed to let the EU have automatic access to databases of DNA (containing samples of people's hair, sperm or fingernails) in order to help track down criminals, even though many thousands of those on record are totally innocent
How did all this happen? Who allowed it? To try to answer these questions, I have made a film, Talking Liberties, about the attack on our freedoms.
I uncovered a disturbing roll call of ancient basic rights which have been systematically destroyed in the self- serving climate of fear this government has perpetuated since the 9/11 attack.
First there was the Act which banned the age- old right of protest within half-a-mile of Parliament without special police authorisation.
And who can forget Walter Wolfgang, the pensioner who was dragged out of the Labour Party Conference for daring to heckle the Home Secretary? He was detained under the Terrorism Act 2000, which gives the police unprecedented stop and search powers.
In 2005 alone, this law was used to stop 35,000 people - none of whom was a terrorist.
But this is only the thin end of the wedge - our civil liberties, enshrined in British law since the Magna Carta, are being whittled away.
There has been an unprecedented shift of power away from the individual towards the state - but now this power is being used not to defeat terrorism, but to keep tabs on ordinary citizens. As well as a raft of repressive anti-terror legislation, there are the more insidious infringements of our freedom and privacy.
We will soon see the introduction of the vast National Identity Register, linking all databases such as the DNA database to which the EU will soon have access.
The tentacles of these networks will intertwine until they form a vast state surveillance mechanism, which can track every detail of your life: what books you borrowed from the library as a student, your sexual health, your DNA profile, your spending and your whereabouts at any given moment in time.
Ministers are even creating a children's database, which will record truancy, diet, and medical history.
And, of course, ID cards will be issued in 2009 - to be used every time we carry out routine tasks such as visiting the dentist. Soon, biometric data - your iris scan, fingerprints and DNA, will help to identify you further.
And, all the time, there are those CCTV cameras - 20 per cent of the global total, even though Britain only has 0.2 per cent of the world's population.
New Labour has an absolute obsession with these devices. Soon, more sophisticated cameras will be able to recognise your face and the information matched to one of the national databases.
All cars will eventually be fitted with a GPS chip, officially to simplify road tax payments but they will also allow government agencies to track every vehicle in the country.
There are, of course, more alarming implications to being constantly monitored - as Orwell understood. Soon, we will be living in an open-air prison.
Some may ask: why does all this matter? The answer is that to surrender our identity and privacy so comprehensively is to give up something we will never get back.
Although New Labour says its mania for data-gathering is all part of its plan to protect us, there's no guarantee that future governments (who will be inheriting a nationwide surveillance machine and the National Identity Register) won't use it to more malign ends.
Totalitarian regimes have, after all, always collected information on their citizens. Hitler pioneered the use of ID cards as a means of repression. The Belgians left Rwanda with a bloody legacy by implementing an ID card system which divided the population into Hutu and Tutsi.
When the 1994 genocide began, these cards proved a device for horrific ethnic cleansing, with one million people dying in 100 days. The Stasi secret police in Soviet East Germany kept millions of files in order to keep track of everyone in the country.
Of course these examples are the extremes - but basic liberties such as privacy and free speech have been hard-won over centuries and history shows that we should not allow them to be brushed aside.
This shift away from individual freedom towards state power has happened slowly, and almost without us noticing.
Like so many others, I was proud to put a cross against the box next to New Labour in 1997 as a first-time voter. But now I have become shocked at the vast swathe of new laws which had been introduced, most of them in response to terrorism.
We are told that this is all for the good - these laws, and the surveillance cameras and ID cards will stop terrorists. Is that the case? Sadly not.
The London bombers carried ID and were observed on CCTV - of course it did not stop them committing their terrible crime.
Intelligence experts say that most information leading to genuine breakthroughs come from informants, not through random tracking or surveillance of the general population.
In any case, liberty and security aren't balanced on some delicate equilibrium, as John Reid, the Home Secretary, and Tony Blair would have us believe. History has shown us that it is precisely when you undermine people's basic rights that they mobilise towards radical groups.
After all, one of the greatest recruiters for the IRA in Northern Ireland was the policy of internment, under which people were imprisoned without trial. Have we learnt nothing from our past?
Stop and search laws applied to Britain's Muslim communities will simply polarise those groups. Instead, we need them to help us protect the country from terrorism.
It's not all doom and gloom, of course - as I hope my film reflects. The sheer absurdity of the bewildering array of idiotic new laws has given us an abundance of bizarre and hilarious situations for our documentary.
But behind this dark comedy is something much more disturbing. Faced with the threat of terrorism, the Government has told us that we must lay down our freedoms for our lives.
Perhaps it has forgotten the millions of people from past generations who have laid down their lives for our freedom. I think we owe it to those people to turn this tide.
URL:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages
/live/articles/news/news.html?in
_article_id=461611&in_page_id=1770
Ingsoc Principles in the Now
The similarities between the dystopia that is George Orwell’s 1984, and the reality of the USA’s so called democracy are indisputable. Easter Z. Wood claimed, in his scholarly article “Uncle Sam is Newspeak for Big Brother”, that all American presidents have just been different faces of the same leader oppressive leader. Whichever leader happens to be in power also uses the same principles of doublethink that George Orwell imposes in Airstrip One to keep his (the governing body) people under control.
Emmanuel Goldstein, a character in 1984 says precisely the same thing, “from the point of view of the low, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters” (Orwell, 167), and this still holds true in George Bush’s America. Minorities (proles) are still kept ignorant and held to a lower standard because of it. In the same sense, they cannot become conscious because they cannot rise up and fight against it, and they cannot fight against it until they become conscious. This principle of doublethink is described by Orwell as the Ingsoc tenet Ignorance is Strength. The ignorance of the people is the strength of the state.
Easter Z. Wood also said that another Ingsoc principle is prevalent in American politics, War is Peace. Ignorance helps fuel this principle, as the less a citizen knows, the more likely he/she is to believe in what the higher authority tells them. If the president tells them that Saddam is trying to get materials for nuclear weapons from Africa, what evidence do we have to prove otherwise? Propaganda is implemented in the form of patriotism, and the term “Freedom Fighting” is often used, although the people’s freedom was never really in jeopardy. At the same time, “terrorism” is used to put the fear into the people, and fabricate some enemy who is not really a threat, just as the Party used Emmanuel Goldstein as the American government uses Osama bin Laden.
Freedom is Slavery is also used as a sort of brainwashing technique in 1984 and it is implemented in the same way in modern society. In the case of Orwell’s dystopia, it was the Proles who were enslaved; doing the bidding of the Party in exchange for living expenses and at the same time kept dumb with external stimulants, and thusly could be the least subject to free thought and revolt. The similarity between that and the current state is the “truth” that black people are being inculcated. It is said that there is equal opportunity for all, and yet as of the year 2000, blacks made $15, 000 less per year as opposed to their white counterparts with the same education. As long as they are told that it is no one’s fault but their own that they are not making something better of themselves, and taught to ignore bias, they cannot do a thing to change it.
ARTICLE: Uncle Sam is Newspeak for Big Brother
The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society in tact. (Orwell, 164)
George Orwell wrote this passage referring to the ruling groups in Oceania, the dystopian world he created in his novel, 1984. A group called Ingsoc, also known as the Party, controls all that takes place in this totalitarian society: what foods people eat, what clothes they wear, what books they read, when they wake up and when they go to sleep. The Party even finds a way to control people’s thoughts, at least “as far as thoughts are dependent on words” (Orwell, 246), by developing a hybrid language called Newspeak. Based on regular English, which is known in the book as Oldspeak, Newspeak was formed by removing many words and combining others. Newspeak was devised “not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible” (Orwell, 246); in other words Newspeak was intended to make it impossible to commit thoughtcrime, which is defined as having any thoughts or opinions against the Party or its policies.
In Orwell’s fictional Oceania, watching television is not a luxury or leisure activity: It is a requirement. The telescreen, as it is called in the book, is an integral part of life: It wakes people up in the morning for the “Physical Jerks,” a mandatory exercise routine, and constantly reports the events of a seemingly never-ending war between Oceania and Eurasia, among other functions. The telescreen must be kept on at all times and, as people watch it, it watches them, waiting to report any thoughtcrime to the Party’s Thought Police, or Thinkpol as they are known in Newspeak. Those found guilty of thoughtcrime are removed from society, presumably killed, and never mentioned again. In fact, according to the Party’s ever-changing records, by tomorrow it will be as though they never existed.
The Party’s public representative comes in the form of an icon know as Big Brother. Everywhere in Oceania are large posters of BB, as he’s known in Newspeak, “which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move” (Orwell, 5) and which bear the warning: BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU. Big Brother is, essentially, the personification of the telescreen; Big Brother is the eyes and ears of the Party; Big Brother is the big brother who’s there to make sure the younger siblings behave when mom isn’t looking.
