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 responses ...)
1984
George Orwell
Orwellian
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41 comments:
I will be doing:
Big Brother is watching: Not in 1984 but in 2002
http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/002285.html
I will be using this article:
Learning to Love big Brother
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/07/28/IN244190.DTL
I will be doing
Beijing 2008 and Tibet: The Orwellian Games
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-mcgowan/beijing-2008-tibet-the-or_b_95897.html
I will be doing:
About Education; Is history still a valid guide?
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F00E0DC1139F93AA15752C1A965948260&sec=health&spon=&pagewanted=all
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0922-07.htm
I will be doing:
Bush's Orwellian Address
Happy New Year: It's 1984
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0922-07.htm
I will be discussing this article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/washington/06nsa.html?st=cse&sq=bush+signs&scp=1
Bush Signs Law to Widen Reach for Wiretapping
By James Risen
To efface the memories of the embattled past results in the emasculation of humanity�an infinite endeavor for the �golden� equilibrium.
In the book, �Nineteen Eighty-Four�, George Orwell states, �To hang on from day to day and from week to week spinning out a present that had no future, seemed an unconquerable instinct, just as one�s lungs will always draw the next breath so long as there is air available.� When one possess the insatiable desire to decipher the intricate threads of history and the present world, that pulls innately at the strings of one�s own existence, it results in the fervent hope to stab this so called duplicity and uncover the extraneous hair line fracture that possess our past encounters and history, which becomes the necessity and will eventually aid in the steady decent from the utmost heights of the Tower of Babel. The revolutionary ardor of today�s society, with its impressive rank as the sole beneficiary of the ideologies of technology, which have apparently besieged the archaic notions of the past which have resulted in the unknown impediment of humanity�s movements towards Orwell�s �golden country�. Our generation must realize the imperative need to yield to our archaic attitudes, beliefs, and sentiments, that can possibly result in our impassioned sense of unity rather than being drawn into the impetuous disastrous downward swirl that leads to a deep dark mental infirmity filled with the struggles to infiltrate and defy the basic concepts and foundations of imperialism, communism, totalitarianism, and possibly the dark confines of Room 101, and more importantly to denounce the mere feeling of being impotent. If one reflects and attempts to change the numerous indictable offenses of our race, it could result in our possession of the keys of the �Golden country� or in biblical terms��to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey: unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites�(Exodus 3:8). As William Hazlitt once said, �Death cancels everything but truth; and strips a man of everything but genius and virtue. It is a sort of natural canonization.�
As a student, one tries to demystify the motive for being educated on the mechanical processes of history which results in one trying to rectify the poisonous tendrils of our past that crept into Orwell�s very existence, that moved him so much that he wrote the compelling novel, �Nineteen Eighty-Four�, that furtively points to the deadly futile actions of our race. Fred M. Hechinger approaches this delicate subject with an astonishing confluence of how one�s reality resides in a pulsating reminiscence of the past. Hechinger tries to conform and configure the underlying truth of history and how its confoundedly intricate thread work is rooted and becomes the pivotal fulcrum of world literature. The article, �About Education; Is History still a valid guide?� touches the confines and understanding of how history is still the valid informative guide to move ahead. The article states that, �Not to know the past, history teacher say, is to move blindly into the future. Since history repeats itself, students are told, we ignore its lessons at the risk of reliving past mistakes.� It makes one ponder that if the past is never resolved, it gives rise to the understanding that the past is still the present, which results in the groundless allegations that we have moved to the very extremities of human aspirations. As Orwell stated in �Gandhi in Mayfair�, �Either power or politics must yield to common decency, or the world must go spiralling down into a nightmare of which we can already catch some dim glimpses.� The article sheds light on the military regimes that have been well educated with the past but only lead their nations on a steady treacherous path towards suffering external and internal damnation. Albert Einstein stated that, �The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking; we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophy.� It makes one look beyond the advances of technology and it leads one to the depths of the grim forests of man�s innovations and creations that have not lead our humanity to extraordinary times but into the very depths of a virulent epidemic. As Dr. Drell states in the article, �When history provides no answer, he adds, strategists turn to futuristic ideas whose feasibility cannot be confirmed or disproved by past experience��when this sentence is taken out of context, it builds towards the same foundations of Big Brother�s ideals and actions.
Hechinger explicitly states that Orwell allocated and alluded to the great significance of being in tune with the past events. Orwell understood that even tough the past reeks with the grim reminiscence of classical antiquity, this hidden aphorism can only be uncovered if the reader indulges in understanding the neglected seeds of history and it will result in the edification of the intellectual mind. As Hechinger states, �Students may rightly conclude the next year�s 1984 will differ greatly from the novel�s; but their understanding of history would be deficient if they failed to detect in the present some of the bad seed of the past that inspired Orwell�s alarm and dire prediction�(Keep in mind that Hechinger wrote this article on November 29, 1983).
Our humanity is masquerading in the allusion of glory while we travel towards the unknown boundaries, which are aligned with the pangs of infinite continuity, but one must be prepared for all sorts of contingencies. The delicate contour of our entire society is in the formation of some kind of continuum and it is in our hands, to break off this repetitive sequence of events. Even though the age of technology is at hand, we have not yet achieved the vital state of consonance. As Louis MacNeice once said, �Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God come near me.�
Article used:
ABOUT EDUCATION; IS HISTORY STILL A VALID GUIDE?
By FRED M. HECHINGER
Published: November 29, 1983
NOT to know the past, history teachers say, is to move blindly into the future. Since history repeats itself, students are told, we ignore its lessons at the risk of reliving past mistakes. Yet, students of military history are also warned that strategists, precisely because they know the past, get themselves and their countries into trouble by always fighting past wars, ignoring new conditions.
A collection of essays by present and former faculty members at Stanford University raises these issues as the authors try to assess how relevant George Orwell's novel ''1984'' will be to the actual year 1984. The essays are contained in the latest issue of ''The Portable Stanford,'' titled ''On 1984,'' published by the Stanford Alumni Association, with a trade edition planned by W. H. Freeman & Company.
Sidney D. Drell, a physicist and arms control expert, makes the point that when conditions of war and defense are unprecedented, history may imprison the mind rather than freeing it to deal intelligently with new facts. In a world of nuclear weapons, he warns, history is no guide to security. He recalls Albert Einstein's comment, shortly after the first atomic explosion: ''The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking; we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophy.''
Dr. Drell, who is deputy director of theoretical physics at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and a former consultant to the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, made these observations in a chapter, ''Newspeak and Nukespeak.''
The issues raised by Dr. Drell give some indication why it is so difficult for teachers to deal with the subject of nuclear arms without running the risk of political controversy. The recent dispute over the depiction of nuclear war in ''The Day After,'' the ABC-TV movie, illustrated these problems and raised the pedagogical questions: Should children be allowed to see such a program? Does it teach them to understand new realities or is it a threat to their mental health? Does the experience create the kind of pacifism that undermines the nation's will to defend itself or does it lead to a better understanding of a rational way of dealing with world affairs in the nuclear age?
''In '1984,' '' writes Dr. Drell, ''Big Brother found it useful and convenient to falsify history in order to maintain the position of the Party. Our challenge in today's heavily armed nuclear world is quite different: it is to understand that we have lost history. History is no longer valid as a guide in matters of nuclear weapons and war.''
Traditionally, students are taught that war, in the terms of Karl von Clausewitz, is a continuation of diplomacy. This, writes Dr. Drell, is no longer true in the face of the prospect of nuclear war, a fact first recognized by President Eisenhower, who called nuclear arms instruments of suicide rather than of defense.
When history provides no guidance, politicians try to give words new meanings. In Orwell's novel, Big Brother, the all-powerful leader, created Newspeak, as in ''War is Peace'' or ''Freedom is Slavery.'' (In the Soviet version of Newspeak, ''wars of liberation'' often mean a new enslavement.) Those who try to apply old historical terms to nuclear arms, Dr. Drell asserts, may say: ''New nuclear weapons are bargaining chips'' or ''We must build up in order to build down.'' When history provides no answer, he adds, strategists turn to futuristic ideas whose feasibility cannot be confirmed or disproved by past experience, as in proposals of a space-based ''star wars'' kind of defense.
Does all this reduce the general importance of history in teaching young people? Even in his gloomiest vision of the future, Orwell assigned great power to an understanding of the past. Robert E. McGinn, a professor of industrial engineering who is associate chairman of Stanford's Values, Technology, Science and Society Program, points out in an essay on ''The Politics of Technology and Technology of Politics'' that Winston Smith, Orwell's hapless hero, quite miraculously conjures up, even in his brainwashed mind, ''a sense of a past radically different from his suffocating present.'' It is this that enables him ''temporarily to achieve a critical perspective on the present.'' It is a perspective that totalitarianism cannot tolerate, and Winston's rebellion is crushed. But the episode suggests that at the heart of Orwell's work is the warning to heed the lessons of human history, not to give up the humane values of that past to any potential Big Brother, no matter how technologically or ideologically enticing.
Ian Watt, a professor of English who is director of the Stanford Humanities Center, in an essay on ''Winston Smith: The Last Humanist,'' points out that ''Winston's love of the past makes him give a symbolic value to literature, and even to other more physical mementos of history.''
All of this suggests that giving history its proper place in modern teaching calls for greater sophistication than ever before. The past, as Professors McGinn and Watt point out, can be liberating; but if the lessons of the past are misapplied, as shown by Dr. Drell, it can give credence to the disastrous idea that, because past wars could be won, nuclear war is also winnable.
Not every overture for peace is another Munich; but every violation of human rights contains elements of past totalitarianism, and thus of Orwell's 1984. Students may rightly conclude that next year's 1984 will differ greatly from the novel's; but their understanding of history would be deficient if they failed to detect in the present some of the bad seed of the past that inspired Orwell's alarm and dire prediction.
(http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F00E0DC1139F93AA15752C1A965948260&sec=health&spon=&pagewanted=all)
I will be doing :
George Orwell, Big Brother is watching your house
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=445897
George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-four depicts a country and a people living in an unimaginable dystopia. The novel gained exposure in 1945. Orwell’s perception of a future that is captured and monitored by cameras is now a reality in our decade of living. We as a people have come to embrace a camera filled society that is now our reality.
Several aspects of Oceania’s society are peaking into our own. One main parallel found between Winston’s society and our society is the reality of being watched and monitored. Winston speaks about this ion Chapter One “It was conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug into your wire whenever they wanted to. 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 move was scrutinized.” (pg.5)
The character, Winston stated that people learned to live with this reality of Big Brother constantly invading their privacy. We as a society have done the same. Every time we leave our homes, go to the store, step on a bus / cab, use a computer or use a cell phone we are being monitored. We have been bred on this reality and not surprisingly we accept and expect this invasion of privacy, without thinking twice about it.
Bob Graham, the author of the article titled “George Orwell, Big Brother is watching your house.” Brought up some very interesting fact about our “reality”. According to him the average person is caught on camera 300 times daily. The argument that supports this invasion of privacy is that being monitored is for our own good. Security is the primary focus that justifies this action. Our society does not challenge this argument. We accept this rationale and continue to live under the watchful eye of “big brother.” Other’s may argue that this is ignorance our part, but most people in today’s world define privacy on difference levels. There is a difference between public privacy and in home social privacy. Our society views “invasion” of privacy in the public realm as being a means to an end. It keeps us safe.
“It not an environment but a home.” (Frye, Educated Imagination, pg 19)
We no longer look at our society as an environment that is being invaded; but we view it as our home. We have grown accustomed to this way of life. The people of modern society are much like the proles who are not aware of the reality of their situation.
Frye addresses the concept of tolerance by the characters in Nineteen Eighty-Four. The parallel between this society and our society is that it is described that these characters have “grown accustomed to this way of life”. Our society has been brought up with this reality. Technology such as the internet, web cams and public security cameras all play a role in invading our privacy. Difference is that we were born into this society and it is nothing new to us. We created a cameraed world and obviously thrive on a false sense of freedom and security.
Article:
George Orwell, Big Brother is watching your house
By BOB GRAHAM - More by this author »
Last updated at 21:55pm on 31st March 2007
Comments (18)
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'.
http://media.www.theticker.org/media/storage/paper909/news/2008/03/31/News/China.Is.1984-3291488.shtml
I will be using the following article:
Big Brother is shouting at you
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=405477&in_page_id=1770
“Secure beneath The Watchful Eyes”
Some might find this reassuring knowing that we are constantly being watched just in case something might happen. However, some might find this peculiar knowing that we have no privacy and someone is continuously watching us, knowing exactly what we are doing at every moment of the day. Some may not even realize they are being watched; however, in today’s society, there is always someone out there who knows more about you than you do.
Based on this article, the country which is most under surveillance would be “Britain”. A device called “Echelon” is frequently monitoring an individual’s communication with others knowing what is said and private thoughts between two individuals. According to the “Draconian RIP Act”, the amount of internet one uses is monitored. Meaning, they are watching which websites you are visiting and how much time you spend on the internet. Another device that is used to know our whereabouts is the world famous “cell phone”. Your cell phone has a memory chip inside of it which they can monitor you on and know exactly where you are at all times during the day. In connection with nineteen eighty-four, both rulers/governors in each society wants to have total control over their civilians. In nineteen eighty-four, Big Brother is their mentor whom is persistently watching its civilians day after day and night after night. He uses a telescreen which is similar to a television; however, it contains a two-way screen so you can watch what is on it and someone can watch and see what you are doing. The government in this book is always watching those individuals that live in that society and they are trying to control all of them so they feel that they have all the power. Those individuals are not permitted to have personal thoughts or opinions; and if they do, they would be vaporized.
