Now it's 1984? New 'Orwell: 2+2=5' (trailer)

Orwell 2+2=5 - Official Trailer (2025)

(PBS News Hour)

(TYT Sports) Anthony Bourdain on Trump's ego, narcissism

Easy read: Orwell's 1984 graphic novel

"1984 (Graphic Novel)" online kaufen

1984: The Graphic Novel

One of the most influential books of the 20th century gets the "graphic" [think hardcover comic book] treatment in this first-ever adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984.

"War is Peace * Freedom is Slavery * Ignorance is Strength."

In 1984, London is a grim city in the totalitarian state of Oceania where Big Brother is always watching citizens and the Thought Police can practically read minds with their constant surveillance.

1984 Graphic novel: George Orwell, Fido Nesti, Penguin Books (Review)

What is this, a comic book, pulp fiction?

Protagonist Winston Smith is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that he has a conscience and a memory that still functions.

Drawn into a forbidden love affair with Junior Anti-Sex League beauty Julia, Winston finds the courage to join a secret revolutionary organization called the "Brotherhood," dedicated to the destruction of the totalitarian Party.

Together they hazard their lives in a deadly match against the powers that be -- having sex to stick it to the State.

With evocative, immersive art from Fido Nesti, this vision of George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece provides a new perspective for longtime fans but is also an accessible entry point for young readers and adults who have yet to discover the iconic story that is still so relevant today (and growing more relevant under Trump and cellphone technology).

• 1984: The Graphic Novel: (Authorized Orwell Edition) by George Orwell, adapted and illustrated by Nesti, Fido
• George Orwell | 1984: The Graphic Novel | Elephant Bookstore
• Fido Nesti, George Orwell, hmhbooks.com; Pfc. Sandoval, Seth Auberon, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Police: Last Week Tonight (John Oliver)

WARNING: Graphic language (cussing/profanity), police brutality of peaceful demonstrators, racism

Policing in America: Last Week Tonight

(LastWeekTonight) Nov. 24, 2024: This look back is from Season 7, Episode 14, from June 7th, 2020. As nationwide protests over the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor [Blacks killed by racist and/or implicitly biased police] are met with police brutality, John Oliver discusses how the histories of policing and white supremacy are intertwined, the roadblocks to fixing things, and some potential paths forward. (Who is LAPD Police Chief Michel Moore?)

Connect with Last Week Tonight online...YouTube for more almost news as it almost happens on Facebook like your mom would, on Twitter for news about jokes and jokes about news, or the official site for all that other stuff at once: hbo.com/lastweektonight

CIA does NOT lie. It "dis-informs"

Pfc. Sandoval, Seth Auberon, Ashley Wells, Sheldon S. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

"Lying" is such an ugly word. It's preferable to call it "disinformation." The CIA (the U.S. government's quasi-independent office of propagandists and warlords known as the Central Intelligence Agency) engages in:

• 
  prevarication,
• gaslighting,
• propaganda,
• deception,
• intrigue,
• intelligence,
• codeswitching,
• spin, and, uh,
• euphemistic languaging characteristic of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four style "Newspeak."

George Orwell warned of these things long ago.

But they do not lie! Read Orwell's book. Now don't worry about Project Mockingbird -- where the CIA, now having infiltrated all major media outlets, nudges editors (or hires the "right" ones in the first place so that nudging isn't even necessary) and steers the "official narrative" of everything reported by the news and influencers in the American media landscape.

Good luck finding an outlet not contaminated by disinformation, misinformation, collusion, infiltration, deception, limited hangouts, and good old phony-whistleblowing by agents like the man-of-the-moment David Grusch.

• Jimmy Dore: Comedy News that Tells the Truth

Orwell's 1984 playbook says it all

After all, the only good democracy is the completely controlled democracy that still thinks of itself as free, fair, and open rather than what it really is. Alcohol sales are booming in the U.S. to help if that nuisance known as Truth starts to get in the way of expedients and compromises in integrity and honesty. Even the good Dalai Lama was caught up in the CIA's net to have something on everyone in the media. The Company used the temporal and spiritual leader of Tibet as an operative in a proxy-war against China. It's still going on, while most Buddhists deny it in a kneejerk way. The Dalai Lama doesn't deny it. He's almost certainly been told not to talk about it, but the old Los Angeles Times sure has the [backfilled?] story in their archives.

