George Orwell alive and well

This web page presents a really neat summary of TV/media and WMDs. It also collates some of the more interesting political cartoons.

But don't visit if you've already seen and heard too much about the corruption of Bush and his cronies, and impending impeachment.

www.hermes-press.com...

Very interesting site, hit home on more than a few subjects. And thats just the images! But lets face it, no matter who is in office, nomatter who would have won the election. Being in office during these times was going to make that person look bad, because it's the people who are behind the President, telling him what to say and do that are lieing to everyone. Bush is just a fugure head and public speaker, with no more true power than the King. Remember it's the throne or possition of office that has the power not the person. That is why the "People" are so important, and that is where "We the People" comes in.

[Edited on 16-6-2003 by ADVISOR]

Orwell rocked, a little sentimental and whiny at times, but those were some damn good books.

1984 is now.
war is peace.
cnn is the ministry of truth.
total information awareness is big brother.
the president's speeches are "two minutes of hate".
orwell saw the same world in 1948.
what's changed is the technological ability to track and profile every human on the planet in real-time.

Not quite, but it may be in the future.

And as for the ministry of truth...that would be FoxNews.

well said

Originally posted by billybob
1984 is now.
war is peace.
cnn is the ministry of truth.
total information awareness is big brother.
the president's speeches are "two minutes of hate".
orwell saw the same world in 1948.
what's changed is the technological ability to track and profile every human on the planet in real-time.

Originally posted by damefool
well said

Originally posted by billybob
1984 is now.
war is peace.
cnn is the ministry of truth.
total information awareness is big brother.
the president's speeches are "two minutes of hate".
orwell saw the same world in 1948.
what's changed is the technological ability to track and profile every human on the planet in real-time.

Lets see if Bush Senior can buy his son out trouble again. Actually he probably can

...& Slavery is Freedom & Ignorance is Strength.

The Unknown
by Donald Rumsfeld

As we know,
There are known knowns.
... But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know we don't know.

From Pieces of Intelligence: The Existential Poetry of Donald H. Rumsfeld, published by the Free Press.

WMD's = known unknowns. By definition. Today.

NOT known knowns or unknown knowns or even unknown unknowns.

Clear as mud. And now Bush is using lingo like 'revisionist historians' to try to label people other than the Bush administration as such, when revisionism (programs not weapons) is the only clutching-at-straws tactic available. Propaganda is running wild, rampant and free, and middle America can't deal with that and a hard life all at once.

How is possible to be rid of this pack of corrupt lying bastards, legally, quickly and easily? It probably isn't all that easy. They intervene in the legislature every single day. But it's worth it.

While we rightly applaud the remarkably visionary nature of much of Orwell: it's worth considering that, after all the political issues have been examined, the true centre of 1984 is when Winston screams out, as he faces the rats: "don't do it me, do it to Julia".
Winston is an incurable romantic who allows himself to be overcome by notions of individual integrity: of recording his views in his little diary, of validating his existence with romantic love, of finding hope in teh proles, the masses - in a world where government, freedom, thought, education,the family have all been or are about to be irreversibly altered, if not destroyed.
At the heart of Orwell is the utter fatuity of any liberal resistance to totalitarianism, of any purely individual resistance.

Estragon

Wouldn't that put a lot of ATS posters who keep their daily recorded views here, off their personal missions to change the world ?

I found exactly the same watching Terry Gilliam's 'Brazil', obviously derivative but the only time you get to see De Niro as an air-conditioning serviceman / Spiderman crossover.

I prefer to take lessons away like knowing the language of propaganda, and reviling what the world could look like if we let arsehole politicians and legislators chip away daily at personal freedoms.

I've seen some excellent posts here on this subject from 'both' sides of the political fence.

Exactly so, Masked-A and one is, after all, talking essentially from a literary perspective; but have no doubt that Orwell would have seen much of what is posted here as equivalent to Winston opening the old, cream-paper diary and beginning his journey into Thoughtcrime.
Orwell offers us little on the intellectual aspects beyond Benjamin the donkey in A.F. who largely kept quiet.
Orwell is, ultimately, very bleak: rmember the vision of a jackboot stamping eternally on a human face, that is offered in 1984 as the Party's view of the future?

An image also used effectively in the opening song, 'Factory' of Shihad's best album, 'Churn'.

This band of Wellingtonians have moved from being a listenable (to me) politicised industrial noise machine influenced by Killing Joke, to a me-too Foo Fighters-derived American hard rock band.

