Brazilian Constitution Day

                      Last Sunday, 24th January was the Day of the Brazilian Constitution, so this post is a tribute to our current constitution called, Citizen Constitution. I'd like to remember that everything is interconnected: Constitution, human rights, citizenship, democracy and the separation of powers, justice, effectiveness of governance, rule of law, and the trust in politics and in the politicians. This post is a summary of four articles. The first published at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Constitution_of_Brazil. The second was published in July of 2014 at http://thebrazilbusiness.com/article/introduction-to-the-brazilian-constitution. The third was published at http://www.ebc.com.br/english/2013/10/constitution-that-put-an-end-to-brazils-dictatorship-celebrates-. The fourth was published http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/bjrenquan/190894.htm

                The current Constitution was promulgated on October 5th, 1988 after a two-year process in which it was written from scratch by a Congress elected in 1986. It appears as a reaction to the period of military dictatorship, seeking to guarantee rights and restricting the state 's ability to limit freedom, and regulate indivifual life. On the other hand, it did not provide clear rules for state reform and kept the economic regulation of the country intact. It was the first constitution to demand severe punishment for breaches of civil liberties and rights. Willing to create a truly democratic state, the constitution has established many forms of direct popular participation, such as plebiscite, referendum and the possibility of ordinary citizens proposing new laws. Despite its advances concerning individual rights and freedoms and also in government control, the constitutional text brought dispositions that resulted in severe difficulties concerning governmental efficiency. in the following years, this it had to be amended many times to get rid of impractical, contradictory or unclear provisions.

               Brazil's current Constitution has been valid since 1988 and it is the fundamental law in Brazil. This is the seventh Constitution in Brazil's history, and it is the one with most changes: up to this day, 77 constitutional amendments and 6 review amendments were made. The 1988 Constitution is considered a milestone in Brazil's history, since it is the first one to grant several rights. It is composed of 250 articles, which are divided under 9 titles. The Brazilian Fundamental Principles are listed in the first four articles of the Constitution. They basically define the political, social and juridical bases of Brazil. Brazil is defined as a Federal Presidential Republic. It is a democratic rule-of-law state, divided into three powers: The Executive, the Legislative, and the Judiciary. Brazil's objective are listed as the construction of a free, fair and egalitarian society for any person. The pillars of the Brazilian Constitution are: Sovereignty, Citizenship, Dignity of the individual, Social values of labor and free enterprise, political pluralism. Some principles of the Constitution can not be changed. They are named Eternity Clauses, or Cláusulas Pétrias. They are: Federal form of government, Direct, secret, universal, and periodic vote, Separation of powers, Individual rights and guarantees.

             "I hereby declare the passing of the document of liberty, democracy and social justice," said deputy Ulysses Guimarães, president of the National Constituent Assembly. He announced officially the end of the military dictatorship in Brazil. For the first time in Brazil history, ordinary people collaborated on the writing of the country's constitution by making proposals signed by more than 12,000 citizens. People traveled to Brasilia in groups from all over the country. Nelson Jobim, former president of the Supreme Federal Court, became the assistant court reporter of the Assembly. In his view, the traumas suffered during the years of dictatorship exerted considerable influence on the precision of the text. On his opinion, the process was good for a reason: political stability.  He said, "We enjoyed stability throughout the whole period, despite considerable traumas, like president Collor impeachment. There was no institutional problem. Things worked, progressed, moved on, there is a discussion, a debate, but this is part of a process. The democratic process is not the product of a consensus, but the administration of a disagreement."

