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1984
[Quote:]
‘The real power, the power we have to fight for night and day, is not power over things, but over men.’ He paused, and for a moment assumed again his air of a schoolmaster questioning a promising pupil: ‘How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?’
Winston thought. ‘By making him suffer,’ he said.
‘Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery is torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever.’
He paused as though he expected Winston to speak. Winston had tried to shrink back into the surface of the bed again. He could not say anything. His heart seemed to be frozen. O’Brien went on:
‘And remember that it is for ever. The face will always be there to be stamped upon. The heretic, the enemy of society, will always be there, so that he can be defeated and humiliated over again. Everything that you have undergone since you have been in our hands — all that will continue, and worse. The espionage, the betrayals, the arrests, the tortures, the executions, the disappearances will never cease. It will be a world of terror as much as a world of triumph. The more the Party is powerful, the less it will be tolerant: the weaker the opposition, the tighter the despotism. Goldstein and his heresies will live for ever. Every day, at every moment, they will be defeated, discredited, ridiculed, spat upon and yet they will always survive. This drama that I have played out with you during seven years will be played out over and over again generation after generation, always in subtler forms. Always we shall have the heretic here at our mercy, screaming with pain, broken up, contemptible — and in the end utterly penitent, saved from himself, crawling to our feet of his own accord. That is the world that we are preparing, Winston. A world of victory after victory, triumph after triumph after triumph: an endless pressing, pressing, pressing upon the nerve of power. You are beginning, I can see, to realize what that world will be like. But in the end you will do more than understand it. You will accept it, welcome it, become part of it.’
Car
Well, this time the bad news is personal. My car was wrecked today.
I was at the tail end of a bunch of cars, standing still in lots of traffic on the left lane of the off-ramp of the A4 (Google Maps) when somebody didn’t quite get it that there was quite an amount of traffic, and hit the back of my car.
So now I’m waiting the damage assessment, and we’ll see what the insurer says about that, the car might be totalled.
And the car did exactly what it is supposed to do in a situation like this: protect me. Right now I’ve got nothing - no scratch, pain, neck cramp or whatever.
Bush on Bolton resignation: ‘I’m not happy about it’
[Quote:]
Unable to win Senate confirmation, U.N. Ambassador John Bolton will step down when his temporary appointment expires within weeks, the White House said Monday.
Bolton’s nomination has languished in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for more than a year, blocked by Democrats and several Republicans. Sen. Lincoln Chafee, a moderate Republican who lost in the midterm elections that swept Democrats to power in both houses of Congress, was adamantly opposed to Bolton.
Critics have questioned whether Bolton, with his brusque style, could be an effective public servant who could help bring reform to the U.N.
President Bush posed for pictures with Bolton on Monday and commented curtly on his departure. “I received the resignation of Ambassador John Bolton. I accepted. I’m not happy about it. I think he deserved to be confirmed.”
“They chose to obstruct his confirmation, even though he enjoys majority support in the Senate, and even though their tactics will disrupt our diplomatic work at a sensitive and important time,” Bush said earlier in a written statement. “This stubborn obstructionism ill serves our country, and discourages men and women of talent from serving their nation.”
I’m puzzled - he seems to be talking about Bolton being a “man of talent”, but surely that can’t be true… but check out this beautiful piece of diplomacy from Annan:
“I think Ambassador Bolton did the job he was expected to do,” Annan said Monday morning when asked about Bolton’s resignation. “He came at a time when we had lots of tough issues from reform to issues on Iran and North Korea. I think as a representative of the U.S, government, he pressed ahead with the instructions he had been given and tried to work as effectively as he could.”
That is one great shot at the instructions he was given while completely avoiding praising Bolton.
Islam Outlaws Female Genital Mutilation
[Quote:]
Ten of the highest ranked scholars from all over the world met at the Azhar University under the patronage of the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Prof. Dr. Ali Goma’a. After listening to several international physicians, they pronounced the sensational decision to classify the custom of female genital mutilation (FGM) as punishable aggression and crime against humanity. As a result, the custom can no longer be practiced by Muslims. Now awareness of this decision has to be spread in the 33 affected countries.
[Quote:]
Many conferences have been held on the issue in the past, but the clerics have never managed to reach a united front. Prof. Shamaa provided a disappointing explanation why this time, following Nehberg’s intiaitve, it succeeded for the first time.
“We simply did not invite those who disagree with us,” he said.
Film pirate gets seven years
[Quote:]
A man convicted of recording films using a camcorder in cinemas has been sentenced in the US to seven years in jail. The man was the first to be charged in a nationwide campaign against video piracy.
“It is hoped the sentence will deter further unlawful conduct and protect the public,” the judge in the case, Dean Pregerson, said.
Johnny Ray Gasca was found guilty in 2005 of copyright infringement. He was also convicted of using a fake social security number and of fleeing his lawyer’s custody while awaiting trial. He represented himself in his trial, which lasted a week.
