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IF YOU TAKE something to read at the beach this summer make sure it is not one of George Orwell's books. The comparison with current events will ruin your day.

In what was then the futuristic, nightmare world of ''1984," written in 1949, Orwell introduced the concepts of ''newspeak," ''doublethink," and ''the mutability of the past," all concepts that seem to be alive and well in 2005, half a century after Orwell's death. In the ever-changing rationale of why we went to war in Iraq, we can imagine ourselves working in Orwell's ''Ministry of Truth," in which ''reality control" is used to ensure that ''the lie passed into history and became the truth."

 

And what about the Bush administration's insistence that all is going well in Iraq? In the Ministry of Truth, statistics are adjustable to suit politics -- ''merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another," Orwell wrote. ''Most of the material that you were dealing with had no connection to anything in the real world, not even the kind of connection that is contained in a direct lie. Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in the rectified version." Welcome to the Iraq war, Mr. Orwell.

 

What of Donald Rumsfeld's newspeak, or was it doublethink, saying that ''no detention facility in the history of warfare has been more transparent" than Guantanamo? We have the FBI's word for it that prisoners were chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, left for 18 to 24 hours with no food and no water, left to defecate and urinate on themselves.

 

The deaths by torture in Abu Ghraib and Afghanistan sound very much like what happens in Orwell's fictional torture chamber: Room 101.

He might as well have been writing about the Bush administration's redefinition of torture when he wrote about using ''logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it."

 

In Orwell's profoundly pessimistic view: ''Political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."

 

There is something profoundly Orwellian, too, about the administration's attempts to impose thought control on public broadcasting. The sometimes secret machinations to place impositions on editorial freedom, the efforts to see which people interviewed by Bill Moyers might be considered anti-Bush or anti-Defense Department or insufficiently conservative, were just the kind of efforts to squash intellectual opposition to state power that Orwell wrote about.

 

I was amused to see even a conservative Republican senator, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, was branded as a ''liberal" because he dared criticize the Pentagon -- a ''thought criminal" in Orwell's parlance.

 

The drum beat by some conservatives to bring down an independent judiciary is another case in point. We learned from the case of unfortunate, blind, and brain-dead Terri Schiavo that it isn't activist judges who are the enemy. It is judges who are not active in the correct causes.

More- http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_

opinion/oped/articles/2005/06/24/the_return_of_1984/

 

 

LATEST HEADLINES
Refresh Frequently -- Updated throughout the day

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US suspected of keeping secret prisoners on warships: UN official

'The UN has learned of "very, very serious" allegations that the United States is secretly detaining terrorism suspects in various locations around the world, notably aboard prison ships, the UN's special rapporteur on terrorism said. While the accusations were rumours, rapporteur Manfred Nowak said the situation was sufficiently serious to merit an official inquiry.'

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Poll Says Most Americans Believe Bush Misled Them Over Iraq Invasion

'The results of the poll conducted by ABC News/Washington Post coincide with the speech of the American President seeking the American public support for Iraq war, with 53 percent of who were surveyed saying that the war was not worth fighting. 57 percent say the U.S. government "intentionally exaggerated its evidence that pre-war Iraq possessed nuclear, chemical or biological weapons".'

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The unofficial war: U.S. and Britain led massive secret bombing campaign before Iraq war was declared

'Starting in late May to June of 2002 a flurry of activity began both in the United States and in the Middle East. In what appears to be an admission of covert activity, chief allied air force commander Lieutenant-General Michael Moseley divulged in a little-noticed quote in the New York Times that US/British aircraft flew 21,736 sorties between June 2002 and March 2003. Moseley said that some 606 bombs were dropped before the official start of the war, targeting 391 locations and/or installations. Moseley explained that the combination of air strikes and covert raids occurred in the southern no-fly zone regions covered by routine patrols.' FOR THE UNTOLD BACKGROUND TO THE IRAQ WAR SEE TALES FROM THE TIME LOOP

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BLAIR WINS FIRST ROUND OVER ID CARDS, BUT MAJOR BATTLE AHEAD

The Blair government, which won an election with only 35% of the national vote, presses forward with ID cards despite opposition from the majority who voted against them. It's called democracy, apparently.

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WATCHDOG WARNS OF BIG BROTHER-STYLE SYSTEM IF PLANS ARE IMPLEMENTED

'Tony Blair's plans for identity cards risk creating a Big Brother-style system of checks in which people are subjected to "unnecessary and disproportionate intrusion" into their privacy, the data protection watchdog has said.'

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Rights Groups Detail Growing Police State

'The FBI is carrying out "unwarranted investigations for religious or political reasons," according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which charges that "the agency has sunk back into the kind of political monitoring it did in the 1960s and 1970s." The Washington-based advocacy group said a series of FBI inquiries across the country shows that the agency is conducting investigations based on the targets' political activities or religious affiliations.'

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It's Going on Everywhere: Australia 'Secret Police' State

'"You can be arrested because [the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation] think you know something," [Former Prime Minister] Mr Fraser said. "Your defence is to prove that you don't know it. But how do you prove a negative? And how do you prove you don't know something which you didn't know in the first place? "I'm against the policy because the policy is truly terrible. To legislate for the arrest of somebody who is not suspected of any crime ... that turns ASIO into some sort of secret police."' (You mean they haven't been all along??)

