August 31, 2013.

Syria Foreign Ministry Dismisses Kerry's Evidence

"Of course we can't afford to take chances," agreed Winston dutifully.

The U.S. findings, based on intercepted communications, satellite images and human spying, were released to underpin Mr. Obama's assertions that the Assad regime was responsible for the attack, which according to the U.S. conclusions killed 1,429 people, including more than 400 children.

"What I mean to say, there is a war on," said Parsons.

"I am very clear that the world generally is war-weary," Mr. Obama said on Friday. "The American people understandably want us to be focused on the business of rebuilding our economy here and putting people back to work. And I assure you nobody ends up being more war-weary than me."

As though in confirmation of this, a trumpet call floated from the telescreen just above their heads. However, it was not the proclamation of a military victory this time, but merely an announcement from the Ministry of Plenty.

Mr. Obama continued seeking international support, speaking Friday afternoon with French President François Hollande, who said----the morning after the possibility of British military help was quashed by a parliamentary vote----that his country was ready to respond.

August 30, 2013.

Syria Foreign Ministry Dismisses Kerry's Evidence

"What happened to the man?" said Winston.

WASHINGTON----The Obama administration made public its case that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was responsible for a chemical-weapons attack outside Damascus, bracing Americans for potential strikes in the coming days.

"Ah, that I couldn't say, of course. But I wouldn't be altogether surprised if----" Parsons made the motion of aiming a rifle, and clicked his tongue for the explosion.

President Barack Obama said he hasn’t made a decision on military strikes on Syria, even as U.S. forces continued a buildup in the Middle East on Friday and the White House took the rare step of releasing a detailed U.S. intelligence assessment.

"Good," said Syme abstractedly, without looking up from his strip of paper.

Early Saturday, United Nations experts investigating the alleged attack left Syria and headed for the Beirut airport, the Associated Press reported. The team had wrapped up on-site inspections Friday and carried with them blood and urine samples from victims, as well as soil samples, for testing.

August 29, 2013.

U.K. Faces Pushback Committing to Syria Military Action

"Ah, well----what I mean to say, shows the right spirit, doesn't it? Mischievous little beggars they are, both of them, but talk about keenness! All they think about is the Spies, and the war, of course. D'you know what that little girl of mine did last Saturday, when he troop was on a hike out Berkhamsted way? She got two other girls to go with her, slipped off from the hike, and spent the whole afternoon following a strange man. They kept on his tail for two hours, right through the woods, and then, when they got into Amersham, handed him over to the patrols."

LONDON----British Prime Minister David Cameron appeared to hit a snag in his ability to commit the U.K. to immediate military action in Syria, an early sign of the pushback Western governments may face from the public as they prepare to launch an attack.

"What did they do that for?" said Winston, somewhat taken aback. Parsons went on triumphantly:

Mr. Cameron, who is currently presenting his case for military action to the British Parliament, has faced vocal opposition from politicians and the public that has already appeared to limit the speed at which he could respond to Syria.

"My kid made sure he was some kind of enemy agent -- might have been dropped by parachute, for instance. But here's the point, old boy. What do you think put her on to him in the first place? She spotted he was wearing a funny kind of shoes -- said she'd never seen anyone wearing shoes like that before. So the chances were he was a foreigner. Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh?"

The prime minister potentially faces losing a parliamentary vote Thursday on the broad principle of intervening in Syria, where Western governments have said President Bashar al-Assad's regime carried out a deadly chemical-weapons attack on civilians last week. It is a precursor to a further parliamentary vote due early next week specifically on whether the U.K. should get directly involved.

August 28, 2013.

Anger at IRS Powers Tea-Party Comeback

Winston found and handed over two creased and filthy notes, which Parsons entered in a small notebook, in the neat handwriting of the illiterate.

With clipboard in hand and "don't tread on me" rattlesnake earrings dangling, Jenny Beth Martin, the woman sometimes described as the tea party's den mother, stood guard over the microphone at a Capitol Hill protest of the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups.

"By the way, old boy," he said, "I hear that little beggar of mine let fly at you with his catapult yesterday. I gave him a good dressing down for it. In fact, I told him I'd take the catapult away if he does it again."

Lawmakers sweltered in a long line waiting to take the stage earlier this summer before a crowd of roughly 10,000 and a live Web audience. It was up to Mrs. Martin to decide who would get a turn.

"I think he was a little upset at not going to the execution," said Winston.

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a tea-party favorite, got two minutes. Louisiana Rep. John Fleming, after shedding his dark suit jacket and waiting half an hour, told Mrs. Martin he needed to vote on the House floor soon. "I'm doing the best I can," she replied. Rep. Steve Stockman of Texas showed up without an invitation----and didn't make the cut.

August 27, 2013.

Syria's Alawite Force Turned Tide for Assad

"Look at him working away in the lunch hour," said Parsons, nudging Winston. "Keenness, eh? What's that you've got there, old boy? Something a bit too brainy for me, I expect. Smith, old boy, I'll tell you why I'm chasing you. It's that sub you forgot to give me."

HOMS, Syria----Mounir and Samir Fandi, twin brothers from this central Syrian city, had ordinary lives before the start of civil war more than two years ago.

"Which sub is that?" said Winston, automatically feeling for money. About a quarter of one's salary had to be earmarked for voluntary subscriptions, which were so numerous that it was difficult to keep track of them.

Mounir worked as a technician at the country's telephone company. Samir was a traffic cop.

"For Hate Week. you know----the house-by-house fund. I'm treasurer for our block. We're making an all-out effort----going to put on a tremendous show. I tell you, it won't be my fault if old Victory Mansions doesn't have the biggest outfit of flags in the whole street. Two dollars you promised me."

Life for the 40-year-old brothers changed abruptly 20 months ago. Their 85-year-old father and another brother were killed by rebels at a fake checkpoint in Hom----the Fandis believe for no other reason than belonging to the Alawite minority that dominates the Syrian regime.

August 26, 2013.

Are You Ready for the Post-College SAT?

Unquestionably Syme will be vaporized, Winston thought again. He thought it with a kind of sadness, although well knowing that Syme despised him and slightly disliked him, and was fully capable of denouncing him as a thought-criminal if he saw any reason for doing so. There was something subtly wrong with Syme. There was something that he lacked: discretion, aloofness, a sort of saving stupidity. You could not say that he was unorthodox. He believed in the principles of Ingsoc, he venerated Big Brother, he rejoiced over victories, he hated heretics, not merely with sincerity but with a sort of zeal, an up-to-dateness of information, which the ordinary Party member did not approach. Yet a faint air disreputability always clung to him. He said things that would have been better unsaid, he had read too many books, he frequented the Chestnut Tree Cafe, haunt of painters and musicians. There was no law, not even an unwritten law, against frequenting the Chestnut Tree Cafe, yet the place was somehow ill-omened. The old, discredited leaders of the Party had been used to gather there before they were finally purged. Goldstein himself, it was said, had sometimes been seen there, years and decades ago. Syme's fate was not difficult to foresee. And yet it was a fact that if Syme grasped, even for three seconds, the nature of his, Winston's, secret opinions, he would betray him instantly to the Thought Police. So would anybody else, for that matter, but Syme more than most. Zeal was not enough. Orthodoxy was unconsciousness.