Another key point mentioned in this article is in relation to the fact that in Britain, their civilians are not allowed to carry or have with them any firearm in order to protect themselves incase of a dangerous predicament. The only firearm they are permitted to have is a broomstick. They were not allowed to defend themselves or their property. Therefore, if someone were to come up to them to steal something, they could very well get away anything. This also relates to the fact that INGSOC controlled their members in society and in general, everyone. Individuals were not allowed to defend, even think for themselves. They had to listen and obey what they were told and what they saw on the telescreen.
Another interesting point brought up in this article is the fact that you were not entitled to freedom of speech. It mentions that you were not allowed to make a racist remark about another individual’s religion. If you were to do so you would find yourself justifying your reason for saying such a remark to the Beak (whom is just like a judge). Again, when relating this article back to nineteen eighty-four, those citizens were not allowed to say anything out of their own free will. They had to say what they were told to or else they would be punished. Power is a very strong attribute to have and when it is used, the outcome can be positive or negative depending on the views that individuals has whom is in power.
The point that the article is trying to exercise is the use of security is to control and watch over their civilians. Oceania is just like Britain because both countries want to control and have all the power over their community. They pay close attention to those who pose as a threat to their government. They want to control and manipulate them and make them believe what they want them to believe. Those who do not pose as a threat are just left in a corner to do their own thing because they do not have the skills or knowledge to rebel against the individuals whom are in authority.
Source:
Big Brother is watching: Not in 1984 but in 2002
Perry de Havilland (London) Best of Samizdata.net • Privacy & Panopticon
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 broom stick. 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.
I'm doing: "China's Orwellian Internet"
http://www.heritage.org/research/asiaandthepacific/bg1806.cfm
Corning by the Book: Utopian or Orwellian?
New York Times Article by LISA W. FODERARO
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0CE1DB1030F931A25754C0A9649C8B63
Orwell did not guess the worse half of it
http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.royalroads.ca/ehost/pdf?vid=2&hid=7&sid=efc11d88-ce0d-42ee-ae1a-7e4d5a514679%40sessionmgr7
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell creates a utopian society essentially characterized by fear, deprivation, and ultimately oppression. The community of Oceania is one which is governed by means of totalitarianism, focused on the ideal of complete thought control, where the term ‘liberty’ has no significance, whatsoever. The citizens of this society are constantly closely observed by an instrument known as the telescreen: a two-way screen which monitors every sound and movement made. This allows the government to ensure each person is obeying orders and carrying out their assigned regular routines; thus employing ultimate control. If any defiance is detected, it is guaranteed that the Thought Police will implement punishment as they see fit: “There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. 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 scrutinized.” (Orwell, 5)
Furthermore, the citizens of Oceania are forced to express their loyalties to the leader of the party known as Big Brother. This is demonstrated through a daily tradition known as the ‘Two Minutes of Hate’, where Goldstein, the leader of the opposition party ‘The Brotherhood’, is shown on the telescreen, and everyone is supposed to scream obscenities at the figure on the screen, therefore showing their support for Big Brother. As soon as a citizen is seen not participating enough or making an odd facial expression, they are committing a shameful crime: “A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself–anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called.” (Orwell, 65)
Although Orwell’s fictional perception of the future might appear extreme, the world in Nineteen Eighty-Four foreshadows the world we live in today, which challenges us to analyze our concept of ‘reality’. Shopping malls, airports, highways and schools are just a few examples of locations which share one thing in common: surveillance cameras. Unlike in Nineteen Eighty-Four, we might not be watched with the government’s goal of controlling human thought, however, ‘BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU’ is surely not such a stretch from the truth in 2008-sixty years since Orwell wrote this compelling novel.
“Big Brother is not only watching you–now he’s barking orders too.”
Due to an on-going issue with anti-social behaviour, in 2006 Middlesbrough, United Kingdom’s mayor Ray Mallon introduced a new, somewhat controversial method of eliminating local crime. For the first time in history in Britain, ‘talking’ CCTV cameras send out verbal warnings which are used to deter citizens from acting unacceptably in public, which includes anything from littering to jay-walking. Control room operators look out for these sorts of law deviations and send out verbal warnings such as ‘Warning-you are being monitored by CCTV’. “…it challenges unacceptable behaviour and makes people thing twice,” states manager of the system Jack Bonner.
Such a means of decreasing crime forces one to evaluate the world we live in. Whether we are law-abiding people or not, we are all being watched. We have become so accustomed to this, that we often do not realize the extent to which we are being observed. It is argued that the sole purpose of this encroachment on our privacy is for safety measures, but how far will it go? Did George Orwell in fact predict exactly what lies in the future? Is it realistic to wonder whether the human race might end up like Winston Smith who is forced to find a blind-spot from the telescreen in order to express his innermost thoughts on paper?
Article:
Big Brother is shouting at you
Last updated at 21:02pm on 16th September 2006
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 realised 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 realise 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.'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=405477&in_page_id=1770
Big Brother or Big Business….Which is Scarier?
In the novel Nineteen Eighty Four, Orwell envisions a world where the government monitors everybody’s movement and activities. Scott Bradner in the attached article believes that Orwell’s belief in government intrusion into individual privacy is becoming true, but Orwell failed to see the amount of information being gathered by the private sector on individuals.
Bradner writes in his article that many public places are already under watch and that security cameras have been installed in almost every public building. He goes on to say that even homeowners have installed security cameras in their own homes. The article brings up Harold Hutt, chief of police in Houston, Texas. Hutt believes that malls and apartment buildings should have police run surveillance cameras due to the shortage of police officers. In response to all the privacy issues being brought up, he said “If you are not doing anything wrong, why should you worry about it?” His article states that cooperation’s and private companies keep track of everything that people buy, read or do. Internet search engines like Google and Yahoo know every site that people go on, supermarkets know what food people buy on a regular basis, phone companies know who people have called and at what time, credit card companies know what people buy and how much they have spent. The article ends by Bradner pointing out that Orwell failed to recognize that the biggest threat to privacy would not come from the government, but would come from the private sector.
Without stricter controls on the ability of companies to gather and keep information on citizens, Orwell’s vision on the future could become a reality. Although the world has not entered the dehumanization of Orwell’s novel, people are heading in that direction.
Article used:
Orwell did not guess the worse half of it
By Scott Bradner
It has become a cliché to bring up George Orwell’s 1948 book 1984 when talking about the ever increasing pervasiveness of governments monitoring the activities of their citizens in the name of security. But Orwell’s apocalyptic picture of a quiet dehumanization missed entirely the most important threat to our privacy and sense of being.
Orwell painted a picture of a world where government has the ability to monitor everyone, everywhere (www.nww.com.Docfinder.2360): individuals never know when they are under surveillance so they always act as if they are. The most recent reason to invoke Orwell was presented by Harold Hutt, Chief of Police in Houston, who suggested that police run surveillance cameras in public places did not go far enough and [said] that owners of malls and large apartment complexes should be required to install such cameras as well. If that was not enough to set off us civil-liberties types he also said that in some cases surveillance cameras should be set up to monitor private residences.
Hutt proposed expanding the number of police run surveillance cameras to help deal with the shortage of police officers. It is hard to argue that it would not make things easier for the police if they could record everything everyone did and could track robbers back to when they took the gun used in a robbery out from under the bedroom pillow in the morning. Not the kind of world I’d to live in, but more convenient for the police.
As one might expect the chief dismissed any privacy concerns by saying “if you are not doing anything wrong, why should you worry about it?”
This response has been used recently by the Bush administration in defence of the National Security Agency wiretapping and one that emphasizes the disconnect between the viewers and the viewed. My guess is that almost no one who says this would be happy to have the tables turned to let citizens watch politicians’ private lives.
What Orwell did not figure out is that most places – including most of the places Hutt wants to monitor – are already under watch. It is hard to walk more than a few feet inside a mall or major corporate building without being recorded by a security camera. Many homeowners have installed security or nanny cameras. We are recorded in many – soon many most – places we go.
More pervasive are corporate databases that record everything you buy, read or do. Phone companies and automatic toll systems know where you go, Google and Yahoo know what you want to look at, The New York Times and other online news sources know what you read, and your local market knows what you want to eat. In the future RFIDs will make this data collection and linkage easier (for a view of the future, see DocFinder.2361).
Orwell missed the fact that much of the privacy threat would come from the private sector, where there are few meaningful legally mandated controls. It will be up to government, however, to decide if we need to accept the current fact that we have no privacy and have to “get over it”.
Disclaimer. Harvard like other schools does have laws protecting privacy at least for students. But the above call for more rules is mine, not the university’s.
The article I selected was from a secure website from the library of Royal Roads University. The URL will not work due to security features.
URL:
"https://ezproxy.royalroads.ca/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=buh&AN=19957459&site=ehost-live"
i will be doing:
Doublethink - 1984 today
http://www.foolsphilosophy.com/doublethink-1984-today/
George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four depicts a world so destructive to human nature that it stirs nightmares even in today’s modern readers. One gets the impression while reading the book that Orwell’s form of government is so terrifying that there could not possibly be any truth to it; the reader hopes all lies will be revealed in the end. If Orwell’s novel is analyzed even further it can be determined that Winston Smith’s reality is not all that different than the average Canadian. Many of the idea’s that are brought up in Nineteen Eighty-Four bear similarities to modern civilization. In part II of the book Orwell introduces the reader to Goldstein’s book, which is the focal point of the novel.
An article named “Corning by the Book: Utopian or Orwellian?” by New York Times journalist Lisa W. Foderaro paints a picture of a society that has adopted a strange organized way of living. Corning, New York is a community that has implemented “Choice Theory” which is a psychology developed by psychologist William Glasser. Glasser’s theory asserts that all crimes, mental illnesses and addictions are caused by people’s unsatisfying relationships. Glasser approached a group of teachers in Corning five years ago and started the Choice Community Project based on the doctor’s ideas. Glasser has resurrected the “quality community” in Corning, New York, which, in theory, should be full of love and encouragement and free of all negative actions. Glasser is attempting to teach people how they can get along with other people better and have more successful lives. Choice theory would recommend asking people their opinions on matters instead of shouting orders at them. The article goes on to describe the ways that choice theory is being practiced in Corning; this is where the article becomes fairly familiar for readers of Nineteen Eighty-Four. “Dr. Glasser estimates that about 1,000 people in Corning have read his book, ''Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom'' (Harper Perennial, 1998). So far, about a quarter of the teachers in the district have been trained in choice theory, and all freshmen in one of the city's two high schools learn about it in their ''high school success'' class.” In Orwell’s book political propaganda plays a very significant role, it is just one of the many ways that INGSOC controls the people of Oceania. Glasser’s “quality community, although it is not based on a political theory, seems to somehow mirror the dystopia that George Orwell wished would never exist. Choice theory has become part of ordinary school, it is being taught to children as though it was fact and as though it should be the way every one lives their lives. It is a positive theory that promotes good morals but children should be able to explore other psychological theories before they make great changes to their lives. At the time this article was written that was a plan in the district school board to apply the choice theory to the entire curriculum, form kindergarten through grade 12. One teacher in the article states that the school board is not giving choices for other programs. This idea of installing ideas into the minds of children is reminiscent of Orwell’s spies, the little children who are the strictest followers of the Party’s ideology. Orwell’s Newspeak represents the death of human language and the repression of human nature. In Corning choice theory even has ideas on the use of language, ideas that are being taught to children. Debbie Finamore-Flint, an assistant principal in the Addison Central School District says that she has benefited from attending a parenting workshop based on Glasser’s ideas. Finamore-Flint says ''Whereas before we might have said, 'That was a dumb thing, you know better than that,' we now say, 'What are you going to do to make it better?' or 'What could you have done to prevent that?'” Glasser’s choice theory is something that the community has taken on and it would be hard for members of the community to follow the mob mentality; if language is changing for one member of Corning it won’t be long before the rest follow. The workshops that spread choice theory also seem very similar to the workshops that Winston and Julia attend to show their loyalty to the party. In Nineteen Eighty-Four members of the outer party did not have to attend workshops at the community by law but if they did not show up they would be vaporized. It seems that people who did not attend choice theory workshops will be considered unequal to those who follow perfect choice theory practice, if not now, it is again only a matter of time.
Goldstein’s book, introduced in part II of the novel, works as a metaphor for many of Orwell’s political ideas. Chapter one of the book is titled Ignorance is Strength. In this section Goldstein outlines how the party came to be in power. He writes of the three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle and the Low and states that this is the essential structure of society. The goal of the High is to maintain their current position and the goal of the Middle is to switch places with the High. The goal of the low is to essentially eliminate all class distinctions and create a society where all people are equal. Goldstein continues to say that throughout history the High hold their place for a while until the Middle recruit the Low and both overthrow the High in the name of liberty and justice. This is the structure of the French Revolution of 1789, with the high being the monarchy, the Middle being the bourgeoisie and the Low being the peasants/ sans-culottes. The Middle then thrust the Low back into their original position and the process begins all over again. English Socialism appeared in Oceania and created a system of government that was Middle and then overthrew the High, but this time the Party would ensure that progress stopped and the High kept their place permanently. The party did this by using fear and constant war to keep the middle under strict control. The same outcome could come out of Glasser’s choice theory. At first glance “quality community” might seem innocent but in time it seems there could be something serious to deal with. Glasser establishes his choice theory as a new way to look at personal freedom; he is trying to overthrow the High (current communities ideologies) with his own Middle ideas. He asserts that choice theory is the best possible way to live and raise children; much like INGSOC, and that whole communities should be run according to it. He believes that the community will stop progressing after choice theory and can remain a happy Corning from now on. Readers of Nineteen Eighty-Four know that this cannot be fully possible.
