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It's a fragment of Orwell's 1984. http://www.orwelltoday.com/how.shtml

al qaeda is your best friend...
        they always arrive when you need them
        yes theyre always around just when you need them
        when your down in the polls, theyll drop a bomb
        when youre stories full of holes...theyll drop a bomb
        when there is an election, and you're in trouble
        they arrive on the double

        Snog "al Qaeda is your best friend" (lyrics from a song, but oh so appropriate and applicable)
        I'm also reminded of that movie "V for Vendetta"

        Bin Laden is Goldstein

Yeah, And I'm still waiting for the promised "paperless society".

I'd like to add my voice to the tiny minority chorus of people admonishing Americans for creating a catch phrase that says the exact opposite of what it's intended to mean. I'm sensitive to language issues, and reading this phrase bothers me in a way similar to that in which others are bothered by fingernails scratching on a blackboard.

If I ever find myself re-enacting Falling Down," it will be because of this or something like it.

Or is there more here than meets the eye? Are the Powers That Be just getting the sheep accustomed to hearing that black is white?

The Ministry of Truth, Winston's place of work, contained, it was said, three thousand rooms above ground level, and corresponding ramifications below.

The Ministsry of Truth concerned itself with Lies. Party ownership of the print media made it easy to manipulate public opinion, and the film and radio carried the process further.

The primary job of the Ministry of Truth was to supply the citizens of Oceania with newspapers, films, textbooks, telescreen programmes, plays, novels - with every conceivable kind of information, instruction, or entertainment, from a statue to a slogan, from a lyric poem to a biological treatise, and from a child's spelling-book to a Newspeak dictionary. Winston worked in the RECORDS DEPARTMENT (a single branch of the Ministry of Truth) editing and writing for The Times. He dictated into a machine called a speakwrite. Winston would receive articles or news-items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, in Newspeak, rectify. If, for example, the Ministry of Plenty forecast a surplus, and in reality the result was grossly less, Winston's job was to change previous versions so the old version would agree with the new one. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs - to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance.

freely derived from George Orwell, 1984. All rights reserved.
Courtesy Orwell Today, found through.. GOOGLE.

I checked with the Ministry of Truth and apparently this information is incorrect. These documents have always been classified. And we have always been at war with Eurasia.

To me it seems that America is more religious than ever (well more religious than any point in the last 60 years for certain).

Wow. Really? I have entirely the opposite opinion. [...] Starbucks [...] Most people I know live their lives as if there's no God, or as if there's no such thing as absolute truth. [...] Seinfeld [...]

What facet of the 30s and 40s makes you think it was more religious?

But, further on, I think you've made a pretty good case for your opinion. I essentially agree. I'll even take your agrument that all the Christians in America that run everything aren't "real" Christians, or put better disciples of Christ (because you are correct, [generally] no one sacrifices for charity, even in time of "war" when traditionally such sacrifice was an 'American value'). But, taking your argument as a given, then all arguments of "America is a Christian Nation" become moot (not that you are making this assertion -- only people that want religious symbols sanctioned by government are). I don't think there's really any debate that Americans, on the whole (in descending order), are matierialistic, hedonistic, and maybe even greedy. I guess this rules them out as Christians in your sense of the word (you're right though, my definition is much looser, this distinction though makes your case that the ACLU is the foe of [your true, real] Christians even weaker -- e.g.).

So, I'd say we have similar goals... the Libertarian says the DOD doesn't give $8 million to Boy Scouts because it's big government pork, equal protection/discrimination, establishment/promotion of one religion, etc. The true Christian says the DOD doesn't give $8 million to Boy Scouts because regardless of their subtle 'Christian' message (in the loose American 'under God', Christian-by-default sense) they are still supporting the status quo, establishing one religion, promoting the culture of war, spending money that could be alms, etc. Once the lepers and the poor are comforted and fed then we can start sparing some time and cash on middle-class youth groups.