That is part of the selling out process to simply sustain their chosen career. They also needed to vary their name that sounded too akin to the Islamic holy war term, and selected the title of one song off their final album, 'General Electric', called 'Pacifier'.

They really were sold the dummy, weren't they?

Good luck to them as one of the hardest working bands in antipodean show business, and making it big on the US college circuit and supporting other rock and roll monstrosities.

I also think of Alex in Clockwork Orange licking the boot of his aggressor rather than fighting him, after being put through the Ludivico technique.

I respect those who don't sell out and instead stick to their principles and moral choices. In the current administration there was a moral vacuum to begin with so nothing to sell out.

Do you have a boot oppressing you for some reason?

I just realised that Benjamin the Donkey is from Animal Farm, which I never read.

Is there a Bush-like character (lowlife, corrupt, morally bankrupt vapid puppet/leader appointed through nepotism) in that?

LOL.

Don't know if you would compare him with Bush, but Napoleon the pig has all of the qualities that you're looking for.

Interestingly enough, he sells out and becomes like his man in the end.

Orwell was a great political analyst and he was able to twist those doctrines into literature. He was one of the first of his kind and I believe that is why we attach so much import to his words.
But I don't believe his books were a prophecy or that they came true.

Orwell certainly was not a prophet: and I suspect he could scarcely have imagined the sorts of leaders we in the West have had the luck to acquire fifty years on. But is Bush fils not on record as saying (no doubt in jest) that a dictatorship would be OK if he were dictator? So perhaps there's a little Napoleon in there somewhere.
As for Orwell the prophet: remember he was going to call it "1948" and the publishers would not accept this. He was essentially writing about the reality of NOW, not some future possibility.
What Orwell did not foresee is the ease with which the world would be bought for microwaves, PC's, pension plans and TV dinners.
And who would ever have guessed then that an ostensibly benign, ostensibly consumer-driven ( it is neither: it is inherently vicious and doesn't actually give a da*n about supplying what people really might need) capitalism would turn out to be stronger than all the jackbooted armies of the world.

It took O'Brien, Newspeak, Thoughtcrime, Room 101, beatings, fear and the whole might of the Party to convince Winston that two plus two could be other than four and that this was actually a condition of "real" freedom.
Money-lenders of various sorts manage this daily with a "pop up" or two and the masses beg for more as they hasten lemming-like to debt-slavery.

Hmmm...A little graphic on the webpage that MaskedAvatar listed (www.hermes-press.com...)...I wonder where I could get a bumper sticker of that made?

Actually, the fault lies not with merely the Bush administration (Which I like to refer to as Bush & His Bully Boy Gang), but with the entire political system that *allows* people like Bush, Nixon & Clinton into Office with such frequency, compared to others like Lincoln & JFK. Granted, it's likely that neither Lincoln or JFK were *saints*, but it seems clear to me that they did have the intrests of the country & (more importantly) its *citizens* in mind much more than the administrations over the past 5 or 6 decades have.

Originally posted by ADVISORRemember it's the throne or possition of office that has the power not the person. That is why the "People" are so important, and that is where "We the People" comes in.

Absolutely! What do you think is going to happen to the people in these powerful positions if they keep chipping away at the source of their power...The "base of their pyramid"...The PEOPLE? I smell another Civil War coming, although I still hold out the hope (quaintly obsolete as it may be) that widespread public awareness will generate a more peaceful way to get the government restructured.

Originally posted by EstragonOrwell is, ultimately, very bleak: rmember the vision of a jackboot stamping eternally on a human face, that is offered in 1984 as the Party's view of the future?

Actually, the image that comes to my mind more often is the animated image of the marching hammers in the movie based on Pink Floyd's album: "The Wall"...

Originally posted by EstragonMoney-lenders of various sorts manage this daily with a "pop up" or two and the masses beg for more as they hasten lemming-like to debt-slavery.

This is why I merely throw away any credit card offers I see in the mail (real or internet mail) & I'm always contacting connsumer protection agencies to make them take my info out of ther databases: Of course, they merely sell their lists of personal info to another company before they erase it from their own files. This is why I do *not* use any kind of credit card...Not only does it make you pay interest on even the *sales tax* (Isn't that essentially the same as taxing your money twice?) of your purchase, but there's no Consittutional basis for credit to even *exist* in this form of "currency": Of course I use the term "currency" in the context here of something that has no more actual substance than a dream...Or in this case, a nightmare!