Orwell’s ideas teach us that there is not one single way to run a society. In Canada we have left wing and right wing politics. We teach religious and well as atheist morals that apply to many different psychological theories in schools. Glasser’s ideas are not made out of a group of people they stem only from him, in this way he is similar to Big Brother. If Orwell can teach his readers anything it’s that perfection is not something that can be met by any society, it is not something to work at because it is not an achievable goal. Glasser’s choice theory is not as extreme as Orwell’s dystopia but if other communities stay on the same path as him it could possibly lead to the unimaginable.
Corning by the Book: Utopian or Orwellian?
By LISA W. FODERARO
Published: July 12, 2002
People in other cities may all be reading the same book, but here they are living the same life. And what a charmed life it is: free from nagging, threatening, blaming, criticizing, complaining, bribing -- and full of loving, encouraging, accepting and negotiating.
At least that's the theory, ''choice theory'' to be exact: the framework for a happier existence as outlined by William Glasser, a psychiatrist in California and author of some 20 books whose beliefs about human nature have improbably taken root here.
Five years ago, Dr. Glasser spoke to a group of teachers in Corning and offered the idea of creating a ''quality community'' based on his ideas. (There are already nine Glasser ''quality schools'' around the country, from Charlottesville, Va., to Boulder, Colo.)
Corning chose, and in a social experiment that might be utopian or Orwellian, depending on your point of view, Dr. Glasser's theories have seeped into many corners of this city of 12,000, tucked into a corner of the Finger Lakes region.
It's not as if smiling people were skipping down the street in an environment out of ''The Truman Show.'' But supporters of the Choice Community Project, as it is called, say there are signs that Corning -- person by person, household by household -- is gradually becoming a kinder, gentler place.
''In essence, we teach people the very necessary skills of how to get along better with the people who matter the most, which is something that is not taught in households across America,'' said Mary Hayes-O'Brien, the project's director. ''We're trying to get all the village members talking the same language.''
In a nutshell, choice theory says that unsatisfying relationships are the source of almost all crime, addiction, mental illness, family breakdown and school failure. For progress in human relationships, Dr. Glasser says, people need to give up trying to control others and accept that the one thing they can control is their own behavior. So a manager who routinely gives orders might get better results by first asking workers what they think. That may sound painfully obvious, but putting it into practice is another matter. And Dr. Glasser's followers say choice theory offers a way to focus people's attention on doing just that.
The superintendent of the Corning-Painted Post public schools, Donald B. Trombley -- who called Corning a petri dish for Dr. Glasser's theories -- said, ''When I think about relationships, I ask myself, ''Am I bringing you closer to me or am I pushing you away?' ''
Dr. Glasser estimates that about 1,000 people in Corning have read his book, ''Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom'' (Harper Perennial, 1998). So far, about a quarter of the teachers in the district have been trained in choice theory, and all freshmen in one of the city's two high schools learn about it in their ''high school success'' class.
The Corning Senior Center is offering the theory in a support group for women. The Steuben County jail is holding workshops in choice theory for its inmates. The pastor of a Baptist church asks all couples in pre-marriage counseling to read the first five chapters of another Glasser book, ''Getting Together and Staying Together.'' And, in nearby Addison, a parenting workshop lays out the ''deadly habits'' of criticizing and blaming as well as the ''caring habits'' of encouraging, negotiating and accepting.
Debbie Finamore-Flint, an assistant principal in the Addison Central School District, said she and her husband had benefited from a ''peaceful parenting'' class that provided a model, based on choice theory, for raising their 3-year-old daughter, Catherine. ''The workshops have changed even the language in our home,'' Mrs. Finamore-Flint said. ''Whereas before we might have said, 'That was a dumb thing, you know better than that,' we now say, 'What are you going to do to make it better?' or 'What could you have done to prevent that?' ''
Then there is Pat Carlineo, 38, who said his life was turned around by the choice-theory workshops he attended in the county jail, where he was sentenced for driving while intoxicated when he was on probation for torching a motorboat he had owned with a former girlfriend. ''I realized I was an adult and thought, 'Geez, I've got children and when am I going to get a grip on life and set an example,' '' said Mr. Carlineo, a guitarist who has formed two bands since leaving jail. ''I accept that my life isn't a Disney film,'' he said, ''there are going to be times when I slip up. But I think I have the tools now to deal with everyday pressure.''
Still, some residents find the whole enterprise a bit suspect, if not silly.
Megan O'Neil-Haight, owner of a preschool program in Corning, detects a paradox in the school district's taking on choice theory. A plan for the district calls for the incorporation of the theory into the entire curriculum, from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. ''To implement that with a broad brush without having been given choices about other programs,'' she said, ''I find that particularly ironic.''
School officials counter with the argument that choice theory is not being forced on anyone: teachers have been encouraged but not required to receive training.
Other criticism has come from parents who worry that giving young people more freedom and control over their lives could lead to trouble. Advocates of choice theory argue, however, that it encourages children to take responsibility for their actions and accept consequences.
Gary A. McCaslin, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Painted Post, said of some critics, ''They have their radar up.''
''It's a misunderstanding of what the basic tenets are,'' he said. ''If the only thing you hear is that you can't force people to do things, there are people in the conservative Christian church who will make the leap and say, 'Oh, kids can do anything they want,' but that's not choice theory.''
Most support for the initiative has come from the school district, which has lent office space to the project's few employees. Financial help has come from foundations and from Corning Incorporated, which despite its major role in the community quietly contributed $200,000 but has not asked employees to take part in the training.
Some here consider Dr. Glasser a visionary whose views on human nature are profound in their simplicity. Others say he is an idealist whose pop psychology is merely simplistic. Dr. Glasser, who has been quite successful, has one book, ''Reality Therapy,'' published in 1965, that has sold about a million copies. He also founded the William Glasser Institute in Chatsworth, Calif., which trains educators, therapists and others around the world.
When asked whether his prescription of the ''caring habits'' might be construed as naïve, Dr. Glasser said: ''It doesn't go against human nature, but it goes against what everyone believes. I am naïve. I've made a good living being naïve, and people listen to me.''
Most mental-health professionals say there is nothing particularly startling or even original about Dr. Glasser's views on personal responsibility and relationships. Rather, he has popularized and expounded on theories set out decades ago by thinkers like the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, the psychologist Abraham Maslow and the psychotherapist Carl Rogers.
''It's apple pie,'' said Dr. Frank J. Bourke, a psychologist who serves on the project's steering committee, of Dr. Glasser's theories. 'It's mainstream clinical opinion.'
Where Dr. Glasser parts company with most of his fellow psychiatrists is on mental illness. He contends that all mental illness is chosen, even schizophrenia and manic depression. And he does not believe in prescribing medication for any psychiatric disorder, which, in this pharmacologic era, is a bit like a surgeon who refuses to use a knife.
Dr. Glasser explains the symptoms of schizophrenia as behaviors that an individual chooses when one or more of the four human needs is not being met, and he has amply identified those needs in his writing as freedom, power, fun and a sense of love and belonging. ''Choice theory is about basic needs,'' he said, ''and if you can't satisfy them you're going to be unhappy, so the creative parts of our brain create schizophrenia and manic depression.''
The people behind the Choice Community Project do a delicate dance around Dr. Glasser's views on mental illness, for obvious reasons. ''I have stayed in safe territory, territory where I know that choice theory works, which is in schools, home life, married life and prisons,'' said Ms. Hayes-O'Brien, the project's director.
Researchers at Syracuse University's School of Education are studying the Corning project and trying to gauge its success by looking at recidivism rates in the county jail, as well as school-dropout rates and the incidence of domestic violence. But charting improvements in a community's quality of life, a somewhat fuzzy notion to begin with, can be tricky.
The city's fortunes rise and fall with those of Corning Incorporated. In the last year, the company has shaken the community with two rounds of layoffs, and the stock price has been in a free fall.
''Even in a place like Corning, which is a ways away from any other place, if the quality of life goes up, is it because the company ended up with lots more contracts and invited more people back?'' said Phil Doughty, an associate professor in the department of instructional design, development and evaluation at Syracuse University's School of Education. ''If people have jobs, they feel good,'' he said.
Still, Dr. Trombley, the superintendent of schools, said fewer students have been suspended since the introduction of choice theory. ''School districts,'' he said, ''are probably the slowest organizations to make changes, so when you take an initiative like this, it's a very long process.''
Dr. Trombley said he would like to see the district's involvement extend well into the future, for ''10, 20, 30, 40 years -- until you think it no longer has value.''
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0CE1DB1030F931A25754C0A9649C8B63
The article I will be using is:
Talking CCTV cameras will order thugs to start behaving
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/
article-23391611-details/Talking+
CCTV+cameras+will+order+thugs+to+
start+behaving/article.do
I will be doing:
Lesson One: No Orwellian Language
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7247160.stm
In George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-four the terms “Doublethink” and “Newspeak” are read often. In the novel Doublethink is defined as “ The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously , and accepting both of them.” Where as Newspeak is defined as “ A constant process of slimming down language in order to limit peoples ability to communicate and ultimately think.
Doublethink is a term which was thought to remained/be confined in the novel Nineteen Eighty-four. But as the years go by the same term is being widely used in our society. The Doublethink theory is not only being practiced in the government itself but in all areas of society as well.
Sometimes I even think that there are some people who have the mindset just like Winston somewhere around the world and they are the people who unwillingly have to edit the truth and help the government manipulate/make people believe what they want them to believe.
In the novel , the Ministry of Peace is exactly what Alex Jones describes as “Ministry of Defence” and they are supposed to have a striking resemblance. They are both fighting a war and attacking in order to gain peace/defence , which does not make sense at all.
After reading the book and trying to relate it to life in general I think that although we may not realise it , while we speak , we do not realise the actual words that come out of our mouth , but we slowly are all beginning to Doublethink and that would slowly overthrow our society.
The Article:
Doublethink - 1984 Today
September 29th 2006 15:57
George Orwell (Wikipedia)
The term 'doublethink' originates in George Orwell's 1984 and along with 'newspeak' (a constant process of slimming down language in order to limit peoples ability to communicate and ultimately think) is an essential part of the 'Big Brother' society. In the novel, doublethink is defined as "The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them."
One of the main reasons doublethink is so necessary is that it allows the masses to accept being slaves to the system and under total surveillance, while considering themselves free and independent. Party slogans from the book such as "Freedom is Slavery, War is Peace" are typical examples of this, convincing the characters that in order to have the freedom of a civilized society they are required to be slaves to their dictatorial regime. It enables Winston (the protagonist of the book) to work at the 'Ministry of Truth', the governments propaganda machine, doctoring old newspaper stories to support whatever the government is claiming while still believing the claims to be true.
Alex Jones (Wikipedia)
In Alex Jones' documentary 'Terrorstorm: A History of Government Sponsored Terrorism' the film-makers interview random people on the streets of London about their views on recent terror attacks and the war on terror in general. The amount of people that respond instinctively with classic doublethink-style logic is positively alarming. The most extreme example was a woman who believed "we should give up our liberty for freedom", seemingly unaware that they are both the same thing!
It appears that doublethink is no longer confined to the pages of Orwell's prophetic novel but is becoming a prevalent part of our language. Below are some common examples of the way doublethink is used in our society:
UN Peacekeeping Forces (Wikipedia)
Fighting for peace - This is a ridiculous concept. As comedian George Carlin once said “Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity” (source thinkexist.com). Fighting, or any form of conflict, is obviously the very thing that stands in the way of peace.
Peace-keeping Forces - Peace keeping forces are those troops left in a country to help enforce a particular regime. The very fact that a military presence is required would suggest that there is no peace there to 'keep'.
Ministry of Defence - The Ministry of Defence bears striking resemblance to Orwell's 'Ministry of Peace' not only in the classic use of doublethink in the name but also in its actions. Both are primarily concerned with warfare and seem to spend the majority of their time and efforts dealing in attack and invasion as opposed to the implied defence or peace.
Holy War - I am not a religious scholar of any kind but as far I am aware all major religions preach a message of peace and have some variation of the 'Love thy neighbour' commandment. No religion promotes violence or killing, so it seems to me that for a war to be considered 'holy' is a contradiction in terms.
Giving up our rights in the name of freedom - This is possibly the most relevant aspect of doublethink in our society today. With Orwellian surveillance on every corner and acts such as 'The Patriot Act', we are being asked to give up the very freedoms that 'The War on Terror' is alleged to protect, and all in the name of freedom. If that isn't doublethink, I dont know what is.
These are just a few examples off the top of my head. If anyone can think of anymore to add to the list, please let me know
Relevant Links:
1984 by George Orwell at Amazon
Infowars article on Doublethink in London
Watch Alex Jones' 'Terrorstorm'
Wikipedia article on Doublethink
Two worlds edging closer
The slogan of the Party in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, is now being secretly used in today’s world. Also the process of doublethink is used in our world to make us feel better about certain things, like the ministry of defense, or peace, for wars. These striking resemblances to Nineteen Eighty-Four make the world a scarier place if you can see the connections. In the article Bush’s Orwellian Address Happy New Year: It’s 1984; it shows a few of these similarities between the party’s slogan and the result of the September 11th terrorist attacks in the United States.