The government is not allowed to spy on citizens, but private industry (for profit corporations) sure is. So the state buys files on us compiled by Google, Facebook, Instagram, Meta, Yahoo, AOL, Apple, and so on. That was a great loophole they thought up. And the bigger game is to make "privacy" a thing of the past, an anachronism, a farce that could never have been true anyway, so why worry? Drink up, or have your doctor prescribe something.

.

"Don't Panic" (Douglas Adams)

Grim CIA directors like William Colby, William J. Casey, and George Bush are only taking after the NAZIs and Gestapo just as Operation Paperclip allowed them to do. It really is Spy vs. Spy out there, ruling the world while people laugh at the distracting gaffes provided by Donny Trump, Joey Biden, Kami Harris. Ronnie DeSantis, and George's son Georgie W. Junior.

G.W. Bush slipped up recently and told the truth

This was pointed out by the British genius Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where he explains that the role of a political leader is not to wield power so much as to draw attention away from those who really wield the power (said in reference to the ever-entertaining bumbling dimwit Zaphod Beeblebrox, president of the galaxy).

George Orwell: Warning to Humankind (doc)

George Orwell: A Warning to Mankind (documentary)

(The People Profiles) June 25, 2023. For early access to videos, discounted merch, and many other exclusive perks, please support as a Patron or member:

• Patreon.com/thepeopleprofiles
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Like the work? Please subscribe to second channel: The History Chronicles (thehistorychronicles). The script for this video has been checked with plagiarism software and scored 1% on Scribbr. In academia, a score of below 15% is considered good or acceptable. All footage, images, and music used in People Profiles Documentaries are sourced from free media websites or are purchased with commercial rights from online media archives. #Biography #History #Documentary

Jimmy Dore website down by cyber attack

Jimmy Dore (jimmydore.com); Pfc. Sandoval, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

George Tsoukalas who is open to most conspiracy theories might not believe this one: Hackers.

George Orwell, author of Nineteen Eighty-Four, knew about speaking truth to power.

The powers that be took down Jimmy Dore's former website (jimmydorecomedy.com). Now they're trying to bring down JimmyDore.com! He and his team are defending against a heavy cyberattack on his servers. The website is currently unavailable as they are cleaning up the damage from that attack. Sorry for the inconvenience. Jimmy Dore and Co. will be back soon! Thanks for the patience. He seems to be putting out material on the YouTube channel.

Democratic censorship: US Pres. Newsom

Jimmy Dore (jimmydorecomedy.com); Pfc. Sandoval, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Big Brother gov't is the problem.

Goodbye free speech and any chance of being offended. Government control is better? California Democrats go ALL IN on censorship and government control of speech. The government, in conjunction with their corporate partners and media outlets, will decide what is "disinformation" and "hate speech." They will enforce what we hear and see across platforms. Hello, George Orwell (author of Nineteen Eighty-Four), who needs freedom when security is at stake?

Truth will NOT be tolerated. Follow the media narrative, insists government's Obama

Reading "Nineteen Eighty-Four" (audio)

George Orwell, Blackstone Audio, NMTV; Fandango 1984 movie; Wisdom Quarterly Wiki edit

Nineteen Eighty-Four, often republished as 1984, is a dystopian novel by English novelist in police state Burma George Orwell.

It was published on June 8, 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. The story was mostly written at Barnhill, a farmhouse on the Scottish island of Jura, at times while Orwell suffered from severe tuberculosis.

Thematically, Nineteen Eighty-Four centers on the consequences of government over-reach, totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of all persons and behaviors within society [2, 3].

THE STORY

Hospitals paid to pad pandemic numbers.

The story takes place in an imagined future, and it is not known what year because the government has manipulated things so much.

But the protagonist imagines it might be 1984 (chosen because the author was writing in 1948), when much of the world has fallen victim to perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, historical negation, and propaganda.