              Brazil has advanced on human rights issues since the end of the military dictatorship in 1985 and the subsequent redemocratizing process which has constituted new legal guarantees in the field of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. The 1988 Constitution synthesized respect for human dignity as the foundation for the legal framework as well as the prevalence of human rights as the guiding principle for Brazilian international relations. In this sense, Brazil's position has been consolidated in regard to the inter-dependence and indivisibility of the wider range of human rights, integrating, in a partnership with civil society, government policies of promoting and guaranteeing civil and political rights. Brazil has also ratified the major international treaties on human rights issues which have elevated our country's commitment to this cause up to international levels and standards. But even with all these steps forward, Norberto Bobbio's observation when, in regard to the glaring contrast between the intentions proposed in the 1948 UDHR and the situation which surrounds us, he declared in "The Age of Rights": "in spite of the expectations of the philosophers, of the courageous jurists, and the efforts of politicians of goodwill, there is a long way to go." In spite of the modern legal framework in place, Brazil's greatest challenge is to effectively guarantee the fundamental rights provided by law. In the 1988 Constitution, human rights are the touchstone for the entire legal framework created by the legislative assembly in response to the wishes of Brazilian society. The Brazilian Government's stand in regard to human rights violations has changed diametrically compared to the stance taken at the time of the military regime. National and international human rights entities freely register and publicize cases of violations and communicate with the authorities in all spheres of government.

               

              

Brazil: Playing With Fire

                 This post is a summary of five articles. The first was published at http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/19/news/economy/imf-brazil-recession-worsens/. The second was published at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-04/brazil-analysts-ring-in-new-year-with-deeper-recession-forecast. The third was published in October 2015 at http://www.americasquarterly.org/content/what-economic-recovery-brazil-might-look. The fourth was published at http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/brazil-s-big-fall-115120801153_1.html. The fifth article with the title above was published in November 2015 at http://bruegel.org/2015/11/brazil-playing-with-fire/

                  Brazil endured a brutal 2015 and it is looking like it may be deja vu in 2016. International Monetary Fund (IMF) downgraded its economic forecast for Brazil Tuesday. It was by far the largest revision of all major countries. Brazil fell deep into a self-inflicted recession last year, the long downturn for the country since thr 1930s. The IMF and other forecasters thought Brazil would still be in a recession this year. The economy over the past year has unraveled as investment has plummeted. Unemployment has shot up, inflation is soaring and the country's currency has lost 35% of its value. The IMF now believes Brazil's economy will shrink 3.5% this year down from its previous estimate of a 1% contraction. Brazil shrank 3.8% last year, the IMF reports. In other words, the light at the end of the tunnel may not come in 2016. Brazil is suffering from a few key factors. Its economy relies on commodities like oil, soy and coffee. Commodity prices have fallen off a cliff in the past year, which hurts economic growth in development countries. But other commodity-driven countries are still growing despite the crash in prices. Brazil is also suffering mightly from poltical instability and the ongoing investigation into the bribery scandal at the government-run oil company Petrobras.

                  Brazil's economy  will contract more than previously forecast and is heading for the deepest recession since at least 1901 as economic activity and confidence sink amid a political crisis. Latin America's largest economy will shrink 2.95% this year, according to the weekly central bank poll of about 100 economists. Analysts lowered their 2016 growth forecast for 13 straight weeks and estimate the economy contracted 3.7% last year. Brazil's policy makers are struggling to control the fastest inflation in 12 years without further hamstringing a weak economy. Finance Minister has faced pressure to moderate austerity proposals aimed at bolstering public accounts. The last time Brazil had back-to-back years of recession was 1930 and 1931, and has never had one as deep as that forecast for 2015 and 2016 combined, according to data from institute IPEA that dates back to 1901.

