September 20, 2014

Are U.S. Soldiers Dying From Survivable Wounds?

The voice from the telescreen was still pouring forth its tale of prisoners and booty and slaughter, but the shouting outside had died down a little. The waiters were turning back to their work. One of them approached with the gin bottle. Winston, sitting in a blissful dream, paid no attention as his glass was filled up. He was not running or cheering any longer. He was back in the Ministry of Love, with everything forgiven, his soul white as snow. He was in the public dock, confessing everything, implicating everybody. He was walking down the white-tiled corridor, with the feeling of walking in sunlight, and an armed guard at his back. The long-hoped-for bullet was entering his brain.

In an unassuming building in suburban Washington, a team of military medical specialists spent six months poring over autopsies of 4,016 men and women who had died on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.

He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.

They read reports from the morgue at Dover Air Force Base, where bodies arrived in flag-draped coffins. They examined toxicology reports. They winced at gruesome photos of bullet wounds and shredded limbs. In each case, the doctors pieced together the evidence to determine the exact cause of death.

THE END

I've debated putting something of myself in here (maybe I have with typos or additions or omissions), but since I've no paragraphs left in 1984 to type, I thought I'd should end it with something a little different.

I would have added the Appendix (The Principles of Newspeak), but I believe that everyone should *still* read this book and if you'd like to know that last little bit, go pick yourself a copy and see why. The illustrations were discontinued at some point in the first year because I started scribing Ulysses and other projects left me little time to add an illustration. Plus I'm not getting paid to do this: my project, my construct. I'd also have pauses in dates for the same reasons. When this occurred and life got too busy, I'd continue when I did have time.

Writing this book out along with paragraphs from the headline story of The Wall Street Journal was exciting at the beginning. The stories would get boring sometimes, but George Orwell keeps making sense. As I went through paragraphs, the news stories would either eerily synchronize with the book or they'd be complete opposites. Sometimes the stories would gel in odd ways that they highlighted each other in interesting ways. When I was still illustrating it there would be times the book would correlate with the picture as well.

I can't say that I'm surprised by the relevance of Orwell's 1984 right now. Its germaneness is partly why I started this project. It was also a provocation because I try not to pay attention to the news. Since the Gulf War broke out when I was a teenager, I was struck by how much the media does and doesn't tell us. It started with a new war breaking out in a time I thought war would never happen again. However, as I got older and could look back at history with the eyes of an adult, I realized that war never stops, empires continue, repressive states still flourish, and governments continue to do things behind a wall of glorious spectacle and dark fear.

The Wall Street Journal focuses its journalism with the news' effect on the financial markets. Money makes the world go round or stop and take different directions. Leaders might make speeches about peace or a call to arms, but it's really the effect of their actions on those that keep them in power that is of great importance. The stock market quotes beside each corporate mention are not by chance, they're necessary for the reader of this journal. To some of us they might just be numbers and percentage points, but subliminally we're exposed to a powerful language we know very little about. Power, fame, and control are very much a part of the chaotic flow of human nature and it's interesting to observe it by writing it out.

Scribing it electronically I'd detach most of the time and not realize what I was writing. It's like when you're reading a page in a book and after realizing that you were just automatically reading words, you weren't actually digesting the words. So you go back to read the paragraphs again. That's kind of what scribing this project was like. I'd zone out, save, and forget about it. There was a bit of meditation in it, but not very much. I'd like to say I was changed by it, but I wasn't. The best part was re-reading 1984. George Orwell was a great storyteller, not heady with the words, but rather, heady with the story. I love that. Franz Kafka is like that as well.

This Is Room 101 was featured in The State:  http://www.thestate.ae/live-blogging-dystopia/

Some time in the near future, I will like to publish this project as a book. Not sure yet how to go about it.

One secondary project came out of This Is Room 101. It was my chapbook Wall Street, which you can find here:  http://jacquelinevalencia.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/wall-street-by-jacqueline-valencia.pdf

I'm still hand scribing Joyce's Ulysses over at http://gettinginsidejamesjoyceshead.blogspot.ca/.

- Jacqueline Valencia

September 19, 2014.

Once Again, Oracle Must Reinvent Itself

A shrill trumpet call had pierced the air. It was the bulletin! Victory! It always meant victory when a trumpet call preceded the news. A sort of electric drill ran through the cafe. Even the waiters had started and pricked up their ears.

Through 37 years, Oracle Corp. ORCL -4.21%  Chief Executive Larry Ellison was a master of corporate reinvention as his company navigated constant technological change. But today the global database powerhouse he built faces challenges as severe as any in its history, and Mr. Ellison's departure as CEO only intensifies the central issue surrounding the company's future: Can Oracle endure recent tectonic shifts that are reshaping its market?

The trumpet-call had let loose an enormous volume of noise. Already an excited voice was gabbling from the telescreen, but even as it started it was almost drowned by a roar of cheering from outside. The news had run round the streets like magic. He could hear just enough of what was issuing from the telescreen to realize that it had all happened, as he had foreseen; a vast seaborne armada had secretly assembled a sudden blow in the enemy’s rear, the white arrow tearing across the tail of the black. Fragments of triumphant phrases pushed themselves through the din: "Vast strategic manoeuvre----perfect co-ordination----utter rout----half a million prisoners----complete demoralization----control of the whole of Africa----bring the war within measurable distance of its end----victory----greatest victory in human history----victory, victory, victory!"

In dividing the chief's executive's role between lieutenants Mark Hurd and Safra Catz, Mr. Ellison is handing his new co-CEOs a $185 billion software empire that is under assault from technology and market forces that Mr. Ellison couldn't have anticipated when he founded the company in the 1970s.

Under the table Winston’s feet made convulsive movements. He had not stirred from his seat, but in his mind he was running, swiftly running, he was with the crowds outside, cheering himself deaf. He looked up again at the portrait of Big Brother. The colossus that bestrode the world! The rock against which the hordes of Asia dashed themselves in vain! He thought how ten minutes ago — yes, only ten minutes — there had still been equivocation in his heart as he wondered whether the news from the front would be of victory or defeat. Ah, it was more than a Eurasian army that had perished! Much had changed in him since that first day in the Ministry of Love, but the final, indispensable, healing change had never happened, until this moment.

Oracle can no longer count on its near-monopoly in database systems, as the emerging technologies of big data and cloud computing----often available in open source versions that cost far less to use----along with a customer base eager for alternatives, fragment the market. At the same time, younger competitors such as Salesforce.com Inc. CRM +1.01%  and Workday Inc. WDAY +3.56%  are picking off Oracle customers by offering specialized software applications sold by subscription rather than in a large lump sum plus a service contract.