The first part of the Party’s slogan is war is peace. This is explained in the book that if there is a permanent war being fought it becomes less dangerous, “But when war becomes literally continuous, it also ceases to be dangerous.” (Orwell 206). If war ceases to be dangerous then it becomes peaceful or if peace ceases to be peaceful it becomes war. Also a constant war creates a common enemy that an entire population can see and this causes the population to easily choose to give power to a small group of people. This passing of power is given because the general population becomes afraid of what the enemy will do to them and no decisions will be made to eliminate the enemy because of the different ideas of how to achieve the victory will cause disorder and chaos throughout the country. It is at this time that a small group of people united in their belief of how to defeat an enemy come forth and take power. This truly becomes something to fear when remembering President George Bush’s announcement for the war on terrorism, “George Bush effectively declared permanent war – war without temporal or geographical limits; war without clear goals; war against a vaguely defined and constantly shifting enemy.” (Levich). The war on terrorism as defined by Bush in his speech sounds very similar to the constant war being fought in Oceania. It will never end because of the vast area of space that will have to be invaded to defeat them and that there is no end or limit at which they will stop to destroy terrorism. The very thing that is needed to create a totalitarian state is already happening, now we must be watchful to see if our democracy will turn into totalitarianism.
The second part of the slogan states that freedom is slavery. With no means of comparison for the society they were living in, in Nineteen Eighty-Four, they would not believe that anything was wrong, “so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed.” (Orwell 216). Since the proles have no way of knowing that their standard of living is utterly terrible, they do not revolt or even notice how they are being treated. The proles cannot notice that their freedoms have been taken away because they do not know that their freedoms have been taken away let alone know what those freedoms are. Unlike in the United States, they at least know which freedoms are being taken, although they are being taken with the use of doublethink; “To save freedom, the warmongers intend to destroy it.” (Levich). With the USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act) the government is allowed to know the intricate details of your life without you even knowing that it is happening. This is a very important difference between our world and that of Nineteen Eighty-Four, we have standards of comparison; unless we stop this slow reduction of our freedoms we will be worshipping a Big Brother-like figurehead.
The third part of the slogan, ignorance is strength, relies on the unwillingness to discover the truth. As Winston thinks in Nineteen Eighty-Four, “He understands how; he did not understand why.” (Orwell 226). This is a very crucial part to understand. With different ruling parties there are different reasons for taking control. Once you understand why things happen you are given a greater view of that thing. Sometimes you are explained why a certain event happened and you believe it because it comes from a supposed credible source. The only problem with that is if the source’s job is to deceive you and keep you in the dark. This brings up a big question about the September 11th terrorist attacks, why did they do it and do we know the truth, “we are not to be allowed to understand the reasons underlying the horrifying crimes of September 11.” (Levich). If we were to understand the reasons behind the attacks, there may be a chance that we sympathize with them and do not feel the need to have the current head of power lead us and make the decisions for us. Once again we know how they did it but not why they did it and we will never know for certain because it is easier to wage war against an enemy you cannot compare to than to one you can.
With the attacks of September 11th, the United States has moved ever closer to an Orwellian society. This is just in the States alone; there are many other countries that followed them as they declared war on terrorism. As long as we stand here twiddling our thumbs we will keep advancing towards the perfect Orwellian Society. With the help of George Orwell and his book, Nineteen Eighty-Four the dangers of the world are more apparent and even scarier. With no end in sight for the war on terrorism we can only dream of what kind of future we will have. Only our choice of whether or not enough people will notice these things will determine it.
Article:
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.
Sources:
Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. Penguin Books. 1949.
Levich, Jacob. "Bush's Orwellian Address Happy New Year: It's 1984." 2001. 17 Apr 2008. http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0922-07.htm.
Oceania Invades China...
In George Orwell’s epic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the citizens of Oceania are subjected to a totalitarian society, run by a mysterious figurehead by the name of Big Brother. The ideas presented in the novel reflect real life situations, such as the Nazi rule in Germany by Hitler, the rule of Stalin in Russia, and most recently the communist Chinese rule over Tibet. The rules of the Chinese government are nearly identical to those used by INGSOC in Nineteen Eighty-Four. The Tibetans are being violently oppressed by the Chinese government for rebelling. The Tibetans are being very poorly treated and have been revolting. These people have been treated similarly to the habitants of Oceania. The way their rights have been taken away, the propaganda they have been subjected to, and the functioning of the government are almost identical to that of Oceania.
The democratic rights the people of Tibet have are very much the same as the people of Oceania. The similarity is that they have none. The Tibetans have no freedom of speech, and if they protest they will be terminated. This compares to the way the citizens of Oceania are forced to live. For example, the main character Winston Smith, keeps a diary. This is forbidden by the government, and as he explains “if detected it was reasonably certain that it would be punished by death” (p. 8). The government in Nineteen Eighty-Four is trying to prevent the citizens from being human, and it is natural to rebel because humans do not like being oppressed. The Tibetans are very much in the same boat because as humans they cannot tolerate being exploited. If being oppressed is not enough, the Tibetans must deal with the consequences of protesting. Brutal beatings and deaths are all part of the punishments for the Tibetans. The Chinese police are very similar to the Thought Police in Oceania. If a citizen commits a crime, the Thought Police would arrest them during the night and take them into captivity. Any record of them would be destroyed, and as Winston states, “you were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word” (p. 21). Winston goes on to explain that the Thought Police would shoot you in the back of the neck. This relates back to the violent ways the Chinese police deal with the Tibetans. It is clear that both the Tibetans and citizens of Oceania are oppressed ridiculously. They are not only being forced to live horribly, but the governments are preventing them from being human.
In both societies, there is a main inspiration for the revolting against the government. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Emanuel Goldstein is the main enemy of the Party. He is the leader of the Brotherhood, a secret faction which is against INGSOC. Winston describes Goldstein as “the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party’s purity” (p.14). Goldstein’s traits are comparable to those of the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader of the Tibetans, and like Goldstein, is hated by the ruling government. The Dalai Lama is greatly supporting the Tibetan revolts as the people look to him as inspiration. The government despises the Dalai Lama, and has called him an evil spirit. The government has forced the Tibetans to go to classes where they criticize the Dalai Lama and enforce the rule of the government. This same tactic is used by the Party in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Their procedure is called the Two Minutes Hate. During this process the citizens would sit in front of a telescreen and yell and scream at the images which would be put on. As Winston clarifies, “the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure” (p.14). The governments both in Oceania and China are attempting to brainwash the citizens to believe that Goldstein and the Dalai Lama, respectively, are the enemies. This is all propaganda put forth by the governments to try and strengthen the support of the people. Evidently, the Dalai Lama and Goldstein have played similar roles, as they are leaders in the revolts against the ruling parties. The governments try to silence them, but struggle to put an end to their supporters.
It is apparent that the ruling governments in Oceania and China are very similar. Not only because of their similar tactics and regulations, but their contradictory policies as well. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, a common word used is doublethink. Doublethink refers to having two contradictory ideas but accept both of them. In China, the government will release false information to better fit their agenda. They will explain that the Tibetans have freedom to their religion, but yet the Monks are forced to attend the classes where the criticism of the Dalai Lama occurs. This is mirrored in the slogan of the Party, “War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength” (p.6). The policies held by both governments are doublethink. The parties themselves are doublethink. It is ironic how a party can be against the idea of doublethink, but at the same time be a prime example of it. The systems being run in China and Oceania are nearly one and the same as the views they are in opposition to are things their party is built upon.
As absurd as it may sound, a society depicted in Nineteen Eighty-Four has taken shape in the real world. The Chinese government is controlling the Tibetan people the same way INGSOC is controlling the people of Oceania. They have minimal rights and are being refused their humanity. The purpose of Orwell’s novel was to make sure a world he was writing about never came to life. It is very unfortunate and also scary because without the world knowing, it may slowly be turning into a similar dystopia. It may already be too late as the violence in Tibet could be the start of something worse to come.
Works Cited
Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. London: Penguin Books, 1990.
Beijing 2008 and Tibet: The Orwellian Games
By Chris McGowan
It's 1984 all over again, and I don't mean the '84 Olympic games in Los Angeles. China's recent behavior following Tibetan unrest and calls for the region's independence seems straight out of George Orwell's novel, with its "Big Brother," double-speak, and thought control.
When protesters disrupted the Olympic-flame procession in London, the whole world watched -- except for Chinese television viewers, who witnessed an absolutely serene, protest-free journey of the torch. Not a "Free Tibet" banner in sight.
Along with massive censorship and cyber-policing at home, China indulges in propaganda so absurd it would be funny if the consequences weren't tragic. Tibet communist party boss Zhang Qingli called the Dalai Lama "an evil spirit with a human face and the heart of a beast." Well, he also has a Nobel Prize and innumerable statements urging dialogue, non-violence, autonomy and human rights. Evidently, those are beastly goals.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu held a press conference on April 8. He stated that the Tibetan people enjoy "democratic rights," "freedom of religious belief is protected in Tibet," and "a handful of rioters and outlaws could not speak for the Tibetan people." Such claims may play well among information-starved residents of Shanghai and Beijing, but not in Peoria or Paris.
Democratic rights in the world's biggest police state, run by a totalitarian regime? The Tibetans are ruled by the Beijing government; they have no freedom of speech, political autonomy or self-determination. The "freedom of religious belief" line is equally ludicrous, and somehow it doesn't harmonize with Tibetan Buddhist monks being forced to attend "re-education" classes that (surprise) denounce the Dalai Lama and praise Chinese rule. And, that "handful of rioters" is certainly raising a ruckus. Similarly, according to the Apr. 14 international edition of Newsweek, when over 100,000 Uighurs recently staged a protest in Hetian in China, the city-government web site termed them a "tiny number" of people representing the forces of "separatism, terrorism and extremism."
From Orwell's Pocket Beijing Dictionary, 2008 edition:
Dissent = lies.
Censorship = elimination of lies.
Protests = terrorism.
Many political protesters = small band of hoodlums.
Totalitarian = democratic.
Re-education = freedom of religious belief.
Suppression = harmony.
Ignoring China's politics = undisturbed growth in global economy.
So, how far do we have to go to protect the Olympic spirit? Do we stage the Olympics in any nation, no matter how undemocratic their government, no matter how dark their human-rights record? Should the Olympic Games be held in Sudan, despite Darfur? Should they be held in North Korea? Could Saddam Hussein have hosted them? Or Idi Amin? If a nation similar to Nazi Germany (who held the Games in '36) appeared in the future, would they be acceptable hosts this time around? I think most people would say no to all of those choices. So why was China given the games?
The Olympic Games are supposed to promote "human dignity," and should be staged in countries that respect human rights and self-determination. They shouldn't be held in totalitarian nations with abuses of liberty similar to those in Orwell's 1984.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-mcgowan/beijing-2008-tibet-the-or_b_95897.html
I'll be doing:
Big Brother on the verge of becoming boring.
http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?index=5&did=1351265781&SrchMode=1&sid=2&Fmt=3&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1208747187&clientId=45626
By:Anonymous
The society portrayed in nineteen eighty-four deals with irregular concepts, the citizens of are constantly being controlled and denied the truth. They are manipulated and convinced so strongly about unrealistic theories. In a society like this it is difficult to defend that anyone is free, always being watched, controlled and brainwashed. This way of life can be compared to an event that takes place seventeen years later. In an article published in 2001 by Jacob Levich, it states that George Bush announces that an interminable war will begin. This means a war with no end, no purpose, no strategy, no permanent enemy. The principles of Oceania lurk within Bush’s declaration and reasoning for this war. War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. These governing theories can all be identified in this statement of war.
War is peace. This statement destroys peace by metaphorically using it to describe war. Real peace lies away from a world of war and destruction and within a world of love and respect. War reflects power, the ability to control people and whole countries. In nineteen eighty-four, citizens are forced to accept permanent war between Oceania and Eastasia or Eurasia. In this recent article, the citizens are also expected to recognize this war as a part of their daily life. Being expected to accept this war as something normal, people are being trained to believe it actually is peace. As told by Bush, people are to “live our lives and hug our children”. The fact that many innocent people will be engaged in a constant state of massacre seems to be flushed through these people’s minds as they accept this war as “normal”.
Freedom is slavery. Bush states, “freedom itself is under attack”. This is a bold statement to make after declaring war, which completely denies a country of their freedom. He is saying that soon the government will be allowing no privacy to people. Their approach on how to prevent this and save their freedom is to destroy it completely. This approach does not seem as convincing as they may believe. If you take away a person’s freedom, it is in their human nature to rebel. Similarly to the main character in the novel, Winston, all humans demonstrate characteristics that allow them to rebel against such restrictions. If you are confined in a society like the one in nineteen eighty-four, you will naturally begin to rebel as per your human nature.
Ignorance is strength. The concept of this is the less people know in a society like nineteen eighty-four, the better off they will be. People do not understand the reasoning for this new war but they do not deny it because they do not want to get too involved. In Bush’s speech, he promotes an Orwellian future that includes never-ending war, no truth and absolute control over society. There are many ways that people can fight against this and luckily they will have the time and space to refuse to accept this Orwellian future.
These three concepts and this event allow people to see that George Orwell’s novel can portray realistic ideals of a society. Society’s should work together to strive for peace, freedom and strength all without war, slavery and ignorance.
Works Cited:
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.
Jacob Levich (jlevich@earthlink.net) is an writer, editor, and activist living in Queens, New York.
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0922-07.htm
The world we live in today is oblivious to the fact that we have a “big brother” over us. But the true reality is we are being monitored 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. At this point we are being told to like it.
Based on this article there is a ‘ministry of truth’ under control of big brother who uses lies to suits it strategic goals as it is in both George Orwell’s, Nineteen eighty four and reality. This is presented through the image of President Bush. His ever-watchful eye plays a heavy role in our streets as there are thousands of cameras monitoring our everyday moves.