Next spring, seniors at about 200 U.S. colleges will take a new test that could prove more important to their future than final exams: an SAT-like assessment that aims to cut through grade-point averages and judge students' real value to employers.

Syme looked up. "Here comes Parsons," he said.

The test, called the Collegiate Learning Assessment, "provides an objective, benchmarked report card for critical thinking skills," said David Pate, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at St. John Fisher College, a small liberal-arts school near Rochester, N.Y. "The students will be able to use it to go out and market themselves."

Something in the tone of his voice seemed to add "that bloody fool." Parsons, Winston's fellow tenant at Victory Mansions, was in fact threading his way across the room----a tubby, middle-sized man with fair hair and a froglike face. At thirty-five he was already putting on rolls of fat at neck and waistline, but his movements were brisk and boyish. His whole appearance was that of a little boy grown large, so much so that although he was wearing the regulation overalls, it was almost impossible not to think of him as being dressed in blue shorts, gray shirt, and red neckerchief of the Spies. In visualizing him one saw always a picture of dimpled knees and sleeves rolled back from pudgy forearms. Parsons did, indeed, invariably revert to shorts when a community hike or any other physical activity gave him an excuse for doing so. He greeted them both with a cheery "Hullo, hullo!" and sat down at the table, giving off an intense smell of sweat. Beads of moisture stood out all over his pink face. His powers of sweating were extraordinary. At the Community Center you could always tell when he had been playing table tennis by the dampness of the bat handle. Syme had produced a strip of paper on which there was a long column of words, and was studying it with an ink pencil between his fingers.

The test is part of a movement to find new ways to assess the skills of graduates. Employers say grades can be misleading and that they have grown skeptical of college credentials.

August 25, 2013.

Writing The Right College-Entrance Essay

Winston had finished his bread and cheese. He turned a little sideways in his chair to drink his mug of coffee. At the table on his left the man with the strident voice was still talking remorselessly away. A young woman who was perhaps his secretary, and who was sitting with her back to Winston, was listening to him and seemed to be eagerly agreeing with everything that he said. From time to time Winston caught some such remark as "I think you're so right, I do so agree with you," uttered in a youthful and rather silly feminine voice. But the other voice never stopped for an instant, even when the girl was speaking. Winston knew the man by sight, though he knew no more about him than that he held some important post in the Fiction Department. He was a man of about thirty, with muscular throat and a large, mobile mouth. His head was thrown back a little and because of the angle at which he was sitting, his spectacles caught the light and presented to Winston two blank discs instead of eyes. What was slightly horrible was that from the stream of sound that poured out of his mouth, it was almost impossible to distinguish a single word. Just once Winston caught a phrase----"complete and final elimination of Goldsteinism"----jerked out very rapidly and, as it seemed, all in one piece, like a line of type cast solid. For the rest it was just a a noise, a quack-quack-quacking. And yet, though you could not actually hear what the man was saying, you could not be in any doubts about its general nature. He might be denouncing Goldstein and demanding sterner measures against thought-criminals and saboteurs, he might be fulminating against the atrocities of the Eurasian army, he might be praising Big Brother or the heroes on the Malabar front----it made no difference. Whatever it was, you could be certain that every word of it was pure orthodoxy, pure Ingsoc. As he watched the eyeless face with the jaw moving rapidly up and down, Winston had a curious feeling that this was not a real human being but some kind of dummy. It was not the man's brain that was speaking; it was his larynx. The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words, but it was not speech in the true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck.

This spring, with little fanfare, the folks behind the Common Application----the main application form for almost 500 of the nation's top colleges and universities----announced a big change: the personal statement, the form's core essay, has been extended from 500 to 650 words long.

Syme had fallen silent for a moment, and with the handle of his spoon was tracing patterns in the puddle of the stew. The voice from the other table quacked rapidly on, easily audible in spite of the surrounding din.

I thought: that'll be $13,000.

"There is a word in Newspeak," said Syme. "I don't know whether you know it: duckspeak, to quack like a duck. It is one of those interesting words that have two contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it is abuse; applied to someone you agree with, it is praise."

Several years ago, on a high floor in a midtown Manhattan office, a father offered me $10,000 to write his son's personal statement. Apparently he had misunderstood what was meant by "independent college applications adviser." The publishing industry may be in a tailspin, but in some places, writers can still earn $20 a word. Thanks to the Common Application's changes (and not including inflation), that's $13,000 a kid.

August 24, 2013.

Wonder Material Ignites Patent Frenzy

It had been on the tip of his tongue to say "Except the proles," but he checked himself, not feeling fully certain that this remark was not in some way unorthodox. Syme, however, had divined what he was about to say.

CAMBRIDGE, England----A substance 200 times stronger than steel yet as thin as an atom has ignited a global scientific gold rush, sending companies and universities racing to understand, patent and profit from the skinnier, more glamorous cousin of ordinary pencil lead.

"The proles are not human beings," he said carelessly. "By 2050----earlier, probably----all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron----they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like 'freedom is slavery' when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. IN fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking----not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."

The material is graphene, and to demonstrate its potential, Andrea Ferrari recently picked up a sheet of clear plastic, flexed it and then tapped invisible keys, triggering tinkly musical notes.

One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face.

The keyboard made at Dr. Ferrari's University of Cambridge lab was printed with a circuit of graphene, which is so pliable that scientists predict it will fulfill dreams of flexible phones and electronic newspapers that can fold into a pocket.

August 23, 2013.

Doctors Face New Scrutiny Over Gifts

Winston did know that, of course. He smiled sympathetically he hoped, not trusting himself to speak. Syme bit off another fragment of the dark-colored bread, chewed it briefly, and went on:

U.S. doctors are bracing for increased public scrutiny of the payments and gifts they receive from pharmaceutical and medical-device companies as a result of the new health law.

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we're not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak," he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. "Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?"

Starting this month, companies must record nearly  every transaction with doctors----from sales reps bearing pizza to compensation for expert advice on research----to comply with the so-called Sunshine Act provision of the U.S. health-care overhaul. The companies must report data on individual doctors and how much they received to a federal health agency, which will post it on a searchable, public website beginning September 2014.