September 16, 2014

iPhone 6 Review: Apple's Cure for Android Envy

Uncalled, a memory floated into his mind. He saw a candle-lit room with a vast white-counterpaned bed, and himself, a boy of nine or ten, sitting on the floor, shaking a dice-box, and laughing excitedly. His mother was sitting opposite him and also laughing.

There's a nagging feeling that afflicts many iPhone owners: a fear of missing out.

It must have been about a month before she disappeared. It was a moment of reconciliation, when the nagging hunger in his belly was forgotten and his earlier affection for her had temporarily revived. He remembered the day well, a pelting, drenching day when the water streamed down the window pane and the light indoors was too dull to read by. The boredom of the two children in the dark, cramped bedroom became unbearable. Winston whined and grizzled, made futile demands for food, fretted about the room pulling everything out of place and kicking the wainscoting until the neighbours banged on the wall, while the younger child wailed intermittently. In the end his mother said, ‘Now be good, and I’ll buy you a toy. A lovely toy----you’ll love it’; and then she had gone out in the rain, to a little general shop which was still sporadically open nearby, and came back with a cardboard box containing an outfit of Snakes and Ladders. He could still remember the smell of the damp cardboard. It was a miserable outfit. The board was cracked and the tiny wooden dice were so ill-cut that they would hardly lie on their sides. Winston looked at the thing sulkily and without interest. But then his mother lit a piece of candle and they sat down on the floor to play. Soon he was wildly excited and shouting with laughter as the tiddly-winks climbed hopefully up the ladders and then came slithering down the snakes again, almost to the starting point. They played eight games, winning four each. His tiny sister, too young to understand what the game was about, had sat propped up against a bolster, laughing because the others were laughing. For a whole afternoon they had all been happy together, as in his earlier childhood.

It hits me riding the train. Mixed among the iPhone herd are Android owners happily reading a novel or burning through work on screens upward of 6 inches. I only see five emails on my four-inch iPhone screen. Those guys get eight.

He pushed the picture out of his mind. It was a false memory. He was troubled by false memories occasionally. They did not matter so long as one knew them for what they were. Some things had happened, others had not happened. He turned back to the chessboard and picked up the white knight again. Almost in the same instant it dropped on to the board with a clatter. He had started as though a pin had run into him.

I used to laugh it off----who wants to hold a gangly phablet up to their ear? Gradually, though, many of us began using our phones more for apps than calls. Samsung anticipated these habits and made large Android phones that were better companions for always-connected people. The iPhone felt stuck in a bygone era called 2012.

September 15, 2014

Read Slowly to Benefit Your Brain and Cut Stress

He took up his glass and sniffed at it. The stuff grew not less but more horrible with every mouthful he drank. But it had become the element he swam in. It was his life, his death, and his resurrection. It was gin that sank him into stupor every night, and gin that revived him every morning. When he woke, seldom before eleven hundred, with gummed-up eyelids and fiery mouth and a back that seemed to be broken, it would have been impossible even to rise from the horizontal if it had not been for the bottle and teacup placed beside the bed overnight. Through the midday hours he sat with glazed face, the bottle handy, listening to the telescreen. From fifteen to closing-time he was a fixture in the Chestnut Tree. No one cared what he did any longer, no whistle woke him, no telescreen admonished him. Occasionally, perhaps twice a week, he went to a dusty, forgotten-looking office in the Ministry of Truth and did a little work, or what was called work. He had been appointed to a sub-committee of a sub-committee which had sprouted from one of the innumerable committees dealing with minor difficulties that arose in the compilation of the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary. They were engaged in producing something called an Interim Report, but what it was that they were reporting on he had never definitely found out. It was something to do with the question of whether commas should be placed inside brackets, or outside. There were four others on the committee, all of them persons similar to himself. There were days when they assembled and then promptly dispersed again, frankly admitting to one another that there was not really anything to be done. But there were other days when they settled down to their work almost eagerly, making a tremendous show of entering up their minutes and drafting long memoranda which were never finished----when the argument as to what they were supposedly arguing about grew extraordinarily involved and abstruse, with subtle haggling over definitions, enormous digressions, quarrels----threats, even, to appeal to higher authority. And then suddenly the life would go out of them and they would sit round the table looking at one another with extinct eyes, like ghosts fading at cock-crow.

Once a week, members of a Wellington, New Zealand, book club arrive at a cafe, grab a drink and shut off their cellphones. Then they sink into cozy chairs and read in silence for an hour.

The telescreen was silent for a moment. Winston raised his head again. The bulletin! But no, they were merely changing the music. He had the map of Africa behind his eyelids. The movement of the armies was a diagram: a black arrow tearing vertically southward, and a white arrow horizontally eastward, across the tail of the first. As though for reassurance he looked up at the imperturbable face in the portrait. Was it conceivable that the second arrow did not even exist?

The point of the club isn't to talk about literature, but to get away from pinging electronic devices and read, uninterrupted. The group calls itself the Slow Reading Club, and it is at the forefront of a movement populated by frazzled book lovers who miss old-school reading.

His interest flagged again. He drank another mouthful of gin, picked up the white knight and made a tentative move. Check. But it was evidently not the right move, because---- ----

Slow reading advocates seek a return to the focused reading habits of years gone by, before Google, smartphones and social media started fracturing our time and attention spans. Many of its advocates say they embraced the concept after realizing they couldn't make it through a book anymore.

September 14, 2014.

Alex Salmond Asks Scotland to Grasp 'Once in a Lifetime' Opportunity

"At the time when it happens," she had said, "you do mean it." He had meant it. He had not merely said it, he had wished it. He had wished that she and not he should be delivered over to the---- ----

The two sides in Scotland's referendum on independence appealed for support Sunday as polls showed the outcome of a ballot on whether to sever Scotland's 300-year-old union with the rest of the U.K. remains too close to call as campaigning enters its final days.

Something changed in the music that trickled from the telescreen. A cracked and jeering note, a yellow note, came into it. And then----perhaps it was not happening, perhaps it was only a memory taking on the semblance of sound----a voice was singing:

"Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me---- ----"

Alex Salmond, leader of the pro-independence Scottish National Party, and Alistair Darling, head of the pro-U.K. Better Together campaign, made back-to-back television appearances to make their case to voters ahead of the referendum Thursday.

The tears welled up in his eyes. A passing waiter noticed that his glass was empty and came back with the gin bottle.

Nationalists need a simple majority to win but Mr. Salmond told the British Broadcasting Corp. he is aiming for a decisive victory.

September 13, 2014.

The Secrets of Berkshire's Success: An Interview with Charlie Munger

"We must meet again," he said.

Why did nearly 250 investors converge on Los Angeles this past week to listen to a 90-year-old man address the annual meeting of a tiny legal-publishing and software company? To hear Charles T. Munger----Warren Buffett's right-hand man----expound on one of his least-known holdings and just about everything else.