The only people who are allowed to live without as much interference from the Party and Big Brother are those members of the out-group, or outcast set, known as the Proletariat or the Proles, in Newspeak. Although the Proles are 85% of Oceania’s population, and thus outnumber the Party members, they are segregated from the Party members and allowed to live more “freely” because they are seen as inferior. As such, the Party does not fear that the Proles will rebel, or try to change the structure of society, because they don’t feel the Proles are capable of rebelling. As an added precaution, the Party restricts the Proles’ access to resources, rationing out only what they need to live, and takes every measure to shirk their desire to rebel using Prolefeed: “rubbishy entertainment and spurious news” (Orwell, 252) designed to keep the Proles complacent and focused on nonsense issues rather than on the actual problems of society. The most important fact that Prolefeed is aimed at keeping “under wraps” is the fact that although the Proles think they are “free”, they are actually the Party’s slaves, “working breeding and dying, not only without impulse to rebel, but without the power of grasping that the world could be other than it is” (Orwell, 173).
Central to the Party’s control over its members and the Proles is a technique called doublethink and 3 oxymoronic tenets: War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength, and Freedom is Slavery. Doublethink is defined in the book as “the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind and simultaneously accepting both of them” (Orwell, 176); using doublethink, the Party is able to claim to be right on all accords even when it presents ideas that are directly opposed to one another. Using the 3 tenets, the Party justifies never-ending war claiming it is the only way to peace, justifies denying people’s freedom claiming that the free are actually slaves and justifies keeping people in ignorance claiming that their ignorance is actually their strength.
Winston, the main character of the novel, is a Party member who does not believe in the Party’s tenets and who fears that he is to be removed from society any day because he has committed several thoughtcrimes, even going so far as to write DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER over and over again in his diary (this is not to mention that even keeping a private diary is considered thoughtcrime). Most condemningly, Winston has contacted the Party’s number one enemy, a man by the name of Emmanuel Goldstein, and has secured a copy of Goldstein’s book, known only as the book. The book gives evidence that the Party’s tenets are propaganda designed to keep themselves in power and the rest of Oceania’s population under control, and it is considered the worst contraband any Party member can possess. Eventually, Winston is caught, and he finds out that Party defectors are not killed, but are brainwashed into loving the Party and Big Brother and are then returned to the outskirts of society amongst the Proles. Thus, the Party wins the war against all those who oppose it and the structure of Oceania’s society remains in tact.
I believe that America is deeply engaged in attempting to keep the structure of its society in tact, and that some of its methods are frighteningly similar to those used by Ingsoc in Orwell’s fictitious country. I believe that techniques resembling doublethink and an iconic, Big Brother-like figure known as Uncle Sam are the major weapons in this pseudo-war that has been waged by the ruling American Capitalist Party against its own Proletariat: So-called “Urban America”. While there is much racial and ethnic diversity among the multitude referred to under this heading, the majority are African-American and Hispanic and, regardless of race, the majority are economically disadvantaged and undereducated while the vast majority of those in power are rich and White. I believe that the individual battles of this war take many forms and that the ultimate goal is to ensure that impoverished minorities continue “working breeding and dying…without impulse to rebel [and] without the power of grasping that the world could be other than it is”, like the Proles of Oceania. From attacks on access to education to attacks on physical well-being, the United States government has taken several specific steps to keep its underclass from advancing – all while giving the impression of being helpful and supportive.
In 1984’s the book, Emmanuel Goldstein states that “from the point of view of the low, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters” (Orwell, 167), and this has certainly been the case in American society: No matter who has been in power – Democrats, Republicans, the North or the South – African-Americans have consistently been on the bottom rung of society’s ladder and remain there to this day. Blacks earn an average of $15,000 less than their White and fellow minority counterparts for the same positions at the same educational levels and, surprisingly, the disparities grow as the level of education increases; although Blacks make up approximately 12.5% of the total U.S. Population, even at higher educational institutions with Affirmative Action policies Blacks generally represent 6%, or less, of the institution’s total population and Whites continue to fight Affirmative Action; many Blacks were disenfranchised and prevented from voting at several polling locations in various states during the 2000 presidential election . The evidence of inequality is plentiful, and the literally hundreds of books and thousands of articles that have been written on the topic still have not detailed it all.
There are those who, when confronted with this information, will cite “rags to riches” stories and say that everyone has an equal chance in America – that those who don’t succeed are simply “lazy” or “letting opportunities pass them by”. I believe that those “rags to riches” stories and suggestions of mere “laziness” as the cause of non-advancement are a type of “spurious news” distributed by America’s Party to try and make the masses believe that there is no injustice in the world; that each person’s economic situation is solely based on their individual effort and has nothing to do with the structure of society, nothing to do with their race or social class and most importantly, nothing to do with history. Such stories and suggestions overlook a very important fact: History does not happen in a vacuum; everything that has happened in the past affects what is happening right now. In fact, the system used to “break” Africans during slavery was guaranteed by its author to control their descendants for “at least 300 years” (Lynch, 2) and it’s only been about half that time since slavery ended.
Regardless of one’s opinion on the previous ideas, there is a plethora of evidence of the American Party’s war against its Proles that cannot be ignored or denied. One of the most compelling pieces is the informal adoption of the Ingsoc Party’s tenets: War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength, and Freedom is Slavery. At this very moment, the president of the United States is justifying a war with Iraq saying it is the only way to bring about peace and national security. Although Iraq never directly threatened the United States and Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, who were told was the real threat, has already been removed from power, the president says War is Peace, and so he continues with the war – and those who oppose his decision have generally stayed quiet for fear of being charged with the thoughtcrime of being unpatriotic. Similar situations have occurred during several American presidencies; the U.S. has become involved in war in the name of peace at the opposition of many of its people on more than one occasion, and who has always personally invited them to fight? Uncle Sam. His likeness has been, and still is, prominently displayed in most armed forces recruiting offices on large posters with the ominous caption UNCLE SAM WANTS YOU.
The Ignorance is Strength tenet is ironically to some extent true in American society: The ignorance of the masses has largely been and still is Uncle Sam’s strength and he knows it – this is why I believe he goes through great lengths to keep his urban Proles ignorant of true facts. As noted in the book, Lies My Teacher Told Me, “rich capitalists control all three major TV networks, most newspapers, and all the textbook-publishing companies, and thus possess immense power to shape the way we talk and think about current events” (Loewen, 275). I believe they chiefly use that power to present events in a distorted light. Their sensationalist style of reporting, exclusion of some facts and “accidental” inclusion of others is designed to get the masses to rally behind whatever Uncle Sam says they should.
During one of his recent national addresses, U.S. president, George W. Bush, “accidentally” uttered the false statement that Saddam Hussein was attempting to procure nuclear materials from Africa even after several intelligence agency reports advised him that this fact was erroneous (“Truth”). I don’t believe this to be any mistake. I believe that Bush knows, as others before him knew: The less people know, the stronger their belief in whatever you tell them. Although he later rescinded the statement, Bush wanted everyone to believe this falsehood to be true so he could continue to justify his War is Peace stance.
Aside from this one incident, the news media was highly instrumental in helping Bush get people “fired up” about going to war. From stating over and over that another devastating terrorist attack was “imminent,” to consistently pointing out the shortcomings in our national defense system, mass media did a great job of scaring people into “fight or flight” mode. Since most people aren’t ready for flight, in the form of leaving the country, the only option left is to fight. Right? The panic incited by constant media reports of unfounded threats pushed many Americans to the point where they were ready to go and fight Saddam themselves in the name of “American Freedom” – even though our freedom was never actually threatened. The public’s fear and ignorance was the president’s strength in starting the war and their continued ignorance allows it to trudge on. As people learn more of the truth about the war, they become less enthusiastic about it – a logical explanation for wanting to keep the masses ignorant.
The perpetuation of ignorance is not relegated to the media and current events. The Party states several times throughout Orwell’s 1984, “who controls the present controls the past” (Orwell) and since it controls Oceania’s present, it also controls Oceania’s past: the presentation of its history. Since we have recognized that “rich capitalists” control the present in America, for all intents and purposes, it also stands to reason that they control the past: the presentation of American history.
The books that supposedly teach the history of the United States are riddled with errors, both of omission and commission. James W. Loewen, historian and co-writer of the first integrated state history textbook, believes that these errors are allowed to go uncorrected from edition to edition in part because “textbook authors seem to believe that Americans can only be loyal to their government only so long as they believe it has never done anything bad” (Loewen, 235). He even had his own book rejected by several school districts because, in being more accurate than many others, it was considered “too negative”. He and I ask: How can the truth be “too negative”? Truth is only negative when it’s ignorance you seek.
As it was in Oceania, the result of these actions in America – the deferment of funds to war, the perpetuation of ignorance – is the continued subjugation of the underclass and, for all intents and purposes, their slavery. Slaves worked hard and were only provided with enough food and clothes to survive; many urban Americans work more than 40 hours a week and only earn enough to survive. Who is really reaping the fruit of their labor? Although they are technically free, in a twist of fate, their Freedom is Slavery. Unfortunately, I believe Uncle Sam wants it to stay that way: He defers precious manpower and equipment to the military while public schools are severely understaffed, under funded and desperately in need of supplies. He spends billions in Iraq while even the president’s own wife appeals to the nation to donate money to feed the 2.6 million American urban youth that go hungry daily (Second Harvest). He spends billions more a year on producing “rubbishy entertainment” to keep urban youth focused on sex and materialism and away from consciousness because he realizes the oxymoron that Orwell presents in reference to the Proles: “until they have become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they can’t become conscious” (Orwell, 61).