Great Britain, known as Airstrip One, has become a province of a superstate named Oceania that is ruled by the Party who employ the Thought Police to persecute individuality and independent thinking [4].

Big Brother, the leader of the Party, enjoys an intense cult of personality despite the fact that he may not exist.

The protagonist, Winston Smith, is a diligent and skillful rank-and-file worker and Party member who secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion. He enters a forbidden relationship with a co-worker, Julia.

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic literary example of dystopian fiction. Many terms used in the novel have entered common usage, including

• Big Brother
• doublethink
• thoughtcrime
• Newspeak
• Room 101
• telescreen [phone, computer, TV screens]
• 2 + 2 = 5
• prole
• memory hole.

Nineteen Eighty-Four also popularized the adjective "Orwellian," connoting things such as official deception, secret surveillance, brazenly misleading terminology, and manipulation of recorded history by a totalitarian or authoritarian state.

Time included it on its 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005 [5].

It was placed on the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels, reaching No. 13 on the editors' list and No. 6 on the readers' list [6]. In 2003, the novel was listed at No. 8 on The Big Read survey by the BBC [7].

Parallels have been drawn between the novel's subject matter and real life instances of totalitarianism, communism, mass surveillance, and violations of freedom of expression among other themes. More

The First Irish Buddhist (video)

Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; Alicia Turner, Laurence Cox, Brian Bocking

The Irish Buddhist (twitter.com/ceesa_ma)

The Irish Buddhist: The Forgotten Monk who Faced Down the British Empire is the biography of an extraordinary Irish emigrant, free-thinker (atheist), hobo, drinker, sailor, and migrant worker.

He became the first Westerner in the world to become a Buddhist monk. He was an anti-British colonial activist in Asia in the early 20th-century.

Born in Dublin in the 1850s, the man who took the Buddhist name Ven. U Dhammaloka at ordination in colonial Burma (birthplace of George "1984" Orwell) was:

• Lawrence Carroll
• Laurence O'Rourke
• "Captain Daylight" (nom de plume)
• William Colvin.

He energetically challenged the values and power of the Christian British Empire and scandalized the colonial establishment of the 1900s.

He rallied Buddhists across Asia, set up schools, and argued down Christian missionaries -- often using Western atheist ("free thinker") arguments. He was tried for sedition, tracked by police and intelligence services, and died at least twice.

.

The Dharma Bum (documentary)

His story illuminates the forgotten margins and interstices of imperial power, the complexities of class, ethnicity, and religious belonging in colonial Asia, and the fluidity of identity in the high Victorian period.

Too often, the story of the pan-Asian Buddhist revival movement and Buddhism's remaking as a world religion (along with the world's only two other "world religions" Catholic-Christianity and Islam) has been told "from above," highlighting scholarly writers, middle-class reformers, and ecclesiastical hierarchies.

By turns fraught, hilarious, pioneering, and improbable, Ven. Dhammaloka's adventures "from below" highlight the changing and contested meanings of Buddhism in colonial Asia. Through his story, authors Alicia Turner, Brian Bocking, and Laurence Cox offer a window into the worlds of ethnic minorities and diasporas, transnational networks, poor whites, and social movements.

Dhammaloka's dramatic life rewrites the previously accepted story of how Buddhism became a modern global religion -- and the mistaken story that British C. H. Allan Bennett (Ven. Ananda Metteyya) or another Westerner were the first to ordain as Buddhist monks. More

AUTHORS

Lead author Prof. Alicia Turner, York University

Together with colleagues around the world three co-authors have spent the past ten years tracking down Ven. Dhammaloka's life. They came together due to their fascination with this many-sided Irish Buddhist monastic.

Associate Professor Laurence Cox

• Associate Professor of Humanities and Religious Studies Alicia Turner, York University Toronto, a scholar specializing in modern Burmese Buddhism, nationalism, and secularism.
• Associate Professor of Sociology Laurence Cox, Nat'l University of Ireland Maynooth, specialist in social movements, historian of Buddhism in Europe, especially Ireland.
• Emeritus Professor of the Study of Religions Brian Bocking, University College Cork, and previously professor of the Study of Religions at SOAS, University of London, who has written widely on the academic study of religions and East Asian religions.
  