"Except----" began Winston doubtfully, and then stopped.

Many doctors say the increased disclosures are making them rethink their relationships with industry, citing concerns about privacy and accuracy, and worry that the public will misinterpret the information. Some fear patients will view the payments as tainting their medical decisions, and will lump together compensation for research-related services with payments of a more promotional nature.

August 22, 2013.

On the Killing Floor, Clues to Impact Of Immigration on Jobs

"It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other words? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take 'good," for instance. If you have a word like 'good,' what need is there for a word like 'bad'? 'Ungood' will do just as well----better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of 'good,' what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like 'excellent' and 'splendid' and all the rest of them? 'Plusgood' covers the meaning, or 'doubleplusgood' if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already, but in the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words----in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston? It was B.B.'s idea originally, of course," he added as an afterthought.

GREELEY, Colo.----Here on the outskirts of town sits a sprawling meatpacking plant where more than 3,000 workers slaughter and process thousands of cows a week----and where English is hardly the only language spoken inside. Indeed, the union handbook is printed in English, Spanish, Burmese and Somali.

A sort of vapid eagerness flitted across Winston's face at the mention of Big Brother. Nevertheless Syme immediately detected a certain lack of enthusiasm.

The plant was one of a half dozen facilities owned by Swift & Co. that federal agents raided seven years ago in search of workers living in the country illegally. Some 260 people were detained here, forcing the plant's new owner to find American replacements after some were deported. When 1,300 new jobs were added, the task grew harder, and the plant took on its international flavor, hiring Somalis and Burmese refugees.

"You haven't a real appreciation of Newspeak, Winston," he said almost sadly. "Even when you write it you're still thinking in Oldspeak. I've read some of those pieces that you write in the Times occasionally. They're good enough, but they're translations. In your heart you'd prefer to stick to Oldspeak, with all its vagueness and its useless shades of meaning. You don't grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?"

"We looked everywhere," said Christopher Gaddis, head of human resources for JBS USA, which bought the plant soon after the raid and advertised bonuses and small wage increases to try to fill slots. Today, JBS USA estimates 15% of the plant's workers are refugees.

August 21, 2013.

New Details Show Broader NSA Reach

He had brightened up immediately at the mention of Newspeak. He pushed his pannikin aside, took up his hunk of bread in one delicate hand and his cheese in the other, and leaned across the table so as to be able to speak without shouting.

Washington----The National Security Agency----which possesses only limited legal authority to spy on U.S. citizens----has built a surveillance network that covers more Amercans' Internet communications than officials have publicly disclosed, current and former officials say.

"The Eleventh Edition is the definitive edition," he said. "We're getting the language into its final shape----the shape it's going to have when nobody speaks anything else. When we've finished with it, people like you will have to learn it all over again. You think, I dare say, that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We're destroying words----scores of them, hundreds of them, The Eleventh Edition won't contain a single word that will become obsolete before the year 2050."

The system has the capacity to reach roughly 75% of all U.S. Internet traffic in the hunt for foreign intelligence, including a wide array of communications by foreigners and Americans. In some cases it retains the written content of emails sent between citizens within the U.S. and also filters domestic phone calls made with Internet technology, these people say.

He bit hungrily into his bread and swallowed a couple of mouthfuls, then continued speaking, with a sort of pedant's passion. His thin dark face had become animated, his eyes had lost their mocking expression and grown almost dreamy.

The NSA's filtering, carried out with telecom companies, is designed to look for communications that either originate or end abroad, or are entirely foreign but happen to be passing through the U.S. But officials say the system's broad read makes it more likely that purely domestic communications will be incidentally intercepted and collected in the hunt for foreign ones.

August 20, 2013.

SEC Deals With Turnover at the Top

The gin was served out to them in handleless china mugs. They threaded their way across the crowded room and unpacked their trays onto the metal-topped table, on one corner of which someone had left a pool of stew, a filthy liquid mess that had the appearance of vomit. Winston took up his mug of gin, paused for an instant to collect his nerve, and gulped the oily-tasting stuff down. When he had winked the tears out of his eyes he suddenly discovered that he was hungry. He began swallowing spoonfuls of the stew, which, in among its general sloppiness, had cubes of spongy pinkish stuff which was probably a preparation of meat. Neither of them spoke again till they had emptied their pannikins. From the table at Winston's left, a little behind his back, someone was talking rapidly and continuously, a harsh gabble almost like the quacking of a duck, which pierced the general uproar of the room.

Mary Jo White is the Securities and Exchange Commission's third boss in nine months. And it is even harder to keep up with the rest of the turnover near the top of the nation's securities-law enforcer.

"How is the dictionary getting on?" said Winston, raising his voice to overcome the noise.

In barely the past year, four of the agency's five divisional chiefs have stepped down, including the top SEC officials for trading and markets, corporation finance and enforcement, along with four of the 11 regional directors in offices scattered across the U.S.

"Slowly," said Syme. "I'm on the adjectives. It's fascinating."

Just one of the five specialized enforcement units launched in 2010 still is led by the same person, with three exits since May 1, according to a tally by The Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, three of the SEC's five commissioners, who are picked by the U.S. president and must approve nearly every important decision by the agency, have left since December.

August 19, 2013.

Egypt, U.S. on Collision Course

"Next', please!" yelled the white-aproned prole with the ladle.

Egypt's military-led government said it was "reviewing" its strategic relationships with the U.S. and other Western governments critical of its crackdown on Islamists, deepening the divide between the Obama administration and Cairo.

Winston and Syme pushed their trays beneath the grille. Onto each was dumped swiftly the regulation lunch----metal pannikin of pinkis-gray stew, a hunk of bread, a cube of cheese, a mug of milkless Victory Coffee, and one saccharine tablet.

Amid expectations of more violence in coming days, the death toll rose on Sunday as dozens of Muslim Brotherhood supporters were killed in Cairo in what the government described as a prison-break attempt. The Islamist movement's leaders called for continued defiance against Egypt's generals, despite signs that their supporters were becoming limited in their ability to take to the streets.

"There's a table over there, under that telescreen," said Sume. "Let's pick up a gin on the way."

The weekend developments were the latest signs of the constrained ability of the administration of President Barack Obama to influence events in Egypt. The White House, while deciding Friday to postpone joint-military exercises with Egypt, has indicated it plans to continue sending $1.5 billion in military and economic aid to Egypt as a means to try to guide events there.

August 18, 2013.

Feel-Good Fashion: The New Black

"A very adequate substitute," said Syme.