Nineteen eighty four is shown as a depicted as a political novel used to warn readers of a totalitarian Government. Big brother commands the support of the people casing an infallible leader. With bush taking the stand as president he has taking the modern day role of Big brother, by intensifying his execution of powers since Nixon.
Concluding this article is trying to present the fact the there is no turning back at this point and we must accept our current state and Learn to love big brother.
Article:
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.
Daniel Kurtzman is a San Francisco writer and former Washington political correspondent.
What IS Education?
An article from BBC News featured the voice of a man whose passion is of teaching. Professor Richard Pring of Oxford University continuously questions the definition of education in today’s society because of the corruption that has plagued his profession. He points out that, “education has been taken over by an ‘Orwellian Language’ which has started to control the way we think and act” (http://news.bbc.co.uk).
His reference to George Orwell, author of Nineteen Eighty-Four, gives us the possibility to correlate the novel to reality. Proffessor Pring tries to inform not only students, but teachers and people of our world that the world of Winston Smith in Oceania is slowly being brought to life by our society. Just as in the novel, the mind-control in today’s society starts early through the innocent and naive minds of children: the poisonous desire for power is being fed through their education. He brings awareness to the fact that the government, specifically of the United Kingdom, has changed the purpose of education. The current purpose of education is to continue to provide employees to the endless cycle of supply-and-demand of the industries rather than teaching not only informative but meaningful life lessons that people could use in their daily lives. Similarly, in Orwell’s novel, children are taught how to be junior espionages so that their future purpose is well served for the Party and Big Brother. The Party ensures that there are many potential additions to their useless and tiring lies by influencing them at an early age. Professor Pring says that “we now have enterprise [or a systematic activity directed towards profit] as a compulsory part of the school curriculum, while history, geography and foreign languages are no longer required after the after the age of fourteen” (http://news.bbc.co.uk). His statement brings out the truth that strive and looking for ways on how to better our country’s economy are the main intentions of today’s education.
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the aim of their language of Newspeak was “to narrow the range of thought [and cause] the range of consciousness [to be] always a little smaller” (pg. 55). Professor Pring notes that, “the language we use shape the answers to the question: What is education for?” (http://news.bbc.co.uk). With regards to today’s society, the mentality of the people are shaped into this perfect model into which all people must conform to. Since today’s education disregards the value of practical, hands-on learning and creativity, it proves that there has been a change in the value and definition of education. The government views that every student must learn the same way (emphasizing conformity) and strive for the same thing: value-for-money (emphasizing mob-mentality). These statements show that students are discouraged to express their individuality and uniqueness, and “imply that there is an exact specification for the finished product [which is the future employees]” (http://news.bbc.co.uk) which all revert back to the supply-and demand idea. The novel also contains a similar scenario that Goldstein wrote in his book, “What kind of people would control this world had been equally obvious […] [they are] made up for the most part of scientists, technicians, trade-union organisers, publicity experts […] and professional politicians who are hungrier for pure power” (pg.213-214). He also mentions that in order to become the professions that he mentioned, citizens of Oceania have to take an examination at the age of sixteen. Since the government controls education, “[they] can twist reality into whatever shape they choose” (pg. 207) which proves true both in the novel as well as reality.
This article along with Orwell’s novel help students reassess their views of the world around them differently. It helps their minds formulate questions and thoughts such as to why the subjects only focus on certain topics or why universities only favour academic subjects. It helps them realize or ask themselves as to why they pick specific subjects, or go into different fields going into university. The two texts offer a truth to enlighten what our world has become: a world and a life that lacks meaning and of fulfillment. As well, it more importantly emphasizes the seriousness of our education.
Knowledge is truly power, and with that power enters the possibility of danger. The danger lies from “continuously moulding the consciousness both of the directing group and of the larger executive group that lies immediately below it” (pg. 216). It means that the if the minds of the influential are corrupt, their people and predecessors will also be corrupt. Professor Richard Pring preaches that if the mind is shaped into a negative mould, our society would end up living in the reality of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Therefore, we should re-evaluate the importance and purpose of our education; we should realize that it is not to provide our society with workers to boom the economy, but rather to make the world a better place to live, not only for us, but for the future generations to come.
Works cited:
Orwell, George.Nineteen Eighty-Four.England: Penguin , 1949
Baker, Mike. “Lesson One: No Orwellian Language“. BBC News (UK). 16 February 2008 [online]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7247160.stm
Lesson one: no Orwellian language
Censorship and government control are two key themes in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Winston lives in a society that revolves around absolute control of their citizens, and much of this control is seen through censorship of independent thought. The Party censors the people by brainwashing them in such a way as to give them no reason for independent thought, through re-writing history and correcting statements in order to support the government. The Party must control its citizens, and to do this, they must effectively rid their country of any independent or human-like thought.
The near-absolute governmental control seen in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is being mimicked in today’s world. Throughout Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Party takes every open opportunity to promote their campaigns, and look down upon the thoughts of any opposition. A similar situation is now unfolding in China, where the government has blocked YouTube.com. Videos of civil unrest in Tibet were released over this web-site, and because of this, China has blocked access to the site for internet users. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the government made attempts to remove any outside knowledge of their ongoing war in order to feed the public information that they were indeed winning. China’s situation is alarmingly similar to that of Oceania’s, as they both show the respective governments exerting their control over what society can be informed about.
Oceania’s war is ongoing, and while the Party has the people believing that Oceania is indeed winning, the reality of the war is unknown to the citizens. Such is the same as China in regards to the civil unrest in Tibet. The videos broadcasted over YouTube.com held information that, if released into China’s population, could raise questions that the Chinese government doesn’t want answered. China and Oceania must both censor their people in order to hide the reality of their states.
China has not only blocked YouTube.com, in fact China installed the “Great Firewall”, which is used to control what internet-users can access. This firewall monitors websites visited by Chinese citizens, and it is also equipped with a keyword blocker. Any specific words or phrases that are blocked will not be accessible to the user, thus limiting their ability to obtain information that may be harmful to China’s reputation or stability. China’s internet cafés are also equipped with surveillance cameras and programs, used to observe what users are viewing. Programs on the internet café’s computers are also set to take screen shots of a user’s screen at specific time periods, which offers the government an opportunity to filter out any harmful material.
The article also talks about other Asian countries that have placed firewalls and nation-wide blocks on certain web-sites. The internet is only accessible by certain individuals in countries such as North Korea, where very little outside information is allowed into the country. Other countries such as Turkmenistan have completely blocked the internet for almost any individual, and Iran has established a law that requires blogging sites and bloggers themselves to register with the authorities.
Countries such as China or Orwell’s Oceania have used their absolute power to remove any outside influence on their people. Blocking web-sites or correcting government speeches, both the fictional world of Nineteen Eighty-Four and the modern day world share surprisingly similar methods of keeping their respective societies free of independent thought. Disabling a society from obtaining any news that may cloud their views towards their government results in the societies becoming brainwashed with the notion that their government is correct, and ultimately results in total domination over human-society.
China is 1984
Rebecca Forbes
Issue date: 3/31/08
On Sunday, March 16, China blocked its Internet users from accessing YouTube.com after videos of the protests in Tibet were found on the site. This is being seen as another move by the Chinese government to exert control over the public's observation of the unrest in Tibet.
The protests began Monday, March 17 by hundreds of monks, according to a time line created by CNN. It was the 49th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising against Beijing rule, which caused the Dalai Lama to be exiled.
Protests by several groups continued and many arrests were made, including approximately 500 students from Tibet University in the days following the anniversary. In addition, the protests became violent on Friday, March 24 in Lhasa, Tibet's capital.
BBC reported that Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has accused the Dalai Lama of "masterminding" the protests against Chinese rule, an assertion the Dalai Lama denies. In addition, the Dalai Lama has stated that an end to the violence is needed. He said he would resign as head of Tibet's government-in-exile if the situation escalates further.
China has been censoring information on the Internet for some time now. In 2006, China created the Great Firewall, which is, according to one BBC article, "an estimated 30,000-strong Internet police force" used to control and monitor what citizens see and know. The article also reported that a type of "keyword blocking technology" was being employed to block access to "offending sites." The article noted that China's 110,000 internet cafés are "highly regulated and state-licensed" and are all equipped with surveillance.
China is not the only country to block YouTube. In a March 2007 article, the BBC reported that Turkey blocked the site by court order after clips were shown that were said to have insulted the memory of the nation's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
The Internet is monitored in several other countries. In North Korea, access is available only to certain government officials and only on connections rented from China. In Turkmenistan, availability is denied to almost everyone. Furthermore, computers in internet cafés in Burma automatically take screenshots every five minutes to monitor what people are seeing. BBC also reported that in January 2007, Iran enacted a new law "requiring bloggers to register their sites with the authorities."
Journalism major Helen Kwon, 20, was surprised to hear about China's block of the site. "The people's opinion should be heard."
Journalism student Evelisse Luciano, 22, was not surprised by China's recent actions, noting that even though China blocked YouTube, the issue will still be known to the people.
Erika Fermin, a 19-year-old political science major, was equally unsurprised. "They believe the nation should have one voice. It's understandable to have a nation be united, but they shouldn't sacrifice the voices of others who want good change."
http://media.www.theticker.org/media/storage/paper909/news/2008/03/31/News/China.Is.1984-3291488.shtml
O’er The Land of Slavery
Who is watching over us? If it were a spiritual God that would be a way for one person to remember that they are not bigger than everyone or everything else in the world. If it were a parent that would be a way for one person to receive guidance to support them with their problems. If it were an unfamiliar person then there is a complete disturbance and paranoia over who is monitoring or who else could be monitoring the living citizen. In a fictional novel the characters or events in the plot are never real but the ideas that the author places are indeed existent. In George Orwell’s, Nineteen Eighty-Four, the novel is structured in a dystopian vision which carries ideas that have been found strikingly familiar towards our own society. From James Risen’s article, Bush Signs Law to Widen Reach for Wiretapping, it has been recognizable to the world Winston Smith lives in.
With the threat of terrorist attacks upon the U.S. grounds George W. Bush signed a law that gives the U.S. government the ability to eavesdrop without any sort of warrant on international phone calls and email messages made to or from American citizens. The American government or national intelligence agencies will receive the power and authority to spy on international communications without the citizens knowing if they are listening to the conversations or not. This seems to be a bit familiar towards Nineteen Eighty-Four “There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork.” (pg.4-5).
Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, gives reasoning for the signing of this law “he stressed that the objective of the new law is to give the government greater flexibility in focusing on foreign suspects overseas, not to go after Americans”. Of course that is Bush’s democratic view to present a fair reason to the people of the nation but that is not the point; it’s not the safety precaution that their making for the American people that seems disruptive it is the power and freedom they are taking away from their citizens. Once again this seems a bit familiar towards Nineteen Eighty-Four “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.” (Pg.55). The Party is influencing people to believe that the intellect in having thought, the educated imagination, will give people the power to embark on ideas against the Party thus committing treachery and destroying their society. This is just like the actions the United States are making. The U.S. are creating a paradox as they take away the privacy, a part that makes us live freely, of one’s conversation with another and influencing the people living in the U.S. nation that this law is ensuring the protection towards their citizens.
The slogans that the Party makes are a paradox for example “Freedom Is Slavery”. The Party stands that individuals are better off in their present time rather than the capitalist past. How is taking away an individuals freedom, a part that makes us live freely, help prove that there are living better in the present than in the past. While the United States of America has a part in their national anthem, The Star Spangled Banner, which states it is the land of freedom “O’er the land of the free”. How is taking a humans’ privacy help prove that they are living in the land of freedom but sure enough there are still people who stand for it. Perhaps that is their patriotic duty towards their country or “our duty to the Party” (pg.70).
Fratto states that the legislative decision is “It’s foreign, that’s the point … What you want to make sure is that you are getting the foreign target”. That’s interesting because the American government doesn’t explain the whereabouts of these foreign terrorists or their identity. Are these individuals real? When Osama Bin Laden was accused for being the absolute threat and traitor to American society then why is it that this man can post videos of himself and send them to the American media and yet the authorities don’t have any clue to his whereabouts. Maybe the imaginative character, Emmanuel Goldstein, will be the next individual accused for being a traitor to the United States.
We stand to believe that we are making our lives easily better because were constantly told that it is but do we really feel that better off from then to now. Take this into consideration then; as we proceed in educating ourselves through novels, such as Nineteen Eighty-Four, “literature not only leads us toward the regaining of identity, but it also separates this state from its opposite, the world we don’t like and want to get away from.” (Frye, Educated Imagination, pg 31). In the end the true reason towards Bush’s snooping law will never be set into one direct colour because the truth is a belief that has many faces fitting for more than one person.
Article used:
Bush Signs Law to Widen Reach for Wiretapping
By JAMES RISEN
Published: August 6, 2007
WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 — President Bush signed into law on Sunday legislation that broadly expanded the government’s authority to eavesdrop on the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens without warrants.
Congressional aides and others familiar with the details of the law said that its impact went far beyond the small fixes that administration officials had said were needed to gather information about foreign terrorists. They said seemingly subtle changes in legislative language would sharply alter the legal limits on the government’s ability to monitor millions of phone calls and e-mail messages going in and out of the United States.
They also said that the new law for the first time provided a legal framework for much of the surveillance without warrants that was being conducted in secret by the National Security Agency and outside the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that is supposed to regulate the way the government can listen to the private communications of American citizens.
“This more or less legalizes the N.S.A. program,” said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington, who has studied the new legislation.
Previously, the government needed search warrants approved by a special intelligence court to eavesdrop on telephone conversations, e-mail messages and other electronic communications between individuals inside the United States and people overseas, if the government conducted the surveillance inside the United States.