               It seems hopeless now, but Brazil's economy could turn around by late 2016. Now might seem like an odd time to look for signs of hope in Brazil. Dilma Roussef has an approval rating of just 10%, she faces possible imprachment procedings, inflation runs around 10% and the economy is expected to shrink 3% this year. Yet, amid all the gloom, we've also recently begun to see tentative hints of what a recovery might look like. Economists expect inflation to slow next year to 6%, still high, but under the 6.5% target ceiling. The exchange rate had devalued from 2.2 reais to over 4.2 reais per dollar. Economists expect it ti hover around 4 throughtout 2016. If the stability of the real exchange rate is maintained and a major, debt-driven emerging-market financial crisis is avoided, then when inflation slows, the central bank can begin to cut interest rate from the current 14.25% to 10%. This possible reduction in rates, plus a weakened and more attractively valued exchange rate, would help attract needed fixed investment in the real economy. Fixed investment, combined with corporates focuses on efficiency, deleveraging and cost-cutting, could stimulate some economic growth and recovery. Such recovery growth could also alleviate pressure on the currently unsustainable fiscal deficit. Indeed, without further reforms, the longer-term economic growth picture in Brazil will be anemic and below the levels necessary to reduce poverty and improve the quality of life of its citizens. Bazil needs to not only reduce its fiscal deficit but also to shrink overall government spending as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). Its faster-growing neighbors such as Chile and Peru, spends about 25% of GDP versus Brazil's government spending at more than 40%. Brazil must embrace a more open trade agenda and deepen engagement with the world at large. The current crisis may provide just the pressure needed for these changes to allow brazil to optimize the value of its human capital and regain its growing footing. Nations like Canada and Australia, with a commodity-dependent export base, have accomplished developed country per-capita income levels for their citizens. With the right economic policies, Brazil can still achieve the same outcome, even if things look bleak right now.

               Till a few years ago Brazil was a star among emerging markets. Fuelled by a global commodities boom, the economy grew 7% in 2010, and social policies combined with market-friendly economic policies saw a sharp reduction in poverty. In 2008, Standard & Poor's (S&P) first awarded Brazil investment grade status. Yet, now S&P downgraded Brazil's credit rating to junk status, the economy is expected to shrink 3% in 2015, inflation is in double digits and the budget deficit is nearing 9% of GDP. Much of this is the result of waning demand from China, the principal buyer for Brazil's oil, ores and soya. But a large part of its problem is due to mishandling by the goverment and the political instability surroundings a series of corruption scandals. Ms. Roussef was narrowly re-elected, after the economy grew just 2.2% during her first term in office (2011-2014). However, was not offset by the necessary fiscal discipline. As a result, the government's debt to GDP stands at 66%, nowhere near Greece, but vastly problematic for an economy in which interest rates hover at 14%.

             Rattled by political turmoil and in the midst of severe stagflation, Brazil is really 'playing with fire'. Urgent measures are needed to reduce the fiscal deficit along with key structural reforms. Brazil is no longer a star performer, the economy is slowing down and falling into an abyss. Raising inflation and weak GDP growth have placed Brazil in a dilemma regarding monetary policy, while the large fiscal deficit prevents the government from using any fiscal stimulus. Brazil is experiencing the consequences of a lack of reform during its golden age. The Dutch disease, poor infrastructure, low quality education and inefficient pension system are all obstacles to restart the economic engine. A shaky political situation, emanating from corruption scandals has delayed the action needed for economic recovery. The option confronting Brazil are limited and short-term pain in recession is unavoidable for a better long-term future. There are a number of structural issues that place Brazil in an especially difficult position. First, after a successful stabilisation in the second half of the 1990s, Brazil is back to square one, with mismanaged macroeconomic environment. The key futures are stagflation and a twin deficit (fiscal and external). Secondly, Brazil's structural problems are acute. Starting with the most recent, de-industrialisation stemming from the Dutch disease generated by the commodity boom, there are also even more deeply-rooted problems such as poor educational levels, a lack of infrastructure and a bloated government structure. Finally, its offers some Brazil's current woes, divided in three groups. 1) Raising inflation, in recession since 2014, large current account deficit, high fiscal deficit,, commodity prices, China slowdown, FED interest rates. 2) The boom years have not been used to support reform: Dutch disease and ensuing de-industrialisation, infrastructure lagging behind, low-quality education, too much spending on pensions, poor corporate governance in state-owned enterprises. 3) Shaky political situation, corruption scandal, low approval rate, government reshuffle,.

