Orwell in 2007 by Robert Weiner

"In “1984,” the novel that most baby boomers read in high school, George Orwell creates a theoretical modern-day government with absolute power — a state in which government, called the Party, monitors and controls every aspect of human life to the extent that even having a disloyal thought is against the law...

In “1984,” the Party barrages citizens with psychological stimuli designed to overwhelm the mind. The giant telescreen in every room monitors behavior. People are continuously reminded of government’s surveillance, especially by omnipresent signs reading, “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.” Individuals are encouraged to spy on each other, even children on their parents, and report any instance of disloyalty to the Party — i.e., government.

“1984″ is happening in 2007.

Signs along interstate highways urge citizens, “Report Suspicious Behavior.” Cameras mounted at strategic locations monitor our everyday movement (just as in the novel). Red, orange and yellow are no longer just bright, pretty colors: They now represent levels of national security alerts. Intelligence agencies now define “chatter” as “terrorist speak.”

The Party in “1984″ uses psychological manipulation to make citizens “doublethink” — hold two contradictory ideas contrary to common sense.

Back to 2007: The Patriot Act by its very name defies individuals to disagree with it, for to do so would be “unpatriotic.”

The Patriot Act was passed hastily in October 2001, under a cloak of fear in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Some of the fundamental changes to American’s traditional legal rights include:

Establishing a huge surveillance system on millions with no court approval, without probable cause.

Holding citizens indefinitely without access to the courts or counsel.

Monitoring library withdrawals and Internet communications.

Taping attorney-client communications.

Creating a national system for citizens to monitor and report on each other, regardless of reason, including paranoia or ethnic bias.

Developing a massive computer system to monitor every purchase.

Creating a national identification card.

The new federal court rulings are a step forward against threats to our freedom — as were other recent court rulings against the Bush administration’s contention that the Geneva Conventions prohibiting torture were “obsolete” and “trite” and against our secret holding of prisoners abroad without due process.

9-11 was real, as the recent videos by Osama bin Laden confirm now more than six years after he attacked us. However, that fact does not allow playing on our fears and increasing our paranoia about our personal safety. Sen. Joseph McCarthy tried that with Communism in the 1950s. The administration has tried to condition the American people, just as Pavlov did with his dogs.

Congress is now revisiting the legality of the Patriot Act, warrantless surveillance programs, torture of prisoners in secret prisons and barring detainees from counsel and knowing the charges against them. By law, in the next few months, Congress must renew, change or end the Patriot Act and surveillance programs."

Robert Weiner was a Clinton White House public affairs director and spokesman for the U.S. House Government Operations Committee. Read the whole article here.

Watcha think? Will the worst Congress ever repeal the Patriot Act? Or have we kissed our Constitution goodbye already? You know where my money is.

By the way, for a more modern take on the joys of Orwellian government I invite you to enjoy these films - V for Vendetta, based on a comic book or the German film, The Lives of Others.

The President Of Hypocrisy

oooooh, you gotta see this. It's amazing that Keith Olbermann hasn't had an unfortunate accident after this scathing smackdown of the Deciderer in Chief. A little fearlessness in the media is refreshing....

Crooks and Liars » Countdown Special Comment: The President Of Hypocrisy

Shouting Underwater by Walter Mosley

"We are coming up on the two-year mark since the Katrina debacle in Louisiana and Mississippi. I hesitate to call this date an anniversary because the word implies, in some way, a celebration, a birth. What we are scratching on the calendar is more like a notch on a raw gravestone, a count of the days and years that have passed without a reckoning for those who died, those who lost loved ones and for a city that is still in critical condition.

Not only did our government fail to answer the call of its most vulnerable citizens during that fateful period; it still fails each and every day to rebuild, redeem and rescue those who are ignored because of their poverty, their race, their passage into old age.

The disaster named after the hurricane is not confined to the areas affected. Every emergency room, empty bank account and outsourced life's work could be named. We live in a country rife with ignored and condemned poverty. The rich, high on their great corporate steeds, ride over us believing that they are out of the reach of global warming and its symptoms, of terrorism and dwindling natural resources. When government officials tell them to evacuate, they drive their cars, board their corporate jets or simply climb to higher ground with ease. At this very moment they are looking down on Baghdad and New Orleans, Pakistan and Sudan, you and me. The feeling of invulnerability that these people have is unfounded, but nonetheless it makes them reckless. They take chances and cut corners believing that everything will come out all right. Their delusions of grandeur and ultimate power put us in ever more dire straits.