We have become a culture where it's not acceptable to express radical worldviews, because we fear offending anyone. This newspeak is detrimental to the freedom of all people.

Calling cultural awareness, diversity, and tolerance (more mythical 'American values') "newspeak" is rhetorically loaded (or at the very least, it's loaded to the literate and its use to defend absolutism is ironic at best). I'll spare you the diatribe about newspeak and 'real' examples (like scotus :) one I use all the time -- or maybe it doesn't count if I say 'supreme court of the united states' in my head when I type it...). I'm sorry that I'm so impatient about word choice. As an aside, maybe Jerry was guilty of doublethinking when began his "What's the deal with those [I assert that something is wrong]... not that there's anything wrong with that."

As far as absolute truth goes, we're just going to agree to disagree. Pardon me for treading near Godwin's Law, but the Western sphere isn't ready to accept, promote, and declare superiority of any absolute truth any time soon. I think we're all a little too gun-shy still. Enforcing a belief such as "[my] God's law is the one true law" is not compatible with a free society (but indvidual expression of that belief is a vital facet).

I think what we've come down to is that when push came to shove, I would choose freedom over faith, where as you would disagree? Right? I'm not sure because it kind of sounds like you are in both camps ("I could not agree with you more. The absolute last thing that I want to see here is for the government, be it city, county, state, or federal endorsement of religion. That would *not* be a goal for me." but at the same time insinuate that Constitutional removals of religious monuments from government buildings is

"in France, authorities have shut down a blog called Hardcore, whose participants have allegedly violating a French law concerning violent speech. Many bloggers fear there will be consequences for them if they are outspoken, even if it is in a nonviolent way."

http://www.orwelltoday.com/police.shtml

Any male who does not enjoy looking at an attractive woman is effectively 5 billion years of evolution gone wrong. People who object to men looking at women might as well object to the existence of the force of gravity.

"Political Correctness" (aka "Double Think", IMHO) makes me want to puke.

"Diversity training" is an aspect of the greater psychological war being waged against independent thought and self-reliance.

One of the faces of that war is called "Political Correctness" and the principle weapon is Newspeak (commonly misreferred to as "doublespeak").

From the site referenced above:

It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and the Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought - that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc - should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings. To give a single example. The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as "This dog is free from lice" or "this field is free from weeds." It could not be used in its old sense of "politically free" or "intellectually free", since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts and were therefore of necessity nameless.

It is easier to control people if they have to continually second guess themselves and if they can be attacked on bogus "sensitivity" issues.

This is not a Left/Right or Liberal/Conservative issue. It is a pure power issue. Those in power represent the Left and the Right in a false dichotomy designed to distract the masses from what is really happening.

Personally, if the Chinese standards don't include restrictive concepts such as CSS and region-encoding, I'd rather have my movies on EVD than DVD.
That said, if EVD has some other kind of restrictions (such as detecting anti-government remarks, and then emailling the details of the viewer to the Ministry of Truth, so that they might be 're-educated' - then perhaps CSS is the lesser of two evils.

After looking at the wayback machine (As the actual website was hacked and is now down) it appears this is a political think tank.

Ok will someone tell me why a political think tank is trying to tell the world open source software is evil?

And
here is the archive mirror of the articals blasting open source.

I don't think there is any doupt this is nothing more than a politcal think tank who exists purely to premote a certen political thought.

Hay everybody.. It's the unoffical Ministry Of Truth.

Thies guys are so anti-Linux it's discusting.

The clames they make about Linus not being the father of Linux have got to be based entirely on the clames made by SCO who in a cort of law was never actually able to provide anything remotely close to proof.

In short it's slanderous hearsay.

Hay if this is valid... how many times has Microsoft been in cort?

I guess now we have our paralel of the psycopath who stalked Bill Gates a number of years back.
(I'm refering to the lady who actually believes Mr Gates is the antiChrist. We all know the real antichrist is Bharny the purple pulsh toy)

example of "two different meanings for the same phrase"

... where are the anti-Orwell leaders?!

