Bush to Face Street Protests over Iraq Escalation Plan |
| by Haider Rizvi |
The Bush administration's plan to beef up the U.S. military presence in Iraq is likely to create a new wave of protests across the United States in the coming days. As Bush is expected to announce his plans Wednesday to send approximately 20,000 more troops to Iraq, anti-war groups say they will hold rallies and sit-ins in dozens of cities across the nation to press the U.S. Congress to thwart any troop escalation. Within 24 hours of Bush's announcement, there will be protests all over the country, according to Tom Andrews, former Congressman and director of Win Without War, one of the largest anti-war coalitions. Andrews' group, which is working closely with United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), another major anti-war umbrella group, has planned a series of protests, including a Web-based campaign to push Congress to block Bush's plans for Iraq. In addition to rallies and sit-ins, the campaign includes personal YouTube.com appeals and photos calling for legislators in Washington to reject Bush's strategy for Iraq and call for an end to the occupation. Those participating in the Web-based campaign have already begun to download "No" signs, with petitions urging Congress to exercise its powers of the purse to block any escalation of war in Iraq. "It is unbelievable that after the voters and the Iraqis said they want and end to this war, Bush is going to escalate it," said Leslie Cagan of UFPJ. "He was wrong to begin the war and he is wrong to prolong it even one more day." Cagan called the Iraq war "outrageous," and demanded that Bush recall all U.S. troops from Iraq. For his part, however, Bush has made clear that he not only intends to increase the size of the U.S. army in Iraq, but would also seek further funding for the war. Some reports suggest that next month Bush is likely to ask Congress for emergency funding for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and what he calls the "war on terror" that would bring total military spending for fiscal year 2007 to more than $110 billion. The expected request for increased funding, if approved, would bring total spending on the war to more than $500 billion. But given the changed political climate on Capitol Hill, indications are that Bush's effort to boost funding and troop levels may not succeed. Now that they hold leadership positions in both houses of Congress, many Democrats are becoming increasingly critical of Bush's Iraq policy. Calling the previous Congress a "rubber stamp" for Bush's Iraq policy, senior Democratic senator Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), in a speech Tuesday, said the Democrats would strongly oppose any further military escalation in Iraq. "It would be another mistake," he told reporters in Washington. "We must change course in Iraq, not escalate. American people voted for change. We have a solemn obligation to say we have heard their voices." In response to Bush's perceived plan for sending more troops, Nancy Pelosi, the new Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, took a similar stance. "Congress is ready to use its authority of oversight to question what is the justification for this spending, what are the results we are receiving," she told the CBS television program Face the Nation. Like Kennedy, Pelosi made it clear that Democrats would not accept military escalation, but said they were not in support of reducing funding for troops already in Iraq. Last week, Pelosi sent a letter to Bush saying there should be no increase in troops, while emphasizing the need for a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, tens of thousands--and by some estimates hundreds of thousands--of Iraqi civilians have died while U.S. forces have also lost more than 3,000 troops. Anti-war groups said this week's campaign against the military escalation would culminate in a major national march on Washington on January 27. That event will be followed by a series of activities, including an interfaith peace service and a day-long program to educate legislators about the devastating consequences of the war. Copyright © 2007 OneWorld.net. |
12.1.07
Face the Music Duh-bya
10.1.07
Without reservation- Dead Man Walking
LINKS TO MORE ARTICLES BY COL. KWIATKOWSKI
Without reservation
by Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D., Lt. Col. USAF (ret.)
posted 06 Jan 07
Dead Men Walking
Without a doubt, George W. Bush is a lame duck with an even lamer foreign policy. We may well call from our own cells “Dead man walking!' Yet, just as the late Saddam Hussein, Bush remains publicly defiant, the model of a patriotic strongman in a time of national calamity.
As with the late Saddam Hussein, the national calamity Bush addresses -- our Middle East militarism -- is entirely of his own making. As with the late Saddam Hussein, Bush fancies himself a strategic genius with an under-appreciated political vision. As with the late Saddam Hussein, the number of his devotees has long dwindled, with those remaining faithful tending to do so for tradition rather than principle.
In the fifty states, we grieve our more than three thousand dead American troops, our 400 or so dead American contractors, and our 50,000 physically and psychologically scarred Americans. Occupied Iraq surely grieves its 650,000 dead Iraqis, its millions of wounded, its 25 to 40% unemployment rate, its lost oil revenues. It is abundantly clear that these Iraqi deaths and economic crimes are not the result of Saddam Hussein's leadership. This fact is not missed by either average Americans or Iraqis.