I believe that Urban Youth need to do what Public Enemy said and “Fight the Power” – the power that funnels their money and opportunity away from them, the power that goes to such great lengths to keep them ignorant, the power that keeps them “working, breeding and dying…without impulse to rebel” - because I believe, as 1984’s protagonist Winston believed of the Proles, that “if there is hope, it lies in [them] because only there in those swarming, disregarded masses could the force to overthrow the Party ever be generated” (Orwell, 60).
The Language of Newspeak, Good or Bad?
In George Orwell’s 1984 he creates a term called “newspeak” which is define as broken down and altered words including expressions used to distort meanings and truths. The article by Herbert London talks about how the U.N. applies the term of newspeak in the way they act towards situations like human rights, acts of violence, and even in the way they present themselves to the world.
One of the U.N.’s goals is to encourage “human rights” among countries although that right seems to be unclear in the criticism between countries. Herbert uses the example of how “Muslim nations invariably condemn Israel as an autocratic nation […]” despite the fact that Jews are persecuted in Muslim states and “[…] denied their right to worship”. This creates the question whether the human rights of one country crosses the other rights of another. The term of human rights loses its meaning in the way the U.N. can be bias to certain countries. With this in mind the U.N. disregards the freedom of one country at the same time being blind to other countries that abuse that freedom. Again Herbert addresses Israel as the U.N. points out ‘“Zionism is racism”’ while Muslim Sects like “Wahhabism” condemn “non-believers”. Similarly the point that Herbert is stating is that the U.N. is trying to promote human rights on the contrary criticizing the rights of others. The meaning and understanding of human rights becomes different as it is more leant to certain countries. As “violators of freedom” the U.N. displays their use of newspeak in the way they claim rights of one country and contradict another.
In addition, Herbert addresses the way the U.N. defines various acts of violence, which have become unclear and loose. Their views on terrorism have become vague in result of the many situations of terrorist bombings. In a way the U.N. has become dismissive of killings including “Jewish blood being shed or Western lives being lost […]”. The organization who stands for peace and security does not seem concerned for these killings and the casualties in result. Furthermore the U.N. refers these violent acts to the ‘[…] cliché that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”’, which points out that there is no clear understanding who is responsible for the violence. The innocent bloodshed of many people cannot be justified since extremist like Ahmadinejad and Arafat are still welcomed by the U.N. Even the charters created by the U.N. clams; ‘[…] nations can engage in “anticipatory self defense” when threatened’, on the other hand the term becomes twisted when applied. For nations like Israel the U.N. criticizes them for retaliating saying that it is out of proportion. The charter is presented with misinterpret understanding that opposes what it represented initially, as to fight back against danger and attack. Indeed the way that the U.N. views the violence occurring around the world is very unorthodox and doubtful.
Overall the way that the U.N. presents itself to the world should be carefully looked at in the way it creates “inversions”. As a global institution the activities that they take part in should be address to public, in that people are able to perceive the “false meanings”. What Herbert is trying to show is that people can be able to identify the flaws that associate with the U.N. in means of understanding “newspeak”. The ideas that come from George Orwell’s 1984 can be identify in the U.N. in the way they function, going against “[…] the context of morality” in the examples of; “[…] justice, freedom, fair play, and human rights”. Herbert presents the fact that the context of newspeak embodies itself in the way the U.N. communicates its work towards other nations. The main argument of the article is that in lying and changing meanings of words and expression, it affects the understanding of what is true and right. In comparison, the U.N.’s miscommunication of their facts of work can results in; “[…] the more it is believed and accepted”. The terminology newspeak can be useful in means of revealing and understanding fabrication of what is presented to us.
The article makes the connection between the broken down meanings of newspeak relating to the way the U.N. handles human rights, violence, and the way it presents itself to the public. Alone what newspeak has done in reality is open our own thoughts to stop and think about the way we interrupt what is given to us. We as people need to be able to determine our morals by transvaluating when looking at different forms of communication.
_______________________
London: Orwellian logic at the U.N.
Commentary by Herbert London
In George Orwell’s novel 1984, the protagonists in the totalitarian society employed “newspeak,” the inversion of words to create false meaning. “War is peace,” “good is bad,” “moral is immoral” are merely a few of the possible inversions.
While Orwell passed this mortal coil years ago, his notion of false meaning is alive and well and residing in the United Nations.
In fact, there is scarcely a sentence uttered at this institution that isn’t Orwellian. “Human rights,” for example, the hallmark of U.N. efforts, does nothing to promote these rights. The commission organized to promote this goal is composed of the most serious violators of freedom.
The fifty-seven Muslim nations invariably condemn Israel as an autocratic nation occupying and dominating Arab territory in the West Bank. Yet this condemnation overlooks the fact that Arabs comprise 20 percent of Israel’s population, are accorded the citizenship and rights of every Israeli and even have representation in the Knesset. By contrast, Jews are oppressed in every Arab Muslim state, are denied their right to worship and, in most instances, have been forced to emigrate.
U.N. pronouncements have indicated “Zionism is racism” while, the racism or the denunciation of infidels – non-believers – is embraced whenever Wahhabism prevails.
At this late date, after 9/11, 7/7, the Madrid bombings and a host of terrorist attacks all over the world, the U.N. cannot come up with a definition of terrorism, relying, instead, on the empty cliché that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” Tell that to innocent women and children maimed by suicide bombers.
Terror at the U.N. is a relative term: if it leads to Jewish blood being shed or Western lives being lost, it is acceptable or, at the very least, not worthy of condemnation.
If Ahmadinejad violates the non-proliferation treaty endorsed by the U.N., he is welcome to speak in its chambers as a conquering hero. Arafat brandishing a weapon as he spoke to the General Assembly was heralded as well.
Although the U.N. charter states specifically that nations can engage in “anticipatory self defense” when threatened, Israel is invariably rebuked for defending itself against attack with the absurd claim that Israel’s retaliation is “disproportionate.” If this standard were applied universally (of course, it isn’t) would that mean the U.S. should have responded to the 2800 deaths at Pearl Harbor with an attack on Japan that killed 2800?
As I see it, those who follow U.N. activity have an obligation to point out Orwellian newspeak. When U.N. officials ignore this critique—as they do—it should still be made public. Shame will not enter this U.N. equation, but the sources that provide funding should want to know why this multilateral organization has turned meaning on its head.
Those who cover the U.N. understand full well that a body housing democracies and dictatorships cannot long prevail as long as the good and bad are treated in the same manner. When Zimbabwe and the Sudan are considered the equals of the United States and the United Kingdom, relativistic standards must be imposed. Even a debating society must realize at some point that some views are more valid than others.
Hence word inversion is a useful, alas, a necessary tactic in an organization that refuses to consider a universal standard of justice, freedom, fair play, representative government and human rights. Orwellianism is the guide for nations that cannot justify their actions in the context of morality, but nonetheless want political recognition in this world body.
Moreover, the more one uses the languages of dissimulation, the more it is believed and accepted. It is a Gresham’s Law of communication in which the bad, or in this case the lie, drives the good or the truth out of circulation. That is the U.N. methodology derived directly from newspeak. Whoever said this isn’t 1984 hasn’t been to the temple of lies at First Avenue and 42nd Street in Manhattan.
- Herbert London is president of the Hudson Institute and a member of the editorial advisory board at Insight on the News.
URL: http://www.insightmag.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=5D3B38F8A2584DB5A77BA05660C6045C&nm=Free+Access&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=8F3A7027421841978F18BE895F87F791&tier=4&id=0665CF60B7DD456498E7CE39065B8BB1
In a 2007 article written by Robert Weiner, titled “Orwell in 2007,” Weiner describes the reality of how America is unavoidably approaching an Orwellian era. With constant advances in technology and such a deep rooted fear of terrorists driven into society since 9-11, it seems this was an unavoidable outcome. Any invasions into the privacy of the public could be classified as necessary. In George Orwell’s 1984, Winston and everyone else’s actions, thoughts and facial expressions were carefully scrutinized to ensure that no one was defying the Party. This could be considered in relevance to America’s society, where any fragment of evidence excavated, such as an email to a friend, can deem you a threat to society.