If you are interested in Orwell you might also like this site: orwelltoday... it describes now the present has become "1984". Too scary to read for very long.

I apologize for using that site as a source. I didn't read the entire 50,000 words looking for corroboration. Do I consider it a reliable source? Never said it was in the first place.

All I'm really trying to get across, sometimes from an extreme point of view, is that most people have their opinions spoon fed to them by:

a) Their parents.
b) The Media.
c) The Government.

Most people never bother to look a little deeper, question the things that they are being fed and then think for themselves. In a country that is so self centered and money focussed as the US, poining out the flies in the ointment is a thankless job. If by being extreme I can get one person to take a more human position in their thinking, then I'll be extreme. Realize though, that the reason it's needed is to counter the extreme position that most of the US population has taken on the right.

US society is all about money and lifestyle. But only for US citizens. The lifestyle comes at other peoples expense and the money is earned in rather distasteful ways. If that is where the majority of US citizens want to live their lives, great. Just leave it at the border. Don't export weapons, either selling them or using them to kill people. Keep them in the US. When you consider that the 2002-2003 year over year budget increase for the US military was more than the combined budgets of all other countries in the world and in Oregon they are shortening the school year and cutting staff, I mean it really points out how whacked peoples priorities are. People need to be shocked.

I'm sure if I spent enough time on google,, I could find some real loony conservative sites as well. Off the top of my head, try this site for links to the rest of the Rush Limbaugh set.

for the lazy: click here

cuttng and pasting yeck

To an intelligent and open-minded individual, an intelligent true believer is like a good punching bag. You can whack them as hard as you want, but they always bounce back, and they never really know how to hit back.

You will find this hard to believe, I'm sure, since you've painted me as your enemy, but I appreciate the sincerity and tenor of your response. However, I'm sure you will understand, I am not writing for you. Just as a true believer must be sure that I will go to hell (with all its notorious accoutrements) for dying unrepentant with my beliefs, I have, though not a corresponding faith, a reasonable assumption that you are in no danger of questioning yours. I write for those others who are still capable of thinking for themselves.

Your painting of my writing as "baited" with "anti-Catholic hysteria" is, of course, a weak position to start from, since you have not-so-subtly failed to answer almost all of my points, while attempting to fall back on "victim" mentality; what many believers consider to be a kind of or "inherent" moral superiority. Furthermore, the insincerity of this retort is also fairly obvious, as, had you really believed this claim, you actually wouldn't have responded, rather than responding to point out that you couldn't be bothered to respond.

Religion is a game with words. Understand this thoroughly, and the entire tawdry mass of it becomes transparent. Out here, in the rational world, we use words as they are described in a dictionary. To the sophists of the church, this is nothing more than a weakness to be exploited.

Church opposition to fertility clinics was conducted with beautifully worded position papers and public speeches. Church opposition to abortion and stem-cell research was conducted with systematic violence, expansive and carte blanche political lobbying (or call it by its real name, "subversion"), and domestic terrorism. Yet to you, the Church's position is consistent on both. Until the next round of the argument, where you will, oh, who knows, deny the Church's involvement in politics, or sanction of violence, or claim that their opposition of fertility clinics was just as vehement and organized as their opposition to abortion or embryonic stem cell research. Or surprise me. Come up with something new. The Catholic Church officially condemns Usury, as well, but there is no "Jerusalem Files" website for bankers. Here, fair is fair, I've got something nice for you to read as well: it's called Doublethink.

You made no response to my mention of the Nuremburg Files, or the church's campaign against birth control (despite it being plastered all over that citation of yours), and you admit you are unwilling to engage in what would undoubtedly be an interesting debate over the status of the embryo - typical for someone who arrives at their beliefs by means other than facts and reason. You didn't comment on the church's undisputed and venerable history as a machiavellian political machine - you could learn a lot by having an open-minded discussion of history, you know. Say what you like of me, but don't say I'm not willing to discuss my points in a rational and honest setting. Now that God seems to be out of the bush burning business, that's how most people get their ideas, you see.

