George Orwell’s “1984″ Is Here
by Ian Mosley
In George Orwell’s futuristic novel “1984″ (well, it was futuristic when it was written in 1948) a totalitarian world is monitored at all times by two-way television sets called “telescreens,” and every conversation and action by citizens is subject to being eavesdropped, spied on and recorded by the Thought Police. A similar situation now exists in Great Britain, where every street and every tube station and every public area are scanned by cameras leading to the local police station. Now George Orwell’s telescreen is on its way here to America.
Orwell’s future police state tightly controlled the news. (Anyone who reads this website or the European press will discover that the mainstream press gives Americans only a fraction of the news on certain key issues.) Orwell’s tyranny was in a perpetual state of war, which provided a convenient excuse to sacrifice rights for “security.” (Thanks to the Bush and Clinton crime families America has been at war every year since 1989.)
According to a CNN article, more and more closed-circuit television cameras are appearing in the United States to “monitor,” i.e. spy on, American citizens. Centralized, police-controlled CCTV (not simple store security cameras but massive electronic surveillance owned and directed by actual cops and FBI) is popping up not just in airports and train stations but on strategically placed lamp posts on the streets, in shopping malls, As per usual since 9/11, the excuse given for increasing centralized control over our lives is that of “fighting terrorism.”
The CNN article notes, “Researchers at General Electric…are creating new smart video surveillance systems that can detect explosives by recognizing the electromagnetic waves given off by objects, even under clothing. Scientist Peter Tu and his team are also developing programs that can recognize faces, pinpoint distress in a crowd by honing in on erratic body movements and synthesize the views of several cameras into one bird’s eye view.”
In other words, it isn’t just a black guy in Harlem who needs to be careful about reaching into his pocket for his cell phone nowadays. Any move anyone makes in a crowd, any comment spoken near a hidden mike, can now be recorded and used against you in a court of law–or a secret military tribunal. CNN tells us that “There are about 30 million video surveillance cameras in the United States shooting about four billion hours of footage every week.” As the government’s mania for spying and control grows, this figure will mushroom.
The same article continues “Ever since the Department of Homeland Security was put into place, our business has gone up,” said James McConnell of security contractor Acoustech. The three-person company takes in $500,000 in revenue a year.” Christopher Kelly, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, added that “The U.S. government is spending $1.1 billion this year to fund anti-terrorism technology research and has spent about $3 billion over the past three years.”. Yes, this so-called war on terrorism has been quite a bonanza for anyone who can figure out how to get his snout into the terrorism trough of government funds, funds that could and should be used for repairing schools and interstate highways and bridges and the overloaded, archaic power grids in the Northeast and California, instead of setting up hi-tech video surveillance systems so that the neo-cons can spy on anyone suspected of thinking unkind thoughts about Israel.
CNN adds another very interesting remark. “The United States and its allies now face a new ‘Iraq generation’ of terrorists who have learned how to make explosive devices, assassinate leaders and carry out other mayhem since the U.S. invasion of the country more than three years ago.” It’s called chickens coming home to roost, Mr. Bush. If you hadn’t invaded Iraq, we wouldn’t have an Iraq generation of terrorists, now would we?