We can certainly understand why our pimped out and bitch-slapped Iraqi Prime minister Nouri Maliki wants to quit. We wonder at the barely suppressed rage of George H.W. Bush and his team as their compromise path to save the presidency for Jeb -- if not salvage what's left of the U.S. Army -- is tasted and then quickly spat out by baby Bush. We are amazed that the tinpot politics of the strutter-in-chief and his replacement of occupation-hardened Army leaders in Iraq by uniformed apparatchiks who promise more genuflecting death and destruction for the glory of the king.
Americans, through elections, polling, activism, lawsuits and personal sacrifice, have shifted their opinion of the war in Iraq, and now overwhelmingly reject the Bush Middle East militarism. At this point, even if we could agree that the goal was really permanent bases in the heart of the Middle East, a regional Sunni political implosion, shattered Iraqi society, and escalated economic and military aggression towards Israel's arch enemy and China's future energy provider -- we would still sadly have to agree that it didn't work out, and it has been neither lawful, successful nor worth the cost.
Even cheerleading neoconservatives simper that the “war' wasn't conducted properly, with enough commitment, or appropriate enthusiasm. For them, the applicable maxim isn't “pride goeth before a fall,' but the New Testament parable of the tares and the wheat. They see the field, after all their hard work, contaminated by weeds, made ugly, unprofitable, even embarrassing. They say, “An enemy hath done this,' unable to recognize their own handiwork.
Yet, the dead men continue to walk. Bush's New strategy for Iraq will be unveiled soon, and will almost certainly include more dead men and women on all sides. In Bush's final two lame duck years, in spite of a somewhat resistant Congress and an angry American public, he will be able to achieve at least as many dead Americans in Iraq as he has since 2003. We haven't even mentioned dead Americans in the Afghan front against Iran, or the utter catastrophe that is post-invasion Afghanistan. Bush is lame indeed, but in a very real way, he will manage to continue the mayhem in the Middle East through inertia, if not by design.
The challenge is to shift the dynamic here at home, in our own prisonhouse of misplaced faith in government, our own illusions of goodness where instead there is only the now-metasticized military-industrial-congressional complex described by President Dwight D. Eisenhower nearly fifty years ago. Three generations since then, and maybe more, have disregarded, or perhaps never understood what we were paying for, in treasure and in constitutional principle.
To imagine freedom from our current foreign policy imbroglio, we step into dangerous territory. It is estimated that 60 million American voters have a financial stake in the military-industrial complex, not counting those who invest in the many American companies that rely on militarism abroad and at home to provide shareholder dividends. As we contemplate a draft, we forget that we really and truly don't need one. Undereducated and underemployed young people may complain, but they don't really count. Increasingly, college students are willing to take any paying job, including one offered in the name of “service' and patriotism. Their parents and grandparents will accept the draft as well, in the name of that societal restructure that Eisenhower warned against, and has now become the norm.
Thus, the dead man walking is not just our increasingly confused and cartoonish Mr. Bush. We see dead men walking in the discredited Republican party, once valued for both fiscal restraint and political seriousness. We find them in the United States Army, and in nearly every office of the E-ring of the Pentagon. We see dead men walking as we watch the young men and women who have been sent to the Middle East to spread “democracy' at the point of the gun, to occupy in a land that will never accept our occupation, and doesn't need it. Finally, here at home, many Americans who otherwise would stand up and act to reject their government instead cower. Because for all of our understanding of the farce, and our recognition of the cure -- leaving Iraq immediately -- too many Americans live paycheck to paycheck, burdened by personal and national debt -- to the tune of $440,000 for every American household. At least 60 million of us truly believe we need that Department of Defense paycheck, that military contract, that service-sector job that sucks greedily at the military-industrial teat.
Thus, Americans of all parties seem to be nastily cheering George W. Bush as he marches into the valley of the shadow of death, fearing no evil and intending even more murder, more destruction, more breaking of banks and breaking of hearts. Better him than us, we mutter. But we are all dead men walking.