"Yes," she said, "we must meet again."

Since 1977, Mr. Munger, the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, BRKA -0.59%  has also been the chairman of a little-known firm called Daily Journal. DJCO -1.40%  His public appearances are so rare and his remarks so entertaining and illuminating that investors came from as far away as Alabama, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Ontario to hear him speak.

He followed irresolutely for a little distance, half a pace behind her. They did not speak again. She did not actually try to shake him off, but walked at just such a speed as to prevent his keeping abreast of her. He had made up his mind that he would accompany her as far as the Tube station, but suddenly this process of trailing along in the cold seemed pointless and unbearable. He was overwhelmed by a desire not so much to get away from Julia as to get back to the Chestnut Tree Cafe, which had never seemed so attractive as at this moment. He had a nostalgic vision of his corner table, with the newspaper and the chessboard and the ever-flowing gin. Above all, it would be warm in there. The next moment, not altogether by accident, he allowed himself to become separated from her by a small knot of people. He made a half-hearted attempt to catch up, then slowed down, turned, and made off in the opposite direction. When he had gone fifty metres he looked back. The street was not crowded, but already he could not distinguish her. Any one of a dozen hurrying figures might have been hers. Perhaps her thickened, stiffened body was no longer recognizable from behind.

They weren't disappointed. Mr. Munger talked almost nonstop for two hours, lambasting the financial industry, hailing the economic potential of China and, above all, dispensing common-sense advice that anyone can benefit from. His central message: Investors can reach their fullest potential only by thinking for themselves. "If you stay rational yourself," he told the crowd, "the stupidity of the world helps you."

September 11, 2014.

For UPS, E-Commerce Brings Big Business and Big Problems

"And after that, you don’t feel the same towards the other person any longer."

When United Parcel Service Inc. UPS +0.33%  Chief Executive David Abney bought his first book from Amazon.com Inc. AMZN -0.24%  about 15 years ago, e-commerce seemed no more complicated than ordering from a catalog. "Pretty basic," he says.

"No," he said, "you don’t feel the same."

Online sales have mushroomed since then into a huge business for the package-delivery company----and a big problem.

There did not seem to be anything more to say. The wind plastered their thin overalls against their bodies. Almost at once it became embarrassing to sit there in silence: besides, it was too cold to keep still. She said something about catching her Tube and stood up to go.

Because of the ubiquity of free shipping, fierce competition from other delivery services and Amazon's power to drive down shipping costs as it gets even more enormous, UPS's average revenue on each Internet-related package it handles is dropping.

September 10, 2014.

Foreign Policy Is Wildcard in U.S. Midterm Elections

She gave him another quick look of dislike.

Foreign policy has catapulted to the center of the U.S. political stage just two months before the 2014 midterm elections, raising fresh questions of whether President Barack Obama's perceived weakness on the issue will hurt his party's electoral chances.

"Sometimes," she said, "they threaten you with something something you can’t stand up to, can’t even think about. And then you say, 'Don’t do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to so-and-so.' And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn’t really mean it. But that isn’t true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there’s no other way of saving yourself, and you’re quite ready to save yourself that way. You WANT it to happen to the other person. You don’t give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself."

Mr. Obama's approval rating has been at or near record low for months, a concern for many Democrats in the final weeks of the campaign season as presidents with low approval ratings typically see big losses for their parties in midterm elections.

"All you care about is yourself," he echoed.

The dynamic put added pressure on Mr. Obama's Wednesday speech detailing his strategy for confronting Islamic State, the militant group also known as ISIS and ISIL. The prime-time speech was designed not just to explain Mr. Obama's goals but also to reclaim the mantle of authority after months of being buffeted by world events.

September 7, 2014.

Researcher Argues for Preserving Floor Trading

He did not attempt to kiss her, nor did they speak. As they walked back across the grass, she looked directly at him for the first time. It was only a momentary glance, full of contempt and dislike. He wondered whether it was a dislike that came purely out of the past or whether it was inspired also by his bloated face and the water that the wind kept squeezing from his eyes. They sat down on two iron chairs, side by side but not too close together. He saw that she was about to speak. She moved her clumsy shoe a few centimetres and deliberately crushed a twig. Her feet seemed to have grown broader, he noticed.

Daniel Beunza has spent the last 13 years scrutinizing the arcane language, rites of passage and rituals of an insular tribe imperiled by advances of the modern world.

"I betrayed you," she said baldly.

His conclusion: Save the floor traders.

"I betrayed you," he said.

Notebook in hand, the London School of Economics professor shadowed New York Stock Exchange traders on and off the floor, tagging along for late-night trips to lower-Manhattan bars, fishing excursions and jaunts to a surfer-themed restaurant on Long Island owned by a former longtime NYSE trader.

September 6, 2014.

Intelligence Gaps Crippled Mission in Syria to Rescue Hostages James Foley, Steven Sotloff

"They can’t get inside you," she had said. But they could get inside you. "What happens to you here is FOREVER," O’Brien had said. That was a true word. There were things, your own acts, from which you could never recover. Something was killed in your breast: burnt out, cauterized out.

WASHINGTON----On a moonless night in early July, several dozen Army Delta Force commandos touched down at an oil-storage facility in eastern Syria.

He had seen her; he had even spoken to her. There was no danger in it. He knew as though instinctively that they now took almost no interest in his doings. He could have arranged to meet her a second time if either of them had wanted to. Actually it was by chance that they had met. It was in the Park, on a vile, biting day in March, when the earth was like iron and all the grass seemed dead and there was not a bud anywhere except a few crocuses which had pushed themselves up to be dismembered by the wind. He was hurrying along with frozen hands and watering eyes when he saw her not ten metres away from him. It struck him at once that she had changed in some ill-defined way. They almost passed one another without a sign, then he turned and followed her, not very eagerly. He knew that there was no danger, nobody would take any interest in him. She did not speak. She walked obliquely away across the grass as though trying to get rid of him, then seemed to resign herself to having him at her side. Presently they were in among a clump of ragged leafless shrubs, useless either for concealment or as protection from the wind. They halted. It was vilely cold. The wind whistled through the twigs and fretted the occasional, dirty-looking crocuses. He put his arm round her waist.

The plan: Neutralize the terrorist guards, search a makeshift prison, find American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and other hostages, and fly off to safety. It was all supposed to take 20 minutes.

There was no telescreen, but there must be hidden microphones: besides, they could be seen. It did not matter, nothing mattered. They could have lain down on the ground and done THAT if they had wanted to. His flesh froze with horror at the thought of it. She made no response whatever to the clasp of his arm; she did not even try to disengage herself. He knew now what had changed in her. Her face was sallower, and there was a long scar, partly hidden by the hair, across her forehead and temple; but that was not the change. It was that her waist had grown thicker, and, in a surprising way, had stiffened. He remembered how once, after the explosion of a rocket bomb, he had helped to drag a corpse out of some ruins, and had been astonished not only by the incredible weight of the thing, but by its rigidity and awkwardness to handle, which made it seem more like stone than flesh. Her body felt like that. It occurred to him that the texture of her skin would be quite different from what it had once been.

