120th Birthday of George Orwell - Part II

                    The tribute to George Orwell carries on. Many journalist are reinforcing the importance of the warnings of Orwell nowadays. Let's pay attention to what they are saying and fighting against abuse of power, authoritarian regimes and anything that undermine truth, democracy, human rights and justice. This post is a summary of three articles. The first was published at https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/1984-george-orwell/590638/. The second was published at https://qrius.com/george-orwell-1984-classic/. The third was published at https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-suffolk-65856526

                  No novel of the past century has had more influence than George Orwell's 1984. The vocabulary of the all-powerful party that rules the state Oceania with the ideologia of Ingsoc - doublethink, memory hole, unperson, thoughtcrime, newspeak, thought police, room 101, big brother - they have all entered the English language as instantly recognizable signs of a nightmare future. It is almost impossible to talk about propaganda, surveillance, authoritarian politics, or pervesions of truth without dropping a reference to 1984. Throughout the Cold War, the novel found avid underground readers behind the Iron Curtain who wondered, How did he know? It was also assigned reading for several generations of American high-schools students. Orwell's novel was paired with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, whose hedonistic and pharmaceutical dystopia seemed more relevant to a California teenager than the bleak sadism of 1984. The 1984's pessimism is relieved, until its last pages, by Winston Smith's attachment to nature, the smell of fresh coffee, the sound of proletarian woman singing, and above all his lover, Julia. The novel is crushingly grim, but its clarity and rigor are stimulants to consciousness and resistance. Conservative American reviewers concluded that Orwell's main target wasn't just the Soviet Union but the left generally. Orwell, waded in with a statement explaining that the novel was not an attack on any particular government but a satire of the totalitarian tendencies."The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one: Don't let it happen. It depends on you." Orwell said. Things haven't turned out that bad. The Soviet Union is history. Technology is liberating. But Orwell never intended his novel to be a prediction, only a warning. And it is as a warning that 1984 keeps finding new relevance. What does the novel mean for us? To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle," Orwell wrote. In the world of enlightened and progressive people, a different sort of doublethink has become pervasive. It is not the claim that true is fake or that two plus two makes five. Progressive doublethink, which has grown worse in reaction to the far right-wing kind, creates a more insidious unreality because it operates in the name of all that is good. Its key word is justice - a word no one should want to live without. But today the demand for justice forces you to accept contradictions that are the essence of doublethink. Orthodoxy is also enforced by social pressure, this pressure can be more powerful than a party or state, because it speaks in the name of the people and in the language of moral outrage, against which there is, in a way, no defense. Orwell wrote in 1946. "What is needed is the right to print what one believes to be true, without having to fear bullying or blackmail from any side." 1984 will always be an essential book, regardless of changes in ideologies, for its portrayal of one person struggling to hold what is real and valuable. The central drama of politics is the one inside your skull.                                                                                                                                                  George Orwell's classical works such as 1984 spoke of a dystopian society, totalitarian control of states and abuse of power. Their relevance in more modern times is no matter of surprise. 1984 provided us with a view of a society and of a future which is very bleak, a state where the government spies on its people round the clock, tells people what to do and what to think, and keeps people at the constant edge of their minds with the constant war propaganda. Orwell provided a well structured vision of this society, a mechanism for control and abuse of power. Societies  as such do exist today, for example, in North Korea. However, Orwell's detailed vision fails, in the light of recent developments such as social media and political correctness. He wrote, "who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past", indicating towards the vitality of information in our lives and how its control can help control the world. Information today is more centralised than ever, with a private company Facebook more than 4 billion people receiving news but on the other hand, the very same platform has brought in the heavy democratisation of information in our daily lives. Social media is peak democracy first. A fierce free speech activist, Orwell understood free speech as the liberty to say things which even people didin't want to hear, a repository of a right reserved for the minority, the powerless and also, the controversial, a right necessary to conserve a society while also calling for change. Free speech for a democracy is like an oxygen for a human being. Orwell remains relevant more than ever, both as a political analyst and a philosopher. He strongly believed that power, exercised by the fascists and the idealists alike, would be subject to abuse. He was heavily obsessed with the malleable nature of power and all the hypocrisy that it revealed. His main lesson? Question everything and everyone.                                                                            Richard Blair was speaking on the 120th anniversary of the writer's birth. He was adopted by Eric Blair, better known by his name of George Orwell. With Russia calling the war in Ukraine a "special military operation", many people see 1984 as more relevant than ever. Asked about how his father would react if he came back today, Mr. Blair said, "has it changed from the world of 1984 and Animal Farm? It is been the same for a millennia. I suppose it will be the same in another 100 years time". Professor Jean Seaton, official historian of the BBC, said Orwell was still incredibly important. " We live in a world with surveillance, facial recognition. 1984 is about the capacity of authoritarian regimes like Russia, China, to make you believe what is not true." he said.                                                                                     