© 06 Jan 2007 Karen Kwiatkowski
5.1.07
FRONTLINE: the torture question: watch the full program online | PBS
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In mid-August, a FRONTLINE documentary crew made the perilous journey to the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Entering the 280-acre compound in the middle of the night, escorted by helicopters and a convoy of armed Humvees, the crew was following 50 detainees fresh from the battlefield. As they were ordered to kneel in formation on the concrete floor, one detainee nervously asked the FRONTLINE cameraman, "Is this Abu Ghraib?" The answer brought a shudder. (more) »
Note: FRONTLINE also offers here a producers' commentary track for high bandwidth connections. Click on "Commentary" to access this new feature. However, we recommend that you first view in High or Low bandwidth the documentary just as it was broadcast by PBS.
Abu Ghraib has always been a terrifying place to Iraqis -- Saddam Hussein used it as his primary torture chamber -- but in 2004, when graphic photographs of American soldiers abusing prisoners surfaced, Abu Ghraib took on deeper meaning.
"The details of what happened in those cellblocks between the American soldiers and Iraqi detainees are well known," says producer/director Michael Kirk, "but how and why it happened is what took us into the heart of Abu Ghraib that night."
In "The Torture Question", FRONTLINE traces the history of how decisions made in Washington in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11 -- including an internal administration battle over the Geneva Conventions -- led to a robust interrogation policy that laid the groundwork for prisoner abuse in Afghanistan; Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; and Iraq.
The political firestorm ignited by the Abu Ghraib photos and the shocking revelations that followed resulted in 12 Department of Defense investigations. One of them, a commission of ex-defense secretaries, found that there were lapses in oversight in the Pentagon, but that the practices had not been condoned. So far there have been arrests and convictions of some low-level soldiers and reprimands for the colonel in charge of Abu Ghraib, Thomas Pappas, as well as for Army Reserve Gen. Janis Karpinski.
"They can do whatever they want; they could make it appear any way they want. I will not be silenced," Karpinski tells FRONTLINE. "I will continue to ask how they can continue to blame seven rogue soldiers on the nightshift when there is a preponderance of information right now, hard information from a variety of sources, that says otherwise."
"The Torture Question" traces the aggressive development of the administration's interrogation policy in the aftermath of 9/11, where the push for "actionable intelligence" led to authorization for interrogators to strip detainees, degrade prisoners with sexual humiliation techniques and use dogs for intimidation.
Former White House and Justice Department legal advisers who were involved in drafting many of the administration's boldest proposals agreed to talk to FRONTLINE. "There was a powerful set of shared assumptions we had in the wake of 9/11, and one of the most powerful was the assumption that we would never be forgiven if we failed to do something that was within the power of our government lawfully to protect the public from a further attack," says Associate White House Counsel Bradford Berenson.
The legal framework developed by administration lawyers like Berenson, Alberto Gonzales and John Yoo provided the impetus for unprecedented rules for interrogating detainees, rules authorized by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld -- rules officials insist never condoned torture.
FRONTLINE follows the implementation of the Rumsfeld rules from the battlefields of Afghanistan to the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, where eventually the FBI began to document a trail of abuses by interrogators.
In one e-mail, an agent reports on conditions in an interrogation room: "[T]he A/C had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room probably well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night."
In this report, American soldiers give first-hand accounts of their involvement in the harsh treatment of prisoners. Moreover, one former Army interrogator and member of a special intelligence team insists that the use of torture was happening all over Iraq. Other military sources, some of whom had to be disguised, confirm that prisoner abuse is a more widespread problem than previously reported.
"The Torture Question" provides the context for understanding how the rules were confused, how lines of authority were blurred, and what happens when the authorization of "coercive interrogation" makes it way into the battle zone.
1.1.07
Iraq: Amnesty International deplores execution of Saddam Hussein - news.amnesty - Amnesty International
International
Iraq: Amnesty International deplores execution of Saddam Hussein
|
12/30/2006
Amnesty International deplored the execution today of Saddam Hussein following the confirmation of his sentence by the Iraqi Appeals Court on 26 December 2006.
The organization, which totally opposes the use of the death penalty, said it was concerned that the Iraqi Appeals Court had failed to address the major flaws during the former dictator's trial before the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal (SICT) which had rendered it unfair.
"We oppose the death penalty in all cases as a violation of the right to life and the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment, but it is especially abhorrent when this most extreme penalty is imposed after an unfair trial," said Malcolm Smart, Director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Programme. "It is even more worrying that in this case, the execution appeared a foregone conclusion, once the original verdict was pronounced, with the Appeals Court providing little more than a veneer of legitimacy for what was, in fact, a fundamentally flawed process."
