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'Mind Control' is Achieved in Post-Snowden United States (El Espectador, Colombia)

 

"Writers are self-censoring. They are leaving certain areas untouched, especially if writing about them involves using certain terms in their communications. So it has come to this: the reality of life in the most powerful democracy in the world has achieved what has been impossible for the worst totalitarian systems and the worst theocracies - mind control over individuals."

 

By Juan Gabriel Vásquez

                                            

 

Translated By Halszka Czarnocka

 

December 8, 2013

 

Colombia - El Espectador – Original Article (Spanish)

Stranger than science fiction?: Self-censorship descends upon what used to be called the freest country in the world. RUSSIA TODAY NEWS VIDEO: 'No way to hide from NSA unless one lives in cave and reverts to handwriting', Sept. 11, 00:01:53

About a month ago, PEN America conducted a poll of its members - 528 out of the over 6,000 writers affiliated to the organization - to determine the ways in which information surveillance is changing their behavior.

 

I followed the process and its results with heightened attention, since for some time now I’ve been thinking that there's only one thing more disturbing than systematic spying on citizens and violating their right to privacy: the fact that it seems not to bother us much.

 

“I have nothing to hide” is the automatic or trained reaction of some of us, as if not having terrorist intentions justifies having our actions or interests - our “digital footprint” they call it now - become objects of trade among companies and these agencies. (Ah, those hypocritical companies: remember those many times Microsoft or Google spouted words like “freedom of expression” and “net neutrality,” only to put our data at the disposal of the first government who came to ask for them?).

 

Be that as it may, the PEN survey brought some disturbing revelations. Twenty eight percent of writer-respondents said they had curtailed their activities on social networks; 24 percent took pains to avoid certain topics during their telephone conversations and in e-mails, and 26 percent had avoided writing about certain topics. The New York Times mentioned the case of Charles J. Shields, a biographer who has stopped writing about the history of civil defense in the United States because that would have forced him to put into his search engine and conversations words that would raise the red flags at the NSA. This can mean only one thing: writers are self-censoring. They are leaving certain areas untouched, especially if writing about them involves using certain terms in their communications. So it has come to this: the reality of life in the most powerful democracy in the world has achieved what has been impossible for the worst totalitarian systems and the worst theocracies - mind control over individuals.

Posted By Worldmeets.US

 

No, this isn't science fiction: if religion and dictatorship have something in common, it is their open striving to legislate our mental activity. “Bad thoughts” are a routine part of the Catholic confessional; and few stop to ponder the obscenity of a ritual that obliges them to describe to a priest their secret desires, even if those desires don't exist in the real world, and even if they haven’t acted on them nor plan to do so. The very fact of harboring them is punishable.

 

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George Orwell (forgive me, but one always ends up talking about George Orwell) invented in Nineteen Eighty Four the notorious "thought crime," which meant to hold to believes or ideas contrary to the regime. In the novel, the totalitarian government controls not only actions and words, but thoughts. Is this not a metaphor for the self-censorship now seen among writers? Is it melodramatic, foolish, or paranoid, to make this connection between a fictional totalitarian system and a journalist who no longer puts certain words into a search engine?

 

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Suedostschweiz, Switzerland: Exposed: Spy Powers that Obama Shouldn't Use
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Business Day, South Africa: Obama Sets 'Dubious Example' on Freedom
Economist, U.K.: The Reason We Fear Broad Surveillance
Guardian, U.K.: The NSA's Secret Tool to Track Global Surveillance Data

 

 

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Posted By Worldmeets.US Dec. 8, 2013, 8:15pm