My son is working on a college project in which he is to find aspects of George Orwell's 1984 mirrored in modern society.
He asked me to cast an eye over his outline. Modern-day examples abound and I'm sure we can all think of at least a few. His include the Patriot Act introduced in the United States after the 9/11 attacks (used in some cases to give the government more leeway in overriding civil liberties when it comes to things such as spying on citizens, wiretaps, etc.); the recent proliferation of surveillance cameras in Britain (now the world's most surveilled country); misinformation (he talked about the U.S. TV channel Fox, but an example truer to the spirit of 1984 would be the Bush administration's insistence on the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as a justification for going to war, when in fact there were none); doublespeak (one might think of phrases like "enhanced interrogation" in place of the word "torture"); and generally maintaining a climate of fear to keep the population cowed.
We're all familiar with 1984, Orwell's vision of a future society (the book was written in 1949) that was kept in its place through just such techniques by a totalitarian "big brother" government.
This week, Canadians were reminded that they are not immune from such tendencies, revolving around the continuing dispute over the handling of Afghan detainees who were captured by Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan. Since the troops didn't have the capability of keeping their detainees incarcerated, they were handed over to the Afghan authorities and, in many cases, subsequently tortured in Afghan jails.
The opposition parties, the media, and by extension the Canadian public, have been trying to find out why the government was slow to stop the transfers when it was common knowledge that torture was rampant in Afghanistan. Also, why the Canadian government wasn't aware of the situation (or so it claims) when everyone else involved in Afghanistan knew. And, finally, why the government refuses to come clean on the issue.
In short, who knew what, and when, and how quickly did the government act, if it acted at all, after being warned about Afghan prisoner abuse.
The government has done everything it can to avoid releasing any information. It has defied Parliamentary committees looking into the affair. It has similarly defied the Military Police Complaints Commission, which is also investigating. The government has released documents so heavily blacked out (censored) as to be unreadable. It even resorted to the extremely obstructive tactic of dumping a huge load of boxes containing thousands of blacked-out documents in the Parliament building. M-Ps were welcome to look at them. They were in no order and it turned out, upon examination, that they were old documents which had previously been released. In other words, the manoeuvre was a time-waster to further delay progress in getting to the bottom of this affair.
Then this week, a new and Orwellian twist. Yesterday, the Military Police Complaints Commission started hearing the first evidence from Canadians who have fought in Afghanistan. These are supposed to be public hearings. But with only a couple of hours' notice, the justice department closed the hearings to the public and the media.
The justification? Security concerns. And the real 1984 spin: the reasons for the decision are confidential. The lead lawyer for the commission can't even tell us exactly why the hearings have gone into two days of closed sessions.
Anything can be cloaked under this post-9/11 secrecy. We can't give you any details of what's happening because of security, and for the same reason we can't tell you why (except that it's because of security).
For a democracy, the Canadian government's behaviour in the Afghan detainee case has been scandalous. It is doing everything it can to prevent the truth from coming out, even to the point of almost being in contempt of Parliament.
It might as well just be upfront about it and announce the creation of a Ministry of Truth, the ironically-named government department in 1984 responsible for creating propaganda by changing the historical record.
Fear, indeed, is playing a role in this affair - the government's fear that if the truth does come out, Canada could be implicated in war crimes for failing to stop a practice that was in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
He asked me to cast an eye over his outline. Modern-day examples abound and I'm sure we can all think of at least a few. His include the Patriot Act introduced in the United States after the 9/11 attacks (used in some cases to give the government more leeway in overriding civil liberties when it comes to things such as spying on citizens, wiretaps, etc.); the recent proliferation of surveillance cameras in Britain (now the world's most surveilled country); misinformation (he talked about the U.S. TV channel Fox, but an example truer to the spirit of 1984 would be the Bush administration's insistence on the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as a justification for going to war, when in fact there were none); doublespeak (one might think of phrases like "enhanced interrogation" in place of the word "torture"); and generally maintaining a climate of fear to keep the population cowed.
This week, Canadians were reminded that they are not immune from such tendencies, revolving around the continuing dispute over the handling of Afghan detainees who were captured by Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan. Since the troops didn't have the capability of keeping their detainees incarcerated, they were handed over to the Afghan authorities and, in many cases, subsequently tortured in Afghan jails.
The opposition parties, the media, and by extension the Canadian public, have been trying to find out why the government was slow to stop the transfers when it was common knowledge that torture was rampant in Afghanistan. Also, why the Canadian government wasn't aware of the situation (or so it claims) when everyone else involved in Afghanistan knew. And, finally, why the government refuses to come clean on the issue.
In short, who knew what, and when, and how quickly did the government act, if it acted at all, after being warned about Afghan prisoner abuse.
The government has done everything it can to avoid releasing any information. It has defied Parliamentary committees looking into the affair. It has similarly defied the Military Police Complaints Commission, which is also investigating. The government has released documents so heavily blacked out (censored) as to be unreadable. It even resorted to the extremely obstructive tactic of dumping a huge load of boxes containing thousands of blacked-out documents in the Parliament building. M-Ps were welcome to look at them. They were in no order and it turned out, upon examination, that they were old documents which had previously been released. In other words, the manoeuvre was a time-waster to further delay progress in getting to the bottom of this affair.
Then this week, a new and Orwellian twist. Yesterday, the Military Police Complaints Commission started hearing the first evidence from Canadians who have fought in Afghanistan. These are supposed to be public hearings. But with only a couple of hours' notice, the justice department closed the hearings to the public and the media.
The justification? Security concerns. And the real 1984 spin: the reasons for the decision are confidential. The lead lawyer for the commission can't even tell us exactly why the hearings have gone into two days of closed sessions.
Anything can be cloaked under this post-9/11 secrecy. We can't give you any details of what's happening because of security, and for the same reason we can't tell you why (except that it's because of security).
For a democracy, the Canadian government's behaviour in the Afghan detainee case has been scandalous. It is doing everything it can to prevent the truth from coming out, even to the point of almost being in contempt of Parliament.
It might as well just be upfront about it and announce the creation of a Ministry of Truth, the ironically-named government department in 1984 responsible for creating propaganda by changing the historical record.
Fear, indeed, is playing a role in this affair - the government's fear that if the truth does come out, Canada could be implicated in war crimes for failing to stop a practice that was in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
The Orwellian Nightmare, here for us all to enjoy (-survive-) !
Posted by: James McLellan | April 07, 2010 at 01:48 PM