You elected not to discuss the peculiarities of the Church's humanitarian priorities, especially their unwillingness to become involved with environmental problems, problems of corruption, or colonialism, some of the chief sources of poverty, especially in the third world, where the Church claims to be so active. Yet you know, I think, your claims that such discussions are "hysterical" or otherwise out of bounds ring decisively false.

The Church rarely recruits adults. It knows it can only breed believers, or (perhaps) recruit them through indoctrination ("Catholic School") while they're still young. The vigor with the church encourages its followers to marry and produce children (your other responder, for instance, had clearly received his opinion about this "requirement" from church sources), and the inherent conflict between this and the duties of a moral person, clearly weight heavily on the minds of your text's author. You claim this is a matter of "hysteria." I much prefer the modern Catholic Church, because such criticism of the church policies in earlier times would have earned me a choice seat at a church barbeque. It makes "hysteria" sound like a real party. But really, I know what you'll say. Actually, you're the most predictable at the weakest juncture of your argument. If you want to surprise me, enter into an honest discussion of Church policy. If you analyze them the way you analyze say, North Korea (who is not nearly as well represented in world politics, I assure you), the conclusions are difficult to avoid. They want what most large bodies want. Survival. Growth. Or dispute me. But don't comfort yourself by thinking that your "hysteria" arguments, or the several other stock "I'm being baited by a Catholic hater" responses make very convincing rebuttal.

Your response to your other poster claims "the church doesn't require you to have children." How charitable. Would you care to comment on the paper referenced in that which you kindly provided for me, "Gaudium Et Spes"

"...married Christians glorify the Creator and strive toward fulfillment in Christ when with a generous human and Christian sense of responsibility they acquit themselves of the duty to procreate. Among the couples who fulfil their God-given task in this way, those merit special mention who with a gallant heart and with wise and common deliberation, undertake to bring up suitably even a relatively large family..."

You have the audacity to misdirect about the Church's blatant propagandizing of the procreative act? Please, don't neglect to comment also on the very paper you cited, HUMANAE VITAE, which follows, "Nonetheless the Church, calling men back to the observance of the norms of the natural law, as interpreted by their constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marriage act (quilibet matrimonii usus) must remain open to the transmission of life..." Your beautiful paper is in fact a pitiful compromise with the rhythm method (skimmers, point 16 is the good part). From point 30, to its own administrators, regarding its strict no-effective-birth-control-allowed policy, your paper says, "Consider this mission as one of your most urgent responsibilities at the present time." How many ways should we dance around it, hoeferbe? The Church is in the baby business! Just a hint, trying to minimize or deny it at this point just massacres your credibility...

The overlap between charity and recruitment. The objective analysis of religion in the context of information science, cellular automata or semiotic phenomenon. The church's role in the violence in Northern Ireland. Yes, even their unwillingness to institute zero-tolerance against pedophiles. All hysteria? You have a different definition of hysteria than the dictionary.

Did the end at any time justify the means, hoeferbe? Did it justify beheading Galileo? Or persecution of gays and lesbians? Did it justify what the church did in Yugoslavia in World War II? Am I hysterical, hoeferbe? Or, truthfully, is my honest and sober talk about the church's behavior rather sedate, in fact downright lazy, when anti-abortion terrorists, whom the church "officially" distances themselves from but unofficially provides the moral (and sometimes financial and logistical) support for (much like Osama bin Laden and the WTC bombers?), are carrying on an active and public murder campaign against Americans? I urge you, read your own side's literature, before you form any premature opinions about what hysteria really is.

I'm hysterical, indeed.

I guess that's the only thing you can tell yourself. Your alternatives would be to start really cranking up the Doublethink - try to bury all this under a deeper bed of lies. Or perhaps you could simply run away, and look for an easier (a more ignorant, pliable) conversational partner. That's the playbook, after all. May God have mercy on your soul.