REVIEWS

The Awakening of the West (Stephen Batchelor)

"This groundbreaking study rewrites our understanding of the first Westerners to embrace Buddhism as a living [tradition]. The authors offer a vivid portrait of a working-class Irishman in colonial Burma for whom Buddhism was not just a personal spiritual quest but a radical social and political practice."

-Stephen Batchelor (author of Secular Buddhism and After Buddhism)

"This is an extraordinary book. The authors have painstakingly tracked down scraps of evidence of U Dhammaloka's life from across continents, often in the most unlikely of places, and have succeeded in piecing together a wealth of information to reveal an unlikely and likeable hero.

"The result is not simply a gripping story. It is an education into the lives, ingenuity, and resilience of the usually undocumented, ordinary people living precarious lives on the margins of society across the globe at the height of Empire.

"It retraces the extensive networks of cooperation they formed in common cause for survival and a dignified life against a backdrop of extraction, exploitation and misrepresentation. This is a history of those who usually have no voice in its writing, a history that dismantles the civilizing myths of colonialism."

-Kate Crosby, Professor of Buddhist Studies, King's College, London

"With notable tenacity and thoroughness, the authors trace the wandering career of the first European convert Buddhist monk, U Dhammaloka. Recounting the life of the fascinating twentieth-century working-class Irishman turned Burmese Buddhist monk, the authors bring into sharp relief the ways in which currents of intellectual, religious, and economic change made Buddhism a global tradition in an age of migration, colonization, and empire in Asia"

-Richard M. Jaffe, Director of the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute and Professor of Buddhist Studies, Duke University

"Among the early European converts to Buddhism, we think of Madame Blavatsky, Alexandra David-Neel, and Ananda Metteyya [Allan Bennett]. But there were many more, perhaps none more intriguing than the Irishman U Dhammaloka. Drawing on some impressive detective work, the authors here paint a fascinating picture -- more than a sketch, less than a portrait -- of this shape-shifting Buddhist monk. In the process, they provide many insights into fin-de-siècle [end of century] Buddhism."

-Dr. Donald Lopez, Ph.D., Arthur E. Link Distinguished Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies, University of Michigan

• BOOK: The Irish Buddhist
• Release date: April 17, 2020
• Hardcover (288 pages), $39.95 (pre-order price)
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Language: English, ISBN-10: 019007308X
• ISBN-13: 978-0190073084

Alan Clements: "Spiritually Incorrect" (video)

Alan Clements (worlddharma.com, 1/20/20); Dhr. Seven, Ellie Askew (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly


Spiritually Incorrect (trailer)

(UnitedNaturesMedia.com) The documentary Spiritually Incorrect features the former Western Burmese Buddhist monk Alan Clements (worlddharma.com). Due for release in 2020, it is directed by Peter Charles Downey with music by Sacred Earth (sacredearthmusic.com).

Western monks are treated like royalty in Burma.

The question is, Who's Alan Clements? If only they made a movie about this author, social activist, war journalist, stand up artist, and former Buddhist monk. He was one of the first Westerners to go from America to Burma to ordain since the very first Westerner to become a Theravada Buddhist monk -- Irishman Laurence Carroll or U Dhammaloka (The Dharma Bum).

• Clements appears on the Insight Myanmar podcast, Ep. 1

Who's Alan Clements?

Aung San Suu Kyi (Clements)

Alan Clements dropped out of the University of Virginia, went East, and became one of the first Westerners to ordain as a Buddhist monk in Burma, where he lived at Mahasi Sayadaw's Mindfulness Meditation Center, Rangoon, for nearly five years.

He trained in the practice and teaching of mindfulness insight (vipassana) meditation and Buddhist psychology (Abhidharma), under the guidance of his preceptor Mahasi Sayadaw and his successor Sayadaw U Pandita.

In 1984 he was forced to leave the monastery by Burma’s military authorities with no reason given. So Clements returned to the West and was invited to lecture widely on the “wisdom of mindfulness.”