Gasca said he did not record the films for profit, but the prosecution case included diary excerpts in which Gasca wrote that he earned $4,000 a week through his actions. The resulting copies of films were sold in small shops or directly on the street, the prosecution said.
Gasca was arrested three times for taking a camcorder into cinemas. The third time was when he was caught on tape by a camera designed to record the audience’s reaction at a screening of the film Anger Management. Gasca was ordered by the judge to attend anger management classes on release.
The guy is an idiot, but, damn…. seven years?
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Lame-Duck Congress May Run Out the Clock
[Quote:]
Congress will convene on Tuesday for what some fear will be the lamest of lame-duck sessions, and GOP leaders have decided to take a minimalist approach before turning over the reins of power to the Democrats. Rather than a final surge of legislative activity, Congress will probably wrap up things after a single, short week of work. They have even decided to punt decisions on annual government spending measures to the Democrats next year.
“There is a lot of battle fatigue among members, probably on both sides of the aisle,” said Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), usually a reliable conservative firebrand. “Contrary to popular belief, members of Congress are human beings. They have a certain shelf life and a certain amount of energy to be drawn on. We’re tired.”
I know I’d be exhausted if I had to work 95 whole days a year to earn my $165,000 annual salary. Was it the 5 weeks off in the summer that tuckered him out, or not starting the session until February, or maybe shuttling back and forth to his district after two or three days of work on Capitol Hill?
Video Is a Window Into a Terror Suspect’s Isolation
[Quote:]
One spring day during his three and a half years as an enemy combatant, Jose Padilla experienced a break from the monotony of his solitary confinement in a bare cell in the brig at the Naval Weapons Station in Charleston, S.C.
That day, Mr. Padilla, a Brooklyn-born Muslim convert whom the Bush administration had accused of plotting a dirty bomb attack and had detained without charges, got to go to the dentist.
“Today is May 21,? a naval official declared to a camera videotaping the event. “Right now we’re ready to do a root canal treatment on Jose Padilla, our enemy combatant.?
Several guards in camouflage and riot gear approached cell No. 103. They unlocked a rectangular panel at the bottom of the door and Mr. Padilla’s bare feet slid through, eerily disembodied. As one guard held down a foot with his black boot, the others shackled Mr. Padilla’s legs. Next, his hands emerged through another hole to be manacled.
Wordlessly, the guards, pushing into the cell, chained Mr. Padilla’s cuffed hands to a metal belt. Briefly, his expressionless eyes met the camera before he lowered his head submissively in expectation of what came next: noise-blocking headphones over his ears and blacked-out goggles over his eyes. Then the guards, whose faces were hidden behind plastic visors, marched their masked, clanking prisoner down the hall to his root canal.
The videotape of that trip to the dentist, which was recently released to Mr. Padilla’s lawyers and viewed by The New York Times, offers the first concrete glimpse inside the secretive military incarceration of an American citizen whose detention without charges became a test case of President Bush’s powers in the fight against terror. Still frames from the videotape were posted in Mr. Padilla’s electronic court file late Friday.
[..]
Federal prosecutors and defense lawyers are locked in a tug of war over the relevancy of Mr. Padilla’s military detention to the present criminal case. Federal prosecutors have asked the judge to forbid Mr. Padilla’s lawyers from mentioning the circumstances of his military detention during the trial, maintaining that their accusations could “distract and inflame the jury.?
But defense lawyers say it is unconscionable to ignore Mr. Padilla’s military detention because, among other reasons, it altered him in a way that will impinge on his trial.
Dr. Angela Hegarty, director of forensic psychiatry at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens, N.Y., who examined Mr. Padilla for a total of 22 hours in June and September, said in an affidavit filed Friday that he “lacks the capacity to assist in his own defense.?
“It is my opinion that as the result of his experiences during his detention and interrogation, Mr. Padilla does not appreciate the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him, is unable to render assistance to counsel, and has impairments in reasoning as the result of a mental illness, i.e., post-traumatic stress disorder, complicated by the neuropsychiatric effects of prolonged isolation,? Dr. Hegarty said in an affidavit for the defense.
[..]
Mr. Padilla’s lawyers say they have had a difficult time persuading him that they are on his side.
From the time Mr. Padilla was allowed access to counsel, Mr. Patel visited him repeatedly in the brig and in the Miami detention center, and Mr. Padilla has observed Mr. Patel arguing on his behalf in Miami federal court.
But, Mr. Patel said in his affidavit, his client is nonetheless mistrustful. “Mr. Padilla remains unsure if I and the other attorneys working on his case are actually his attorneys or another component of the government’s interrogation scheme,? Mr. Patel said.
Mr. do Campo said that Mr. Padilla was not incommunicative, and that he expressed curiosity about what was going on in the world, liked to talk about sports and demonstrated particularly keen interest in the Chicago Bears.
But the defense lawyers’ questions often echo the questions interrogators have asked Mr. Padilla, and when that happens, he gets jumpy and shuts down, the lawyers said.