Amnesty International said it had greatly welcomed the decision to hold Saddam Hussein to account for the crimes committed under his rule but this should have been done through a fair process. "His trial should have been a major contribution towards establishing justice and ensuring truth and accountability for the massive human rights violations perpetrated when he was in power, but his trial was a deeply flawed affair" said Malcolm Smart. "It will be seen by many as nothing more than 'victor's justice' and, sadly, will do nothing to stem the unrelenting tide of political killings."
Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death on 5 November 2006 after being convicted in connection with the killing of 148 people from al-Dujail village after an attempt to assassinate him there in 1982. The trial, which began in October 2005 almost two years after Saddam Hussein was captured by US forces, ended last July. The Appeals Court confirmed their sentences on 26 December 2006, when Judge Arif Shaheen confirmed that it must be carried out within 30 days after ratification by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani or his delegate.
The trial before the SICT failed to satisfy international fair trial standards. Political interference undermined the independence and impartiality of the court, causing the first presiding judge to resign and blocking the appointment of another, and the court failed to take adequate measures to ensure the protection of witnesses and defence lawyers, three of whom were assassinated during the course of the trial. Saddam Hussein was also denied access to legal counsel for the first year after his arrest, and complaints by his lawyers throughout the trial relating to the proceedings do not appear to have been adequately answered by the tribunal. The appeal process was obviously conducted in haste and failed to rectify any of the flaws of the first trial.
"Every accused has a right to a fair trial, whatever the magnitude of the charge against them. This plain fact was routinely ignored through the decades of Saddam Hussein's tyranny. His overthrow opened the opportunity to restore this basic right and, at the same time, to ensure, fairly, accountability for the crimes of the past. It is an opportunity missed," said Malcolm Smart, "and made worse by the imposition of the death penalty."
At the time of his execution, Saddam Hussein was also standing trial before the SICT, together with six others, on separate charges arising from the so-called Anfal campaign, when thousands of people belonging to Iraq's Kurdish minority were subject to mass killings, torture and other gross abuses in 1988. It is expected that this trial will now continue against the other accused. The execution of Saddam Hussein is a major blow to the process of establishing the truth of what happened under his rule. and as such another squandered opportunity for Iraqis to find out about and come to terms with the crimes of the past.
Ministry of Love
Dayorder 12.30.06
A glorious victory: the Ministry of Love has recently shipped copies of the book to several dozen unpersons.
Video of this historic event will be posted shortly.
Today, we are indebted to Comrade Paglino of Ohio and Comrade Loftis of New York, who have brought our collection total to 86 books. This represents 27% of our goal!
Meanwhile, we are still accepting copies of 1984 at:
PO Box 655
Guilford, CT 06437
In other news, we wish to share with you photographs of actual members of the Ministry of Love, who recently emerged from their underground headquarters to mourn the passing of the United States Constitution.
Here you see the gravesite where the Constitution was laid to its eternal rest.
Mourners gather to pay their respects to the document. This small child was especially upset.
Finally, Comrade Cobb reads the eulogy.
First Shipment Scheduled
We have scheduled our first shipment of The Book for this week.
We will be shipping to all unpersons about to be vaporized, as well as all other Inner Party Member of the Senate who voted for torture.
All representatives from the Ministry of Truth are invited to witness the proceedings.
Please contact us at our email address for additional information.
We are, however, still accepting books for the Inner Party Members who survived the Purge.
Please ship them to:
Box 655
Guilford, CT
06437
Dayorder 12.3.06
Comrades,
Due to your excellent response, we have received 68 copies of 1984 thus far, representing nearly 21% of our collection goal.
We want to single out Comrade Levy of Massachusetts, who shipped us eight brand new copies from Amazon.
We at Miniluv are also stepping up our preparations for Hate Weekend: afterdowningstreet.org
Regards,
O’Brien
Newfound Comrades!
We just learned about this: Harvard University Law Students Hold Funeral for U.S. Constitution
We humbly request that you meet us in the room above Charrington’s shop on Saturday, 1300 hours.
About Newspeak
Here at Miniluv we understand that many of the proles who peruse this site may not have the latest edition of the Newspeak Dictionary. Therefore we have included a few definitions below. All these were found at Newspeak Dictionary
Recently rescued from the Memory Hole…
Learning to love Big Brother: George W. Bush channels George Orwell
by Daniel Kurtzman
Sunday, July 28, 2002
San Francisco Chronicle
Here’s a question for constitutional scholars: Can a sitting president be charged with plagiarism?