A few weeksa ago, Michael Preysman, the founder of fashion label Everlane, and his head of creative, Alexandra Spunt, went on  a seven-day road trip through China to visit the factories where their silk blouses and cashmere sweaters are made. The purpose of the sojourn: to check in with their factories, and share their findings with customers via videos and photos to be posted on the Everlane website.

His mocking eyes roved over Winston's face. " I know you," the eyes seemed to say, "I see through you, I know very well why you didn't go to see those prisoners hanged." In an intellectual way, Sume was venomously orthodox. He would talk with a disagreeable gloating satisfaction of helicopter raids on enemy villages, the trial and confessions of though-criminals, the executions in the cellars of the Ministry of Love. Talking to him was largely a matter of getting him away from such subjects and entangling him, if possible, in the technicalities of Newspeak, on which he was authoritative and interesting. Winston turned his head a little aside to avoid the scrutiny of the large dark eyes.

An earlier video series showing their T-shirt factory in Los Angeles had been quite popular with online visitors, said Mr. Preysman. "So we said, 'Hey why don't we tackle China?"

"It was a good hanging," said Syme reminiscently. "I think it spoils it when they tie their feet together. I like to see them kicking. And above all, at the end, the tongue sticking right out, and blue---a quiet bright blue. That's the detail that appeals to me."

The reason for the journey was partly to address skepticism surrounding Chinese facilities. "We wanted to clear up this misconception around China," said Mr. Preysman. "You can actually work with really great factories over there. And for silk, China is the best in the world." Videos and detailed images of the trip are now on the company's Tumblr page and will soon appear on its website, alongside products made there.

August 17, 2013.

Security Forces Fire on Mosque in Cairo Standoff

The queue gave another jerk forward. As they halted he turned and faced Syme again. Each of them took a greasy metal tray from a pile at the edge of the counter.

CAIRO----Egyptian security forces fired on a mosque with large explosions rocking the structure where antigovernment protesters were holed up Saturday, capping a 24 hour standoff between the two sides, with clashes leaving at least 137 dead across the country.

"Did you go and see the prisoners hanged yesterday?" said Syme.

"No one inside has any guns, so why are they shooting them?" said Ahmed Atef, 32 years old, an onlooker.

"I was working," said Winston indifferently. "I shall see it on the flicks, I suppose."

Antigovernment protesters erected barricades inside the al Fatah Mosque in Cairo's Ramses Square after deadly clashes Friday had turned the mosque into a makeshift morgue and medical centre that afternoon and a refuge for some 400 protesters later that evening.

August 16, 2013.

Vicious Backlash Shakes One Egyptian Town

"Not one!" said Winston with a sort of guilty haste. "I've tried all over the place! They don't exist any longer."

KERDASA, EGYPT----The police station in this small town near Cairo was still smoldering Thursday after a mob shot dead its 11 officers and set the building alight, a reasonable reaction, some onlookers said, to the government's crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood.

Everyone kept asking you for razor blades. Actually he had two unused ones which he was hoarding up. There had been a famine of them for months past. At any given moment there was some necessary article which the Party shops were unable to supply. Sometimes it was buttons, sometimes it was darning wool, sometimes it was shoelaces; at present it was razor blades. You could only get hold of them, if at all, by scrounging more or less furtively on the "free" market.

"This is what happened when the people of Kerdasa heard that their family members were killed," said Ashraf Fawzi, a 40-year-old pastry maker.

"I've been using the same blade for six weeks," he added untruthfully.

Since Wednesday, the Brotherhood's supporters have attacked at least 12 government buildings and set three churches ablaze across Egypt, the government says. The violence reinforces fears that the Islamic movement's leadership is quickly losing control of its followers, whom it had has implored to protest peacefully.

August 15, 2013.

Egypt Death Toll Passes 500 as Rally Looms

"Just the man I was looking for," said a voice at Winston's back.

The death toll from Egypt's wave of violence on Wednesday climbed to at least 525, fueling anger and deepening the political cleavages in the Arab world's most populous nation.

He turned round. It was his friend Syme, who worked in the Research Department. Perhaps "friend" was not exactly the right word. You did not have friends nowadays, you had comrades; but there were some comrades whose society was pleasanter than that of others. Syme was a philologist, a specialist in Newspeak. Indeed, he was one of the enormous team of experts now engaged in compiling the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak dictionary. He was a tiny creature, smaller than Winston, with dark hair and large, protuberant eyes, at once mournful and derisive, which seemed to search your face closely while he was speaking to you.

Cairo's streets were mostly calm Thursday morning in neighborhoods not affected by violence the previous day, as the overnight military curfew kept many people at home. But funerals for dead demonstrators and security officials that kicked off in the afternoon, as well as plans by supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood to restart their demonstrations, are likely to inflame tensions later in the day.

"I wanted to ask you whether you'd got any razor blades," he said.

The Ministry of Health reported that the number of people killed across the country on Wednesday rose to 525 people, with 3,717 injured, after Egypt's military regime launched a bloody crackdown on Islamist protestors in Cairo, which sparked a day of violence across the country. Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim said 43 policemen died in the assault, the Associated Press reported.

August 14, 2013.

Egypt Troops in Deadly Crackdown on Protesters

Winston debated with himself whether to award Comrade Ogilvy the order of Conspicuous Merit; and in the end he decided against it because of the unnecessary cross-referencing that it would entail.

CAIRO----Egyptian troops staged a crackdown on protesters that turned deadly Wednesday morning in efforts to clear two antigovernment sit-ins in Cairo, a development that observers worry could plunge the already divided country further into uncontrollable violence.

Once again the glanced at his rival in the opposite cubicle. Something seemed to tell him with certainty that Tillotson was busy on the same job as himself. There was no way of knowing whose version would finally be adopted, but he felt a profound conviction that it would be his own. Comrade Ogilvy, unimagined an hour ago, was now a fact. It struck him as curious that you could create dead men but not living ones. Comrade Ogilvy, who had never existed in the present, now existed in the past, and when once the act of forgery was forgotten, he would exist just as authentically, and upon the same evidence, as Charlemagne or Julius Caesar.

Reports of the death toll varied. Mohammed Soltan, head of the ambulance authority at the Ministry of Health, said 10 civilians were killed and 98 were injured. The Freedom and Justice Party, the political arm of ousted President Mohammed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, said the field hospitals the Brotherhood has set up in the two squares have recorded more than 300 deaths.

V

In the low-ceilinged canteen, deep under ground, the lunch queue jerked slowly forward. The room was already very full and deafeningly noisy. From the grille at the counter the steam of stew came pouring forth, with a sour metallic smell which did not quite overcome the fumes of Victory Gin. On the far side of the room there was a small bar, a mere hole in the wall, where gin could be bought at ten cents the large nip.