If we call ourselves Americans (and mean it), then we are all victims of Katrina. If we breathe the air or eat fresh fruit, if we call on our cellphones, drink water from a plastic bottle or just nibble on a chocolate bar, then we are Katrina; we are the rising waters around the ankles of this world.

When the day comes to mark off the two-year point since the deluge descended on the Gulf of Mexico, we should take care not to make too much noise. We shouldn't march in that shadow of time or even protest. Rather, we should sit alone in a room with our imaginations open to feel what they experienced on that day: the waters rising, rising and us climbing stairs and ladders, chairs and fire escapes; sitting on rooftops while bodies float by; calling out to passing boats and helicopters that go by in mute witness; being pressed to the roof by the rising tide and being engulfed shouting, shouting out for the ones we love underwater, unheard; the darkness swirling around us as we die with no one coming to save us, or themselves.

Two years have passed and Americans are still displaced, waters are still rising. Wars are raging and we are waiting for a day to vote for a man or a woman who works, not even in secret, for the rich. We wait for this man or woman to lead us out from the disaster like chattel. We feel sorry for the victims as so many felt sorry for Rodney King, not realizing that his defeat was our loss; the blows that rained down on him were also aimed at our freedom, our ability and feeling of responsibility to fight back. Two years have passed and the dead are still dead and the dying are still dying. The clouds gather like angry anthropomorphic gods, and we stumble and fall unable to make a stand or lend a hand or protest all the victims in ghettos, retirement homes, prison wards and dark skins.

Two years have passed and we are still exporting democracy while we continue living under the semibenevolent oligarchy of international corporations and their candidates. This two-year point measures how far we have sunk under the weight of the rich and their political flunkies--while so many of us still celebrate them as if they were pop stars. We experience the silence of drowning men and women. We call out and are not heard. We believe in systems and people who have no faith in us. We perpetuate the rising temperatures and waters and hatred and feelings of hopelessness. New Orleans's defeat is also our defeat. Its closed schools are a metaphor for our minds and our futures. We see the storm's passage but we don't see it coming. But it is coming. And there are no leaders, no corporations, no benevolent billionaires who are going to save our grandmothers and our babies. We must unite outside of the systems that lie like fast food heaped on golden platters at our feet. We must organize at the ground level, where the water has already begun to rise. "

I'm sharing this article because I couldn't have said it any better.

Hurricane Strength: Category 5 (=156 mph)

Landfall: August 23, 2005 in the Bahamas and the Gulf Coast of the United States

Human Cost: At least 1,836 fatalities, thousands of people displaced from their homes

Damage: $81.2 Billion (USD)

and we're still bleeding....

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

This is just too good not to share:

On March 23, 1994, the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound to the head. The decedent had jumped from the top of a ten-story building intending to commit suicide.

He left a note to that effect indicating his despondency. As he fell past the ninth floor, his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast passing through a window, which killed him instantly. Neither the shooter nor the decedent was aware that a safety net had been installed just below at the eighth floor level to protect some building workers and that Ronald Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide the way he had planned.

Ordinarily, Dr. Mills continued, "a person who sets out to commit suicide and ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he intended" is still defined as committing suicide. Mr. Opus was shot on the way to certain death nine stories below at street level, but his suicide attempt probably would not have been successful because of the safety net. This caused the medical examiner to feel that he had a homicide on his hands.

The room on the ninth floor from whence the shotgun blast emanated was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. They were arguing vigorously, and he was threatening her with a shotgun. The man was so upset that when he pulled the trigger he completely missed his wife and the pellets went through the window striking Mr. Opus.

When one intends to kill subject A, but kills subject B in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject B. When confronted with the murder charge, the old man and his wife were both adamant. They both said they thought the shotgun was unloaded. The old man said it was his long standing habit to threaten his wife with the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her. Therefore the killing of Mr. Opus appeared to be an accident, that is, the gun had been accidentally loaded.

The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple's son loading the shotgun about six weeks prior to the fatal accident. It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son's financial support and the son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot his mother.

The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus.