More than an hour later, the Army team was headed back to its launchpad outside Syria empty-handed.

September 5, 2014.

When These Hobbyists Get Together, Fireworks Ensue

The voice from the telescreen paused and added in a different and much graver tone: "You are warned to stand by for an important announcement at fifteen-thirty. Fifteen-thirty! This is news of the highest importance. Take care not to miss it. Fifteen-thirty!" The tinkling music struck up again.

MASON CITY, Iowa----Seth Berquist, a fifth-grader from Portage, Ind., has three main hobbies: Little League baseball, playing drums and building low-grade recreational explosives.

Winston’s heart stirred. That was the bulletin from the front; instinct told him that it was bad news that was coming. All day, with little spurts of excitement, the thought of a smashing defeat in Africa had been in and out of his mind. He seemed actually to see the Eurasian army swarming across the never-broken frontier and pouring down into the tip of Africa like a column of ants. Why had it not been possible to outflank them in some way? The outline of the West African coast stood out vividly in his mind. He picked up the white knight and moved it across the board. THERE was the proper spot. Even while he saw the black horde racing southward he saw another force, mysteriously assembled, suddenly planted in their rear, cutting their communications by land and sea. He felt that by willing it he was bringing that other force into existence. But it was necessary to act quickly. If they could get control of the whole of Africa, if they had airfields and submarine bases at the Cape, it would cut Oceania in two. It might mean anything: defeat, breakdown, the redivision of the world, the destruction of the Party! He drew a deep breath. An extraordinary medley of feeling----but it was not a medley, exactly; rather it was successive layers of feeling, in which one could not say which layer was undermost----struggled inside him.

At age 10, Seth is one of the youngest members of the Pyrotechnics Guild International, a group dedicated to the hobby of manufacturing fireworks.

The spasm passed. He put the white knight back in its place, but for the moment he could not settle down to serious study of the chess problem. His thoughts wandered again. Almost unconsciously he traced with his finger in the dust on the table:

2+2 = 5

During the guild's 42nd annual convention last month, Seth attended instructional sessions held by the PGI's youth group, the Junior Pyrotechnics Association. He is an expert at building rockets that fly hundreds of feet into the air, fueled by black gunpowder, and explode in bursts of color and flashing sparks, and "comets" that soar across the sky with glittering tails of flaming powdered metal.

September 4, 2014.

West Raises Pressure on Russia Ahead of Ukraine Peace Talks

He never named them, even in his thoughts, and so far as it was possible he never visualized them. They were something that he was half-aware of, hovering close to his face, a smell that clung to his nostrils. As the gin rose in him he belched through purple lips. He had grown fatter since they released him, and had regained his old colour----indeed, more than regained it. His features had thickened, the skin on nose and cheekbones was coarsely red, even the bald scalp was too deep a pink. A waiter, again unbidden, brought the chessboard and the current issue of "The Times," with the page turned down at the chess problem. Then, seeing that Winston’s glass was empty, he brought the gin bottle and filled it. There was no need to give orders. They knew his habits. The chessboard was always waiting for him, his corner table was always reserved; even when the place was full he had it to himself, since nobody cared to be seen sitting too close to him. He never even bothered to count his drinks. At irregular intervals they presented him with a dirty slip of paper which they said was the bill, but he had the impression that they always undercharged him. It would have made no difference if it had been the other way about. He had always plenty of money nowadays. He even had a job, a sinecure, more highly-paid than his old job had been.

The U.S. and Europe moved to toughen sanctions on Moscow over the Ukraine crisis amid signs that some countries could go even further and send weapons to Kiev----ratcheting up the pressure on pro-Russia rebels a day ahead of peace talks.

The music from the telescreen stopped and a voice took over. Winston raised his head to listen. No bulletins from the front, however. It was merely a brief announcement from the Ministry of Plenty. In the preceding quarter, it appeared, the Tenth Three-Year Plan’s quota for bootlaces had been overfulfilled by 98 per cent.

At a summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Wales, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko expressed what he called "careful optimism" that a cease-fire would be agreed to Friday in the Belarusian capital of Minsk----in part because Russian President Vladimir Putin had proposed it himself.

He examined the chess problem and set out the pieces. It was a tricky ending, involving a couple of knights. "White to play and mate in two moves." Winston looked up at the portrait of Big Brother. White always mates, he thought with a sort of cloudy mysticism. Always, without exception, it is so arranged. In no chess problem since the beginning of the world has black ever won. Did it not symbolize the eternal, unvarying triumph of Good over Evil? The huge face gazed back at him, full of calm power. White always mates.

But it wasn't clear whether the Russian and Ukrainian proposals were compatible; Mr. Putin's plan calls for Ukraine to pull back its forces and leave the rebels in control of some territory.

September 3, 2014.

Brazil's Sugar Sector Goes on a Diet

Winston sat in his usual corner, gazing into an empty glass. Now and again he glanced up at a vast face which eyed him from the opposite wall. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said. Unbidden, a waiter came and filled his glass up with Victory Gin, shaking into it a few drops from another bottle with a quill through the cork. It was saccharine flavoured with cloves, the speciality of the cafe.

Brazil's sugar industry is slimming down, a shift that producers hope will deliver them from a yearslong glut that has depressed prices.

Winston was listening to the telescreen. At present only music was coming out of it, but there was a possibility that at any moment there might be a special bulletin from the Ministry of Peace. The news from the African front was disquieting in the extreme. On and off he had been worrying about it all day. A Eurasian army (Oceania was at war with Eurasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia) was moving southward at terrifying speed. The mid-day bulletin had not mentioned any definite area, but it was probable that already the mouth of the Congo was a battlefield. Brazzaville and Leopoldville were in danger. One did not have to look at the map to see what it meant. It was not merely a question of losing Central Africa: for the first time in the whole war, the territory of Oceania itself was menaced.

The sugar surplus has led processors to shut dozens of mills and some growers to invest less in their fields. The moves highlight the desperate economics of the domestic sugar industry following an ill-fated expansion.

A violent emotion, not fear exactly but a sort of undifferentiated excitement, flared up in him, then faded again. He stopped thinking about the war. In these days he could never fix his mind on any one subject for more than a few moments at a time. He picked up his glass and drained it at a gulp. As always, the gin made him shudder and even retch slightly. The stuff was horrible. The cloves and saccharine, themselves disgusting enough in their sickly way, could not disguise the flat oily smell; and what was worst of all was that the smell of gin, which dwelt with him night and day, was inextricably mixed up in his mind with the smell of those---- ----

The effect of the cutbacks in Brazil, which is the world's biggest producer of the sweetener and accounts for more than 40% of exports, hasn't yet hit the world marketplace, where prices are near their lowest in more than six months. But many analysts expect the impact to be felt as soon as next year.