Today, most international telephone conversations to and from the United States are conducted over fiber-optic cables, and the most efficient way for the government to eavesdrop on them is to latch on to giant telecommunications switches located in the United States.
By changing the legal definition of what is considered “electronic surveillance,” the new law allows the government to eavesdrop on those conversations without warrants — latching on to those giant switches — as long as the target of the government’s surveillance is “reasonably believed” to be overseas.
For example, if a person in Indianapolis calls someone in London, the National Security Agency can eavesdrop on that conversation without a warrant, as long as the N.S.A.’s target is the person in London.
Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, said Sunday in an interview that the new law went beyond fixing the foreign-to-foreign problem, potentially allowing the government to listen to Americans calling overseas.
But he stressed that the objective of the new law is to give the government greater flexibility in focusing on foreign suspects overseas, not to go after Americans.
“It’s foreign, that’s the point,” Mr. Fratto said. “What you want to make sure is that you are getting the foreign target.”
The legislation to change the surveillance act was rushed through both the House and Senate in the last days before the August recess began.
The White House’s push for the change was driven in part by a still-classified ruling earlier this year by the special intelligence court, which said the government needed to seek court-approved warrants to monitor those international calls going through American switches.
The new law, which is intended as a stopgap and expires in six months, also represents a power shift in terms of the oversight and regulation of government surveillance.
The new law gives the attorney general and the director of national intelligence the power to approve the international surveillance, rather than the special intelligence court. The court’s only role will be to review and approve the procedures used by the government in the surveillance after it has been conducted. It will not scrutinize the cases of the individuals being monitored.
The law also gave the administration greater power to force telecommunications companies to cooperate with such spying operations. The companies can now be compelled to cooperate by orders from the attorney general and the director of national intelligence.
Democratic Congressional aides said Sunday that some telecommunications company officials had told Congressional leaders that they were unhappy with that provision in the bill and might challenge the new law in court. The aides said the telecommunications companies had told lawmakers that they would rather have a court-approved warrant ordering them to comply.
In fact, pressure from the telecommunications companies on the Bush administration has apparently played a major hidden role in the political battle over the surveillance issue over the past few months.
In January, the administration placed the N.S.A.’s warrantless wiretapping program under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and subjected it for the first time to the scrutiny of the FISA court.
Democratic Congressional aides said Sunday that they believed that pressure from major telecommunications companies on the White House was a major factor in persuading the Bush administration to do that. Those companies were facing major lawsuits for having secretly cooperated with the warrantless wiretapping program, and now wanted greater legal protections before cooperating further.
But the change suddenly swamped the court with an enormous volume of search warrant applications, leading, in turn, to the administration’s decision to seek the new legislation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/washington/06nsa.html?_r=2&st=cse&sq=bush+signs&scp=1&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Lesson one: no Orwellian language
By Mike Baker
Mike Baker
An insightful speaker raised a massive cheer from the audience at an education conference this week.
No, he had not called for a doubling of teachers' pay, the abolition of national tests, or even a ban on lumpy custard in school canteens.
No, his rallying cry was much simpler and involves no complex administrative changes or financial costs.
Yet it went to the heart of what education is about.
He urged everyone to stop talking about "delivery" in education and to return to talking about "teaching".
The speaker was Professor Richard Pring, of Oxford University, and he was not just being fussy about the use of language.
A quick look at any recent government documents quickly provides further examples
His point was that education has been taken over by an "Orwellian language" which has started to control the way we think and act.
Professor Pring is the lead author of a report, published this week by the Nuffield Review of 14-19 Education and Training, which looks at how the aims and values of education have come to be "dominated by the language of management".
So when judging schools and universities we now talk about "performance indicators" as a substitute for assessing the quality of their teaching.
Learning has to be measured by an "audit" of the qualifications achieved rather than a more qualitative judgement of what students have learned.
This approach has certainly driven policy in adult education, where courses that do not lead to an accredited qualification seem to be dismissed as mere hobbies by policy-makers.
A quick look at any recent government documents quickly provides further examples.
For example, they talk about "new providers" instead of schools.
'What is education for?'
Repeated phrases refer to "efficiency gains", "choice for customers", "the market", and "funding systems that respond to customer demand".
The phraseology of "inputs" and "outputs" is more like the language of industrial production than of education.
It implies there is an exact specification for the finished product.
The Nuffield paper wonders whether we have lost sight of earlier descriptions of education such as "the conversation between the generations of mankind" (Michael Oakeshott) or an introduction to "the best that has been thought and said" (Matthew Arnold)?
I suppose this could seem unfair. After all, the authors of government documents are not attempting to do the same thing as philosophers of education.
Yet this matters because the language we use shapes the answers to the question: "what is education for?"
And there is no doubt that it is the model of workforce preparation and employability that currently dominates the current education discourse.
Hence we now have "enterprise" as a compulsory part of the school curriculum, while history, geography and foreign languages are no longer required after the age of 14.
'Bigger picture'
Nor is this simply about a neglect of certain types of traditional academic learning.
Equally overlooked is the value of practical, hands-on learning or of creativity.
Yes, we are about to get new Diplomas in vocation subjects such as engineering, IT, Creative and Media and Health and Beauty.
But the government does not describe these as vocational qualifications but prefers to describe them as "academic" qualifications and to stress their A-level equivalence.
This may make practical sense in the face of British snobbery towards non-academic qualifications.
But it also suggests a lack of confidence in the value of practical education.
'Academic frippery'
The need to measure everything and to find equivalents for different types of education arises from a natural enough desire to achieve value-for-money, and to promote different routes for young people.
But it can also be a strait-jacket, implying that all types of learning can, and should, be forced into the same model.
As Professor Pring pointed out, one of the problems with the General National Vocational Qualifications (GNVQs) - and a future risk for Diplomas - is that in an attempt to achieve parity with GCSEs and A-levels, students were assessed not so much on what they could "do" but how well they could write about and analyse their "doing".
Students were forced into a model of academic learning, even when they had chosen something that had a hands-on and practical approach.
The same applies to creativity; the latest government initiative is an investigation into how to measure the levels of creativity amongst school pupils.
The Nuffield Review paper concludes that we should recognise, and value, many different aims for education.
These include: critical thinking and an introduction to knowledge in the physical and social sciences, the humanities and the arts; development of practical capabilities; preparation for citizenship; and development of the ideals and values needed to face the big issues affecting our communities.
Taking us back to consider the big question - "what is education for?" - may seem like an academic frippery compared to the day-to-day hard questions about the curriculum and testing.
But at a time when 14-19 education in England is going through its biggest upheaval for over 50 years, it is an essential reminder of the need to keep an eye on the bigger picture.
2008: George Orwell’s Dystopia Brought To Life
George Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty Four is a fiction that depicts the result that follows an obsession of power. The society of Oceania in this novel is regulated by a dictatorial government with complete control over the minds and actions of civilians as power is used to maintain a state of fear and submission of authority. The role of the government turns away from its proper purpose as ensuring the wellness of a people no longer becomes the focus and selfish motives move those in high positions with maximum authority to fulfill their own desires and supply their own needs.
The use of surveillance cameras and police are tools used by many countries in today’s world and in Oceania’s society of George Orwell’s dystopia to minimize and control the amount of crimes committed. Monitored by the observation of “telescreens” Oceania’s civilians have their every move and sound that is made seen and heard. As body language can be easily misinterpreted the fear of committing a crime by the slightest body gesture or facial expression that indicates a thought against the leader Big Brother results in the arrest by thought police. This idea of surveillance no doubt does that job of pinpointing any criminal but the right to express one’s emotions or to simply be a human being is entirely taken away. Methods such as these are only seen in futuristic films and novels, so is it possible Orwell’s dystopia of invasive security could be a depiction of the world we live in today?
Reading Nineteen Eighty-Four for the first time could anyone laughing at the idea of their own country or state climb to the next level of surveillance the way this novel has done.
Reading an article about cameras that give commands has changed my way I see the future unfolding for today’s world. This article describes the prevention of disrespect to the earth in many areas of the world as cameras observe any criminal act and make comments to people. Views about the privacy invasion of this new idea of surveillance vary as Simon Davies from Privacy International describes this method to be an invasion of people’s privacy as it is simply wrong for Britain to become a society that allows unknown commanders to bark instructions at people. On the flipside others differ in opinion as Respect tsar Louise Casey views this method as a way of getting the message across that people should not litter for the reason of money being spent on cleaning up litter.
It appears as though George Orwell possesses an amazing gift of predicting the future seeing that the theft of freedom in his amazing novel Nineteen Eighty- Four is a method of control in today’s world. Or maybe he was simply following the way the world was headed. Despite the fact that Orwell’s novel is indeed a fiction, it animates todays society.
ARTICLE:
Talking CCTV cameras will order thugs to start behaving
Last updated at 08:07am on 05.04.07
Talking CCTV cameras will order people to pick up dropped litter in an extraordinary extension of state surveillance, it has emerged.
Loudspeakers will be placed on cameras across the country, linked to local control rooms.
Any person spotted misbehaving, or dropping litter, will have orders barked loudly in their direction by the camera operator.
Failure to obey could lead to the police being dispatched, and an arrest made.
The £465,000 experiment, part of the Government's Respect offensive, was greeted with a mixture of incredulity and derision by critics.
Civil liberties campaigners said Britain already had 4.2m CCTV cameras - a fifth of the world's total.
Now, in a move which apes George Orwell's vision of talking screens being used to control citizens round-the-clock, they are being fitted with microphones and speakers.
The Conservatives described the cameras as "scarecrow police". And rank-and-file officers said they were no substitute for putting real bobbies on the beat. But Home Secretary John Reid denied the cameras, which will initially be installed in 20 town centres, were "Big Brother gone mad".
He admitted some people would be "concerned about what they claim are civil liberties intrusions".
But he added: "The vast majority of people find that their life is more upset by people who make their life misery in the inner cities because they can't go out and feel safe and secure in a healthy, clean environment because of a minority of people.
"What really upsets people is their night out being destroyed or their environment being destroyed by a fairly small minority of people who get involved in drunk and disorderly behaviour or gangs or whatever."
The scheme, which has already been piloted in Middlesbrough, involves fitting loudspeakers to existing CCTV cameras. They are monitored round-the clock by council officials, based in control rooms.
If they spot a person committing a serious offence, the police will be alerted. But a person dropping litter, or drunks arguing in the street or attempting criminal damage, will receive a loud instruction telling them to stop misbehaving.
Somebody dropping litter will be told to pick it up, and be given directions to the nearest litter bin. If they obey, the operator will politely say "thank you". Those who refuse could have the CCTV evidence used against them in court, or to issue a fine. In some cases, the police will be sent to the scene to make an arrest.
Critics fear louts will play-up to the cameras, in order to amuse their friends. There were also concerns the talking cameras would be used to replace police.
Police Federation vice-chairman Alan Gordon said: "It seems a sorry state that we are now using faceless people sat in control rooms booming out instructions on loud speakers when if you put a uniform presence in those areas, I think the public would feel far safer. "They would find it more acceptable to be told by a uniform police officer to pick up that piece of rubbish or stop urinating in that doorway."
Simon Davies, of Privacy International, said: "This sort of technology ruins the environment and invades people's space.
"It is just not right Britain should become a society where some anonymous official in an invisible room can bark instructions to you.
"It is a psychological warfare on the population. It is intimidation and harassment."
Human rights group Liberty said: "The Home Office has already poured 78 per cent of the crime prevention budget into CCTV over the last decade without assessing its effectiveness. "Surely this money would be better spent on a proven crime deterrent such as more police officers on our streets rather than a gimmick like talking cameras?"
Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, said: "This could be a useful tool against anti-social behaviour but it is no substitute for having a real police presence on our streets and communities, detecting and deterring crime.
"People want real policing, not scarecrow policing. It remains to be seen whether this scheme goes the same way as night courts and cash point fines for yobs." A Home Office spokesman said the pilot in Middlesbrough had proved extremely successful in reducing crime.
Respect tsar Louise Casey, said: "It gets across the message 'please don't litter our streets because someone else will have to pay to pick up that litter again. Half a billion pounds a year is spent picking up litter'."
The 21 areas which have received grants for Talking CCTV proposals are:
Southwark
Barking and Dagenham
Reading
Thanet
Harlow
Norwich
Ipswich
Plymouth
Gloucester
Derby
Northampton
Mansfield
Nottingham
Coventry
Sandwell
Wirral
Blackpool
Salford
Middlesbrough
South Tyneside
Darlington
URL:
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23391611-details/Talking+CCTV+cameras+will+order+thugs+to+start+behaving/article.do
e-Restriction in China
The internet came into fruition in the late 1990s for many of the world’s population, and has provided people who access it with a plethora of information that would otherwise be unattainable by other means. It is an incredible tool for communicating with people all over the world, accessing information of any kind, conducting business, and reading the news from many perspectives, not limited to those in one’s own region. However in China, the internet today is being corruptly used for surveillance of citizens, and a means to spread disinformation and propaganda that promote China’s government. Shutting down websites opposed to the Chinese government, computer surveillance, and not allowing free speech have all contributed to giving China’s government an Orwellian undertone that alludes to many references of The Party’s actions in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Emerging computer technology has allowed many new and innovative features to be implemented into websites. People all over the world can now access message boards that deal with topics ranging from things like music, movies, and videogames to politics, wars, and world issues, and debate with people from all over the world. Many people enjoy accessing these websites, as they provide new perspectives on issues and topics of interest, and allows users to connect with people who have similar interests. In China, no type of internet forum is allowed to exist that debunks its government. In April 2004, the Washington Post covered a story of several university students in China who were arrested for running and participating in debates concerned with the actions of the government. They discussed and reported many cases of human rights abuse in China, and questioned their government’s actions. The website was frequently monitored by the police, and only after the website gained a considerable amount of popularity did they make their arrests, and terminate the site. The webmaster, a student at Beijing University named Yang Zili was reportedly beaten, and was demanded to sign confessions that implicated his web sites contributors. This was an important case in Chinese Internet regulation, as it emphasized their priority of thought control over the internet. It shows how they, much like the Party in Nineteen Eighty-Four, do not accept free thinking or different perspectives; the only perspective that should be expressed in China is the Chinese government’s, not the perspective of the people. Negativity of its government is not allowed in the communist nation, which is, fortunately, the opposite in the western world, as many blogs and message boards that deal with the 2008 US Election are frequented by mass amounts of people, and many of them attack opposing politicians and candidates. Unfortunately, such free thought is a taboo in China.