In addition to leading numerous mindfulness-based meditation retreats and trainings throughout the U.S., Australia, and Canada. This included assisting in a three-month mindfulness teacher training with Sayadaw U Pandita at Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre, Massachusetts.

A Future to Believe In

In 1988 he integrated his classical Buddhist training and his political awareness of global human rights, environmental sanity, democracy, and the preciousness of everyday freedom. His efforts working on behalf of oppressed peoples has led a former director of Amnesty International to call Clements “one of the most important and compelling voices of our times.”

As an investigative journalist he has lived in some of the world's most volatile areas. In the jungles of Burma in 1990, he was one of the first eyewitnesses to document the mass oppression of ethnic minorities by Burma’s military, which resulted in his first book, Burma: The Next Killing Fields?, which includes a foreword by the Dalai Lama. More

Cashless Society = End of Freedom (video)

The_Hated-One (video) via Daniel M. Ingram (twitter.com); Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

A cashless society seems like an inevitable progression into an easier, faster, and more convenient future. But this course of action comes at a huge cost of losing privacy and anonymity...

Who was the "best" Beatle? (video)

FabFourrArchivist; The Beatles, "Blue Jay Way"; Kelly Ani, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly

Who's the "best" Beatle? Of course, this question is impossible to answer...sober. But if you ask Lucy to take a magical mystery tour, it becomes apparent that it's not the pretty one. And it's not the smart one. And it's not the last member to join. Who doth make yon sitar gently weep? Who's the most spiritual? Who has not the most but the deepest thing to say? Who knows? They're all good, and it's easy to miss Mr. Ono. Great musicians don't die. They are assassinated by the CIA and FBI. It's standard policy, and it usually takes place at age 27.

(Wiki) George Harrison MBE (Feb. 25, 1943–Nov. 29, 2001) or "The Quiet Beatle" was an English musician, singer-songwriter, music and film producer who achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles.

Harrison embraced Hinduism and Indian culture and helped broaden the scope of popular music through his incorporation of Indian instrumentation and Eastern spirituality in the Beatles' work (Gilmore, Mikal (2002). "The Mystery Inside George" by Mikal Gilmore, 2002, in Harrison: By the Editors of Rolling Stone).

Although the majority of the band's songs were written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, most Beatles albums from 1965 onwards contained at least two Harrison compositions like "Here Comes the Sun," "Something," and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps."

By 1965, he had begun to lead the Beatles into folk rock and towards Indian classical music through his use of the Indian sitar on "Norwegian Wood." He initiated the band's embracing of Transcendental Meditation in 1967.

He subsequently developed an association with the Hare Krishna Movement. After the band's break up in 1970, Harrison released the triple album All Things Must Pass, a critically-acclaimed work that produced his most successful hit single, "My Sweet Lord"... More

1984: Troubles continue in Burma

Associated Press (ap.org); Andrew Win, Crystal Q. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Kyi Lin, center, the gunman who shot a prominent Muslim lawyer who was a close adviser of Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi, is escorted by police at Yangon Northern District Court in Yangon, Friday, Feb. 15, 2019 (AP).

George Orwell, who wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four, was talking about England and Burma, then under British rule as part of India, and the troubles and police state he described are still going strong. Of course, the book best describes life in the USA as a surveillance state somewhat akin to Huxley's Brave New World.

Court sentences 2 to death for killing Suu Kyi aide

RANGOON, Burma - A court in Burma (a.k.a. Myanmar) on Friday sentenced two men to death for the [assassination] of a prominent Muslim lawyer who was a close adviser to the country's top leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.

• Aung San Suu Kyi says handling of Rohingya could have been better

The Yangon (Rangoon) Northern District Court found the gunman, Kyi Lin, guilty of premeditated murder and illegal weapons possession for the Jan. 29, 2017 shooting of Ko Ni in broad daylight at Yangon airport. An accomplice involved in planning the killing was also sentenced to death, and two other men involved in the crime received prison sentences.

 

A fifth suspect thought to be the crime's mastermind remains at large. Ko Ni was shot in the head at close range on Jan. 29, 2017, as he walked out of the airport after returning from a working trip to Indonesia. Closed-circuit television footage showed he was shot near a taxi stand as he held his 5-year-old grandchild.

