Free Republic

Governments will soon have, for the first time in history, the means to identify, monitor and track citizens anywhere in the world in real time      http://www.cbsnews.com/ Climbing into his Volvo, outfitted with a Matrics antenna and a Motorola reader he'd bought on eBay for $190, Chris Paget cruised the streets of San Francisco with this objective: To read the identity cards of strangers, wirelessly, without ever leaving his car. It took him 20 minutes to strike hacker's gold. Zipping past Fisherman's Wharf, his scanner detected, then downloaded to his laptop, the unique serial numbers of two pedestrians'...

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. —George Orwell, opening line of 1984 Sixty years ago, Eric Arthur Blair (a.k.a. George Orwell) published his final book, 1984, months before his death. Other writers pictured the future in utopian terms—a golden age of bliss and enlightenment. Not Orwell. His dystopian novel pictured a bleak world where government was out of control. As different from his earlier Animal Farm as Finding Nemo is from Moby Dick, Orwell’s 1984 conjured terms that are still in use today: doublethink, newspeak, thought police and Big Brother. Even Orwell's...

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR’’ opens with one of the most famous first lines in modern English literature - the vaguely unnerving “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.’’ The line it ends with is even more famous, and considerably more sinister: “He loved Big Brother.’’ George Orwell’s brilliant, bitter novel turns 60 this month, but after all these years it has lost none of its nightmarish chill. Its hero is the decidedly unheroic Winston Smith, a weak and wistful man who lives in the totalitarian police state of Oceania, which is ruled by the Party...

We use Orwell, Orwellian, and Orwellianism loosely a lot these days, but what is going on in the Obama administration is beginning to get a little creepy and resembles a lot of things Orwell wrote about in 1984. When in, Soviet fashion, a critical overseer is dismissed as being "confused" and suffering mental problems in carrying out the law, as Gerald Walpin probably did in uncovering waste and possible fraud in connection with the mayor of Sacramento; or when the government begins to create new words like "overseas contingency operations" and "man-made catastrophes"; or when Justice Sotomayor says that a Latina is...

In his essay "The Principles of Newspeak," the appendix to his classic novel, 1984 (published 60 years ago this month), George Orwell describes how the leaders of his totalitarian future have contrived to assure their hold on power by replacing English with Newspeak, a language containing no vocabulary for concepts contrary to the platform of the state-run Party. By controlling language, the Party controls its people's very thoughts. Intuition suggests that language is a product of thought: if we think clearly, automatically we will speak clearly. Orwell demonstrates the opposite, that thought is a product of language. Because we formulate...

Racism as thoughtcrime - Orwell seems more right than ever The last decade have been a golden age for George Orwell and his greatest work, 1984. While the novel has always been prized, I remember a time when it was considered a great piece, but not a prescient one. As the age of genetic engineering dawned in he Nineties Huxley's Brave New World seemed far more accurate (though less well written). And yet in 2009 Orwell's predictions seem more eerily true than ever. It is not so much the more obviously Soviet elements, like the economic poverty and the state...

The last decade have been a golden age for George Orwell and his greatest work, 1984. While the novel has always been prized, I remember a time when it was considered a great piece, but not a prescient one. As the age of genetic engineering dawned in he Nineties Huxley's Brave New World seemed far more accurate (though less well written). And yet in 2009 Orwell's predictions seem more eerily true than ever. It is not so much the more obviously Soviet elements, like the economic poverty and the state brutality, that have turned out true - quite the opposite...

Almost one of every six foster children on mood-altering drugs in Florida is being medicated without the court order or parental consent required by law, according to a study released Thursday by the state Department of Children and Families. DCF Secretary George Sheldon acknowledged there was "no rational basis" for 433 foster children in Florida being given psychotropic drugs without the required documentation. He vowed that by next week, the agency would ensure that the children have parental consent to take the drugs or that their cases are scheduled to go before a judge. The study is more fallout from...

A common meme on conservative sites is the assertion that Obama and his minions are "Alinskyites." (For those of you unfamiliar with the term, "Alinsky" is not the Chicago version of "Lewinsky.") Saul Alinsky was a political agitator (read: Socialist / Communist) who was interested in subverting American culture, and who decided that the most effective way to do this was to usurp the levers of power within the system. He wrote, along the way, a book entitled Rules for Radicals, which was a guidebook of strategy and tactics for the communist infiltrator community organizer. The book is famous for...