As President Bush wages his war against terrorism and moves to create a huge homeland security apparatus, he appears to be borrowing heavily, if not ripping off ideas outright, from George Orwell. The work in question is “1984, ” the prophetic novel about a government that controls the masses by spreading propaganda, cracking down on subversive thought and altering history to suit its needs. It was intended to be read as a warning about the evils of totalitarianism — not a how-to manual.
Granted, we’re a long way from resembling the kind of authoritarian state Orwell depicted, but some of the similarities are starting to get a bit eerie.
PERMANENT WAR
In “1984,” the state remained perpetually at war against a vague and ever-changing enemy. The war took place largely in the abstract, but it served as a convenient vehicle to fuel hatred, nurture fear and justify the regime’s autocratic practices.
Bush’s war against terrorism has become almost as amorphous. Although we are told the president’s resolve is steady and the mission clear, we seem to know less and less about the enemy we are fighting. What began as a war against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda quickly morphed into a war against Afghanistan, followed by dire warnings about an “Axis of Evil,” the targeting of terrorists in some 50 to 60 countries, and now the beginnings of a major campaign against Iraq. Exactly what will constitute success in this war remains unclear, but the one thing the Bush administration has made certain is that the war will continue “indefinitely.”
MINISTRY OF TRUTH
Serving as the propaganda arm of the ruling party in “1984,” the Ministry of Truth not only spread lies to suit its strategic goals, but constantly rewrote and falsified history. It is a practice that has become increasingly commonplace in the Bush White House, where presidential transcripts are routinely sanitized to remove the president’s gaffes, accounts of intelligence warnings prior to Sept. 11 get spottier with each retelling, and the facts surrounding Bush’s past financial dealings are subject to continual revision.
The Bush administration has been surprisingly up front about its intentions of propagating falsehoods. In February, for example, the Pentagon announced a plan to create an Office of Strategic Influence to provide false news and information abroad to help manipulate public opinion and further its military objectives. Following a public outcry, the Pentagon said it would close the office — news that would have sounded more convincing had it not come from a place that just announced it was planning to spread misinformation.
INFALLIBLE LEADER
An omnipresent and all-powerful leader, Big Brother commanded the total, unquestioning support of the people. He was both adored and feared, and no one dared speak out against him, lest they be met by the wrath of the state.
President Bush may not be as menacing a figure, but he has hardly concealed his desire for greater powers. Never mind that he has mentioned — on no fewer than three occasions — how much easier things would be if he were dictator. By abandoning many of the checks and balances established in the Constitution to keep any one branch of government from becoming too powerful, Bush has already achieved the greatest expansion of executive powers since Nixon. His approval ratings remain remarkably high, and his minions have worked hard to cultivate an image of infallibility. Nowhere was that more apparent than during a recent commencement address Bush gave at Ohio State, where students were threatened with arrest and expulsion if they protested the speech. They were ordered to give him a “thunderous ovation,” and they did.
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING
The ever-watchful eye of Big Brother kept constant tabs on the citizens of Orwell’s totalitarian state, using two-way telescreens to monitor people’s every move while simultaneously broadcasting party propaganda.
While that technology may not have arrived yet, public video surveillance has become all the rage in law enforcement, with cameras being deployed everywhere from sporting events to public beaches. The Bush administration has also announced plans to recruit millions of Americans to form a corps of citizen spies who will serve as “extra eyes and ears for law enforcement,” reporting any suspicious activity as part of a program dubbed Operation TIPS –
Terrorism Information and Prevention System.
And thanks to the hastily passed USA Patriot Act, the Justice Department has sweeping new powers to monitor phone conversations, Internet usage, business transactions and library reading records. Best of all, law enforcement need not be burdened any longer with such inconveniences as probable cause.
THOUGHT POLICE
Charged with eradicating dissent and ferreting out resistance, the ever- present Thought Police described in “1984″ carefully monitored all unorthodox or potentially subversive thoughts. The Bush administration is not prosecuting thought crime yet, but members have been quick to question the patriotism of anyone who dares criticize their handling of the war on terrorism or homeland defense. Take, for example, the way Attorney General John Ashcroft answered critics of his anti-terrorism measures, saying that opponents of the administration “only aid terrorists” and “give ammunition to America’s enemies. “ (America gave them ammunition first)
Even more ominous was the stern warning White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer sent to Americans after Bill Maher, host of the now defunct “Politically Incorrect,” called past U.S. military actions “cowardly.” Said Fleischer, “There are reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks like that; there never is.”