A large portion of China’s internet users do not actually own computers. Rather, internet cafes are used extensively, providing citizens with internet access for a small fee. These businesses have expanded wildly in the past 10 years in China, and only continue to grow as more people have the desire to access information. Internet cafes in China are not as free and public as initially presented, however. It is Chinese law to implement and install software that monitors what information is accessed, and who is accessing it at all net cafes in China. The software electronically transmits information to police surveillances people, who know who is on what computer, what they are reading, and can track them down with a few keystrokes. Users must provide their real name at internet cafes and present an identification card before logging in. The surveillance is not just as internet cafes, too. Yahoo China hires people to sit in all hosted chat rooms and for 24 hours a day in real time, observe comments and chats, delete any chat room that talks about politics, delete all comments negative to the Chinese governments instantly, and sends warnings to people who break these rules, punishable by jailing. This makes it nearly impossible for Chinese people to talk about their government over the internet, and in some ways, limit the ability of free thought over the internet, much like Newspeak limits communication and thought of the people of Oceania. It does not stop at chat rooms. Email, instant messaging, internet relay chat, blog comments, and even text messages are monitored by the police. An example of this took place in 2004, where a Chinese correspondent for the New York Times was tracked down by the police for providing news that leader Jiang Zemin was retiring. The police found his location the instant he turned on his mobile phone, and within one hour his location was confirmed, tracked down, and arrested. Cell phone networks have now become a network of police surveillance. Any citizen carrying a mobile phone is constantly streaming out their location to the police, by means of the GPS technology within every cell phone manufactured. Constant communication monitored by the Chinese police force is an example of modern telescreens implemented everywhere online. But unlike the fantastic telescreens in Oceania, these are invisible on the internet, they are constantly watching the actions of every single Chinese citizen online.
The internet is a tool that can provide information of all kinds to people who access it, and it is an incredibly innovative, excellent tool. Unfortunately, the internet is used by the Chinese government to keep a constant watch on its citizens so no one has any sort of free thought or (ironically) oppressive opinions on the government. Many of their actions have an illusion to Nineteen Eighty-Four, and its effects on the people are seen with the constant stream of news of tyranny from China towards its citizens. It is a form of human oppression and thought control on the internet, and free thought is a right all humans must have, both in the real and virtual world.
article: http://www.heritage.org/research/asiaandthepacific/bg1806.cfm
October 8, 2004
China's Orwellian Internet
by John J. Tkacik, Jr.
Backgrounder #1806
The Internet once promised to be a conduit for uncensored information from beyond China’s borders, and for a brief, shining instant in modern Chinese history, it was a potential catalyst for political and human rights reform in China. However, for China’s 79 million Web surfers—the most educated and prosperous segment of the country’s population—the Internet is now a tool of police surveillance and official disinformation. If a stable, democratic China remains a key goal of America’s global strategy, the Bush Administration and Congress must consider ways to penetrate China’s “Great Firewall.” The United States must restrain the transfer of sensitive and often proprietary cybertechnology from Western—including American—firms to Chinese police agencies. Just as the United States established Radio Free Asia to provide a source of uncensored news, so too must the U.S. minimize the obstructions that the Chinese face in acquiring and disseminating news and information via the Internet.
The Democratic Imperative
In 2003, President George W. Bush declared, “We welcome the emergence of a strong, peaceful, and prosperous China. The democratic development of China is crucial to that future.”[1] This imperative of a democratic China has been a feature of America’s strategic plan for nearly six decades. President Harry S. Truman said that a “strong, unified and democratic China” is “of the utmost importance to world peace” and consequently “in the most vital interests of the United States.”[2] Yet two out of three is not good enough. A strong, unified, and undemocratic China is a greater potential threat to the region and to America than a weak and undemocratic one.
If the U.S. truly believes that a peaceful China evolving along democratic lines is in America’s interest—as well as in the interest of the Chinese people—then the U.S. should recognize that the Internet could be a most effective tool. Moreover, it requires no special informational input from the U.S. government. Key elements of democratic thought, free market economics, and concepts of a civil society are all freely available on the Internet. Yet regrettably, the Internet has an even greater potential as an instrument of Orwellian thought control. With the help of foreign—including American—high-tech companies, Internet technologies have enabled China’s Big Brother to keep a close eye on its citizens and to identify and arrest those who spread democratic ideals.
Democratic reform in China is highly unlikely to come from the top down, that is, from the Chinese Communist Party. It will have to emerge from the grass roots. If the Internet is to be a medium of that reform, ways will need to be found to counter China’s official censorship and manipulation of digital communications. The cultivation of democratic ideals in China therefore requires that the U.S. adopt policies that promote freedom of information and communication by funding the development of anti-censorship technologies and restricting the export of Internet censoring and monitoring technologies to police states.[3]
Naïve optimism about China’s Internet fills the pages of America’s leading papers and scholarship, giving the impression that an increasingly wired China will necessarily evolve into an open and free society. One recent editorial in The Wall Street Journal optimistically claimed, “By searching for new measures to clamp down on its increasingly high-tech citizens, the Communist Party has taken on a battle it is bound to lose.”[4]
For Chinese Communist Party leaders, domestic “stability” is a prerequisite to national goals, but by stability they mean unchallenged Party rule. Thus while cosmopolitan urban Chinese—who perhaps number as many as 50 million (out of China’s 1.3 billion people) and have an average annual family income in excess of $5,000—increasingly enjoy the electronic gadgetry of modern life, they have learned that the price to be paid is the unquestioned rule of the Party. As the central propaganda organs and police agencies maintain and tighten their grips on information flow and private digital communications, the average Chinese citizen now realizes that political speech on the Internet is no longer shrouded in anonymity: Private contacts with like-minded citizens in chat rooms, or even via e-mail text messaging, are not likely to escape police notice.
Big Brother Is Watching
For several years during the 1990s, Chinese Internet users gained increasing amounts of information from the Internet. By 1998, according to an insider’s account of China’s Internet development, the Chinese Public Security Ministry and its police stations around the country found that their resources for monitoring the Internet were becoming overwhelmed.[5] Several major U.S. firms came to the aid of the Chinese security services by constructing a new Internet architecture that enabled China’s cyberpolice to monitor Internet sites in real time and identify both the site owners and visitors.
The inevitable result is that suppression of Internet dissent has increased in recent years. China is said to have the largest prison population of “cyberdissidents” in the world. As of June 2004, the Reuters news service reported there were 61 cyberdissidents in jail for criticizing the Chinese government.[6] In January 2004, Amnesty International documented 54 cases of individuals arrested for “cyberdissent,” but concluded that the 54 cases were probably just “a fraction” of the actual number detained.[7] According to another report, 13 Internet essayists were tried, sentenced, and denied appeals between October and December of 2003 alone.[8]
In April 2004, The Washington Post described a typical cyberdissidence case involving a group of students who were arrested for participating in an informal discussion forum at Beijing University. It was a chilling report that covered the surveillance, arrest, trial, and conviction of the dissidents and police intimidation of witnesses.
Yang Zili, the group’s coordinator, and other young idealists in his Beijing University circle were influenced by the writings of Vaclav Havel, Friedrich Hayek, and Samuel P. Huntington. Yang questioned the abuses of human rights permitted in the “New China.” His popular Web site was monitored by police, and after letting him attract a substantial number of like-minded others, China’s cyberpolice swept up the entire group. Relentlessly interrogated, beaten, and pressured to sign confessions implicating each other, the core members nevertheless withstood the pressure. The case demonstrated that stamping out cyberdissent had become a priority state function. According to the Post, Chinese leader Jiang Zemin considered “the investigation as one of the most important in the nation.” In March 2003, the arrestees were each sentenced to prison terms of between eight and ten years—all for exchanging opinions on the Internet.[9]
Then there is the case of Liu Di, a psychology student at Beijing Normal University who posted Internet essays under the screen name of Stainless Steel Mouse. She is an exception among cyberdissidents—after a year behind bars, she is now out of jail. The then 23-year-old Liu was influenced by George Orwell’s 1984 and became well known for her satirical writing and musings on dissidents in the former Soviet Union. She defended other cyberdissidents, supported intellectuals arrested for organizing reading groups, attacked Chinese chauvinists, and, in a spoof, called for a new political party in which anyone could join and everyone could be “chairman.” Arrested in November 2002 and held for nearly one year without a trial, she became a cause célèbre for human rights and press freedom groups overseas and apparently gained some notoriety within China as well. Although she had been held without trial and was never formally charged, she was imprisoned in a Beijing jail cell with three criminals. In December 2003, she was released in anticipation of Premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to the U.S. Yet nine months after returning to the Beijing apartment that she shares with her grandmother, Liu still finds police security officers posted at her home. She has found it impossible to find a regular job, and police monitors block her screen name Stainless Steel Mouse from Web sites.[10]
One reason Ms. Liu was released was the incessant prodding of another Internet essayist, Du Daobin (identified only as a 39-year-old civil servant from Hubei province), who condemned Liu’s jailing. In turn, at least 1,000 people signed a petition in support of Du that urged the government to stop using anti-subversion laws to hinder free speech. Of course, Du was charged with subversion and jailed. In June 2004, a Chinese court announced that Du would get a suspended sentence instead of a long prison term. Du’s case, says The New York Times, may not be one of government magnanimity, but rather an example of what can happen to other cyberdissidents in “a quiet but concerted push to tighten controls of the Internet and surveillance of its users even though China’s restrictions on the medium are already among the broadest and most invasive anywhere.”[11]
On July 31, 2004, hundreds of villagers of Shijiahecun hamlet in rural Henan province demonstrated against local corruption. Provincial police from the capital at Zhengzhou dispatched a large anti-riot unit to the village, which attacked the crowd with rubber bullets, tear gas, and electric prods.[12] Propaganda officials immediately banned media coverage of the incident, and the outside world might not have learned of the clash if an intrepid local “netizen” had not posted news of it on the Internet. The Web correspondent was quickly identified by Chinese cybercops and arrested during a telephone interview with the Voice of America on August 2. While the informant was on the phone with VOA interviewers in Washington, D.C., he was suddenly cut short, and the voice of a relative could be heard in the background shouting that authorities from the Internet office of the Zhengzhou public security bureau (Shi Gonganju Wangluchu) had come to arrest the interviewee. After several seconds of noisy struggle, the telephone connection went dead.[13]
Popular Web Sites Shut Down
In other cases, when it is difficult for the state to discern whether or not certain Internet activity is a clear and present danger, the cyberpolice simply shut down Web sites. For example, on September 13, 2004, officials from the State Council News office, the ministry of information industry, and the ministry of education suddenly appeared at Beijing University to announce the closure—for no stated reason—of Yi Ta Hutu (One Big Mess), a popular university bulletin board system (BBS). It was understood that the BBS was shut down for “disseminating political rumors.” At the same time, the government ordered all Web sites in China to delete Internet links to One Big Mess. Six days later, three Beijing University law instructors wrote an open letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao praising the closed BBS site as “an important channel by which the party and government can understand the feelings of the people.” The professors then condemned the BBS closure as “suppressing freedom of speech” and decried the state action as “illegal” and “regrettable.” Needless to say, the professors’ open letter was not published on Chinese sites and had to be e-mailed to correspondents outside China.[14]
One Big Mess was host to over 800 separate discussion boards, boasted an average of 20,000 page viewers at any one time, and had over 300,000 regular viewers on its list.[15] Instead of being a vehicle for democratic reform, Chinese security services now use the Internet to identify and eliminate networks of dissent.
