Published on Saturday, September 22, 2001 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 Busheffectively 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.
Re:Its slow because you use a IDE harddrive you du
on
Nautilus 1.0.5 Release
·
· Score: 1
if only one device on the controller is speaking, SCSI has no real advantage
over IDE
Except automatic background bad sector location and mapping out.
If this were a general issue walking away might be effective, but because it only affects non-MS users or MS users who are rightly afraid to use MS mail clients, QWest will retain the majority of its customers. It may not even notice the mass exidos of.5% of its customers, or whatever amounts to the clueful percentage of its customers.
The real problem is that there may not be any alternatives and that this may mean give up your non MS OS or just do without internet service.
Oh yeah, web based email sucks and it's insecure. No body in their right mind should use it for anything but semi-anonymous or trivial purposes.
I disagree on both accounts, KDE's license is GPL and it's no slower than GNOME. In fact, I recently swtiched from GNOME to KDE (2.1.x) and I now regretting that it took me so long to try it. KDE is better.
Unfortunately the majority of US citizens aren't aware of these things, and mistake our current bungled services for the best there is to be had. I'm not saying that all European services are cheaper and better, just that we'd probably be better off here in the US if we knew how much better our services could be.
So you're saying that you don't think it sucks to have severely restricted upload speeds? The point of your post isn't very obvious. I agree with the 11 year old, it does suck.
And while I usually side against Big Money (like Verizon), it seems sorta
backwards that they must open their network to rivals before they can offer data services. It's their network right?
The reason they've been forced to do this is because they were granted a monopoly by the government. The phone company is imensely profitable as well as wasteful. If it were run like competitive business, we'd have much better service. Don't cry for the phone company being forced to allow other companies to try to provide us with decent DSL service. At lest my phone company, Verizon, has no interest in doing so.
I think that's a hasty conclusion. As the article states, most broadband companies are loosing money, and they've been doing it only to win market share. There's no reason why a broadband company would continue to offer cheap/fast service if its market wasn't growing and it was loosing money. That's why companies like Excite are going down the tube.
I'm on my fourth ISP. The first three have all gone out of business and I have their useless DSL boxes to prove it. Now I'm facing the fact that my second DSL provider may go bye-bye. It's a pretty grim future for broadbad in my opinion. Even if the phone company (Verizon) continued to offer DSL, it's such a bad service (friends have had endless QOS problems) I doubt I could bring myself to use it.
I'm so spoiled by broadband that I don't think I could bear to go back to a modem. On the other hand, not having any sort of net connection at home would mean I might actually have some semblence of a life.
I do know something about music and you are wrong. First of all if you "adjust" a tone you are altering it, so by definition it is a different tone. And it's not adjusted because of the characteristics of the instrument, it's adjusted because of physics of sound and vibration. The only reason this isn't done on a piano is because it's too difficult.
Up until about the time of Bach instruments were tuned for the particular key they'd be playing. This made life difficult for the harpsichorist. Bach's, "The Well Tempered Clavier" was a work written to be played in what was called, "Well Temperment" a tuning which actually meant that each note was slightly out of tune in all keys, but not so much that it would sound unacceptable and let the harpsichordist modulate between keys without retuning.
Let me get this striaght. You think that national policy and what someone (whom you don't even know) should use for a text editor are equally valid debates?
I don't get it either, how people can not love it that is.
The best part is the refreshing lack of an opressive moral code that, on other shows, often makes the resolution inevitable as soon as the conflict is known. Tweedle blows up entire planets to demonstrate his power, seldom with any reprocussions at all, Zev wants to get f**ked and happy tells informs to almost everyone she meets of this fact. This is television that isn't (totally) morally sanitized! How did it get past the network execs?
The only clue I have as to why this show isn't universally loved is that it really isn't "science" fiction since it rarely deals with any science issues.
No that is not ironic, it may be an eerie coincidence, but it's not irony:
irony:
1 : a pretense of ignorance and of willingness to learn from another
assumed in order to make the other's false conceptions conspicuous
by adroit questioning -- called also Socratic irony
2 a : the use of words to express something other than and especially
the opposite of the literal meaning b : a usually humorous or sardonic
literary style or form characterized by irony c : an ironic expression or
utterance
3 a (1) : incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events
and the normal or expected result (2) : an event or result marked by
such incongruity b : incongruity between a situation developed in a
drama and the accompanying words or actions that is understood by
the audience but not by the characters in the play -- called also
dramatic irony, tragic irony
Why should I spend a couple of thousand dollars (at least) for the hardware and software to run OSX just to see if I like it better than the OS I use now (Linux) which works perfectly fine for me?
Why don't you switch to BeOS? It's probably better than both Linux and OSX. Go ahead, do it and see if it's better.
Slashdot Mirror
He started a new life alrigh, it's just that it's another evil one.