A law that Weiner believes is parallel in connection to the laws of 1984, are those of the USA PATRIOT Act. This Act significantly expanded the authority of the United States law enforcement agencies for the stated purpose of fighting terrorism in the United States and abroad. Among its provisions, the Act increased the ability of law enforcement agencies to search telephone and e-mail communications and medical, financial and other records. With this law in place, nothing was secret; anything and everything about anyone could be used to incriminate them as a terrorist. This relates to Orwell’s 1984, where the telescreens could listen into every conversation and watch whatever anyone may be doing all day, everyday, for the rest of their lives. The Party reminded everyone continuously that they were being watched and they even encouraged everyone to spy on each other. Weiner highlights the fact that this is all too familiar to our daily lives. As people drive down the highways they are bombarded with signs urging them to “Report Suspicious Behavior”, as they walk down streets they are being watched by surveillance cameras and now green, yellow and read are not just any colours, they symbolize levels of national security alerts.
Weiner isolates a relation between the ways set forth in 1984 compared to those of the present. In 1984, the Party uses psychological manipulation to force its citizens to “doublethink”. In the present day, the Patriot Act by its name defies individuals to disagree with it because by doing so it would be reckoned “unpatriotic”. Therefore citizens are forced to allow their freedom to be demolished right in front of them, or else they will be deemed traitorous to their country.
If this is happening so widespread in America, what is to stop these types of laws from spreading to other countries and freedom being abolished totally? We can not allow ourselves to become Orwell’s 1984. By trying to create the idealistic “perfect world,” we create more and more laws to try and make our world perfect, but by doing so we only make our world more imperfect. If we continue to act the way we do and continue to set forth more restricting laws, we will only end up destroying that which we were trying to keep.
ARTICLE
Orwell in 2007
By: Robert Weiner
In “1984,” the novel that most baby boomers read in high school, George Orwell creates a theoretical modern-day government with absolute power — a state in which government, called the Party, monitors and controls every aspect of human life to the extent that even having a disloyal thought is against the law.
On Sept. 26, a federal judge in Eugene ruled that crucial parts of the USA Patriot Act are unconstitutional because they allow federal surveillance and searches of American citizens without demonstrating probable cause. U.S. District Judge Ann L. Aiken said the federal government would “amend the Bill of Rights, by giving it an interpretation that would deprive it of any real meaning.”
Ruling in favor of an Oregon lawyer who challenged the act after he was mistakenly linked to the 2004 train bombings in Madrid, Spain, Aiken stated: “A shift to a nation based on extra-constitutional authority is prohibited, as well as ill advised.”
Earlier in September, another federal judge, this one in New York, ordered the FBI to stop obtaining e-mail and telephone data without first securing a warrant. The secrecy provisions are “the legislative equivalent of breaking and entering, with an ominous free pass to the hijacking of constitutional values,” U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero wrote.
In “1984,” the Party barrages citizens with psychological stimuli designed to overwhelm the mind. The giant telescreen in every room monitors behavior. People are continuously reminded of government’s surveillance, especially by omnipresent signs reading, “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.” Individuals are encouraged to spy on each other, even children on their parents, and report any instance of disloyalty to the Party — i.e., government.
“1984″ is happening in 2007.
Signs along interstate highways urge citizens, “Report Suspicious Behavior.” Cameras mounted at strategic locations monitor our everyday movement (just as in the novel). Red, orange and yellow are no longer just bright, pretty colors: They now represent levels of national security alerts. Intelligence agencies now define “chatter” as “terrorist speak.”
The Party in “1984″ uses psychological manipulation to make citizens “doublethink” — hold two contradictory ideas contrary to common sense.
Back to 2007: The Patriot Act by its very name defies individuals to disagree with it, for to do so would be “unpatriotic.”
The Patriot Act was passed hastily in October 2001, under a cloak of fear in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Some of the fundamental changes to American’s traditional legal rights include:
Establishing a huge surveillance system on millions with no court approval, without probable cause.
Holding citizens indefinitely without access to the courts or counsel.
Monitoring library withdrawals and Internet communications.
Taping attorney-client communications.
Creating a national system for citizens to monitor and report on each other, regardless of reason, including paranoia or ethnic bias.
Developing a massive computer system to monitor every purchase.
Creating a national identification card.
The new federal court rulings are a step forward against threats to our freedom — as were other recent court rulings against the Bush administration’s contention that the Geneva Conventions prohibiting torture were “obsolete” and “trite” and against our secret holding of prisoners abroad without due process.
9-11 was real, as the recent videos by Osama bin Laden confirm now more than six years after he attacked us. However, that fact does not allow playing on our fears and increasing our paranoia about our personal safety. Sen. Joseph McCarthy tried that with Communism in the 1950s. The administration has tried to condition the American people, just as Pavlov did with his dogs.
Congress is now revisiting the legality of the Patriot Act, warrantless surveillance programs, torture of prisoners in secret prisons and barring detainees from counsel and knowing the charges against them. By law, in the next few months, Congress must renew, change or end the Patriot Act and surveillance programs.
Congress must act quickly or the courts should permanently strike down these presidential fear-based abuses. Americans’ trust of the federal government is now lower than during Watergate, according to a Gallup poll released Sept. 26.
Al-Qaida hates Americans of all creeds and races and will do whatever it can to destroy us and our way of life. James Madison warned, “If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.” With the mightiest military and strongest technology on Earth, democracy can stand up to terrorism without becoming the mirror of our enemies.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/07/4378
Ignorance is Strength?
In Pakistan Saturday, President Pervez Musharraf declared martial law, as well as suspended parliament elections, arrested all who opposed him, and above all else, suspended the countries constitution. Now the reasons for such a shocking act is behind the original action of purging the country’s Supreme Court for reasons that might involve not allowing him to run for “re-election” in January of 2008, the first elections in that country since Musharraf sized power in a military coup in 1999. The main reason behind the rejection is that Misharraf wants to run while still army chief. The official reason for the martial law is to “in response to rising Islamist militancy in nuclear-armed Pakistan and what he called a paralysis of government by judicial interference”. All this means is that slowly, Pakistan is slowly becoming an Orwellian state. An Orwellian society is a dystopia is a society that is full of negatives, such as poverty, famine, and disease, the opposite of utopia. The state of Pakistan today compares to the political idea in George Orwell’s 1984 as the idea of one person in power, and using fear to keep that power stable are both elements of these two ideas. In 1984 Big Brother arrests, and eventually, vaporizes them. Big Brother also uses the fear of near by states to keep the masses in check. Big Brother keeps destroys any real democratic chance as well as justice. These issues are going on in present day Pakistan. The President has suspended the countries constitution, allowing the government to arrest demonstrators against the government, which has already happened, and the numbers of those arrested are in the hundreds. It is scary to see such scary actions taking place in the 21st century, but as our world changes and evolves, more crazy measures show up.
The Orwellian novel 1984 is suppose to be a warning for the public. Never should the public be afraid of their governments, the governments should be afraid of the public. Here we see the actions of a government in which it tries to maintain power, resorting to dangerous levels of totalitarian decision making. The United States, one of the major supporters of Pakistan, in terms of aid, say they are shocked by such an action. If this is true, then why no immediate action against it. We as a democratic country are playing the part of the proles right now, just accepting the action and moving on with out lives. This is exactly why Orwell was instructing us to keep an eye open for, and to affect change when possible. Hopefully the message does not get lost in translation and free elections can be held in such a county that holds some clout in the Middle East.
Hundreds arrested in opposition crackdown in Pakistan
ISLAMABAD -- Pakistan braced for protests against emergency rule on Monday, while President Pervez Musharraf faced mounting pressure from the United States to hold parliamentary elections in January.
Declaring an emergency on Saturday, General Musharraf cited spiralling militancy and hostile judges to justify his action.
Police detained opposition figures and lawyers -- between 400 and 500 according to Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz -- and placed reporting curbs on the media to stifle the risk of outrage spilling on to the streets.
Mr. Musharraf, who seized power in a coup in 1999, also suspended the constitution.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed disappointment with Musharraf in terms seldom heard before from U.S. officials more accustomed to praising the Pakistani leader's support in the battle against al Qaeda.
"The United States has never put all of its chips on Musharraf," Ms. Rice said, urging Pakistan to get back on the road to democracy, and warning U.S. aid to its ally was under review.
Washington has provided Islamabad, a major ally in its battle against al Qaeda in Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan, with around US$10-billion over the last five years.
In Pakistan, police detained hundreds of Pakistani opposition figures and lawyers and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said national elections, due in January, might be rescheduled.
The emergency effectively thwarted U.S. hopes of a transition to a civilian-led democracy in Pakistan, led by General Musharraf since he seized power in a coup in 1999.
"Obviously we are going to have to review the situation with aid, in part because we have to see what may be triggered by certain statutes," Ms. Rice told reporters travelling with her in Jerusalem, adding that the United States still wanted to cooperate with Pakistan on counter-terrorism issues.
Mr. Aziz told a news conference that "the parliament could give itself more time, up to a year, in terms of holding the next elections." Mr. Musharraf has also suspended the constitution.
Mr. Musharraf said he acted in response to rising Islamist militancy in nuclear-armed Pakistan and what he called a paralysis of government by judicial interference.
Most Pakistanis and foreign diplomats believe his main motive was to prevent the Supreme Court invalidating his Oct. 6 re-election by parliament while still army chief.