The Smoking Gun has more still images from his trip down the hall to the dentist…
We can thank the USA for setting back human progress at least a century. How? By first becoming the Great Example, “the home of the brave, the land of the free”, and then turning around and showing that terror and intimidation are legitimate tools of government.
Brazil protects great swath of Amazon
[Quote:]
A swath of Amazon rain forest the size of Alabama was placed under government protection Monday in a region infamous for violent conflicts among loggers, ranchers and environmentalists.
Known as the Guayana Shield, the 57,915-square-mile area contains more than 25 percent of the world’s remaining humid tropical forests and the largest remaining unpolluted fresh water reserves in the American tropics.
The protected areas will link to existing reserves to form a vast preservation corridor eventually stretching into neighboring Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana.
Conservation International put up $1 million to facilitate the expansion, which preserves much of the jungle’s largely untouched north. Still, it’s far from clear how much the new reserves will do to stall Amazon destruction, since most of the deforestation is taking place along the rain forest’s southern border.
[..]
Together these two areas are believed to contain up to 54.1 percent of all bird, animal and plant species found in the Amazon, Conservation International said. They also are home to several endangered animal species, including the northern bearded saki monkey, jaguars, giant anteaters, the giant armadillo and the ariranha, or giant Amazon otter.
The remaining areas have been declared sustainable use protected areas, allowing local communities to manage the natural resources and permitting limited logging under strict management.
Al eerder alarm over Julien Constancia
[Quote:]
Zonder behandeling in een kliniek zou de verdachte opnieuw goed in de fout kunnen gaan.’ Die waarschuwing gaven reclassering en een psycholoog drie jaar geleden in een rechtszaak tegen Julien Constancia, die nu wordt verdacht van de moord op Jesse Dingemans (8) in Hoogerheide.
Julien Constancia werd in 2004 veroordeeld tot twee jaar cel (waarvan zes maanden voorwaardelijk) voor een gewapende overval op een supermarkt in de wijk Belcrum in Breda. Constancia bedreigde twee caissières met een namaakwapen en ging aan de haal met 3500 euro kasgeld. Maar niet nadat hij nog netjes ‘dankjewel’ had gezegd.
Deskundigen bestempelden de koele houding van Constancia, die in de rechtszaal geen greintje berouw toonde, als ‘zorgelijk’. Volgens hen was er het nodige mis met de toen 19-jarige Hoogerheidenaar, een bovengemiddeld intelligente student. Hij zou lijden aan ‘zelfoverschatting’ en ‘zwak normbesef’ en zou opvallend geïnteresseerd zijn in wapens en criminaliteit.
De Bredase rechtbank veroordeelde Constancia niet alleen tot celstraf, hij moest zich ook laten behandelen in een speciale kliniek. Of dat ook is gebeurd, is niet bekend.
Julien Constancia maakte vrijdagmiddag bij zijn arrestatie in Hoogerheide eveneens een opmerkelijk koele indruk. Advocaat Henk van Asselt, die kort na de aanhouding met Constancia sprak, zegt dat hij ‘een heel rustige, zelfs wat lacherige indruk’ maakte. „Niet de houding die je verwacht van iemand die verdacht wordt van zo’n vreselijk misdrijf. Óf hij heeft het niet gedaan óf er is iets helemaal mis met hem“, meent de raadsman.
Het wapen dat Julien Constancia drie jaar geleden bij de overval in Breda gebruikte, is nooit teruggevonden. Of het wapen van de moord op Jesse Dingemans terecht is, mag politiewoordvoerder Willem van Hooijdonk niet zeggen.
Constancia ontkent de moord op de scholier. Voor zover bekend zijn er geen getuigen van het misdrijf.
Evenmin is duidelijk of er op de kleding van de verdachte (bloed)sporen zijn aangetroffen. Politie en Openbaar Ministerie zwijgen over toedracht en motief. De politie is er wel van overtuigd dat ze met Julien Constancia de juiste man te pakken heeft.
„Ik ben er zeker van dat we de man hebben die we moeten hebben“, meldde politiechef Fred Stegman de ouders van de kinderen van de Klim-Op-basisschool, waar het drama zich afspeelde.
Het onderzoek richt zich (vooralsnog) volledig op de 22-jarige verdachte. ,,Het ziet er niet naar uit dat we op korte termijn nog meer arrestaties zullen doen“, zegt woordvoerder Willem van Hooijdonk van de politie, die dertig rechercheurs op de zaak heeft gezet.
But you do feel some vague pain in your neck, don’t you?
How about a picture of your car?
I am glad that you are uninjured. Please be aware that there is delayed shock in a collision like this and do not be surprised if your health takes a bit of a dip in a couple of weeks time.
Take care, Michael
Auw!!!
There is nothing funny in having your car wrecked. You have my sympathy.
I know, and I’ll keep an eye on myself. It isn’t the first time somebody mistakes the back of my car for a place to park, and so far I’ve always been lucky…
Bad Sinterklaas-present for you John.
Glad you are uninjured.
Ouch….
But the main thing you are unhurt. Loosing the car is irrelevant in these cases - although annoying, I have to admit.