140th Birthday of Jack London

            Last Tuesday 12th of January, the American writer Jack London would complete 140 years old, so this post is a tribute to him. He was a pioneer in many areas: in publishing a literary magazine, in social activism and writing a dystopian novel. This post is a summary of five posts. The first was published  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_London. The second was published https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Heel. The third was published at https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2012/03/iron-m08.html. The fourth was published at http://www.enotes.com/topics/iron-heel/themes. The fifth was published at http://www.spikemagazine.com/0806-jack-london-iron-heel.php

                Jack London (1876-1916) was born John Griffith Chaney. He was a novelist, journalist and social activist. A pioneer in the burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction, he was one of the first writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and large fortune from his fiction. Some of his most famous work include, The Call of the Wind and White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories, An Odyssey of the North and Love of Live. He also wrote about South Pacific in such stories as The Pearls of Parlay and The Heathen. Jack London's mother, Flora Wellman was a music teacher and his father was the astrologer William Chaney, his father left his mother when he was born. Flora then married John London, a partially disabled Civil War veteran. In 1886 at the age of ten, he started to attend the Oakland Public Library, where he found a sympathetic librarian, who encouraged  his learning. At the age of thirteen, he began to work in a cannery. In 1893, at seventeen, he signed on to the sealing schooner, bound for the coast of Japan. After the experience as a sailor, he returned to Oakland to attend high school.  In 1897, when he was a student at the University of Californian Berkeley, London searched for and read the newspaper accounts of his mother's suicide attempt and the name of his biological father. He wrote to William Chaney and Chaney responded that he could not be his father and he asserted that his mother had relations with other men and concluded by saying that he was more to be pitied than London. Jack London was devastated by his father's letter and with his own financial circumstances, he quit university and went to the Klondike during the gold rush boom with his sister's husband. After the experience as a miner, he concluded that his only hope was to get an education. He saw his writings as a business, his ticket out of poverty. London began his career just as new printing technologies enabled lower-cost production of magazines. This resulted in a boom popular magazines and a strong market for short stories. He married Elizabeth Madden in 1900, they had two girls. In 1904, he accepted an assignment of the San Francisco Examiner to cover the Russo-Japanese War. After divorcing Elizabeth, London married Charmian Kittredge in 1905. 

                 The Iron Heel is a dystopian novel,  first published at 1908. Generally considered to be "the earliest of the modern dystopian", it chronicles the rise of an oligarchic tyranny in the U.S.    A forerunner of soft science fiction novels and stories of the 1960s and 1970s, the book stresses future changes in society and politics while paying attention to tech changes. The book is unusual among London's writings ( and the literature of the time in general) in being a first-person narrative of a woman protagonist. The iron Heel is cited by George orwell's biographer as having influenced Orwell's novel 1984. Another London's novel The Scarlet Plague (1912), and some of his short stories, are placed in a dystopian future setting that closely resembles that of The Iron Heel  although there is no continuity of situations or characters.                                                                                                                                       The Iron Heel predicts the rise of fascism emerging from a rotting capitalism, and the terrible implications of that for the working class and democratic leadership. The novel traces the rise of ruling class political organizations controlled by "the oligarghy", combined into a single entity that London vividly dubs "The Iron Heel", whose brutality is detailed throughout the novel. The story is written in a complex and unique way: The novel takes the form of a manuscript, originally composed by Avis Everhard, wife of Ernest Everhard, a revolutionary leader. To understand the social genesis of The Iron Heel, it is necessary to take some account of the decades preceding the First World War. Social, economic and military tensions find expressions in London's story. Perhaps the most interesting themes in The Iron Heel, however, is the importance of international solidarity among the workers and democracy advocates and opposition to explorative schemes. 

                After London's novel White Fang (1905) proved popular, he decided he could risk writing a novel he had long dreamed of undertaking: a political novel. Yet, London's book is not only a socialist proletarian novel but also a futurology it purpose to predict the future of the U.S. Indeed, Robert Spiller called London's novel " a terrifying forecast of fascism and its evils". Much of the novel is founded on the history of the U.S. The novel opens in Chicago, in 1866,  the Haymarket Square Riot occurred when amid labor's drive for an eight-hour day, a demonstration by anarchists was staged in the square, where about 1,500 people were gathered. When police attempted to disperse the crowd, a bomb was exploded, killing eleven persons and injuring more than a hundred. The London's novel is thus grounded in the class distinctions, violence, poverty and labor strife of late nineteenth and early twentieth century America. The welfare of the masses was dependent on the owners and managers of the trusts. The Iron Heel is a cautionary tale of the even darker future to which the author believed such naked capitalism would lead.