Somehow I don't feel to bad not knowing stupid gang lingo. In fact, just the opposite.
What about it was gracious? Leaving so many customers stranded doesn't sound too gracious to me.
You poor, poor, deluded children. God love you though, for your single-mindedness.
Read the original article here
Date: September 27, 2001
Published on Saturday, September 22, 2001 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 Busheffectively 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.
Except automatic background bad sector location and mapping out.
(just to pointlessly fan the flames)
At least it's not as ugly as an American car
If this were a general issue walking away might be effective, but because it only affects non-MS users or MS users who are rightly afraid to use MS mail clients, QWest will retain the majority of its customers. It may not even notice the mass exidos of .5% of its customers, or whatever amounts to the clueful percentage of its customers.
The real problem is that there may not be any alternatives and that this may mean give up your non MS OS or just do without internet service.
Oh yeah, web based email sucks and it's insecure. No body in their right mind should use it for anything but semi-anonymous or trivial purposes.
It's no different. Forcing customers to use AOL would be equally bad, don't you think?
I disagree on both accounts, KDE's license is GPL and it's no slower than GNOME. In fact, I recently swtiched from GNOME to KDE (2.1.x) and I now regretting that it took me so long to try it. KDE is better.
Your VPN sucks then, get a new one. My computer's connection is essentially the same when using a VPN or not.
Do what I do, use a VPN over your wireless interface.
I use emacs all day (and love it) but my hands were killing me. The MS keyboard (the only thing MS on my system) reall did fix things.
By the way, vi is for girls
kidding!
Unfortunately the majority of US citizens aren't aware of these things, and mistake our current bungled services for the best there is to be had. I'm not saying that all European services are cheaper and better, just that we'd probably be better off here in the US if we knew how much better our services could be.
So you're saying that you don't think it sucks to have severely restricted upload speeds? The point of your post isn't very obvious. I agree with the 11 year old, it does suck.
There may be isolated pockets of good service, but don't think that what you have is broadly available, even in highly populated areas.
backwards that they must open their network to rivals before they can offer data services. It's their network right?
The reason they've been forced to do this is because they were granted a monopoly by the government. The phone company is imensely profitable as well as wasteful. If it were run like competitive business, we'd have much better service. Don't cry for the phone company being forced to allow other companies to try to provide us with decent DSL service. At lest my phone company, Verizon, has no interest in doing so.
I'm on my fourth ISP. The first three have all gone out of business and I have their useless DSL boxes to prove it. Now I'm facing the fact that my second DSL provider may go bye-bye. It's a pretty grim future for broadbad in my opinion. Even if the phone company (Verizon) continued to offer DSL, it's such a bad service (friends have had endless QOS problems) I doubt I could bring myself to use it.
I'm so spoiled by broadband that I don't think I could bear to go back to a modem. On the other hand, not having any sort of net connection at home would mean I might actually have some semblence of a life.
Up until about the time of Bach instruments were tuned for the particular key they'd be playing. This made life difficult for the harpsichorist. Bach's, "The Well Tempered Clavier" was a work written to be played in what was called, "Well Temperment" a tuning which actually meant that each note was slightly out of tune in all keys, but not so much that it would sound unacceptable and let the harpsichordist modulate between keys without retuning.
You can read more about the issue in Elementary Music Theory
I'd vote for Jed Barlett too, if I could.
But Tom Clancy? His books are nothing more than mindless patriotic boy stories. US == great, anywhere else = dumb/evil. Boring and embarasing.
Let me get this striaght. You think that national policy and what someone (whom you don't even know) should use for a text editor are equally valid debates?
I don't get it either, how people can not love it that is.
The best part is the refreshing lack of an opressive moral code that, on other shows, often makes the resolution inevitable as soon as the conflict is known. Tweedle blows up entire planets to demonstrate his power, seldom with any reprocussions at all, Zev wants to get f**ked and happy tells informs to almost everyone she meets of this fact. This is television that isn't (totally) morally sanitized! How did it get past the network execs?
The only clue I have as to why this show isn't universally loved is that it really isn't "science" fiction since it rarely deals with any science issues.
irony:
1 : a pretense of ignorance and of willingness to learn from another assumed in order to make the other's false conceptions conspicuous by adroit questioning -- called also Socratic irony
2 a : the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning b : a usually humorous or sardonic literary style or form characterized by irony c : an ironic expression or utterance
3 a (1) : incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result (2) : an event or result marked by such incongruity b : incongruity between a situation developed in a drama and the accompanying words or actions that is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play -- called also dramatic irony, tragic irony
Why should I spend a couple of thousand dollars (at least) for the hardware and software to run OSX just to see if I like it better than the OS I use now (Linux) which works perfectly fine for me?
Why don't you switch to BeOS? It's probably better than both Linux and OSX. Go ahead, do it and see if it's better.
But he's not Afgani. He just happens to be in that country.