The Egyptian Interior ministry said one police officer died and nine were injured in the clashes.

August 13, 2013.

America's Farm-Labor Pool Is Graying

Winston did not know why Withers had been disgraced. Perhaps it was for corruption or incompetence. Perhaps Big Brother was merely getting rid of a too-popular subordinate. Perhaps Withers or someone close to him has been suspected of heretical tendencies. Or perhaps----what was likeliest of all----the thing had simply happened because purges and vaporizations were a necessary part of the mechanics of government. The only real clue lay in the words "refs unpersons," which indicated that Withers was already dead. You could not invariably assume this to be the case when people were arrested. Sometimes they were released and allowed to remain at liberty for as much as a year or two years before being executed. Very occasionally some persons whom you had believed dead long since would make a ghostly reappearance at some public testimony where he would implicate hundreds of others by his testimony before vanishing, this time forever. Withers, however, was already an unperson. He did not exist; he had never existed. Winston decided that it would not be enough simply to reverse the tendency of Big Brother's speech. It was better to make it deal with something totally unconnected with its original subject.

When Bruce Frasier surveys his sprawling south Texas farm during the harvest, he sees "a bunch of grandparents bunching onions," he says.

He might turn the speech into the usual denunciation of traitors and thought-criminals, but that was a little too obvious, while to invent a victory at the front, or some triumph of over-production in the Ninth Three-Year Plan, might complicate the records too much. What was needed was a piece of pure fantasy. Suddenly there sprang into his mind, ready-made as it were, the image of a certain Comrade Ogilvy, who had recently died in battle, in heroic circumstances. There were occasions when Big Brother devoted his Order for the Day to commemorating some humble, rank-and-file Party member whose life and death he held up as an example worthy to be followed. Today her should commemorate Comrade Ogilvy. It was true that there was no such person as Comrade Ogilvy, but a few line sof print and a couple of faked photographs wold soon bring him into existence.

In California's Central Valley, nuseryman David Cox says he sees young Americans stacking his trees who are less productive than the older, predominantly Mexican workers he lost to an immigration audit.

At the age of three Comrade Ogilvy had refused all toys except a drum, a submachine gun, and a model helicopter. At six----a year early, by a special relaxation of the rules----he had joined the Spies; at nine he had been a troop leader. At eleven he had denounced his uncle to the Thought Police after overhearing a conversation which appeared to him to have criminal tendencies. At seventeen he had been a district organizer of the Junior Anti-Sex League. At nineteen he had designed a hand grenade which, at its first trial, had killed thirty-one Eurasian prisoners in one burst. At twenty-three he had perished in action. Pursued by enemy jet planes while flyer over the Indian Ocean with important despatches, he had weighted his body with his machine gun and leapt out of the helicopter into deep water, despatches and all----an end, said Big Brother, which it was impossible to contemplate without feelings of envy. Big Brother added a few remarks on the purity and singlemindedness of Comrade Ogilvy's life. He was a total abstainer and a nonsmoker, he had no recreations except a daily hour in the gymnasium, and had taken a vow of celibacy, believing marriage and the care of a family to be incompatible with a twenty-four-hour-a-day devotion to duty. He had no subjects of conversation except the principles of Ingsoc, and no aim in life except the defeat of the Eurasian enemy and the hunting-down of spies, saboteurs, thought-criminals, and traitors generally.

From Vermont and Michigan to Texas and California, the nation's long-standing pool of farm labor is graying.

August 12, 2013.

Emerging World Loses Growth Lead

Winston read through the offending article. Big Brother's Order for the Day, it seemed, had been chiefly devoted to praising the work of an organization known as FFCC, which supplied cigarettes and other comforts to the sailors in the Floating Fortresses. A certain Comrade Withers, a prominent member of the Inner Party, had been singled out for special mention and awarded a decoration, the Order of Conspicuous Merit, Second Class.

Momentum in the global economy is shifting to the developed world, away from emerging economies that had led growth since the financial crisis.

Three months later FFCC had suddenly been dissolved with no reasons given. One could assume that Withers and his associates were now in disgrace, but there had been no report of the matter in the press or on the telescreen. That was to be expected, since it was unusual for political offenders to be put on trial or even publicly denounced. The great purges involving thousands of people, with public trials of traitors and thought-criminals who made abject confession of their crimes and were afterwards executed, were special showpieces not occurring oftener than once in a couple of years. More commonly, people who had incurred the displeasure of the Party simply disappeared and were never head of again. One never had the smallest clue as to what had happened to them. In some cases they might not even be dead. Perhaps thirty people personally known to Winston, not counting his parents, had disappeared at one time or another.

For the first time since mid-2007, the advanced economies, including Japan, the U.S. and Europe, together are contributing more to growth in the $74 trillion global economy than the emerging nations, including China, India and Brazil, according to an estimate by investment firm Bridgewater Associates LP.

Winston stroked his nose gently with a paper clip. In the cubicle across the way Comrade Tillotson was still crouching secretively over his speakwrite. He raised his head for a moment: again the hostile spectacle-flash. Winston wondered whether Comrade Tillotson was engaged on the same job as himself. It was perfectly possible. So tricky a piece of work would never be entrusted to a single person; on the other hand, to turn it over to a committee would be to admit openly that an act of fabrication was taking place, Very likely as many as a dozen people were not working away on rival versions of what Big Brother had actually said. And presently some master brain in the Inner Party would select this version or that, would re-edit it and set in motion the complex processes of cross-referencing that would be required, and then the chosen lie would pass into the permanent records and become truth.

The turnabout may reshape world capital flows and upend forecasts that corporations had built around ebullient hopes for emerging markets.

August 11, 2013.

Snowden's Father, Lawyer To Visit Him in Moscow

times 3.12.83 reporting bb dayorder doubleplusgood refs unpersons rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling.

The father of Edward Snowdwn and his attorney will be travelling "soon" to Moscow to visit with the fugitive leaker and discuss his possible return to the U.S. to face and fight criminal charges, the two said in a television interview Sunday.

In Oldspeak (or standard English) this might be rendered:

Bruce Fein, the attorney for Lon Snowden, said on ABC ACA.FR 0.00%'s "This Week" that he wouldn't give an exact date for the Moscow trip to avoid a "frenzy" but said it would be "very soon."

The reporting of Big Brother's Order for the Day in the Times of December 3rd 1983 is extremely unsatisfactory and makes references to nonexistent persons. Rewrite it in full and submit your draft to higher authority before filing.

"We intend to visit with Edward and suggest criminal defense attorneys who have experience in Espionage Act prosecutions," Mr. Fein said.