Mr. Musharraf, in a midnight televised address, said the country was in grave danger of becoming destabilised. "I cannot allow this country to commit suicide," he said after purging the Supreme Court of judges opposed to him and rounding up lawyers.
Washington had earlier urged Mr. Musharraf to avoid taking authoritarian measures and has urged him to go ahead with parliamentary elections.
Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, suspended eight months ago by Mr. Musharraf and reinstated in July, was fired after refusing to take a fresh oath following the suspension of the constitution.
Pakistan Television said that the cabinet, national and provincial assemblies would continue to function and that Abdul Hameed Dogar had been appointed as new Chief Justice.
A lawyers' movement that emerged at the vanguard of an anti-government campaign last March called for a countrywide strike on Monday to protest Mr. Musharraf's move.
Veteran Islamist Qazi Hussein Ahmed, leader of the opposition religious alliance, called for street protests to overthrow "the military dictator," during a speech to 20,000 followers on the outskirts of Lahore.
Pakistan's English-language newspapers were unforgiving of the draconian measures that included a ban on any coverage "that defames, and brings into ridicule or disrepute the head of state" on pain of up to three years' jail.
"General Musharraf's second coup," was Dawn's headline.
There were no troops or large numbers of police on the streets of Islamabad or other main cities -- Karachi, Lahore or Peshawar -- though the detentions were conducted in all of them.
Barricades blocked the main boulevard to the presidency building in Islamabad, where police arrested 40 opposition activists including a former chief of the army's Inter Services Intelligence agency, Hameed Gul, a supporter of Islamist causes.
A leader of exiled former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's party voiced defiance as he was detained in Multan, a major city in Punjab province. "People will win. Generals will lose. They have to surrender," Javed Hashmi told reporters.
Mr. Musharraf said he still planned to move Pakistan to civilian-led democracy.
He had been promising to quit the army and become a civilian leader if he was given a second five-year term, but uncertainty over the court's decision had left the country in suspense and stock markets fell last week amid the uncertainty.
Pakistan's internal security has deteriorated sharply in recent months with a wave of suicide attacks, including an assassination attempt on former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto last month that killed 139 people.
In July, Mr. Musharraf ordered troops to storm the Red Mosque in Islamabad to crush a Taliban-style movement based there.
At least 105 people were killed in the raid and a wave of deadly militant attacks and suicide bombings followed in which more than 800 people have been killed.
In a fillip for the army, however, pro-Taliban militants set free on Sunday 211 Pakistani troops they had held captive since late August in a tribal region near the Afghan border, a military spokesman said.
Mr. Bhutto flew back to Pakistan on Saturday from a brief visit to Dubai and accused Mr. Musharraf of imposing "mini-martial law" in a move to delay elections "by at least one or two years".
Another leading opposition figure, former cricket captain Imran Khan, was put under house arrest, but escaped hours later.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=6246db90-831e-4538-bdd4-820395b903b4
Big Brother is watching you and shouting too!
Would you have ever pictured today’s society being monitored on a 24 hour, 7 day basis? It is scary knowing that your every move is being watched by a group of strangers. In George Orwell’s novel 1984 what was known as a telescreen was the device the Big Brother watched you on. Whatever they saw you do that they did not agree with, or feel was right you would be punished for. It is inevitable that today’s government is trying to do the same thing by controlling most societies and pressuring them into acting/being the way they feel is appropriate. Presently, in Britain CCTV cameras have been installed to observe the streets, both day and night to make certain there is no littering or bad behaviour. It has also been said that speakers have been attached to these cameras which send out verbal warnings to individuals who are performing illegal acts.
These security devices have made it hard for a lot of people to act the way they normally would in public. Many individuals feel uncomfortable knowing that they are being watched and feel as though they have to ensure that they are always acting/looking perfect and not doing anything (picking your underwear) that you wouldn’t want anyone else to see. No one has yet to complain about the government’s new ideas to guarantee that the streets are safe but as Liberty spokesman Doug Jewell said, “None of us likes litterbugs or yobs playing up on a Saturday night, but talking CCTV cameras are no substitute for police officers on the beat.” We are all controlled by somebody whether we know it or not and it is nice reading a book that portrays how our society today is. George Orwell’s novel, 1984 is a prime example of domination. One group of individuals want to know everything that is going on around them and want every event that occurs within their society to be because of them.
Every person is entitled to their privacy rights. It is up to us to express our thoughts and opinions to the government so that we are given these rights and not in fear of hearing some person yell at you while you are walking down the street, for doing something such as throwing a gum wrapper on the ground. The following article, Big Brother is shouting at you relates how today’s societies reflect those of what George Orwell made a conspiracy in 1984.
Daily Mail Article
Big Brother is shouting at you
Big Brother is not only watching you - now he's barking orders too. Britain's first 'talking' CCTV cameras have arrived, publicly berating bad behaviour and shaming offenders into acting more responsibly.
The system allows control room operators who spot any anti-social acts - from dropping litter to late-night brawls - to send out a verbal warning: 'We are watching you'.
Middlesbrough has fitted loudspeakers on seven of its 158 cameras in an experiment already being hailed as a success. Jack Bonner, who manages the system, said: 'It is one hell of a deterrent. It's one thing to know that there are CCTV cameras about, but it's quite another when they loudly point out what you have just done wrong.
'Most people are so ashamed and embarrassed at being caught they quickly slink off without further trouble.
'There was one incident when two men started fighting outside a nightclub. One of the control room operators warned them over the loudspeakers and they looked up, startled, stopped fighting and scarpered in opposite directions.
'This isn't about keeping tabs on people, it's about making the streets safer for the law-abiding majority and helping to change the attitudes of those who cause trouble. It challenges unacceptable behaviour and makes people think twice.'
The Mail on Sunday watched as a cyclist riding through a pedestrian area was ordered to stop.
'Would the young man on the bike please get off and walk as he is riding in a pedestrian area,' came the command.
The surprised youth stopped, and looked about. A look of horror spread across his face as he realized the voice was referring to him.
He dismounted and wheeled his bike through the crowded streets, as instructed.
Law-abiding shopper Karen Margery, 40, was shocked to hear the speakers spring into action as she walked past them.
Afterwards she said: 'It's quite scary to realize that your every move could be monitored - it really is like Big Brother.
'But Middlesbrough does have a big problem with anti-social behaviour, so it is very reassuring.'
The scheme has been introduced by Middlesbrough mayor Ray Mallon, a former police superintendent who was dubbed Robocop for pioneering the zero-tolerance approach to crime.
He believes the talking cameras will dramatically cut not just anti-social behaviour, but violent crime, too.
And if the city centre scheme proves a success, it will be extended into residential areas.
The control room operators have been given strict guidelines about what commands they can give. Yelling 'Oi you, stop that', is not permitted.
Instead, their instructions make the following suggestions: 'Warning - you are being monitored by CCTV - Warning - you are in an alcohol-free zone, please refrain from drinking'; and Warning - your behaviour is being monitored by CCTV. It is being recorded and the police are attending.'
Mr Bonner said: 'We always make the requests polite, and if the offender obeys, the operator adds 'thank you'. We think that's a nice finishing touch.
'It would appear that the offenders are the only ones who find the audio cameras intrusive. The vast majority of people welcome these cameras.
'Put it this way, we never have requests to remove them.'
But civil rights campaigners have argued that the talking cameras are no 'magic bullet', in the fight against crime.
Liberty spokesman Doug Jewell said: 'None of us likes litterbugs or yobs playing up on a Saturday night, but talking CCTV cameras are no substitute for police officers on the beat.'
The Kingdom of Heaven
Every human being possesses his or her own vision of heaven, a world that they perceive to be completely perfect and without flaw, but more importantly, is a world better than the reality that they live in. During George Orwell’s lifetime, there were a number of individuals who could easily be identified as attempting to make their vision of heaven into reality through a totalitarian government, but just as Leon Trotsky discovered, although their ideas seemed golden, in reality they were corrupt and rotten and doomed for failure. In the words of Peter Quennell, “In Nineteen Eighty-Four Orwell shows himself a powerful satirist; and the message that the book delivers has not lost its force today”, and it is evident when the fictional Ingsoc Party of Orwell’s 1984, shockingly, parallels that of North Korea, a society that Peter Hitchens, writer of the article “North Korea, the last great Marxist bastion, is a real life Truman show”, reflects as “it is almost as if North Korea’s rulers have taken Orwell’s novel as a handbook rather than a warning”.