The Movement We Need

                  There is not nothing more left to say, this text says all.  This post is a summary of the book with the incomplete title above published at https://www.thepeopleslobbyusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/The-Movement-We-Need-Web1.pdf

                   The global economic crisis gave us all a glimpse of the rot at the center of our economy and politics. Despite the repeated efforts of elites around the world to put everything back together, the crisis has not been resolved. In the everyday lives of the majority of people, it is clear that there has been no real recovery. In moments like this, progressive activists, the pragmatic left, environmental groups, human rights organizations and community organizations must look beyond small scale, short-term fights. Fundamental change is becoming not just desirable but unavoidable. We must set an agenda for a more progressive future, or we will end up in a world even less humane than the one we already have. We must move from a politics of merely exposing injustice through critique to end injustice. We have to move beyond identifying injustice to understanding why it happens in order to change it. Real progress towards equality is impossible without addressing  political and economic exclusion. Movements for rights have made some headway, but so far there have been no serious attempts to deal with the underlying economic forces which render so many and so vulnerable. Any movement to address the vulnerability will find itself constrained by the demands of the market. True justice will eventually require that we eliminate the inequality that currently exists. We have arrived at a point in history where this kind of transformation has become possible. In the 1970s, stagnating productivity had generated the economic dysfunctions of stagflation and undermine popular faith in the establishment. The neoliberal solution was to break the back of organized labor and inspire an even more intense atmosphere of competitive individualism. Neoliberalism unleashed the dynamic power of capitalist development only to know find itself stymied by ever-expanding stocks of capital and ever-narrowing opportunities for their investment. This marks a moment of great danger. Yet the paralysis of a global system also presents us with the chance, for the first time in decades, to fundamentally change the course of our socviety. It's an opportunity we must start taking seriously. The status quo was virtually unassailable. The system itself increased inequality, destroyed unions, and narrowed the civil public sector. Those who wanted something better were reduced either to impotent condemnation or to narrow defensive campaigns against the offensive. The crucial question in our historical moment is not whether there should be growth, but what kind of growth there could be. Economical development can take a distinctly progressive form, one that not only makes ecologically sustainable life a possibility, but that also opens the door to even more political possibilities. A more inclusive society must be based on productive long-term investment. Rather than consigning the economically excluded to the ineffectual care of charities and aid programs, productive investment would actively integrate them into the economy. It would generate a form of growth that by its very logic would reduce inequality, raise the standard of living of those who suffer deprivation, and extend social recognition to those who are treated as trash. The full power of transnational solidarity is not yet evident, but we have had glimpses of its potential. The brutality of the global system has been horrifying demonstrated by preventable disasters. A new global movement must demand that transnational bodies, multinational corporations, and national governments participate in the creation of new, legally-binding global standards governing labor rights, corporate taxes, and environmental protection. We must reject the unfortunate trend of nationalism. This is incompatible with international solidarity. The best traditions emphasize internationalism, human equality regardless of nation, and global solidarity among all of the political excluded. Unlike the champions of neoliberal globalization, progressives understand that our current global society is not one of universal opportunity and progress, but one of inequality, exploitation and political exclusion. The answer, however, is not destroy global society. The answer is to make it just. Those guided by justice and love have been blessed with the terrible fortune of bearing witness to the slow motion collapse of our social and political systems. We have a choice: do we retreat into fear, or do we expand our compassion to new terrains? Do we huddle in desperate enclaves hoping to survive the looming environmental and social catastrophes, or do we address them head-on with a breadth of imagination and intensity that has been missed? What we have outlined is a new way to understand the intolerable injustices and excruciating dilemmas we face today.