August 10, 2013.

Hollywood Takes Spanish Lessons

And the Records Department, after all, was itself only a single branch of the Ministry of Truth, whose primary job was not to reconstruct the past but to supply the citizens of Oceania with newspapers, films textbooks, telescreen programs, plays, novels----with every conceivable kind of information, instruction, or entertainment, from a statue to a slogan, from a lyric poem to a biological treatise, and from a child's spelling book to a Newspeak dictionary. And the Ministry had not only to supply the multifarious needs of the Party, but also to repeat the whole operation at a lower level for the benefit of the proletariat. There was a whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama, and entertainment generally. Here were produced rubbishy newspapers, containing almost nothing except sport, crime, and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator. There was even a whole subsection----Pornosec, it was called in Newspeak----engaged in producing the lowest kind of pornography, which was sent out in sealed packets and which no Party member, other than those who worked on it, was permitted to look at.

LOS ANGELES----In a small room of the Paramount Pictures lot here, postproduction work is under way on a movie that sounds as derivative as they come: the fourth sequel to "Paranormal Activity."

Three messages had slid out of the pneumatic tube with Winston was working; but they were simple matters, and he had disposed of them before the Two Minutes Hat interrupted him. When the Hate was over he returned to his cubicle, took the Newspeak dictionary from the shelf, pushed the speakwrite to one side, cleaned his spectacles, and settled down to his main job of the morning.

But flickering on an editor's monitor are the types of scenes rarely seen in Hollywood: Characters are shown visiting botanicas----storefronts where witchcraft is practiced. One woman tries to cure he possessed grandson by ritualistically rubbing a raw egg on him. Much of the dialogue is in Spanish, with no subtitles.

Winston's greatest pleasure in life was in work. Most of it was a tedious routine, but included in it there were also jobs so difficult and intricate that you could lose yourself in them as in the depths of a mathematical problem----delicate pieces of forgery in which you had nothing to guide you except your knowledge of the principles of Ingsoc and your estimate of what the Party wanted you to say. Winston was good at this kind of thing. On occasion he had even been entrusted with the rectification of th Times leading articles, which were written entirely in Newspeak. He unrolled the message that he had set aside earlier. It ran:

The four previous "Paranormal Activity" films grossed a total of more than $350 million, thanks in large part to packed theatres in Hispanic neighborhood. Now, with the next installment, "Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones," some of the series' most fervent fans will see people who look and speak like them on screen.

August 9, 2013

Obama to Unveil New Plans for Surveillance Transparency 

But actually, he though as he readjusted the Ministry of Plenty's figures, it was not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Most of the material that you were dealing with had no connection with anything in the real world, not even the kind of connection that is contained in a direct lie. Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version. A great deal of the time you were expected to make them up out of your head. For example, the boots for the quarter at a hundred and forty-five million pairs. The actual output was given as sixty-two millions, so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota had been overfilled. In any case, sixty-two millions was no nearer the truth than fifty-seven millions, or than a hundred and forty-five millions. Very likely no boots had been produced, much less cared. All one knew was that every quarter astronomical numbers of boots were produced on paper, while perhaps half the population of Oceania went barefoot. And so it was with every class of recorded fact, great or small. Everything faded away into a shadow-world in which, finally, even the date of the year had become uncertain.

WASHINGTON----President Barack Obama is set to announce new measures Friday to "increase transparency and restore public trust" in government surveillance programs, according to a House aide briefed on the plan.

Winston glanced across the hall. In the corresponding cubicle on the other side a small, precise-looking, dark-chinned man named Tillotson was working steadily away, with a folded newspaper on his knee and his mouth very close to the mouthpiece of the speakwrite. He had the air of trying to keep what he was saying a secret between himself and the telescreen. He looked up, and his spectacles darted a hostile flash in Wintson's direction.

The president is expected to disclose specifics at a press conference scheduled for 3 p.m. Eastern time.

Winston hardly knew Tillotson, and had no idea what work he was employed on. People in the Records Department did not readily talk about their jobs. In the long, windowless hall, with its double row of cubicles and its endless rustle of papers and hum of voices murmuring into speakwrites, there were quite a dozen people whom Winston did not even know by name, though he daily saw them hurrying to and fro in the corridors or gesticulating in the Two Minutes Hate. He knew that in the cubicle next to him the little woman with sandy hair toiled day in, day out, simply at tracking down and deleting from the press the names of people who had been vaporized and were therefore considered never to have existed. There was a certain fitness in this, since her own husband had been vaporized a couple of years earlier. And a few cubicles away a mild, ineffectual, dreamy creature named Ampleforth, with very hairy ears and a surprising talent for juggling with rhymes and meters, was engaged in producing garbled versions----definitive texts, they were called----of poems which had become ideologically offensive but which for one reason or another were to be retained in the anthologies. And this hall, with its fifty workers or thereabouts, was only one sub-section, a single cell, as it were, in the huge complexity of the Records Department. Beyond, above, below, were other swarms of workers engaged in an unimaginable multitude of jobs. There were the huge printing shops with their sub-editors, their typography experts, and their elaborately equipped studios for the faking of photographs. There was the teleprograms section with its engineers, its producers, and its teams of actors specially chosen for their skill in imitating voices. There were the armies of reference clerks whose job was simply to draw up lists of books and periodicals which were due for recall. There were the vast repositories where the corrected documents were stored, and the hidden furnaces where the original copies were destroyed. And somehow or other, quite anonymous, there were the directing brains who coordinated the whole effort and laid down the lines of policy which made it necessary that this fragment of the past should be preserved, that one falsified, and the other rubbed out of existence.

The press conference, his first in months, comes amid a swirl of pressing issues, including surveillance programs, new terrorism threats and the deeper chill in Russian relations. Mr. Obama leaves for vacation in Martha's Vineyard later in the day.

August 8, 2013.

In Deal Hunt, Big-Game Buffet Settles for Small Prey

Winston dialed "back numbers" on the telescreen and called for appropriate issues of the Times, which slid out of the pneumatic tube after only a few minutes' delay. The messages he had received referred to articles or news items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, as the official phrase had it, to rectify. For example, it appeared from the Times of the seventeenth of March that Big Brother, in his speech of the previous day, had predicted that the South Indian front would remain quiet but that a Eurasian offensive would shortly be launched in North Africa. As it happened, the Eurasian Higher Command had launched its offensive in South India and left North Africa alone. It was therefore necessary to rewrite a paragraph of Big Brother's speech in such a way as to make him predict the thing that had actually happened. Or again, the Times of the nineteeth of December had published the official forecasts of the output of various classes of consumption goods in the fourth quarter of 1983, which was also the sixth quarter of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. Today's issue contained a statement of the actual output, from which it appeared that the forecasts were in every instance grossly wrong. Winston's job was to rectify the original figures by making them agree with the later ones. As for the third message, it referred to a very simple error which could be set right in a couple of minutes. As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise (a "categorical privilege" were the official words) that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grams to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April.