September 2, 2014.

School Starts in Chicago With More Security Guards

"Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don’t care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!"

CHICAGO----School opened in Chicago on Tuesday, with children and parents making their way past security guards whose bright neon vests served as a reminder of the city's efforts to protect students from violence.

He was falling backwards, into enormous depths, away from the rats. He was still strapped in the chair, but he had fallen through the floor, through the walls of the building, through the earth, through the oceans, through the atmosphere, into outer space, into the gulfs between the stars----always away, away, away from the rats. He was light years distant, but O’Brien was still standing at his side. There was still the cold touch of wire against his cheek. But through the darkness that enveloped him he heard another metallic click, and knew that the cage door had clicked shut and not open.

A year after hundreds more "Safe Passage" workers were hired to keep children from harm, an infusion of city money has allowed Chicago to increase their number from 1,200 to 1,300. An additional $10 million from the state will mean 600 more workers will be lining the streets within the next several weeks.

Chapter 6

The Chestnut Tree was almost empty. A ray of sunlight slanting through a window fell on dusty table-tops. It was the lonely hour of fifteen. A tinny music trickled from the telescreens.

The city is also raising from 93 to 120 the number of schools with Safe Passage routes, said Jadine Chou, chief safety and security officer for the Chicago Public Schools.

August 31, 2014.

Why Doctors Are Sick of Their Profession

The circle of the mask was large enough now to shut out the vision of anything else. The wire door was a couple of hand-spans from his face. The rats knew what was coming now. One of them was leaping up and down, the other, an old scaly grandfather of the sewers, stood up, with his pink hands against the bars, and fiercely sniffed the air. Winston could see the whiskers and the yellow teeth. Again the black panic took hold of him. He was blind, helpless, mindless.

All too often these days, I find myself fidgeting by the doorway to my exam room, trying to conclude an office visit with one of my patients. When I look at my career at midlife, I realize that in many ways I have become the kind of doctor I never thought I'd be: impatient, occasionally indifferent, at times dismissive or paternalistic. Many of my colleagues are similarly struggling with the loss of their professional ideals.

"It was a common punishment in Imperial China," said O’Brien as didactically as ever.

It could be just a midlife crisis, but it occurs to me that my profession is in a sort of midlife crisis of its own. In the past four decades, American doctors have lost the status they used to enjoy. In the mid-20th century, physicians were the pillars of any community. If you were smart and sincere and ambitious, at the top of your class, there was nothing nobler or more rewarding that you could aspire to become.

The mask was closing on his face. The wire brushed his cheek. And then----no, it was not relief, only hope, a tiny fragment of hope. Too late, perhaps too late. But he had suddenly understood that in the whole world there was just ONE person to whom he could transfer his punishment----ONE body that he could thrust between himself and the rats. And he was shouting frantically, over and over.

Today medicine is just another profession, and doctors have become like everybody else: insecure, discontented and anxious about the future. In surveys, a majority of doctors express diminished enthusiasm for medicine and say they would discourage a friend or family member from entering the profession. In a 2008 survey of 12,000 physicians, only 6% described their morale as positive. Eighty-four percent said that their incomes were constant or decreasing. Most said they didn't have enough time to spend with patients because of paperwork, and nearly half said they planned to reduce the number of patients they would see in the next three years or stop practicing altogether.

August 30, 2014.

How to Fire Your Financial Adviser

O’Brien picked up the cage, and, as he did so, pressed something in it. There was a sharp click. Winston made a frantic effort to tear himself loose from the chair. It was hopeless; every part of him, even his head, was held immovably. O’Brien moved the cage nearer. It was less than a metre from Winston’s face.

Investors discuss many tough issues with their financial advisers. How much risk should I take? When should I cut losses?

"I have pressed the first lever," said O’Brien. "You understand the construction of this cage. The mask will fit over your head, leaving no exit. When I press this other lever, the door of the cage will slide up. These starving brutes will shoot out of it like bullets. Have you ever seen a rat leap through the air? They will leap on to your face and bore straight into it. Sometimes they attack the eyes first. Sometimes they burrow through the cheeks and devour the tongue."

Sometimes the most important question is when to say "You're fired."

The cage was nearer; it was closing in. Winston heard a succession of shrill cries which appeared to be occurring in the air above his head. But he fought furiously against his panic. To think, to think, even with a split second left — to think was the only hope. Suddenly the foul musty odour of the brutes struck his nostrils. There was a violent convulsion of nausea inside him, and he almost lost consciousness. Everything had gone black. For an instant he was insane, a screaming animal. Yet he came out of the blackness clutching an idea. There was one and only one way to save himself. He must interpose another human being, the BODY of another human being, between himself and the rats.

Cutting ties with someone who knows intimate details about your life and money can be fraught with emotion and doubt.

August 29, 2014.

Google Is Testing Delivery Drone System

O’Brien picked up the cage and brought it across to the nearer table. He set it down carefully on the baize cloth. Winston could hear the blood singing in his ears. He had the feeling of sitting in utter loneliness. He was in the middle of a great empty plain, a flat desert drenched with sunlight, across which all sounds came to him out of immense distances. Yet the cage with the rats was not two metres away from him. They were enormous rats. They were at the age when a rat’s muzzle grows blunt and fierce and his fur brown instead of grey.

The latest endeavor to emerge from Google Inc. GOOGL -0.46%  's advanced-research lab is flying into a field buzzing with competitors.

"The rat," said O’Brien, still addressing his invisible audience, "although a rodent, is carnivorous. You are aware of that. You will have heard of the things that happen in the poor quarters of this town. In some streets a woman dare not leave her baby alone in the house, even for five minutes. The rats are certain to attack it. Within quite a small time they will strip it to the bones. They also attack sick or dying people. They show astonishing intelligence in knowing when a human being is helpless."

Google X said Thursday it is developing a system of drones to deliver goods. Rival Amazon.com Inc. AMZN -0.92%  is also testing delivery drones, and Domino's Pizza Inc. DPZ +0.13%  tested delivering pies via drone in 2013.

There was an outburst of squeals from the cage. It seemed to reach Winston from far away. The rats were fighting; they were trying to get at each other through the partition. He heard also a deep groan of despair. That, too, seemed to come from outside himself.

Google said a 5-foot-wide single-wing prototype from its Project Wing carried supplies including candy bars, dog treats, cattle vaccines, water and radios to two farmers in Queensland, Australia, earlier this month.