Building Trust to Reinforce Democracy

                 This post is a summary of the book with the title above published in July 2022 at https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/governance/building-trust-to-reinforce-democracy_b407f99c-en#page1

                  The inaugural OECD Survey on the Drives of Trust in Public Institutions (Trust Survey) is a new measurement tool for democratic governments seeking to improve public confidence in government reliability, responsiveness, integrity, fairness and openness. Twenty-two OECD countries volunteered to participate. Trust is an important indicator to measure how people perceive the quality of, and how they associate with, government institutions in democratic countries. The resilience of democratic systems comes from the open public debate they foster, enabling them to improve and meet increasing citizens expectations. Overall, the results show that OECD countries are performing reasonably well on average on many measures of governance, such as citizens' perceptions of government reliability, service provision, and data openness. A key factor distinguishing democracy from other forms of governments is equal opportunities for representation. Many people see equal access to political processes as falling short of their expectations. Public perceptions of government integrity are also an issue. Just under half of respondents on average, think a high-level political official would grant a political favour in exchange for the offer of a well-paid private sector job. These feelings of disempowerment, a lack of voice in policy making, and the sense that political officials are captive to undue influence, are compounded by persistent, underlying inequalities in society. There is a widespread sense that democratic government is working for some, but certainly not for all. Low levels of trust in government and public institutions are also related to perceptions of vulnerability and being left behind economically, socially and politically. A tangible indicator of government reliability lies in the provision of social protection and educational opportunities. OECD governments devote a massive amount of resources to providing health and education: countries spent around 5.6% and 3.4% of GDP, respectively, on average. 61.7% of respondents, on average, say they are satisfied with their country's healthcare system. Respondents are similarly positive about education: 57.6% say they are satisfied with their country's educational system. People who perceive governmental information to be open and transparent also have higher levels of trust in government. Indeed, on average across countries, among those who find information about administrative processes easily available, 50,8% have trust in national government. Trust in public institutions is derived from factors beyond the conventional measures of service quality, suggesting that attention should be paid not only to performance, but also to processes. Public sector integrity is a key element of democratic governance and fundamental for a system that has the ambition to work in the same way for everyone. Corruption and mismanagement in the public sector are cited among the most important sources of distrust. While ethical behaviour and the absence of corruption is associated with greater trust. The rule of law is one of the cornerstone of the democratic governance and trust in legal and justice services matters for trust in government, too, by providing citizens with recourse mechanisms to protect their rights. These protection mechanisms create safeguards against possible misbehaviour and integrity in the justice sector is thus essential for trust in fellow citizens, businesses and other public institutions. The Trust Survey shows that citizens' overall trust in the judiciary is relatively high: on average 59.6% of respondents say they trust the courts and legal system. Perceptions are most positive in Denmark, Ireland, and the Netherlands. A fundamental feature of democracy is the concept of political voice. Political participation is a cornerstone of a well-functioning democracy. Political participation strengthens democracies both at the individual and systemic level: when people actively engage, they develop stronger democratic values and civic skills, and at the same time provide legitimacy to the system. In turn, participation and trust are mutually reinforcing. Civic-minded citizens are found to participate more. Trust can be considered as a prerequisite of political action, and is related to higher levels of different forms of participation, such as being part of elections, contacting government officials or being part of political parties. Lack of representation and low levels of trust in national legislatures usually go together with lower levels of accountability, corroding the basis of democracy and resulting in policies which are less responsive to the interests of a broad public. In addition to feeling like they do not have opportunities to influence policies and be heard, many respondents question the integrity of elected and appointed officials and whether they fairly represent the will of the people. On average 47.8% of respondents say it is likely that a high-level political official would grant a political favour in exchange for the offer of the prospect of a well-paid job in the private sector. Norway is the only country in which the share of respondents believing in the ethical behaviour of high-level officials is higher than the share of sceptical respondents. People who feel their political and government institutions do not treat them fairly may become cynical and distrust their government. Institutions can lessen this distrust. Countries' efforts to give people effective voice and strengthen the representation of collective interests. Access to accurate information is a key component of democracy and a foundation of current events, followed by newspapers (including online). News consumption is fairly high. Yet it is important to note that these news are operating in an environment of high scepticism towards the media. Only 38.8% of respondents, on average, say that they trust the news media