Orwell meets HAL

[Octafish]

If we aren't there already, we are becoming the worst of both worlds.

[Mnemosyne]

1. K&R nt

[Octafish]

2. 1984 Spirit and 2001 Technology

STASI Times.

I have watched Barack Obama transform into the security president

During his 10 years as the Observer's correspondent in America, Paul Harris has seen a new toughness from the once fiery campaigner

Paul Harris in New York
The Guardian

EXCERPT...

No one in that hall in Boston in 2004 could have imagined that the young, eloquent and inspiring politician would have transformed so dramatically less than a decade later. Yet the age of Obama is not one of hope and change; it is the era of the national security president. Obama has overseen increasing use of drones, in a targeted killing programme across the globe. No doubt they wipe out legitimate targets. But the drones also murder American citizens, such as Anwar al-Awlaki and his son Abdulraman in 2011, with no trial, amid a legal framework that – again – is kept largely secret. They wipe out wedding parties by accident. Any "military-aged male" in a drone strike zone is called a legitimate target, turning the innocent into the guilty to justify death from above. Then there is Guantánamo Bay, that bleeding sore on the face of American civil liberties. It is a tropical gulag of 166 men – more than half cleared for release but still kept behind bars – who are starving themselves out of desperation. Obama promised to close it down in 2008. He failed. He promised again last month. But nothing has happened. Meanwhile, the regime inside the camp is growing more savage.

Obama has cracked down aggressively on whistleblowers, using the Espionage Act – a hangover from the first world war – more times than all his predecessors combined. He has presided over an explosion of over-classification, as millions of government documents are shuttered away from public eyes. His Department of Justice has collected the phone records of AP journalists and accessed the emails of a Fox News reporter.

It's the stuff of conspiracy theorist fantasies. But these abuses of power are real and are playing out on the front pages of America's papers every day. When the IRS searched for conservative groups to target for special treatment, it confirmed the worst fears of every rightwinger in America.

How on earth did we get here from Boston 2004? Bush – a cipher of a politician whose only belief was in his right to rule – surrounded himself with Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton and an army of whispering neocons. Obama does not have that excuse. When his staff meets to mull over the latest names in their killing programme – an event dubbed "Terror Tuesdays" – Obama himself is often present.

Neither is Obama ignorant of the law; he's a constitutional law professor. In turning America into a national security state, the awful truth is that he knows full well what he is doing.

CONTINUED...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/15/broken-promise-barack-obama

Thanks for grokking, Mnemosyne.