August 28, 2014.

Abercrombie to Remove Logos From Most Clothing

O’Brien made no direct answer. When he spoke it was in the schoolmasterish manner that he sometimes affected. He looked thoughtfully into the distance, as though he were addressing an audience somewhere behind Winston’s back.

It's about to get a lot harder to tell who is wearing Abercrombie & Fitch. ANF -4.84%

"By itself," he said, "pain is not always enough. There are occasions when a human being will stand out against pain, even to the point of death. But for everyone there is something unendurable----something that cannot be contemplated. Courage and cowardice are not involved. If you are falling from a height it is not cowardly to clutch at a rope. If you have come up from deep water it is not cowardly to fill your lungs with air. It is merely an instinct which cannot be destroyed. It is the same with the rats. For you, they are unendurable. They are a form of pressure that you cannot withstand, even if you wished to. You will do what is required of you."

The teen retailer that built a lucrative business selling A&F emblazoned T-shirts and hoodies at premium prices is going to be logo-free in North America come spring.

"But what is it, what is it? How can I do it if I don’t know what it is?"

The move follows a change in teen behavior that caught Abercrombie & Fitch Co. on the wrong side of a trend. Teens who once sought brand names have shifted to cheaper, unmarked gear that they can use to put together their own individual styles.

August 27, 2014.

Trapped in Venezuela: Airlines Abandon Fliers Amid Currency Dispute

"You can’t do that!" he cried out in a high cracked voice. "You couldn’t, you couldn’t! It’s impossible."

CARACAS, Venezuela----When this city's professional soccer club traveled to a key match in Peru, its tough rival wasn't the only challenge. The team also had to endure an arduous four-day journey, including four connecting flights, a layover in neighboring Colombia and a jarring, cross-border bus ride.

"Do you remember," said O’Brien, "the moment of panic that used to occur in your dreams? There was a wall of blackness in front of you, and a roaring sound in your ears. There was something terrible on the other side of the wall. You knew that you knew what it was, but you dared not drag it into the open. It was the rats that were on the other side of the wall."

Like many of their compatriots, the players simply couldn't get a flight that would take them where they wanted to go.

"O’Brien!" said Winston, making an effort to control his voice. "You know this is not necessary. What is it that you want me to do?"

The 20-man team was a victim of the long-simmering dispute between international airlines and the leftist administration of President Nicolas Maduro. With the cash-strapped government holding back on releasing $3.8 billion in airline-ticket revenue because of strict currency controls, carriers have slashed service to Venezuela by half since January, adding another layer of frustration to daily life here.

August 26, 2014.

Germany's Expensive Gamble on Renewable Energy

He had moved a little to one side, so that Winston had a better view of the thing on the table. It was an oblong wire cage with a handle on top for carrying it by. Fixed to the front of it was something that looked like a fencing mask, with the concave side outwards. Although it was three or four metres away from him, he could see that the cage was divided lengthways into two compartments, and that there was some kind of creature in each. They were rats.

WILSTER, Germany----In a sandy marsh on the outskirts of this medieval hamlet, Germany's next autobahn will soon take shape.

"In your case," said O’Brien, "the worst thing in the world happens to be rats."

The Stromautobahn, as locals call it, won't carry Audis and BMW's BMW.XE +0.01%  , but high-voltage electricity over hundreds of miles of aluminum and steel cables stretching from the North Sea to Germany's industrial corridor in the south.

A sort of premonitory tremor, a fear of he was not certain what, had passed through Winston as soon as he caught his first glimpse of the cage. But at this moment the meaning of the mask-like attachment in front of it suddenly sank into him. His bowels seemed to turn to water.

The project is the linchpin of Germany's Energiewende, or energy revolution, a mammoth, trillion-euro plan to wean the country off nuclear and fossil fuels by midcentury and the top domestic priority of Chancellor Angela Merkel.

August 25, 2014.

Crowds Gather for Michael Brown's Funeral

"You asked me once," said O’Brien, "what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world."

ST. LOUIS----Crowds gathered on Monday, singing hymns and calling for justice at the funeral of Michael Brown, whose shooting by a police officer in a nearby suburb sparked days of protests and brought national attention to the often tense relationship between police and young blacks.

The door opened again. A guard came in, carrying something made of wire, a box or basket of some kind. He set it down on the further table. Because of the position in which O’Brien was standing. Winston could not see what the thing was.

In the thick Missouri heat, some mourners sang "We Shall Overcome," while others solemnly walked through the doors of Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church. Still others talked of what brought them here Monday for the funeral, which was set to begin at 10 a.m. local time.

"The worst thing in the world," said O’Brien, "varies from individual to individual. It may be burial alive, or death by fire, or by drowning, or by impalement, or fifty other deaths. There are cases where it is some quite trivial thing, not even fatal."

"You see so much injustice going on in our communities," said Shirley Minter, 66 years old, who came to show her support for Mr. Brown's family. "Michael Brown was an innocent black man on his way home. And to be shot down like that is very disturbing."

August 23, 2014.

Ferguson's Experience Offers Lessons on Integration

Chapter 5

At each stage of his imprisonment he had known, or seemed to know, whereabouts he was in the windowless building. Possibly there were slight differences in the air pressure. The cells where the guards had beaten him were below ground level. The room where he had been interrogated by O’Brien was high up near the roof. This place was many metres underground, as deep down as it was possible to go.

FERGUSON, Mo.----Sharon Golliday grew up in the Pruett-Igoe public housing project in St. Louis, a high-rise complex so violent that even the police were afraid to enter.

It was bigger than most of the cells he had been in. But he hardly noticed his surroundings. All he noticed was that there were two small tables straight in front of him, each covered with green baize. One was only a metre or two from him, the other was further away, near the door. He was strapped upright in a chair, so tightly that he could move nothing, not even his head. A sort of pad gripped his head from behind, forcing him to look straight in front of him.

So like many African-Americans, she and her family took advantage of a sea change in federal housing policy in the 1980s and 90s that came to regard projects as part of the problem. Using a government voucher to subsidize the cost, they eventually landed in this suburb.

For a moment he was alone, then the door opened and O’Brien came in.

"We needed to get out," said Ms. Golliday, a 58-year-old teacher. "No one forced us to move----we left."

August 18, 2014.

Ukrainian Refugees Caught in Crossfire

"You hate him. Good. Then the time has come for you to take the last step. You must love Big Brother. It is not enough to obey him: you must love him."

Ukraine accused pro-Russian separatists of killing dozens of civilians by firing on a refugee convoy, the latest example of residents caught in the line of fire of a four-month-old war that has caused more than 2,000 deaths.

He released Winston with a little push towards the guards.

Rebels denied any role in the attack, or that an attack had taken place. The U.S. State Department condemned the "shelling and rocketing" of the convoy but said it couldn't confirm who was responsible.