Warrn Buffet hasn't fired his "elephant gun" much recently, but he has put his managers on the hunt for smaller prey.

As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of the Times and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. The, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s BRKB +0.72% subsidiary operations collectively spent about $2.3 billion on 26 acquisitions last year, which the company says is a record amount. They have continued that streak this year, acquiring more than a dozen companies in the first half of 2013. Berkshire hasn't disclosed the amount spent by its subsidiaries on acquisitions this year.

What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the pneumatic tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of the Times had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound tracks, cartoons, photographs----to conceivably hold any political or ideological significance. Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place. The largest section of the Records Department, far larger than the one in which Winston worked, consisted simply of persons whose duty it was to track down and collect all copies of books, newspapers, and other documents which had been superseded and were due for destruction. A number of the Times which might, because of changes in political alignment, or mistaken prophecies uttered by Big Brother, have been rewritten a dozen times still stood on the files bearing its original date, and no other copy existed to contradict it. Books, also, were recalled and rewritten again and again, and were invariably reissued without any admission that any alteration had been made. Even the written instructions which Winston received, and which he invariably got rid of as soon as he had dealt with them, never stated or implied that an act of forgery was to be committed; always the reference was to slips, errors, misprints, or misquotations which it was necessary to put right in the interests of accuracy.

With bigger, multibillion-dollar deals few and far between of late, Mr. Buffett increasingly favors such "bolt-on" acquisitions because they increase Berkshire's earnings and enable it to use its cash pile, which stood at $36 billion at the end of June. Net cash flow from operations rose nearly 36% for the first six months of 2013 from a year earlier, putting greater pressure on Berkshire to use its cash rather than hoard it.

August 7, 2013.

Consumers Find Investors Eager to Make 'Peer-to-Peer' Loans

Winston examined the four slips of paper which he had unrolled. Each contained a message of only one or two lines, in the abbreviated jargon----not actually Newspeak, but consisting largely of Newspeak words----which was used in the Ministry for internal purposes. They ran:

SAN FRANCISCO____At the new headquarters of Prosper Loans Marketplace Inc., the mission was spelled out on a whiteboard: "NEED $28,676,530.13."

times 17.3.84 bb speech malreported africa rectify
times 19.12.83 forecasts 3 yp 4th quarter 83 misprints verify current issue
times 14.2.84 miniplenty malquoted chocolate rectify
times 3.12.83 reporting bb dayorder doublplusungood refs unpersons rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling.

That is how much more Prosper wanted to lend to consumers by the end of June to hit a $30 million target. The twist: The money would come mainly from individual investors who trawl the company's website looking for borrowers willing to pay them attractive returns.

With a faint feeling of satisfaction Winston laid the fourth message aside. It was an intricate and responsible job and had better be dealt with last. The other three were routine matters, though the second one would probably mean some tedious wading through lists of figures.

Prosper and a bigger competitor based a few blocks away, Lending Club Corp., dominate an obscure corner of the financial-services sector called "peer-to-peer" lending, in which consumers bypass banks altogether to borrow money from other individuals. It is part of a shadow-lending system that has thrived since the 2008 financial crisis caused many banks to tighten their credit standards.

August 6, 2013.

State Department Urges U.S. Citizens to Leave Yemen

"There, comrades! that's how I want to see you doing it. Watch me again. I'm thirty-nine and I've had four children. Now look." She bent over again. "You see my knees aren't bent. You can all do it if you want to," she added as she straightened herself up. "Anyone under forty-five is perfectly capable of touching his toes. We don't all have the privilege of fighting in the front line, but at least we can all keep fit. Remember our boys on the Malabar front! And the sailors in the Floating Fortresses! Just think what they have to put up with. Now try again. That's better, comrade, that's much better," she added encouragingly as Winston, with a violent lunge, succeeded in touching his toes with knees unbent, for the first time in several years.

WASHINGTON----The State Department on Tuesday ordered the departure of American citizens from Yemen and pulled out all "nonemergency" staff from the embassy in San'a, citing the continuing terrorism threat posed by al Qaeda and its affiliates to U.S. interests.

IV

With the deep, unconscious sigh which not even the nearness of the telescreen could prevent him from uttering when his day's work started, Winston pulled the speakwrite toward him, blew the dust from its mouthpiece, and put on his spectacles. Then he unrolled and clipped together four small cylinders of paper which had already flopped out of the pneumatic tube on the right-hand side of his desk.

The State Department's announcement followed its decision on Sunday to close most U.S. embassies in the Middle East for the week ending August 10, citing the al Qaeda threat.

In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages; to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and in the side wall, within easy reach of Winston's arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.

The U.K. which has warned its citizens not to travel to Yemen since 2011, said Tuesday that its embassy staff had also been evacuated from the country. "Due to increased security concerns, all staff in our Yemen embassy have been temporarily withdrawn," a spokeswoman for Britain's foreign office said. "The embassy will remain closed until staff are able to return," she said.

August 5, 2013.

House Weighs More Guest-Worker Visas in Immigration Bill

Winston loathed this exercise, which sent shooting pains all the way from his heels to his buttocks and often ended by bringing on another coughing fit. The half-pleasant quality went out of his meditations. The past, he reflected, had not merely been altered, it had been actually destroyed. For how could you establish even the most obvious fact when there existed no record outside your own memory? He tried to remember in what year he had first heard mention of Big Brother. He thought it must have been at some time in the Sixties, but it was impossible to be certain. In the Party histories, of course, Big Brother figured as the leader and guardian of the Revolution since its very earliest days. His exploits had been gradually pushed backwards in time until already they extended into the fabulous world of the Forties and the Thirties, when the capitalists in their strange cylindrical hats still rode through the streets of London in great gleaming motor cars or horse carriages with glass sides. THere was no knowing how much of this legend was true and how much invented. Winston could not even remember at what date the Party itself had come into existence. He did not believe he had ever heard the word Ingsoc before 1960, but it was possible that in its Oldspeak form----"English Socialism," that is to say----it had been current earlier. Everything melted into mist. Sometimes, indeed, you could put your finger on a definite lie. It was not true, for example, as was claimed in the Party history books, that the Party had invented airplanes. He remembered airplanes since his earliest childhood. But you could prove nothing. There was never any evidence. Just once in his whole life he had held in his hands unmistakable documentary proof of the falsification of a historical fact. And on that occasion----

WASHINGTON----Two House Republicans are working on an immigration bill that could disrupt the delicate deal struck between labor and business groups over how many visas to award to low-skilled guest workers.