                  When it comes to accolades for the most lauded prophetic dystopian novel of the early 20th century, there is no doubting which are the two big. The all-surveillance paranoid nightmare of Orwell's 1984, and the distorted DNA playground of Huxley's Brave New World. Ocassionally Yevgeny Zamyarin's We get a look-in, a minor precursor to both, appearing as it did in 1920, long before that of Huxley (1932) and Orwell (1949). There is one however which always gets passed over, despite being written before both the others, way back in 1908, and overlooked, despite being written by one of the most widely revered American authors of all time. That novel is Jack London's The Iron Heel. The action of the book begins in the years immediately following when it was written. Labour relations in the U.S. are plunging as rapidly as the economy, while the thuggery of big-business against the unions increases in turn. Poverty spreads apace, and slower but just as surely does the socialism movement. The novel's narrative skilfully shifts focus from the small scale to the large and back again, the snapshots of poverty signifying the minutiae of the bigger vista. We see as the dictatorship takes hold it foes so steadily, creepily. The insidious little signs, the silence and ostracizing of academics, the blackening of the names of campaigners, are shown as Avis's father is hounded from his job, and a reformed priest the family know is hounded into a mental institution. The story continues and the Iron Heel kicks in. Congress is suspended, dissenters are machine-gunned. Scenes of conflict on a gargantuan scale ensue, interspersed with the individual intrigues within.

    

Privacy and Surveillance

                 This post is a summary of two articles and a report. The first article with the title above, was published at https://www.aclu.org/issues/national-security/privacy-and-surveillance. The second article was at https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2006/05/were_giving_up_priva.htm. The report was published in 2013 at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2242258

                  Privacy today faces growing threats from a growing surveillance apparatus that is often justified in the name of national security. Numerous governments agencies intrude upon the private communications of innocent citizens, amass vast databases of who we call and when, and catalog "suspicious activites" based on the vaguest standards. This is a invasion of privacy, But its use of this data is also rife with abuse. Innocuous data is fed into bloated watchlists, with severe consequences, innocent citizens have found themselves unable to board planes, barred from certain jobs, etc. Once information is in the government's hands, it can be shared widely and retained for years, and the rules about access and use can be changed without the public knowing. Our constitution and democratic system demand that the govenment be transparent and accountable to the people, not the other way around. History has shown that surveillance tools will almost certainly be abused for political ends and turned on disfavored minorities.

                 Collecting information about phone calls is an example of data mining. The basic idea is to collect as much information as possible on everyone, sift through it with massive computers, and uncover terrorists plots. It is a compelling idea, and convinces many. But it is a wrong. We are not going to find terrorists plots through systems like this, and we are going to waste resources chasing down false alarms. To understand why, we have to look at the economics of the system. Data mining works best wehn you are searching for well-defined profile. Credit-card fraud is one of data mining's success stories. Many credit-card thieves share a pattern purchasing things that can be easily fenced, and dara mining systems can minimize the losses in many cases by shutting down the card. Terrorists plots are different, there is no well-defined profile and attacks are very rare. This means that data-mining systems will not uncover any terrorist plots until they are very accurate, and that even very accurate systems will be so flooded with false alarms that they will be useless. This is not anything new. In statistics, it is called the "base rate fallacy" and it applied in other domains as well. And this is exactly the sort of things we saw with the NSA eacesdropping program: The New York Times reported that the computers spat out thousands of tips per month. Every one of them turned out to be false alarm. Finding terrorists plots is not a problem that lends itself to data mining. It is a needle-in-a-haystack problem, and throwing more hay on the pile does not make that problem any easier. By allowing the NSA to eacesdrop on us all, we are not trading privacy for security. We are giving up privacy without getting any security.