What would it take to turn America into the kind of society that Orwell warned about, a society that envisions war as peace, freedom as slavery and ignorance as strength? Would it happen overnight, or would it involve a gradual erosion of freedoms with the people’s consent?
Because we are a nation at war — as we are constantly reminded — most Americans say they are willing to sacrifice many of our freedoms in return for the promise of greater security. We have been asked to put our blind faith in government and most of us have done so with patriotic fervor. But when the government abuses that trust and begins to stamp out the freedom of dissent that is the hallmark of a democratic society, can there be any turning back?
So powerful was the state’s control over people’s minds in “1984″ that, eventually, everyone came to love Big Brother. Perhaps in time we all will, too.
Daniel Kurtzman is a San Francisco writer and former Washington political correspondent.
Miniluv Achieves 18% of Collection Goal.
Our brave comrades have thwarted the underground resistance to send the Ministry of Love a total of 57 copies of 1984. This is a glorious victory for Miniluv!
While we are still gathering books to reach our final goal of 315, we have become aware that many of the Inner Party Members who voted for torture did not survive the Great November Purge, and are soon to be vaporized. Therefore, we will be sending copies to these unpersons sooner than expected.
We are currently consulting with the Ministry of Truth to prepare a “total information awareness” campaign to promote this mailing. Any help that our comrades can provide is greatly appreciated.
~O’Brien
Wonderful News, Comrades!
Comrades at Unamerican and Students for an Orwellian Society have agreed to sign on as co-sponsors to this project. Details to follow.
We have reached 10% of our goal number. Books are coming in from brave comrades all across our homeland.
The following Inner Party Members are spoken for:
Bachus of Alabama
Calvert of California
Lieberman, Johnson, Simmons, and Shays of Connecticut
Brownback of Kansas
Gregg and Sununu of New Hampshire
Brown, Voinovich and DeWine of Ohio
Fitzpatrick, Specter and Santorum of Pennsylvania
J. Davis, T. Davis, Warner, and Allen of Virginia
To sponsor your own Member with a book donation, enclose a note with your shipment.
Keep spreading the word.
Ministry of Love Announces Doubleplusgood Book Collection Activity
The Ministry of Love announces its fourth-quarter plan to gather 315 separate copies of George Orwell’s landmark novel 1984, from proles and party comrades alike, all across our brave homeland.
Once collected, all 315 copies will be mailed separately to each Member of Congress who voted YEA on the Military Commissions Act (a.k.a. The Torture Bill) on September 28th and 29th, in the sixth year of our glorious leader’s regime. These shipments will occur with great fanfare, and hopefully, a television news crew on hand to capture the momentous occasion for inclusion in the Ministry of Truth’s ever-growing archives.
In case you’ve forgotten, our glorious leader’s regime has gifted us with the following remarkably Orwellian achievements:
* spying on ordinary citizens without their knowledge
* paid propaganda masquerading as news reports
* removal by Thought Police of ungoodthinkers (protesters) from all Party rallies and celebrations featuring our glorious leader
* community members encouraged to report “suspicious activities” of neighbors and co-workers
* the promise of an endless war
(for a more comprehensive list, go to studentsfororwell.org)
Now, through the farsightedness of these distinguished 315 Inner Party Members, House and Senate, we can add sanctioned torture and indefinite detainment of suspects to that noteworthy list.
To recognize those who have brought us one step closer to the utopian world envisioned by Orwell, Miniluv will enclose a handwritten note with each copy of 1984, thanking each 315 Inner Party Member individually for their achievement.
Send new and used copies of 1984 to the following address:
Ministry of Love
Box 655
Guilford, CT 06437
If buying books online, have them shipped directly to Miniluv.
If you would like your donation earmarked for a particular Inner Party Member, please note that with your shipment.
Goodthinkers always use media mail rates for shipping books.
Cash donations for postage to the Inner Party Members are doubleplushelpful.
Finally, remember:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
About
The goal of this blog is to collect 315 copies of Orwell’s 1984 and send them to every member of Congress who voted for the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which suspends the writ of Habeas Corpus for anyone deemed an “enemy combatant” by anyone in the Bush Administration, meaning they can detain you indefinitely without access to a court and torture you if they like.
We can be reached at unpersonsATgmailDOTcom
Big Brother is watching you.