Bigger, bloodier wars equal peace and justice "The Deltas are psychos. You have to be a certified psychopath to join the Delta Force", a U.S. Army colonel from Fort Bragg once told me back in the 1980's. Now President Obama has elevated the most notorious of the psychopaths, General Stanley McChrystal, to head the U.S. and NATO military command in Afghanistan. McChrystal's rise to leadership is marked by his central role in directing special operations teams engaged in extrajudicial assassinations, systematic torture, bombing of civilian communities and search and destroy missions. He is the very embodiment of the brutality and...

Children as young as seven are being recruited by councils to act as 'citizen snoopers', the Daily Mail can reveal. The 'environment volunteers' will report on litter louts, noisy neighbours - and even families putting their rubbish out on the wrong day. There are currently almost 9,000 people signed up to the schemes. More are likely to be recruited in the coming months. Controversially, some councils are running 'junior' schemes which are recruiting children. After basic training, volunteers are expected to be the 'eyes and the ears' of the town hall. They are given information packs about how to collect...

In 1946 Observer editor David Astor lent George Orwell a remote Scottish farmhouse in which to write his new book, Nineteen Eighty-Four. It became one of the most significant novels of the 20th century. Here, Robert McCrum tells the compelling story of Orwell's torturous stay on the island where the author, close to death and beset by creative demons, was engaged in a feverish race to finish the book Robert McCrum The Observer, Sunday 10 May 2009 Article history George Orwell. Photograph: Public Domain "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." Sixty years...

Why is the press remaining mostly silent about the so-called "hate crimes law" that passed in the House on April 29? The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act passed in a 249-175 vote (17 Republicans joined with 231 Democrats). These Democrats should have been tested on their knowledge of the First Amendment, equal protection of the laws (14th Amendment), and the prohibition of double jeopardy (no American can be prosecuted twice for the same crime or offense). If they had been, they would have known that this proposal, now headed for a Senate vote, violates all these constitutional provisions....

Sixteen people banned from entering the UK are "named and shamed" by the Home Office. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said she decided to make public the names of 16 people banned since October last year so others could better understand what sort of behaviour Britain was not prepared to tolerate. The list includes hate preachers, anti-gay protesters and a far- right US talk show host.

Cass Sunstein sees Web as anti-democratic, proposed 24-hour delay on sending e-mail WASHINGTON – Barack Obama's nominee for "regulatory czar" has advocated a "Fairness Doctrine" for the Internet that would require opposing opinions be linked and also has suggested angry e-mails should be prevented from being sent by technology that would require a 24-hour cooling off period. The revelations about Cass Sunstein, Obama's friend from the University of Chicago Law School and nominee to head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, come in a new book by Brad O'Leary, "Shut Up, America! The End of Free Speech."...

Communications firms are being asked to record all internet contacts between people as part of a modernisation in UK police surveillance tactics. The home secretary scrapped plans for a database but wants details to be held and organised for security services. The new system would track all e-mails, phone calls and internet use, including visits to social network sites. The Tories said the Home Office had "buckled under Conservative pressure" in deciding against a giant database. Announcing a consultation on a new strategy for communications data and its use in law enforcement, Jacqui Smith said there would be no single...

WHEN it comes to spying on emails and online behaviour, the British government is particularly well placed. A new analysis suggests that more internet traffic passes through the UK than any other country bar the US. Josh Karlin of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and colleagues examined the way international internet traffic is transmitted around the globe (www.arxiv.org/abs/0903.321). From this they created a "country centrality" (CC) rating - a 0-to-1 scale in which a country that routes all international traffic would score 1. The US came out top with a CC of 0.74. The UK and Germany followed...

Angry villagers formed a human chain to thwart the progress of a Google Street View car that was in the process of taking photographs of their homes. Police were called to Broughton in Buckinghamshire yesterday, after furious villagers blocked one of the cars, complaining it was an invasion of their privacy and that the photographs would attract burglaries. Paul Jacobs, a local resident, spotted the car yesterday morning, thanks to the distinctive 360-degree camera attached to its roof. He told the driver not to enter the village, then roused fellow residents by knocking on their doors. The driver eventually did...

Finally! Someone had the guts to call it like it is! Well done Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC)!

Animal Farm concerns a group of talking pigs who take over a farm, purportedly for the benefit of all its inhabitants, but end up running it for their own selfish ends. Its plot sees the pig Napoleon, based on Stalin, forcing out his rival Snowball, who genuinely works for the good of the farm. Many commentators have concluded that Snowball was based on Stalin's rival Leon Trotsky, who was expelled from the Communist Party in 1927. In his dismissive letter, Eliot wrote that Orwell's view "which I take to be generally Trotsykite, is not convincing". He argued: "We have no...