                  Concerns about privacy are growing. A right to privacy is a constitutional right. However, there are also important economic implications to the fair redress and enforcement of that right. Admittedly, not everything of value can be measured in dollars and cents and courts have found that monetary compensation is not sufficient for violations of constitutional rights, such as free speech and privacy. Nevertheless, a better understanding of the economic values associated with privacy, and its violation, can inform the current policy debate. Narrowly, violations of privacy that cause direct economic harm need to be compensated. The economic harms to individuals who have their privacy violared fall into at least two. First, some violations of privacy lead to direct economic harm. This is the type of harm, for example, that occurs from identify theft, someone gain access to your private information and that allow them to create liabilities in your name. Second, while not always economic costs, some privacy violations create value that is not shared with the individuals whose information creates the value. The broader economic issues reach beyond the value of data about individuals to those individuals and concern the externalities of costs and benefits to others. Better understanding these externalities is urgent as institutions around privacy are developed and policy is codified in legislation. These costs and benefits can be divided between those that directly impact other economic factors (e.g. firms, data aggregators, researchers) and those that concern society as a whole (e.g. social benefits of big data, protection of constitutional rights.) When your privacy is violated, you are harmed. Measuring that harm is revelant for at least two reasons. First, depending on the type of privacy violation, now or in the future there may be legal recourse . If so, an economically sound measure of harm will be needed to calculate compensation. Second, in evaluating policies related to privacy, some weighing of costs and benefits is required. Such analysis will need to assign a value to privacy to understand the costs of allowing privacy violations or the benefits of preventing them. In either case, however, a clear understanding of the harm from violating privacy is needed. Intellectual property is a type of information good and suffers as other information goods such as privacy, or its privacy. Traditional intellectual property, copyright and trade secrets. Privacy shares many features of intellectual property. As noted privacy is an information good. Once knowledge about you, for example your shopping habits have been created, it is nearly costless for that information to be shared. But unlike other intellectual property where there is a clear benefit of incentivizing innovation, there can be ambiguity about whether the creation of the knowledge is beneficial in the first place. Economic violations of privacy have three distinct buckets of value that need to be considered. The first is privacy as an economic good, including both the value of privacy to an individual and to those who would use the information about the individual. Second, is the value created when data are aggreggated. The third is costs to businesses of handling and securing private data.

Orwell's World

            This post is a summary of an article published in January 2015, written by editor Robert Butler at http://www.intelligentlifemagazine.com/content/features/robert-butler/orwells-world