"Room 101," he said.

Interviews at three different refugee camps in recent days showed that anger over shelling in residential areas is hampering the Kiev government's efforts to win the trust of people in the east.

August 16, 2014.

BMW 535d: This Eco Car Is No Diesel in Distress

He paused, and went on in a gentler tone:

NOT THE DIESEL thing again.

"You are improving. Intellectually there is very little wrong with you. It is only emotionally that you have failed to make progress. Tell me, Winston----and remember, no lies: you know that I am always able to detect a lie----tell me, what are your true feelings towards Big Brother?"

Believe me, if I could, I would just avoid even mentioning the fact that the BMW 535d burns diesel fuel instead of premium gasoline. Why? Because you don't get the crazy email I get, OK? Diesel advocates, the true believers, scare me. They have an agenda and dwell in tunnels between gas stations.

"I hate him."

No, please! I'm not interested in your spreadsheet on the "diesel-payback period," the time it takes to recoup in fuel savings the additional cost of a diesel powertrain. Thank you for the picture of your uncle's million-mile 1983 Mercedes-Benz diesel S-class. Think of all the traffic he held up.

August 14, 2014.

Harvard Scientists Devise Robot Swarm That Can Work Together

"Get up," said O’Brien. "Come here."

Harvard University scientists have devised a swarm of 1,024 tiny robots that can work together without any guiding central intelligence.

Winston stood opposite him. O’Brien took Winston’s shoulders between his strong hands and looked at him closely.

Like a mechanical flash mob, these robots can assemble themselves into five-pointed stars, letters of the alphabet and other complex designs. The researchers at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering in Cambridge, Mass., reported their work Thursday in Science.

"You have had thoughts of deceiving me," he said. "That was stupid. Stand up straighter. Look me in the face."

"No one had really built a swarm of this size before, where everyone works together to achieve a goal," said robotics researcher Michael Rubenstein, who led the project.

August 13, 2014.

Colombia Wins Investors' Favor----And That's the Problem

One day they would decide to shoot him. You could not tell when it would happen, but a few seconds beforehand it should be possible to guess. It was always from behind, walking down a corridor. Ten seconds would be enough. In that time the world inside him could turn over. And then suddenly, without a word uttered, without a check in his step, without the changing of a line in his face----suddenly the camouflage would be down and bang! would go the batteries of his hatred. Hatred would fill him like an enormous roaring flame. And almost in the same instant bang! would go the bullet, too late, or too early. They would have blown his brain to pieces before they could reclaim it. The heretical thought would be unpunished, unrepented, out of their reach for ever. They would have blown a hole in their own perfection. To die hating them, that was freedom.

When Colombia undertook an extensive tax overhaul, Wall Street rewarded it by making the country a bigger piece of one of the most widely used emerging-market bond indexes, handing fund managers a mandate to buy more of the nation's debt.

He shut his eyes. It was more difficult than accepting an intellectual discipline. It was a question of degrading himself, mutilating himself. He had got to plunge into the filthiest of filth. What was the most horrible, sickening thing of all? He thought of Big Brother. The enormous face (because of constantly seeing it on posters he always thought of it as being a metre wide), with its heavy black moustache and the eyes that followed you to and fro, seemed to float into his mind of its own accord. What were his true feelings towards Big Brother?

For Colombian plantain farmer Paula Martinez, the ripple effects of that decision have felt more like a punishment.

There was a heavy tramp of boots in the passage. The steel door swung open with a clang. O’Brien walked into the cell. Behind him were the waxen-faced officer and the black-uniformed guards.

The index reshuffling prompted investors to redirect billions of dollars to the country's local-currency-denominated debt, causing the value of Colombia's peso to surge against the dollar. That, in turn, has made it more difficult for Ms. Martinez, 57 years old, to compete with growers in other countries. A highly valued currency makes a country's exports more expensive and reduces profits for exporters when they convert overseas earnings back to pesos.

August 12, 2014.

Lauren Bacall, Actress, Dies at Age 89

He lay back on the bed and tried to compose himself. What had he done? How many years had he added to his servitude by that moment of weakness?

Seldom in Hollywood has a star risen from obscurity to headliner with such rapidity as Lauren Bacall.

In another moment he would hear the tramp of boots outside. They could not let such an outburst go unpunished. They would know now, if they had not known before, that he was breaking the agreement he had made with them. He obeyed the Party, but he still hated the Party. In the old days he had hidden a heretical mind beneath an appearance of conformity. Now he had retreated a step further: in the mind he had surrendered, but he had hoped to keep the inner heart inviolate. He knew that he was in the wrong, but he preferred to be in the wrong. They would understand that----O’Brien would understand it. It was all confessed in that single foolish cry.

Ms. Bacall, who died Tuesday at age 89 in New York, was among the last of the golden age screen goddesses, despite having appeared in relatively few films. She went on to star in Broadway plays and musicals.

He would have to start all over again. It might take years. He ran a hand over his face, trying to familiarize himself with the new shape. There were deep furrows in the cheeks, the cheekbones felt sharp, the nose flattened. Besides, since last seeing himself in the glass he had been given a complete new set of teeth. It was not easy to preserve inscrutability when you did not know what your face looked like. In any case, mere control of the features was not enough. For the first time he perceived that if you want to keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself. You must know all the while that it is there, but until it is needed you must never let it emerge into your consciousness in any shape that could be given a name. From now onwards he must not only think right; he must feel right, dream right. And all the while he must keep his hatred locked up inside him like a ball of matter which was part of himself and yet unconnected with the rest of him, a kind of cyst.

Part of the reason for her legend was that she was Mrs. Humphrey Bogart----Hollywood royalty almost from the start.

August 9, 2014.

Baghdad's Last Line of Defense

Suddenly he started up with a shock of horror. The sweat broke out on his backbone. He had heard himself cry aloud:

Sattar Jabbar stood at a Baghdad army recruiting station in June wearing nothing but a pair of blue boxer-briefs and a crooked grin. He was waiting for the medical exam required to join Iraq's army, he said, answering a call to arms issued by his spiritual leader, Iraq's senior Shiite cleric.

"Julia! Julia! Julia, my love! Julia!"

"I've been trying to volunteer for years, so now I'm seizing the opportunity," he said. "I'm doing this for the Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani and for the prime minister."

For a moment he had had an overwhelming hallucination of her presence. She had seemed to be not merely with him, but inside him. It was as though she had got into the texture of his skin. In that moment he had loved her far more than he had ever done when they were together and free. Also he knew that somewhere or other she was still alive and needed his help.

At 39 years old, the gray-haired, potbellied father of five doesn't look like the kind of vigorous young man usually sought by armies. But as Sunni militants led by the Islamic State push through Iraq, seizing towns and territory, Baghdad is desperately trying to rebuild its broken army with untrained, mostly Shiite recruits.

