Speaking of George Orwell

As per my post below, it seems that Ireland's very own big brother, Justice Minister McDowell, has gone out of his way to use language to pull the wool over our eyes yet again.

Speaking in the Dail last week he presented the Criminal Justice (Mutual Assurance) Bill in Irish! Quite a cynical move to ensure the people who are most concerned about intrusions on privacy, eg Digital Rights Ireland and the average citizen, have as much trouble as possible in understanding its impact. The grammar of Irish he used was commented on by TD Michael D Higgins as of very poor quality and quite hard to understand. MDH himself being a life long Irish speaker is well qualified to comment.

The Bill itself allows any European police/security force to spy on citizens of any other EU country without notifying the Government in which they are carrying out the activity. There is a clause to seek "retrospective permission" but by then it is too late as they privacy rights of the citizen have already been violated.

And further highlighting how undemocratic the EU is: The Human Rights Commission, for example, has expressed concern that these measures are negotiated in Brussels with no advance input from the commission or from anyone else. By the time a framework decision is agreed and comes before the Oireachtas, it is too late to do much more than tinker with it.

You would think that something like this would cause a bit of a storm in the media, but alas once again the media are largely silent. With the only press coverage being so far from the Sunday Tribune and the Irish Times,both commenting on the privacy issues of the Bill and its unusual presentation by McDowell.

Sunday Tribune link to article
Irish Times link to article from Monday, reproduced here without need to log in
Irish Times link to article from Tuesday, reproduced here without need to log in

The Value of George Orwell

George Orwell remains a valuable writer, though he died in 1950. He was a man who was an active participant in his times, and since the new century appears to be going down the same road as the last one, we can still learn from him.

His essay "Politics and the English Language" ought to be read by every journalist and by everyone who reads journalists or listens to the babble on television.

"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity," he wrote. "When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

"In our age, there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia," Orwell wrote. Earlier in the essay he had said, "In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible."

Former Soviet Dissident Warns of EU Dictatorship

Some very ominous comparisons were made of the EU to the USSR in this interview by Vladimir Bukovksy, a former dissident who was imprisoned in Soviet gulags for a total of twelve years has warned that he personally saw secret documents in 1992 which outlined a conspiracy to turn the European Union into a Socialist dictatorship.

Excerpts from the interview:

"The European Parliament is elected on the basis of proportional representation, which is not true representation. And what does it vote on? The percentage of fat in yoghurt, that kind of thing. It is ridiculous. It is given the task of the Supreme Soviet. The average MP can speak for six minutes per year in the Chamber. That is not a real parliament."

Calling it "blackmail," Bukovksy pointed out that citizens in countries like Ireland, Denmark and Switzerland were being forced to join the EU via means of endless referendums despite the fact that they consistently vote against it.

"It is a trick for idiots," he says. "The people have to vote in referendums until the people vote the way that is wanted. Then they have to stop voting. Why stop? Let us continue voting. The European Union is what Americans would call a shotgun marriage."

Chomsky: "Under the current U.S. policies, a nuclear exchange is inevitable"

There are dire consequences to the current direction of the U.S. foreign policy, said Noam Chomsky in a speech Saturday at Binghamton University. Among those consequences, he said, is a nuclear Armageddon.

"Under the current U.S. policies, a nuclear exchange is inevitable," the 77-year-old MIT professor said in his presentation, "Imminent Crises: Paths Toward Solutions." He spoke to an over-capacity crowd in BU's Osterhout Concert Theater.

Chomsky cited nuclear proliferation and environmental collapse as the two greatest crises that "literally threaten survival."

Nifty flash animation 'War Corporatism: The New Fascism'

A video by Simon Robson aka. Knife Party and friend, Barry McNamara. It's an animated look at the dogs of War Corporatism unleashed upon the world by Bush and the PNAC as stated in the September 2000 document Rebuilding America's Defenses.