Surveys conducted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences show that in metropolitan areas more than one in three people has Internet access.[16] Even in small cities, 27 percent of residents have access to the Internet.[17] Given these numbers and the determination of the Chinese Communist Party to stamp out each and every vestige of dissent and opposition, it is not surprising that China has the most extensive Internet censorship in the world.[18]At last estimate, access was blocked to 19,000 political Web sites considered threatening.[19] These blocked sites include popular foreign news, political, religious, and educational Web sites, including fairly innocuous Web sites of church and religious organizations serving foreign businessmen and residents.[20]
Clampdown Aided by U.S. Firms
In addition to blocking sensitive Web sites, the government also controls the sites that appear in popular global search engines such as Yahoo and Google. For instance, a search for “Jiang” in the Chinese version of Yahoo returns only 24 sites, all of which are flattering to Chinese leader Jiang Zemin. Moreover, e-mail subscription services are blocked and the government can and does monitor personal e-mail and “erase online content considered undesirable.”[21]
Some American Internet portal companies assist the Chinese government in limiting information available to the Chinese people. In 2001, Yahoo signed an agreement with Chinese security authorities to block critical content from its Chinese language servers. Yahoo further promised to avoid “producing, posting or disseminating pernicious information that may jeopardize state security and disrupt social stability.”[22] By contrast, the search engine Google, which has not signed such an agreement, has been deemed “unselective” and “unsupervised” by the security authorities and has consequently been censored. Google is especially feared by China’s cybercensors because of its cache feature that makes available saved copies of Web pages that have been deleted and Web sites that have been taken down. Since 2002, Chinese visitors to Google.com have been re-routed to a local search engine.[23]
Surveillance of the Chinese Internet is greatly enhanced by the custom design of China’s Internet portals. All Chinese Internet traffic is routed through five major channels using devices sold by a U.S.-based corporation. American engineers developed special routers, integrators, and a “special firewall box” programmed to monitor Internet traffic and detect selected keywords.[24] China Telecom bought “many thousands” of these special firewall boxes from a U.S. firm for $20,000 each.[25] These boxes allow the Chinese government to search for, identify, and intercept potentially subversive transmissions, which had theretofore been considered difficult to track.[26] By exporting sophisticated communications technology to China, North American telecoms and software companies facilitated the construction of the “Great Firewall of China” against the world and provided the Chinese government with a means to conduct surveillance against its citizens.[27]
Big Brother’s Eyes at Internet Cafes
The Chinese government has also installed elaborate monitoring systems at all Chinese Internet cafes. For example, the Shanghai Cultural Broadcast and Film Management Bureau is installing software in 110,000 computers in the city’s 1,329 Internet cafes for comprehensive long-term surveillance. This software allows the government to monitor, in real time, the identities of Internet users and the sites that they access or attempt to access. New regulations require all Internet users at cafes to register in their real names and provide identification cards before log-on. Press announcements of Shanghai’s new Internet regulations indicate that the local security services expect all Internet cafe proprietors to cooperate—and pay for the new software upgrades. China’s large eastern province of Shandong has also reported adoption of an “internet real names” project to track cybercafe Web surfers.[28]
Online conversations are subject to constant eavesdropping, and Web surfing is scrutinized. Yahoo-China, for example, reportedly hires supervisory “big mamas” for the teams of censors assigned to every Yahoo-hosted Internet chat room in China. One American expert in the Chinese Internet describes the big mamas’ mission as deleting politically undesirable chat room comments in real time and sending warnings to violators in cyberspace. All Chinese chat rooms, according to this expert, are watched by surveillance teams who can also monitor e-mails, including Web-based accounts, and may use unblocked Web sites as “tripwire” stings to locate and trap possible agitators.[29]
Chinese censors periodically and inexplicably block and unblock foreign news sites that inquisitive surfers may try to access.[30] There is a special task force of some 30,000 “cybercops” who patrol the World Wide Web, block select foreign news sites, and terminate domestic sites with politically sensitive information. Coupled with the ability to log viewers of sensitive sites, security agents may record names of surfers who attempt to access forbidden sites or selectively unblocked sites for further monitoring. In this way China’s Internet has increasingly become a tool for security agencies to identify, monitor, arrest, and imprison potential dissidents.[31]
Censorship Under the Guise of Moral Propriety?
The Beijing government emphasizes the dangers of corrupt influences on children and says that in one survey 60 of 100 juvenile delinquents in a Beijing courthouse were frequent visitors to pornography sites. In what appeared to be a commendable effort to bolster youth morals, Chinese authorities shut down over 30 pornography sites between June and July of 2004.[32]
Although President Hu’s anti-porn crusade has superficially lofty goals, the nationwide crackdown conveniently tightens state control over the spread of digital information. In fact, more than 90 percent of the articles in China’s legal regime governing Internet sites is “news and information,” and less than 5 percent is “other inappropriate content.”[33] Recent reports indicate that authorities in Shanghai intend to restrict Internet communications for religious groups. China maintains restrictions on religious expression and does not permit religious activities coordinated between Chinese and religious groups from abroad.[34] As digital communications present a potential gap in Beijing’s scope of supervision, the crackdown against pornography appears to be a smokescreen for increased surveillance of political dissent.
Mobile Phone Text Messaging Tracked
For several days in late September 2004, a Chinese-citizen researcher for the Beijing bureau of The New York Times was—unbeknown to him— hunted by Chinese police for providing his employer with news that China’s leader Jiang Zemin was planning to retire. The researcher had been visiting friends in Shanghai and had turned off his mobile phone. When he switched on his phone again a few days later, it took secret police less than an hour to track him down at a restaurant and arrest him.[35] It was just the latest evidence that China’s mobile phone network has become a means of police surveillance. Yet for several years, Chinese citizens had used mobile phone text messages to disseminate information.
In February 2003, a mysterious virus swept through the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, decimating the staffs of hospitals and clinics. According to The Washington Post, “there were 900 people sick with SARS [sudden acute respiratory syndrome] in Guangzhou and 45 percent of them were health care professionals.” The Chinese media suppressed news of the disease, apparently in the belief that the public would panic, but:
[News] reached the Chinese public in Guangdong through a short-text message, sent to mobile phones in Guangzhou around noon on Feb. 8. “There is a fatal flu in Guangzhou,” it read. This same message was resent 40 million times that day, 41 million times the next day and 45 million times on Feb. 10.[36]
The SARS epidemic taught the Chinese security services that mobile phone text messages are a powerful weapon against censorship and state control of the media. The Chinese government announced in 2003 new plans to censor text messages distributed by mobile telephone. China Mobile, the country’s largest service provider, alone tallied 40 billion text messages in 2002.[37] With over 220 billion text messages sent each year via all China’s telecom providers, the Chinese government has had to establish 2,800 centers across the country to conduct routine text monitoring. However, interception of personal messages may not be peculiar to China for long. The Ministry of Public Security recently permitted the manufacturer of these low-cost surveillance systems to sell them on the open market, leading to their possible proliferation worldwide.[38]
A Faustian Deal for an Orwellian Future
Without innovations in technology provided to China by Western telecoms, networking, Internet portal, and software firms, the Chinese government could not have gained its current stranglehold over Internet information. The “Great Firewall of China,” designed in large part by North American firms, is increasingly effective at monitoring and censoring online speech in a medium that had for a few short years carried a lively debate about democratic ideals. Chinese filtering systems have removed politically provocative Web sites and postings and have redirected Web surfers to search engines that show only content favorable to the regime.[39] China’s Internet now serves to disseminate propaganda and block the flow of information and the proliferation of democratic ideas. Contrary to conventional wisdom, which holds the Internet as a great propagator of information and ideas, China’s electronic communications are heavily censored and are increasingly used as an instrument for surveillance, repression, and propaganda.
Recommendations for U.S. Policy
A democratic China is indeed “in the most vital interest of the United States,” and fostering an environment in China conducive to the free expression of ideas should be a primary objective. The Bush Administration and Congress must consider strategies to break through the Great Firewall. Specifically, the Administration and Congress should:
Designate Internet censorship and monitoring systems as “police equipment.” Since the Chinese telecoms and police agencies are using custom-designed Internet hardware and software primarily for police purposes—and because this equipment has been used broadly to apprehend and arrest political dissidents— these types of software should be designated “police equipment” for the purposes of the Export Administration Regulations (which regulate the export of dual-use items for foreign policy and national security purposes).[40] U.S. exporters should be required to file adequate descriptions of their custom-designed systems with the U.S. government. License applications for exports of these systems to China should be treated in the same way as other police equipment exports to China.
Renew research into anti-censorship technologies. A few years ago the Voice of America briefly sponsored a network of servers, code-named “Triangle Boy,” which was beyond the reach of Chinese censors.[41] Although reportedly successful, the system failed due to inadequate funding and over-cautious handling of the contracts. Rather than funding its expansion, VOA decided to pursue “safe-haven Web sites,” but these are now blocked on a real-time basis by Chinese censors. There should be renewed efforts to create an information network that would permit Web surfers in China to access accurate news beyond China’s Great Firewall.
Establish an Office of Global Internet Freedom. Legislation—like the Global Internet Freedom Act of 2003 (H.R. 1950)—is already drafted that would create an Office of Global Internet Freedom under the International Broadcasting Bureau (the parent agency for the Voice of America) to coordinate U.S. efforts to develop counter-censorship technologies. The need for a concerted, U.S.-backed campaign to promote democracy in China is urgent, and authorizing legislation should be included in the next State Department authorization bill.
Conclusion
Chinese police surveillance of Internet communications has increased as Chinese citizens have gained more access to the medium. The censors’ reach extends to each computer terminal, and even personal mobile phones and personal digital assistants. As Chinese citizens found during the SARS outbreak, mobile phone text messaging and access to the Internet were their only conduits for the truth.
Support for a democratizing China must be a primary objective of American policy. This should be done by challenging the Chinese Communist Party’s monopoly on information in that country. U.S. firms that have provided the tools of censorship and surveillance to a police state should also help in defeating those tools. The United States established Radio Free Asia to provide Chinese short-wave radio listeners with uncensored sources of information about what was really happening in China and the world, but short-wave broadcasting is now obsolete. A similar effort on the World Wide Web would have a far greater impact.
Big Brother on the verge of becoming boring
The article talks about Big Brother and how of a frightening person he was in George Orwell’s book 1984. Big Brother wouldn’t let anyone have that desire for freedom and by doing so he would persecute, torture and even murder you in order to stop people from thought.
The newer generation today thinks that for a sure fact that Big Brother is worthless and won’t harm anyone today within our society. But miserably that Big Brother does exist in our world still to this date and they all want to know and operate our very thoughts. Were being watched when we e-mail, talk on the phone or even when we chat somewhere were all being recorded and listened into by Big Brother. Mass Readers monitor calls, record and listen in to what’s being said. Right now radio chips are being placed into many items such as monitoring your shopping patterns, spying into your fridge, counting your personal hygiene items and also recording all of your medical records. Having records in the electronic world will be impossible to obliterate. It very shocking to people that value their own privacy because there being watched from points that there not expect at all to be watched from and that violates their own personal isolation. The saddest thing is that most people today aren’t scared and don’t care about their own privacy therefore leaving them to expose themselves with no intention willing fully to Big Brother.
The article explains that Facebook and the personal blog universe are most frequently watched by Big Brother today. A world where every person exposes his or her own personal activity and every bit of everyone’s imagination and thought are out in the open for all to watch and see. It is true were all being watched from cameras by the government in order to heighten the awareness of the people around you as a means of national security to keep everyone safe and out a danger. But reaching a point where it starts to violate everyone’s own personal privacy is taking it way too far and as a result the younger generation should be concerned and should be aware that their being watched. Since you know you’re being watched you must keep your actions and personal thoughts to yourself because if you present or express yourself in a wrongful matter not excepted by Big Brother he come and get you. To prevent oneself from getting into trouble with Big Brother just “Shut Up…and Zip Your Mouth Shut” and you should be okay.
Article:
Full Text (644 words)
Copyright F.P. Canadian Newspapers Limited Partnership Oct 3, 2007
The Red Deer Advocate
BIG Brother was a scary guy in George Orwell's 1984. Those of us who went to high school during the Cold War years will always remember him as the powerful dictator who controlled people's thoughts and society's memories.
Big Brother persecuted, tortured and murdered anyone who yearned for freedom. Today's high school crowd knows for a fact that kind of Big Brother is unsustainable. It's pretty safe to say they don't fear the loss of freedom or privacy the way the Cold War conspiracy theorists still do. But that doesn't mean the fears would be groundless. There's still a Big Brother out there today, probably a whole tribe of them, and they all want to know and manipulate your thoughts. But not to kill you for what you believe. They just want your money. And of that, today's younger generation simply has no fear.
Last week, news stories moved of an interview with U.S. author Bruce Schneier. He is also he chief technology officer for a security firm called BT Counterpane. Schneier suggested the very idea no longer exists that people can have a private conversation of any form that just disappears when its over.
All of what we say over e-mail or phone calls, or even chatting as we walk downtown, is being recorded by somebody, somewhere.
And it's being used to sell us stuff.
Mass readers can monitor cellphone calls, record the caller's identity and listen in on what's being said. Last week, a U.S. phone company announced it can run these recorded conversations through software that will send advertisements to the owner of the cellphone, based on the content of the call.
Radio chips are being put into common consumer items, says Schneier, that will transmit our shopping patterns through a store, spy on what's in our fridge and count our personal hygiene items. Big Brother stores your e-mail address and your medical records. Anything you say or do in the electronic world is impossible to erase.
That's scary stuff to people who value their privacy. But in numbers growing too fast to contemplate, it seems that young people are not only unafraid of this lack of privacy, they eagerly embrace the brave new world. A teen tells the world that if enough people sign on to watch, he will douse himself with a popular men's cologne and set himself on fire -- again.
The video will be posted on YouTube.
Is this guy going to worry about loss of privacy?
Teens videotape actual battles in their basement bedrooms and post them for all the world to see. If they're ready to exchange punches with their friends in public, do you think they're afraid of Big Brother?
In the Facebook and personal blog universe, where no personal activity or fragment of imagination is held back, and everyone is linked to everyone else, Schneier's warnings sound like they're about two years and 20 seconds too late.
Alberta's government-paid privacy commissioner recently worried in public that Google's plans to put web cameras on city streets was an invasion of privacy. Speeding through red lights seems to pose no such problem, but escorting someone who may not be your spouse to a popular bar is best kept an anonymous event, apparently. That same government paid for people to sit in on private conference calls to record who said what about a power transmission line that would cross their property.
And there appears to be no technical barrier for someone, somewhere to know every minor factoid of our daily existence.
For one generation, the prospect chills. For another, it's just how we live -- in fact, it's kind of cool.
But someone ought to warn Big Brother, outside of watching some idiot set his leg on fire (again), the vast majority of his existence is going to become really, really boring.
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