In the article “North Korea, the last great Marxist bastion, is a real life Truman show”, Peter Hitchens describes his experience exploring the daily lives of the citizens of North Korea’s capital city, Pyongyang. While interrogating the citizens of Pyongyang, Hitchen notes their physical appearance, “every face I see is thin, every belt tight, every garment worn and faded, every child and adult undersized”, and Hitchens’ observation of Pyongyang’s citizens parallels that of Winston Smith’s analysis of the typical citizen in his fictional society, “Actually, so far as he could judge, the majority of people in Airstrip One were small, dark and ill-favoured (63)”. As well, Peter Hitchens also noticed that the history and education that the North Koreans received was manipulated and twisted to serve the purpose of its government when he recalls from his journey to Pyongyang, “Our guide asked merrily if we knew how the Korean War had started. I said, cautiously, that our imperialist history books said that the war had been started by the North. The poor man's face fell as if I had wounded him. It is an essential part of North Korea's founding myth that the war was started by the Americans and the South. Even a mention of any other version of history upset him, an intelligent person with a sense of humour, judging by his behaviour the rest of the time.”, which compares with the purpose of 1984’s Ministry of Truth, to alter the past in order to accommodate the needs of the Party, “ And presently some master brain in the Inner Party would select this version or that [...], and then the chosen lie would pass into the permanent records and become truth (48)”. Finally, his stay in North Korea, Peter Hitchens notes the lack of privacy within the community of Pyongyang, “Every radio and television has its tuning dial soldered so that it can receive only North Korean signals. Inspectors visit frequently to check that nobody has tampered with this mental barricade. And, while a few brave souls defy this (resoldering the dials when an inspection is due), most are too frightened, or so loyal, that it would never occur to them to do so”, which of course parallels the purpose of the Thought police to monitor the peoples of Oceania and emphasize the lifestyle of Ingsoc, “You had to live – did live, from habit that became instinct- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinised (5)”. As a result, through a lack of privacy, their meager lifestyle, and the manipulation of their education, today’s citizen of Pyongyang reflects that of Orwell’s Winston Smith, despite the boundary of fiction and reality.
Due to the poor and depressing lifestyles of the people living in totalitarian societies such as a fictional Oceania or modern day North Korea, it is obvious that Orwell’s message is still applicable today, which is that the vision of heaven requires the thoughts and influences of all its people. As a result, a Kingdom of Heaven cannot succeed because by neglecting the feelings and thoughts of its people, the community is unable to function, because the lack of human progression causes the Kingdom to go backwards in time, turning it from a utopia, and into a dystopia and decrepit world.
Article:
PETER HITCHENS: North Korea, the last great Marxist bastion, is a real-life Truman show
A rare and remarkable dispatch from inside the secret world of Kim Il Sung
Last week's summit between the leaders of North and South Korea was hailed as a step towards world peace because North Korea is portrayed as a member of the "Axis of Evil" with plans to develop nuclear weapons.
But, as Peter Hitchens found when he evaded the Marxist state's ban on foreign journalists, it is a nation to be pitied rather than feared...
If this is a showcase, then what can it be like in the parts they do not want us to see? North Korea's capital, Pyongyang, is closed to all but the most favoured citizens. Only friends of the regime may live here.
Yet in this citadel of privilege, every face I see is thin, every belt tight, every garment worn and faded, every child and adult under-sized, most windows unlit.
For the ordinary poor, who cannot even leave their towns without a permit, Pyongyang is almost as inaccessible as New York or Paris. How thin and ragged are they?
Those considered unreliable must live out their chilly, pinched lives amid the dreary spoil-heaps and miserable townships of the coalfields. How wretched can they possibly be?
As for those who offend the regime, a chain of labour camps, stretching from Yongchon on the west coast to Onsong in the far north east, is hidden in the northern mountains, where no foreigner penetrates and where people die of hunger and despair, unrecorded.
I am not sure how we can live our prosperous lives, knowing these wretches exist. Here in the alleged paradise city of Pyongyang, the buildings are blistered and stained, the paint faded and cracked. Except for a few main processional ways – and even here there are signs of decay – the shabbiness and gloom are overwhelming.
At dusk, when a normal city would begin to sparkle, an almost total darkness falls in the long interval before the first lights come on.
Later, when the government considers bedtime has arrived, the power is cut off from a million homes, whose occupants will be wakened at 5am by plonky music leaking from loudspeakers, and ordered to work by a siren at 7am, every day but Sunday (and sometimes even then).
Now, in the early evening, silence is almost complete. I can hear a drunken man singing from what feels like half a mile away. Yet we are at the heart of a city of perhaps three million people.
And the lights, when they do come on, are so feeble that I am suddenly reminded – poignantly – of the austere British townscapes of my own childhood in the early Fifties.
Except that even they were never as austere as this. Nor were they sinister and mad, as this place is. If all politics is a sort of mental illness that gets worse as the politicians' power increases, then this is the locked ward where absolute power has brought absolute insanity.
Brooding over the deranged cityscape is the ugliest building in the universe, a 1,000ft pyramid, already a ruin though it has never been finished and never will be, perhaps because the money has run out, perhaps because it is so jerry-built that nobody would ever have dared stay in it.
Official guides pretend not to notice it though it is by far the tallest structure in Pyongyang.
This symbol of overweening ambition is by a strange coincidence the exact shape and size of the Ministry of Truth, the chief source of official lies in George Orwell's prophecy of just such a state, and just such a city, in 1984.
It is almost as if North Korea's rulers have taken Orwell's novel as a handbook rather than a warning.
But where Orwell's ministry was a glittering white, the abandoned Ryugyong Hotel is a dingy dun-brown, its hundreds of glassless windows like sockets gazing at what its maker, the Great Leader Kim Il Sung, has wrought.
And what he has wrought is hopeless failure, a long, grim joke that has yet to reach its punchline.
Kim's city is the capital of a state that is far more of a danger to its own people than it is to the rest of the world.
It may be – I think the evidence is sketchy – that North Korea has a nuclear bomb. What is certain is that it has almost nothing else.
It cannot any longer even fake success at its very heart. Its great propaganda festival, the Arirang Games where thousands of young Koreans create vast pictures with eerily synchronised movements, is a pathetic remnant.
It is the only show I have ever been to where the cast is far bigger than the audience. The colossal May Day Stadium was three-quarters empty the night I went.
The performance, in which Joseph Stalin meets Walt Disney, was less confidently militaristic than in past times and most of the "soldiers and sailors" were attractive young women in pert skirts, none looking very menacing.
Sometimes it descended into circus, with platoons of dancing children dressed as boiled eggs, and a motorbike on a tightrope.
Every machine in the country is close to breakdown. This even affects parts of the system that are on show.
I was there as a tourist, arriving in a Soviet-built Tupolev from the age of Yuri Gagarin, which shuddered and strained into the sky and was prudently kept clear of terminal buildings at the Chinese airport from which I began my journey.
My tour bus failed (its fuel tank sprang a leak that the driver tried to plug with chewing gum) on the way to a museum of gifts given to Kim Il Sung.
Our guide pedalled off for help on a borrowed bike but the bus that eventually rescued us also breathed its last, forcing us to walk the final few hundred yards to an unscheduled break for lunch.
We never arrived at the museum.
While the first bus was broken down, we were prevented from moving more than a few yards away from it – probably because we would then have been able to look closely at the nearby lorryload of runt-sized troops, part of the supposedly fearsome North Korean army.
The weapons they carried were ancient, probably more dangerous to their users than to their targets. Vehicles everywhere were decrepit, clothes shabby and faded from much washing, in the greys, browns and greens that dominated our streets in the years before cheap and colourful fabrics.
I never saw anyone in jeans or a baseball cap.
The soldiers looked universally undersized and underfed, usually with prominent cheekbones. And the 'military-first' policy means that they get better food supplies than most civilians.
How do the ordinary people fare? We cannot tell.
But here is one possibility. Some years ago, the leading American expert on North Korea, Bradley Martin, had an accidental and obviously unintended glimpse, in a remote district, of a train bearing ordinary North Koreans: "They were a ghastly sight.
"Their clothing was ragged and filthy, their faces darkened with what I presumed to be either mud or skin discolourations resulting from pellagra. There was no glass in the windows of their train."
Yet much of the country is hauntingly lovely, willow-fringed fields in which peasants stagger under heavy sheaves, villages that are picturesque from a distance but squalid at closer quarters.
This month the roads are lined with flowers growing riotously in the verges, a hint that beneath the weight of despotism, Koreans seek freedom in ordinary things.
One of my five days in the country was a public holiday, an ancient festival of ancestor worship too powerful to be suppressed, when the whole country went picnicking in hilltop country graveyards.
But on a working day, in a 200-mile drive, I saw just two tractors in operation in the fields – probably because there is no fuel for them.
In five days of travelling by road, I saw miles of electrified railway, but only four moving trains, and they were rolling slowly and hauled by diesel locomotives, suggesting the current is erratic or just switched off.
My allegedly luxury hotel in Pyongyang had its power cut off each morning as soon as the tour parties had set off on their various pilgrimages to the many shrines of the Great Leader.
Sometimes it was if we were witnessing a sort of Truman Show, in which even the casual passers-by might easily have been rehearsed actors pretending to be real people. A promised visit to Pyongyang's underground railway consisted of a trip between two stations, during which ordinary travellers were cleared from our carriage.
Many passengers stared at us with shock that we were there at all. Even in Pyongyang, a foreigner is an event.
As we descended the immensely deep escalators, a party of women on the upward staircase were singing a song about how they couldn't manage without their Dear Leader.