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List Of Carnivore And Eschelon Keywords

List of many of the keywords the Government Spooks search for in email and chatrooms.

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BID TO END PRESIDENTIAL TERM LIMITS

'Berman's concern about the 22nd Amendment comes at a time of renewed talk in Sacramento over the possibility of loosening legislative term limits as part of a redistricting agreement with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.'

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1884 in 2005

'If you take something to read at the beach this summer make sure it is not one of George Orwell's books. The comparison with current events will ruin your day. In what was then the futuristic, nightmare world of ''1984," written in 1949, Orwell introduced the concepts of ''newspeak," ''doublethink," and ''the mutability of the past," all concepts that seem to be alive and well in 2005, half a century after Orwell's death. In the ever-changing rationale of why we went to war in Iraq, we can imagine ourselves working in Orwell's ''Ministry of Truth," in which ''reality control" is used to ensure that ''the lie passed into history and became the truth."'

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Rice wins G-8 support to isolate Syria in line with neocon agenda

'The U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice won support from the Group of Eight foreign ministers over Syria, as Washington stepped up its efforts to isolate Damascus on the international level. The U.S. has repeatedly accused Syria of allowing fighters to cross into Iraq, fomenting instability in Lebanon and supporting anti-Israeli resistance groups.'

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Count the Bullets: Blow Away All Arguments

'¡§The reason I knew that Oswald could not have done it, was because I could not have done it,¡¨ said former US Marine sniper, Craig Roberts. Credited with numerous kills while serving in Vietnam, Roberts turned an objective eye on the shot heard ¡¥round the world. After he visited Dealey Plaza, after viewing the so-called ¡§sniper¡¦s lair,¡¨ on the sixth floor of the book depository, and after staring at the large oak tree overspreading much of Elm Street, Roberts said, ¡§I walked away from the window in disgust. I had seen all I needed to know that Oswald could not have been the lone shooter.¡¨'

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Mencken sense ...

'I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious. I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty.' ~ H.L. Mencken

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Who Was Behind The Killing Of Four Female Marines?

Who Are These Girls? 'They aren't New York debutants, or socialites, or girls from the Brandeis. These are 18 and 19 year-olds, who are out to learn a skill such as air traffic controller, IT management, computer repair, etc. They were looking to combine this with a college bonus. That's what the Marines were going to give them. 99% of them had no idea they would be in front line combat.'

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New York bans mercury in vaccines

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'HUNDREDS OF UFOS IN THE SKY OVER MEXICO'

'The investigation on the June 24, 2005 UFO incident over Xalapa now unveils a new story. A similar UFO sighting took place the same day in San Luis Potosi where several reports from residents told of a strange unusual activity witnessed for several days of unknown groups of flying spheres over the city.'

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WHATEVER NEXT ... ??

Boffins create zombie dogs 'Scientists have created eerie zombie dogs, reanimating the canines after several hours of clinical death in attempts to develop suspended animation for humans. US scientists have succeeded in reviving the dogs after three hours of clinical death, paving the way for trials on humans within years.'

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ISRAELI SOLDIER JAILED FOR REFUSING ORDERS OVER JEWISH PROTEST

'Cpl. Avi Bieber, who refused to evacuate settlers protesting the demolition of 11 deserted structures at Shirat Hayam on Sunday, declaring "Jews do not beat other Jews," was sentenced at a Southern Command disciplinary hearing to 56 days of detention in a military prison on Tuesday.' (Why not a similar refusal when ordered to do the same - and worse - to Palestinians?)

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Supreme Court's Brand X Decision A Blow Against Internet Freedom

'The decision now leaves the vast majority of broadband households in the US at the mercy of just two companies--the local cable monopoly or one of four remaining "Baby Bells"--for their connections to what the courts once described as "¡K the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed¡K." They will operate these networks as the same top-down monopolies that have dominated both the cable and local telephone business.' 'It's a message from Homeland Security - "If you use the word 'freedom' again we will delete your contract ... and we'll be a knockin' at your door ... The Internet is here so we know what you are doing - not for you tell the people what we are doing, Okay?"'

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YOU KNOW IT MAKES SENSE ...

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Eminent Domain: The Property No State Can Touch

'The way the "system" would have us believe, freedom was a "new thought" that slowly grew over time. It became secured with paper documents like the Magna Carta in 1215, the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the US Constitution in 1789 and its subsequent amendments down through the years. We also have the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen written by the French in 1789 and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights written as a guiding document of the United Nations in 1948. These documents have a few interesting things in common. They were all written by white people. They were all written under heavy Masonic influence (or their predecessor in the case of the Magna Carta). They were all written on paper. The societies which celebrate them remained firmly entrenched in a system of servitude.'

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President Bush faces second term blues

'When President George Bush famously said on the day after his re-election that he had earned political capital and was now going to spend it, he was already succumbing to that classic second-term delusion of infallibility.'