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Osama bin Laden is Dead
[Obama brags about ordering the kill]
(Politics Buzz) In a late Sunday night speech, President Obama will announce that Osama Bin Laden has been killed. Breaking news, obviously. The big question: Is the $25 million reward still on the table? And who gets it?
The Fabulous Distraction
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Who is Emmanuel Goldstein?
Wikipedia (Wisdom Quarterly edit)
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Despite being a key part of the story, he is only actually seen and heard on the telescreen [computer monitor, television, phone, the ubiquitous screens used to present propaganda and to spy on us], and may in fact be nothing more than a propaganda fabrication of the Ministry of Truth (shortened as everything is by 1984, "Minitrue").
In the novel, Goldstein is rumored to be a former top member of the ruling (and sole) Party. He had broken away early in the movement and started an organization known as "The Brotherhood" [Al Queda, "the list"], dedicated to the fall of The Party.
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Each member of "The Brotherhood" is required to read the book supposedly written by Goldstein, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism. Each person is said to have three or four contacts at one time which are replaced as people disappear [a collective network, much as we find amorphous "terrorist" cells and sleeper organizations], so that if a member is captured, he can only give up three or four others.
Goldstein is always the subject of the "Two Minutes Hate," a daily, 2-minute period when a purported image of Goldstein is shown on the telescreen (a one-channel two-way television-camera with surveillance devices in it that cannot be turned off) [much like a camera on a computer screen or iPhone].
Readers may surmise that a political opposition to Big Brother -- namely, Goldstein -- was psychologically necessary in order to provide an internal enemy. This "enemy" posed a threat to the rule of the Party and a handy pretext for perpetual war.
The constantly reiterated ritual of the Two Minutes Hate helps ensure that popular support for and devotion towards Big Brother is continuous.
It is never revealed whether Goldstein really exists. In fact, Inner Party member O'Brien adamantly refuses to reveal whether The Brotherhood truly exists when asked by the book's protagonist Winston Smith in the torture room:
- Winston: "Does the Brotherhood [Al Queda] exist?"
- O'Brien: "That, Winston, you will never know. If we choose to set you free when we have finished with you, and if you live to be ninety years old, still you will never learn whether the answer to that question is Yes or No. As long as you live it will be an unsolved riddle in your mind."
Although O'Brien claims to have collaborated in writing the book himself [making it a fake and showing that it has all been a ruse and a fraud], his statement still leaves the questions of Goldstein and the Brotherhood's existence unanswered. It could have been an untrue statement made by O'Brien in order to manipulate Winston's thinking and break his spirit [and the spirits of all revolutionaries].
Or, more likely, it could have been Orwell's understanding of the cynicism of how a police state works. He lived in Burma at the time and was very familiar with England and Germany's monarchy and dictatorship. More
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