A similar hymn drifted from the loudspeakers.
Genuine? Accidental? Or staged?
But not everything could be arranged or controlled. A number of incidents lifted the veil without meaning to.
Richard Jones, the intrepid photographer who accompanied me, raised his camera towards an ancient, 5ft gentleman in a Mao cap, trimming the grass on a Pyongyang boulevard.
The old man, possibly a veteran of the Korean War, snarled and raised his sickle as if to strike.
Having been taught from childhood that Westerners are wolves in human form, he intended to defend the fatherland against the imperialist spy.
On another occasion, we arrived at our pre-booked restaurant to find a drunk – or possibly a corpse – sprawled outside.
Seeing us approaching, loyal citizens immediately formed a human barrier to shield the sight from alien eyes.
The trouble is, even if everything we saw was what we were meant to see, the impression given is of a society in an advanced stage of decomposition, held together by a fragile web of lies.
The cult of the Great Leader is much like that of the Japanese Emperor Hirohito before 1945.
In fact it is probably modelled on it, since all Korea was under Japanese rule until 1945 and the people were compelled to worship the emperor as a god.
But it has other elements, too. Confucianism demands respect for ancestors, perhaps the origin of the red-and-white obelisks in every town proclaiming that the Great Leader is "always with us".
But there may be other roots for this. Kim Il Sung as a teenager played the organ in his father's Protestant church and seems to have liked it. When American soldiers captured his offices in the Korean War, they found a sizeable organ, of all things, installed there.
Kim was bored by Christianity, preferring (by his own account) to go fishing than to church. But he was paying attention, and many have wondered if the worship of father and son – Kim Il Sung and present leader Kim Jong Il – is a blasphemous copy of Christianity.
In any case, it seems to work. As we barrelled down the long, straight, empty motorway that leads to the closed border with South Korea, our guide asked merrily if we knew how the Korean War had started.
I said, cautiously, that our imperialist history books said that it had been started by the North.
The poor man's face fell as if I had wounded him. It is an essential part of North Korea's founding myth that the war was started by the Americans and the South.
Even a mention of any other version of history upset him, an intelligent person with a sense of humour, judging by his behaviour the rest of the time.
He took it as a British person of my generation might take a claim that Britain was the aggressor in 1939.
It was to avoid upsetting or scandalising him that I later made a shameful obeisance to the Kim Il Sung image, laying flowers and offering a perfunctory bow.
I feared that if I didn't, I would be treading on a real, living personal faith, not just showing disrespect to a cold, dead cult.
And I think I was correct in this judgment. For this really is – as Eastern Europe and Russia never were – a wholly closed country where a large majority more or less believe the state propaganda.
East Germany tried to stop its people watching West German TV, but abandoned the effort because it was just too difficult.
Powerful transmitters – the BBC, Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe – broadcast to Russia and her empire so successfully that in Prague in the Seventies people would come up to me in trams to pass on their thanks for the existence of the BBC Czech service.
But not here. Every radio and television has its tuning dial soldered so that it can receive only North Korean signals.
Inspectors visit frequently to check that nobody has tampered with this mental barricade. And, while a few brave souls defy this (resoldering the dials when an inspection is due), most are too frightened, or so loyal, that it would never occur to them to do so.
In Cold War days South Korea used to float radios across the border on balloons, but few dared use them even when they got through.
There is no internet access here for ordinary beings. On a trip round a vast "people's study centre", we were shown North Koreans supposedly working at computers.
But when one of us tried to reach the Google search site, he could get nowhere. The screens had no link to the outside world.
A librarian boasted of her stock of English-language books but, asked if she had a copy of 1984, had plainly never heard of it.
A supposed economics expert, likewise, did not seem to have heard of the free-market economist Milton Friedman – and there was much consternation among the guides when I asked about these things.
North Koreans live under a thick blanket of darkness, with a hopelessly distorted or restricted picture of the outside world.
They have never seen pictures of the terrorist attack on New York's World Trade Centre.
They are vaguely aware of The Beatles (I was proudly offered the chance to listen to a rare tape of Ob La Di, Ob La Da in the People's Study Hall).
One of my guides claimed to have heard of The Rolling Stones, but couldn't name any of their songs.
It is easy to understand why North Korea does not want "I can't get no satisfaction" echoing round its darkened avenues.
But this skewed, half-blind view of the world has its serious side. It is a judicious mix of truth and outrageous lies.
Heaven knows what is taught in schools (we were not allowed near any) but the authorities have produced an English-language version of a propaganda pamphlet called US – The Empire Of Terrorism, which is the local answer to American accusations that North Korea sponsors terrorist groups, and to George W. Bush's accusation that North Korea belonged to an 'Axis of Evil'.
Some of its charges against America are truthful. But these are mingled with unhinged fantasies and lies.
After a relatively factual attack on the United States' treatment of the Native Americans, and on seizure of Mexican territory, the pamphlet declares: "In April 1968, the US administration organised the assassination of Martin Luther King, a black Baptist leader who advocated freedom and equality of the blacks.
"Enraged by this, the blacks rose in a revolt that swept across 46 cities simultaneously. It was an act in self-defence. However, the administration retaliated by going on a spree of white terror...
"Black survivors of white hooliganism and terror are now confined to Detroit, Appalachia and the delta of southern Mississippi, where they live a dispirited life. For fear of racist terrorism, the 22million black population hesitate to go to schools, theatres, restaurants and even public lavatories..."
I am not making up this rubbish, nor did anyone try to conceal it from me.
The bookstall attendant, in a
pleasant mountain resort, who sold it to me (for $1) was delighted by my purchase.
One of Pyongyang's unexpected treasures is an American warship, the spy vessel USS Pueblo, which is moored as a trophy on the Taedong River, and is perhaps the last place on Earth where the Cold War is kept alive.
It is extraordinary to walk into the most secret rooms of this ship, where the ultimate espionage technology of 40 years ago is on open display (including decoding machines marked 'NOFORN', which means that their products could not be shared with the British MI6). It still looks surprisingly modern.
An angry propaganda video records the ship's capture in January 1968, and the dismal humiliation of her captain and crew in an incident rather similar to (but much nastier than) Britain's recent experience in the Persian Gulf.
If only, the North Korean government must wish, the Cold War could be brought back. As a Soviet ally, Pyongyang received the aid that allowed it to build this concrete show city and sustain its unyielding regime with food for the loyal and brute force for the rebellious.
Now the concrete crumbles and there is no money for food or bullets. North Korea, desperate and destitute, is accused of everything from drug-running and money-laundering to forging dollar bills to stay alive.
It reluctantly seeks food aid from the outside (and gives most of it to friends of the regime).
Last October's supposed nuclear blast (which experts still dispute) may well have been the leadership's infuriated response to the freezing of its accounts in a Macau bank, accounts allegedly used to buy luxuries for the loyal elite who dwell behind police barriers in tree-shaded Changgwang Street near the old Soviet Embassy, venturing out in black 4x4s with tinted windows.
Certainly the unfreezing of these accounts has been a key part of the talks that reopened after the bomb went off.
Here, too, is "office Building No 15", headquarters of Dear Leader Kim Jong Il who took over from his father in 1994.
The younger Kim, short, podgy and unimpressive, has spoken in public only once and has been careful not to usurp too much of his father's prestige.
The old man was, after all, a guerrilla leader in the war against the Japanese and is revered by older citizens who remember their country rising out of the flattened ruins of the Korean War before it was surpassed economically by the capitalist south.
Much effort was devoted to keeping him alive, for fear that his successors would fail to maintain his magical hold over the people.
Doctors at the Kim Il Sung Institute of Health and Longevity prescribed a special diet of extra-long dog penises (minimum length 2.8in) to keep the Great Leader well.
Maybe it was this regime that kept him going until he was 82, perhaps helped by the "Happy Corps" and the "Satisfaction Corps" of attractive young women recruited to serve in the chain of secret palaces and mansions inhabited by Kim Il Sung and his far-less-impressive son and heir, Kim Jong Il. Female beauty is a passport to preferment in North Korea.
The Dear Leader is still rumoured to choose Pyongyang's famously attractive traffic policewomen who, clad in fetching uniforms, control the sparse traffic with strangely provocative robotic gestures.
But the succession, a laughable breach of Marxist dogma, surely cannot go any further. The Younger Kim was 65 in February and is said to suffer from diabetes and to have recently undergone unnamed major surgery.
He looked unwell when he appeared in public for Tuesday's summit with the South Korean President, Roh Moo-hyun. His eldest son, Kim Jong Nam, is an unlikely heir, though he is already 36 and was educated in Switzerland and China. Inconveniently, he was caught in 2001 travelling to Japan on a false Dominican Republic passport, with two women (neither of them his wife) and a suitcase full of cash.
The passport was in the name Pang Xiong, Chinese for "fat bear", a name that rather suits him.
The world needs to work out – quickly – how this murderous black comedy can be brought to an end that is not too painful. The obvious answer would be reunification with South Korea.
But South Korea and North Korea alike are terrified by the example of Germany, where unity devastated the East and nearly bankrupted the West.