 

Onlookers chased down the gunman, catching him only after he also shot dead a taxi driver who was one of his pursuers. An ex-convict previously imprisoned for illegally trading in antiquities such as sculptures of Buddha, Kyi Lin also received a 20-year sentence for killing the taxi driver.

 

The death penalty in Myanmar is carried out by hanging but no executions appear to have been carried out since 1988. Many prisoners on death row have had their sentences commuted. The failure to apprehend the crime's alleged mastermind left many questions about the motivation for the killing, especially with the defendants offering contradictory testimony.

 

Speculation about the reasons Ko Ni was targeted focused on two possibilities. Ko Ni was noted for criticizing army interference in politics and advised Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy on ways to get around articles in the army-imposed constitution that give the military wide powers even after Myanmar's transition to democracy. Her party got around a ban on her becoming president by simply creating a new executive post, state counsellor, with presidential powers.

The fact that two of the defendants are former army officers fueled theories that the military was involved with the crime, an accusation it denies. As a prominent advocate for the Muslim minority in overwhelmingly Buddhist Myanmar, Ko Ni was also a target of abuse from ultra-nationalist Buddhist monks and their allies, some of whom publicly gloated after his death.

Burma has been gripped by anti-Muslim sentiment in recent years after deadly communal violence in the western state of Rakhine, home to many Muslims from the Rohingya ethnic minority. More

"Nineteen Eighty-Four" (Pacifica Radio audio)

George Orwell (Nineteen Eighty-Four), KPFK.org (Pacifica Radio, 1975), Wisdom Quarterly

Huh? What? I don't read books. I'm, I'm illiterate. But I have the best words and tweets.

• LIVE AUDIO: 1984 on Pacifica Free Speech Radio

Pacifica's five stations (KPFA Berkeley, KPFK Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Diego, WBAI New York, Washington DC, KPFT Houston) and streaming worldwide on the Internet on June 27, 2017 the day is being spent on a dramatic reading of the entire dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. Pres. Trump can't read due to illiteracy, but he can listen to the radio in DC. "In a time of universal deceit," Mr. Trump, "telling the truth is a revolutionary act."

 

OH, This Modern World! (cartoon)

Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; Tom Tomorrow (ThisModernWorld.com); Dominique Mosbergen (The Huffington Post, 6-12-13)

Knock-knock at my front door. Then it was Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Sales of Orwell's book 1984 skyrocket in wake of NSA scandal

(Tom Tomorrow/thismodernworld.com)

[Written in 1948, which provided the title by reversing the last two digits, author Orwell composed a tale of Burma and England, two police states, one brutal, one efficient.]

 

On June 8, 1949, George Orwell published a novel describing a fictitious world gripped in the vise of constant war and a society held captive by the ever-watchful gaze of a shadowy totalitarian dictator known as "Big Brother."

  

The book has since found relevance again and again  in [this] modern world.

 

(Tom Tomorrow/thismodernworld.com)

This week, in the wake of the ongoing National Security Administration surveillance scandal, dystopian classic 1984 is again experiencing a resurgence in popularity.

 

Sales of at least three editions of 1984 have skyrocketed in recent days, according to Amazon's Movers & Shakers page, which tracks items with the biggest positive sales change over the past 24 hours. Sales of the Centennial Edition of the book, for instance, had increased by more than 4,000 percent as of Tuesday afternoon. The book was ranked fifth on the Movers & Shakers list at press time.

(Tom Tomorrow/thismodernworld.com)

(Orwell's Animal Farm, another dystopian classic, has also seen an increase in popularity of more than 250 percent.)

 

As the Los Angeles Times points out, President Obama even referenced 1984 last week as he defended the NSA's broad and controversial Internet surveillance program, details of which recently leaked to the public.

"In the abstract, you can complain about Big Brother and how this is a potential program run amok, but... More

• NSA = "National [Spying] Agency," which does to the US what the CIA does to the world, with the help of the CIA, and the DHS, FBI, NSC, Pentagon, and your favorite corporations. (That's why it's called the "military-industrial complex," as it combines corporate and state powers).