            It is now 65 years since George Orwell died, and he has never been bigger. His phrases are on our lips, his ideas are in our heads, his warnings have come true. How did this happen? If there were to be a statue outside BBC's new offices in central London that captured the spirit of its modish interior of  "workstation clusters", and the daily struggle of the 5,500employees to produce content across multiple platforms for an audience of 240m. In 2016 a statue of George Orwell will be unveiled. Orwell spent a mere two years ( 1941-1943 ) at the BBC. The critic Cyril Connolly, an exact contemporary, thought that only D.H. Lawrence rivalled Orwell in the degree to which his personality "shines out in everything he said or wrote". Any reader of Orwell's non-fiction will pick up on the brisk, buttonholing manner. The Orwell's bronze statue will look down on the comings and goings of BBC staff who, returning his gaze, can read some chiselled wisdom from his works on the wall behind him. The Financial Times recently called Orwell "the true patron saint of our profession". Why Orwell? One answer to "why Orwell?" is because of his posthumous career. Five years before his death in 1950, he was, in the words of one of his biographers, "still a faintly marginal figure". He had published seven books, four of them novels, none of which put him in the front rank of novelists. It was only with his last two books, "Animal Farm" and "1984" (published in 1945 and 1949) that Orwell transformed his reputation as a writer. These two books would change the way we think about our lives. The interest in Orwell is accelerating and expanding practically daily. Since his death 65 years ago, the estate has been handled by A.M. Heath. Bill Hamilton, his literary executor describes the onward march of '1984'. We are selling far more. We are licensing far more stage productions than we have ever done before. We are selling in new languages. We have recently done our first Kurdish deals too. We suddenly get these calls from, say, Istanbul, from the local publisher saying, "I want a thousand copies to the demonstrators in the square outside as part of the campaign." As a global recognised name, it is at an peak. A new hollywood movie of "1984" is in the pipeline, "Aninal Farm" is also in development as a feature film, and Lee Hall, who wrote "Billy Elliot", is writing both a stage musical version of "Animal Farm" and a television adaptation of "Down and out in London and Paris". It is boom time for Orwell. Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale, advises,"To understand Putin, read Orwell." By Orwell, he means "1984": "The structure and the wisdom of the book are guides, often frightening precises ones, to current events. "This is just the top end of the range. Barely a minute goes by when Orwell is not namechecked on Twitter or Google. Only two other novelists have inspired adjectives so closely associated in the public mind with the circunstances they set out to attack: Dickens and Kafka. An office worker defines the word as "people monitoring everything you do, that was orwellian." In the years after his death, Orwell was co-opted by cold-war warriors as a powerful voice against communism and Soviet Union. After the collapse of communism, libertarians would use Orwell as an argument against Big Brother and the nanny state. Yet he had categorically stated that everything he had written had democratic socialism at his very heart. It was possible to spot Orwellian scenarios on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The film "The Lives of Others", set in 1984, depicts the nightmare apparatus of the secret police in East Germany. But the toxic fear of McCarthyism that runs through a film like George Clooney's "Good Night, and Good Luck" is very bit as Orwellian. For decades "Animal Farm" and "1984" have been mainstays on the British English-literature syllabus. Generations have grown up familiar with concepts of Big Brother, Doublethink and Thoughtcrime. Orwell was in any reading list for teenagers in the 1970s. But in the university, we looked at his essays, but not his fiction. In those days, Joyce and Lawrence were seen as the towering novelists of the 20th century. Yet, today, "1984" can claim to be the most influential novel of the century. There would have been no surge of interest 35 years after publication if Orwell had gone for the other title he liked: "The Last Man in Europe". Nor would the appeal have been as global. I doubt "1984" would have become as big as it has in Brazil, where, along with "Animal Farm", it is now on the government's school syllabus, if "Europe" had been in the title. The vision of the future Aldous Huxley had conjured up in "Brave New World", of a society rendered passive by a surplus of conforts and distractions, seemed prescient. In 1985, the cultural critic Neil Postman argued in "Amusing Ourselves to Death" that Orwell feared that what we hate ruin us, while Huxley feared that what we love would ruin us. Talking with the cast of "1984", I asked the actors what they had researched in terms of everyday life in 2014 to help them understand the world of the play. One answer was Edward Snowden showing how the NSA snoops on ordinary Americans, another was news footage from the pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong, and a third, from the actress playing Julia, was that the most useful research for her had been living in N.Y. in the wake of 9/11, the fear and paranoia that followed. To Edward Snowden, the tech that Orwell depicts, he says, "now seem quaint and unimaginative. Now we have got webcams that go with us everywhere. We buy cellphones that are the equivalent of a network microphone that we carry around in our pockets. Times have shown that the world is much more unpredictable and dangerous." The general public, on learning of something like Snowden's revelations, still goes out and buys Orwell's books. Bloomberg News reported that "1984" had moved from 11,855th on Amazon's list to number three. What is extraordinary is that Orwell had a purpose in writing "Animal Farm" and "1984" which has now largely evaporated. He had gone to Spain to fight fascism, but had returned with a hatred of communism. He was a left-wing writer pungently attacking the illusions of the left and he did it by aiming his fire at Britain's ally Stalin, while the second world war was still going on. In attacking Stalin, Orwell captured fundamental aspects of the way the world was evolving and struck a chord that resonates even more today. If there is one quality to catch, it is Orwell's unease. What struck him is how he keeps questioning his own position. It is the contrariness and the contradictions, the resolute lack of complacency, that animate the writing. No other writer could feel safe around him.