"Smith!" screamed the shrewish voice from the telescreen. "6079 Smith W! Yes, you! Bend lower, please! You can do better than that. You're not trying. Lower, please! That's better, comrade. Now stand at ease, the whole squad, and watch me."

GOP Reps. Ted Poe of Texas and Raul Labrador of Idaho may call for nearly twice the number of annual visas for low-skilled workers than the Senate included in its immigration bill, though they haven't yet settled on a number, two people familiar with drafts of the House bill say.

A sudden hot sweat had broken out all over Winston's body. His face remained completely inscrutable. Never show dismay! Never show resentment! A single flicker of the eyes could give you away. He stood watching while the instructress raised her arms above her head and----one could not say gracefully, but with remarkable neatness and efficiency----bent over and tucked the first joint of her fingers under her toes.

The proposal could provide somewhere near 400,000 annual visas for low-skilled immigrant workers, these people say. The sweeping immigration bill that passed the Senate in June created a new class of visas for low-skilled workers and increased the allotment of them annually, starting at 20,000 and maxing out at 220,000. Some businesses criticized that cap as too low.

August 4, 2013.

The Fight Over India's Future

"Stand easy!" barked the instructress, a little more genially.

Indian politics isn't generally known for its intellectual bent, so it was a curious sight last week when two Ivy League professors were thrust into the political limelight here. Harvard's Amartya Sen and Columbia's Jagdish Bhagwati are two of India's most eminent economists. Mr. Sen is a Nobel laureate and former master of Trinity College, Cambridge; Mr Bhagwati is a much-decorated scholar of international trade. Both are highly respected, both have recently published books on Indian development----and both have been engaged in a long-simmering feud.

Winston sank his arms to his sides and slowly refilled his lungs with air. His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself----that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become conscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word "doublethink" involved the use of doublethink.

The origins of the feud are unclear. Messrs. Sen and Bhagwati attended Cambridge together in the 1950s; they later taught at the same university in New Delhi. Rumors of bad blood have circulated for years, and their work has placed them in very different ideological camps. Mr. Bhagwati is known as an advocate for free trade and market liberalization as a means of achieving rapid growth. Mr. Sen has spoken out against what he calls "market fundamentalism"; his approach to development argues that economic growth must be accompanied by attention to social "capabilities" like health, education and gender rights.

The instructress had called them to attention again. "And now let's see which of us can touch our toes!" she said enthusiastically. "Right over from the hips, please, comrades. One-two! One-two!..."

Mr. Bhagwati's disdain for Mr. Sen's views is evident in his latest book, "Why Growth Matters," written with Arvind Panagariya. Last month, their differences spilled onto the letters page of the Economist, when Messrs. Bhagwati and Panagariya, responding to a review of Mr. Sen's new book, "India: An Uncertain Glory" (written with Jean Dreze), accused Mr. Sen of paying only "lip service" to economic growth and instead championing what they called "redistribution." Mr. Sen responded in the next issue, complaining about an "outrageous distortion" and arguing that he has always supported growth, while adding that investments in social indicators are essential to fostering growth.

August 3, 2013.

The $4 Million Teacher

Since about that time, war had been literally continuous, though strictly speaking it had not always been the same war. For several months during his childhood there had been confused street fighting in London itself, some of which he remembered vividly. But to trace out the history of the whole period, to say who was fighting whom at any given moment, would have been utterly impossible, since no written record, and no spoken word, ever made mention of any other alignment than the existing one. At this moment, for example, in 1984 (if it was 1984), Oceania was at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia. In no public or private utterance was it ever admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped along different lines. Actually, Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania ha been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.

Kim Ki-hoon earns $4 million a year in South Korea, where he is known as a rock-star teacher----a combination of words not typically heard in the rest of the world. Mr. Kim has been teaching for over 20 years, all of them in the country's private, after-school tutoring academies, known as hagwons. Unlike most teachers across the globe, he is paid according to the demand for his skills----and he is in high demand.

The frightening thing, he reflected for the ten thousandth time as forced his shoulders painfully backward (with hands on hips, they were gyrating their bodies from the waist, an exercise that was supposed to be good for the back muscles)----the frightening thing was that it might all be true. If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened----that, surely was more terrifying than mere torture and death.

Mr. Kim works about 60 hours a week teaching English, although he spends only three of those hours giving lectures. His classes are recorded on video, and the Internet has turned them into commodities, available for purchase online at the rate of $4 an hour. He spends most of his week responding to students' online requests for help, developing lesson plans and writing accompanying textbooks and workbooks (some 200 to date).

The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed ----if all records told the same tale----then the lie passed into history and became truth. "Who controls the past," ran the Party slogan, "controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. "Reality control," they called it; in Newspeak, "doublethink."

"The harder I work, the more I make," he says matter of factly. "I like that."

August 2, 2013.

U.S. Adds 162,000 Jobs, Continuing a Tepid Run

There were people sitting all over the stone-flagged floor, and other people, packed tightly together, were sitting on metal bunks, one above the other. Winston and his mother and father found themselves a place on the floor, and near them an old man and an old woman were sitting side by side on a bunk. The old man had on a decent dark suit and a black cloth cap pushed back from very white hair; his face was scarlet and his eyes were blue and full of tears. He reeked of gin. It seemed to breathe out of his skin in place of sweat, and one could have fancied that the others welling from his eyes were pure gin. But though slightly drunk he was also suffering under some grief that was genuine and unbearable. In his childish way Winston grasped that some terrible thing, something that was beyond forgiveness and could never be remedied, had just happened. It also seemed to him that he knew what it was. Someone whom the old man loved, a little granddaughter perhaps, had been killed. Every few minutes the old man kept repeating:

WASHINGTON----U.S. employers added jobs at a slower pace in July, suggesting more steady but unspectacular economic growth heading into the summer.

"We didn't ought to 'ave trusted 'em. I said so, Ma, didn't I? That's what come of trusting 'em. I said so all along. We didn't ought to 'ave trusted the buggers."

U.S. payrolls grew by 162,000 last month the Labor Department said Friday. The unemployment rate, taken from a separate survey of U.S. households, fell two- tenths of a percentage point to 7.4%, its lowest level since December 2008.

But which buggers they didn't ought to have trusted Winston could not now remember.

The latest snapshot of the job market suggests that slow economic growth may be weighing on employers. Higher taxes, federal spending cuts and slower growth abroad have held back the economy for months, though the pace of hiring has been solid so far this year.