Now comes the exquisite twist. Further investigation revealed that the son was in fact Ronald Opus. He had become increasingly despondent over both the loss of his financial support and the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother's murder. This led him to jump off the ten-story building on March 23rd, only to be killed by a shotgun blast passing through the ninth-story window. The son had actually murdered himself, so the medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.

This famous tale is hypothetical and was told to the American Academy of Forensic Sciences by Don Harper Mills in 1987... but it had you going, didn't it?

the American Dream

Could you live on $833 a month? in Seattle, the average rent is $869 so you'd be a little shy. But that is the amount you need to exist on to be considered poor in America. That in mind, the stat that one in ten Americans live in poverty seems a tad on the low side. It's all in how you define poverty. And the US government says that an individual lives in poverty if they make below $10,000 a year. Or $833 a month.

Keeping in mind the interesting definition, consider this: 20% of Hispanic people, 24% of black people and 28% of single mothers live below the poverty line. In America. Think about that for a second. One fifth of Hispanics (not illegals, because you have to be a citizen to make these stats,) nearly a quarter of black folks and almost a third of single mothers try to make ends meet on virtually nothing. In America.

23 million Americans seek food from food banks annually. 13 million American children wonder where there next meal is coming from. We're spending $720 million a day in Iraq. A day.

Wake the hell up, America. Some 75% of Americans identify themselves as Christian. Are these your family values?

Speaking of Our Fearless Leader

I was kidding when I suggested that Bush might appoint himself Grand Dictator of the Universe. However, I'm one of those cynical folks who wouldn't be all that surprised if it turned out that George had decided to stay on after the party ends. Now I know you're thinking that the first Lame Duck to really deserve that moniker is gone come November 2008. Some folks are even counting the days (1 year, 4 months, 28 days.... and change.) But let's not forget that George is pretty damn comfortable with the idea that the rules don't apply to him.

Let's talk signing statements. Bush loves them. I think he's hovering around 600 constitutional challenges to laws enacted by Congress. Now George doesn't try to fight city hall by using his constitutional right to veto... heck no. He just adds an addendum that states that the law doesn't apply to him. This gives our Prez the ability to effectively rewrite the laws by reinterpreting how the law will be implemented. Nifty huh? So is it so outrageous to think that maybe silly old term limits don't apply to him either?

Then there's the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive. Basically as of May 9th, if George determines a catastrophic emergency has occurred, he can "take over all government functions and direct all private sector activities to ensure we will emerge from the emergency with an enduring constitutional government." Feeling safer now? Reaching for the Tums?

Let's face it, the idea that George might wish to maintain his little fiefdom post term isn't his alone. There was that little upstart idea of repealing the 22nd Amendment (embarrassing that 6 of the 8 sponsors in the House were Democrats... ouch.) And democracy is so obviously a terrible form of government - letting the popular opinion of the unwashed masses sway a leader from his God appointed task of bringing the world to it's knees... well that would be like listening to a focus group. A horribly liberally biased focus group. (There are actually people who believe this. There are actually people who believe the world is flat.)

And just because we haven't had an untainted presidential election in eight years, doesn't mean that this one won't be completely up and up. This is a DEMOCRACY - by the people, for the people and all that. They've fixed all that questionable election type stuff, touch screens, chads, and all. Right? Right. Well.......

Rant o' the Day - Death in America

Seems in the waning days of his Presidency (assuming he doesn't appoint himself Grand Dictator of the Universe) it seems our Fearless Deciderer in Chief is thinking of a legacy. Well, when things aren't looking too rosy, you should probably revisit the things that you know. So Bushie reached back, way back, to the grand glorious days of being Governor (his approval rating was a bit better back then) when he made himself memorable by killing off some 152 people. I guess you could say presiding over more executions than any other elected official in the history of the US of A makes a guy memorable.

Seems the Department of Justice will be overseeing how the states implement their appeals process in death penalty cases. (What would they do without that Patriot Act?) So warming to the task, he's set up his favorite legal mind to get the ol' killing machine a rolling. Good old Alberto. You'd think he'd have better things to do than fast tracking people to their lethal injection, what with all that fuss about firing attorneys and such. But back when they were a team in Texas, it rarely took these two more than 30 minutes to thumbs up an execution. I imagine Gonzales can fit that in between indictments.

But wait. Didn't Bushie just declare January 19th as the National Sanctity of Human Life Day? Thousands dead in Iraq and 152 Americans to boot. Now that's a legacy.