It also left the old East German elite jobless and humiliated, and pursued by the courts.
Economic experts believe a merger of the two Koreas would ruin the South. As for the Dear Leader, he presumably thinks it safer to cling on than risk being strung up like Saddam, locked up like Slobodan Milosevic or hounded to death like Augusto Pinochet.
North Korea's new version of nuclear blackmail is just that, crude extortion by people who have no honest way of supporting themselves.
Give us aid and money, they demand, or we may do something terrible. If they do fulfil their threats, it is hard to know who will be most badly hurt.
Pyongyang's Taepodong rockets are wildly unreliable and as likely to fall into the sea or strike the wrong country as to hit their intended targets.
Their nuclear technology is crude and possibly faked.
Meanwhile, increasing numbers of emaciated North Koreans are fleeing across the Chinese border or working abroad.
The long-hidden truth about the outside world filters back from them to their friends and families.
And the Dear Leader and his loyalists have no idea how they can secure the succession of the world's first Marxist-Leninist hereditary monarchy, a problem that looks rather urgent.
Quite soon, it will have to be admitted that neither Kim Il Sung nor Kim Jong Il are the godlike beings they are made out to be.
Quite soon, the entombed, defrauded North Koreans will realise their fatherland is not a great power and that it is bankrupt and backward.
It will be a hard moment for them and there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
It is our responsibility to try to see that there is nothing worse.
Pretending that North Korea is a terrifying great power, when it is in truth a crippled nation stranded between two worlds by the end of the Cold War, and made increasingly irrational by poverty and pain, will not help.
It is a country to be pitied rather than feared.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=486079&in_page_id=1811
The need for detachment of humans by caste
The constant idea of separating humans from one another has been dutifully fulfilled as the royal figures would never accept equality or mingling with lower classes in order to prevent the spread of power and riches to others. This is evident throughout Nineteen Eighty Four, as the human body in Oceania is divided into three distinct castes including: the Inner Party, the Outer Party, and the proles, who can definitely represent the modern, lower class humans who have no personal thoughts and are just mice to be played around with. To acquire this state of humanity, separation must occur whereas the leaders or bodies of administration must proclaim themselves higher than the human body and invent laws for citizens to abide by.
In the case presented by Lauren Williams of the Daily 49er, it’s written that the President of Cal State University of Long Beach, F. King Alexander, has become “unresponsive to the needs of his constituents”, just as Big Brother is to any members below the Inner Party. Also, the CSULB President declares refusal to all those who rebuff his ideologies and wraps himself around with people who share identical creeds with him. This should be alarming as the current actions of CSULB faculty portray certain qualities of a dystopia where the central human body is limited to primitive behaviours which exclude all rational thought and heartfelt feelings or emotions. If the human race continues on this course of self demobilization of all critical thoughts and emotions, we might as well embark the Oceaniac society presented by George Orwell in the novel Nineteen Eighty Four, as it will be inevitable for someone as Big Brother to seize control over a nation. Also, the striking resemblance between the current CSULB’s operations and those portrayed in Nineteen Eighty Four is the access policy. Freedom of speech and thought is eradicated as the general secretary for F. King Alexander begins screening every single phone call and replying to reporters that all questions shall go through other personnel before submission of question is granted to the President, “A few weeks later, his gen[eral] secretary began screening phone calls, telling reporters…that all questions must come through Zint before getting an audience”. Then, what I believe to be appalling is the fact that the president, F. King Alexander, demands the understanding of his criteria where there should be a certain structure to the posing questions and their submissions. This is decomposition of our language and rights to speak our mind because if our questions are simply reduced to stating everything in good or “ungood” terms then we are not getting our point across and as articulated by Northrop Frye that decreasing our use of the descriptive language, humanity will create a living hell on earth. No wonder the world portrayed in Nineteen Eighty Four is utterly despicable since Newspeak has completely defragmented the English language so dearly forged centuries ago. Another important point by Lauren Williams to be considered is, “As with other fearless, heedless leaders, I believe he is a genuinely good person who is well-intentioned and means best. But we all know where the best of intentions go and we don’t want to go there,” since the world illustrated in Nineteen Eighty Four, portrays the idealistic world of Big Brother whose intentions were also good since that was the way he saw best fit. Accordingly, any person should realize that best intentions of a lifestyle should be reserved for his or her own imagination rather than causing a national revolution or a constant and pointless state of war for the sake of economy and its stability. Finally, the conclusive point to be considered from the article is, “What we really need is a campus leader who is open, forthcoming and welcoming to students, not one whole holes away in a drab, mysterious brown building,” since if the President and the supporting faculty can formulate such unrighteous rules about submission of questions, then who knows what else can they breed and implant upon the student body of Cal State University of Long Beach.
As for final thoughts, I believe that the estranged President of the CSULB is trying to keep the student body on a certain level and separate himself to a much higher state where he could implicate anything he desires, even ridiculous guidelines concerning the submission of questions put forth towards him. This is an example of maintaining a caste system because if the student body does not revolt against his ideologies, they will remain in an unaware state of what is truly occurring while he will maintain a constant power as a leader since the students will become helplessly submissive to whatever he will feed them.
Article used:
CSULB's eerie access policy resembles '1984'
By: Lauren Williams
Posted: 10/31/07
In light of the spooky holiday, I thought I'd devote my weekly column to telling a scary story. I already wrote about the gory, bizarre occurrences that have graced the Cal State Long Beach faculty, students and staff in Dig Magazine.
This scary story, however, does not entail dark shadows, blood or graphic visuals. However, there are definitely enough creepy characters and shady dealings to give anyone the shivers.
Imagine an Orwellian-like time and place with a leader who is unresponsive to the needs of his constituents, partially because he ignores them, but also because he doesn't listen. He refuses to meet with anyone who disagrees with his ideas and surrounds himself with like-minded people. His stance is uncompromising.
Once a(n) [insert noun here] chooses to speak up about something (s)he considers an important issue, a wall is built between the leader and the noun-turned-ugly.
Sound familiar? It should.
The person who I'm describing, though, may be closer to the CSULB campus than you think. It is not our fearless, heedless leader in the White House (although these characteristics certainly do describe him as well). It is our very own CSULB President F. King with a capital "K" Alexander.
Four weeks ago, I wrote an editorial detailing a strange encounter Editor in Chief Bradley Zint and I had with the leader of our university during our scheduled, biweekly meeting invaolving the three of us, some surprise ASI guests, a soccer field and electronic gadgets.
Since then, my invitation to the meeting table has been rescinded. The reason I was given were my Oliver Stone-like "conspiracy theories."
At first I was elated. The fewer phony meetings the better, as far as I was concerned. I hated the idea of someone trying to spoon feed me news ideas and, quite frankly, the meetings did not feel in any way productive.
At the time, though, I hadn't really considered Alexander's behavior troublesome. In the weeks since then, however, a few things have transpired to make me change my mind about this destructive mindset.
In our first meeting, Alexander asked us that Zint and I collect reporters' questions and save them for our biweekly talks.
This at first seemed perfectly reasonable. He is a busy man, and a bit more planning in the Daily Forty-Niner newsroom in regards to assigning stories in advance never hurts. He promised that, when possible, he would try to speak to reporters who had questions.
Unfortunately, news is rarely predictable and clairvoyance is a trait I've yet to see on a résumé. A few weeks later, his genial secretary began screening phone calls, telling reporters (at least two, including myself) that all questions must come through Zint before getting an audience.
Maybe it was all a foolish misunderstanding, but what I was told was that there is an understanding with the president and our own leader about how questions should be submitted.
Since then, my interactions with Alexander have been restricted to a generous nine-line e-mail and a phone call.
As I've learned since then, the 'Niner is not alone in its predicament with getting the president's attention.
The truth of the matter is, Alexander needs to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. It's part of the job.
He needs to be able to be open and frank with faculty members, reporters, students and community members, though.
The job isn't about being cozy. That's why the school conducts such a seemingly belabored process in screening candidates - they want someone who can handle the pressure, not someone who cowers when things get itchy, because they do in a setting this big, diverse and demanding.
We've seen this kind of headstrong, listen-to-no-one-except-your-friends attitude in a leader before.
We've also seen the effects of such an unwillingness to compromise and be open.
Alexander needs to change. As with other fearless, heedless leaders, I believe he is a genuinely good person who is well-intentioned and means best. But we all know where the best of intentions go and we don't want to go there.
Right now, what we really need is a campus leader who is open, forthcoming and welcoming to students, not one who holes away in a drab, mysterious brown building.
To me, this is far scarier than any other ghoulish Halloween tale could possibly be.
Lauren Williams is a senior journalism and political science student, the managing editor for the Daily Forty-Niner and a weekly contributor.
________________________________________
© Copyright 2007 Daily 49er
URL: http://media.www.daily49er.com/media/storage/paper1042/news/2007/10/31/Opinion/Csulbs.Eerie.Access.Policy.Resembles.1984-3068351.shtml
Post a Comment