And speaking of Orwell and "1984," there's another theme from that novel
that we might recall these days. Big Brother and his cohorts were able to
stay in business because most of the world was in a state of apparently
permanent low-level warfare. In "1984," as I recall, the war involved
shifting alliances of several regional blocs of nations. Permanent war
against terrorists here and there could serve the same purpose.
No, I'm not saying that the current American administration is deliberately
scheming to achieve such a dreadful situation, but if it takes forever to do in
all terrorists, a state of (relatively) low-level anti-terrorist warfare
could continue for quite some time...
My thoughts only, of course.
>>> "Diane C. Russell" <dcrussell@MAILANDNEWS.COM> 11/30/01 06:58AM >>> Revised version. Big Brother is Watching You! Cameras are everywhere. Just look at the use of WalMart and ATM cameras to track hijackers. Can we really trust the government, or educational institutions, or corporations, or whomever to not expand the use of those cameras, or link them together, in order to track other criminal activity, and eventually any unpopular or politically incorrect activities? And think about other themes in Orwell's 1984. Both the recent Executive Order on presidential records, and the rapidly growing movement to restrict access to government records will make it much easier to first reinterpret what has happened and then just change the records to match--after all, without public access, the citizentry will only have access to whatever is the current government-approved version of history. If you don't like this picture, what can you do about it? Probably nothing. It's too late, and as some folks on this list have demonstrated, many (perhaps most) people seem happy to live in some version of Orwell's world. A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List! To subscribe or unsubscribe, send e-mail to listserv@listserv.muohio.edu In body of message: SUB ARCHIVES firstname lastname *or*: UNSUB ARCHIVES To post a message, send e-mail to archives@listserv.muohio.edu Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/archives.html Problems? Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <rschmidt@lib.muohio.edu> |