August 6, 2014.

Sprint Goes Off Beaten Track for New CEO Marcelo Claure

He set to work to exercise himself in crimestop. He presented himself with propositions----"the Party says the earth is flat," "the party says that ice is heavier than water"---- and trained himself in not seeing or not understanding the arguments that contradicted them. It was not easy. It needed great powers of reasoning and improvisation. The arithmetical problems raised, for instance, by such a statement as ‘two and two make five’ were beyond his intellectual grasp. It needed also a sort of athleticism of mind, an ability at one moment to make the most delicate use of logic and at the next to be unconscious of the crudest logical errors. Stupidity was as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult to attain.

Sprint Corp.'s S -18.96%  new chief executive is going to stand out in Kansas.

All the while, with one part of his mind, he wondered how soon they would shoot him. ‘Everything depends on yourself,’ O’Brien had said; but he knew that there was no conscious act by which he could bring it nearer. It might be ten minutes hence, or ten years. They might keep him for years in solitary confinement, they might send him to a labour-camp, they might release him for a while, as they sometimes did. It was perfectly possible that before he was shot the whole drama of his arrest and interrogation would be enacted all over again. The one certain thing was that death never came at an expected moment. The tradition----the unspoken tradition: somehow you knew it, though you never heard it said----was that they shot you from behind; always in the back of the head, without warning, as you walked down a corridor from cell to cell.

Marcelo Claure is a 6-foot-6-inch Bolivian billionaire who built a global mobile-phone distributor from scratch and had singer Jennifer Lopez perform at his 40th birthday party. Now, he is relocating to the Midwestern suburbs to turn around a 38,000 person company that has spent the better part of a decade losing customers and money.

One day----but "one day" was not the right expression; just as probably it was in the middle of the night: once----he fell into a strange, blissful reverie. He was walking down the corridor, waiting for the bullet. He knew that it was coming in another moment. Everything was settled, smoothed out, reconciled. There were no more doubts, no more arguments, no more pain, no more fear. His body was healthy and strong. He walked easily, with a joy of movement and with a feeling of walking in sunlight. He was not any longer in the narrow white corridors in the Ministry of Love, he was in the enormous sunlit passage, a kilometre wide, down which he had seemed to walk in the delirium induced by drugs. He was in the Golden Country, following the foot-track across the old rabbit-cropped pasture. He could feel the short springy turf under his feet and the gentle sunshine on his face. At the edge of the field were the elm trees, faintly stirring, and somewhere beyond that was the stream where the dace lay in the green pools under the willows.

His efforts could determine whether Sprint's decision to end a $32 billion plan to buy smaller rival T-Mobile US Inc. TMUS -8.40%  was a savvy, pragmatic move or a disaster.

August 5, 2014.

A Patients' Group Scores a Win in Muscular Dystrophy Drug Research

He accepted everything. The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia. Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford were guilty of the crimes they were charged with. He had never seen the photograph that disproved their guilt. It had never existed, he had invented it. He remembered remembering contrary things, but those were false memories, products of self-deception. How easy it all was! Only surrender, and everything else followed. It was like swimming against a current that swept you backwards however hard you struggled, and then suddenly deciding to turn round and go with the current instead of opposing it. Nothing had changed except your own attitude: the predestined thing happened in any case. He hardly knew why he had ever rebelled. Everything was easy, except----!

When it comes to developing new drugs, pharmaceutical companies and federal agencies have always called the shots. Now patients and their families want a turn.

Anything could be true. The so-called laws of Nature were nonsense. The law of gravity was nonsense. "If I wished," O’Brien had said, "I could float off this floor like a soap bubble." Winston worked it out. "If he THINKS he floats off the floor, and if I simultaneously THINK I see him do it, then the thing happens.’ Suddenly, like a lump of submerged wreckage breaking the surface of water, the thought burst into his mind: ‘It doesn’t really happen. We imagine it. It is hallucination." He pushed the thought under instantly. The fallacy was obvious. It presupposed that somewhere or other, outside oneself, there was a "real" world where "real" things happened. But how could there be such a world? What knowledge have we of anything, save through our own minds? All happenings are in the mind. Whatever happens in all minds, truly happens.

Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy, an advocacy group founded by family members frustrated by a lack of research on Duchenne muscular dystrophy, initiated and wrote a draft guidance for pharmaceutical companies trying to develop drugs to treat the fatal condition.

He had no difficulty in disposing of the fallacy, and he was in no danger of succumbing to it. He realized, nevertheless, that it ought never to have occurred to him. The mind should develop a blind spot whenever a dangerous thought presented itself. The process should be automatic, instinctive. CRIMESTOP, they called it in Newspeak.

Guidances are issued by the Food and Drug Administration and set out the latest thinking on designing trials and which standards must be met by companies to get a new drug approved. The FDA typically initiates the creation of guidances. But with so many diseases, the agency can't cover them all.

August 4, 2014.

Polaris Throws Down Against Mighty Harley-Davidson

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

Then almost without a pause he wrote beneath it:

TWO AND TWO MAKE FIVE

BLOOMINGTON, Minn.—In trying to expand its modest share of the motorcycle market, Polaris Industries Inc. PII +0.95%  is up against the likes of Mike Meloy, who is fanatically loyal to Harley-Davidson Inc. HOG +0.53%

But then there came a sort of check. His mind, as though shying away from something, seemed unable to concentrate. He knew that he knew what came next, but for the moment he could not recall it. When he did recall it, it was only by consciously reasoning out what it must be: it did not come of its own accord. He wrote:

Wearing a black sleeveless Harley-Davidson T-shirt, the 65-year-old retired metal-recycling manager sat eating breakfast at a motel here last week. "I may be prejudiced," Mr. Meloy said when asked about the Indian Motorcycle brand that Polaris revived a year ago. "I've been riding Harleys for 46 years."

GOD IS POWER

For riders like Mr. Meloy----one of more than 700,000 motorcyclists who belong to Harley riding groups in the U.S. and Canada----it isn't just about the bike, it's about the cult of Harley riders.

August 3, 2014.

Rand Paul, Still Mum, Lays 2016 Groundwork

His mind grew more active. He sat down on the plank bed, his back against the wall and the slate on his knees, and set to work deliberately at the task of re-educating himself.

Sen. Rand Paul hasn't said whether he will seek the 2016 GOP presidential nomination. But his aggressive groundwork seems to point to no other outcome.

He had capitulated, that was agreed. In reality, as he saw now, he had been ready to capitulate long before he had taken the decision. From the moment when he was inside the Ministry of Love----and yes, even during those minutes when he and Julia had stood helpless while the iron voice from the telescreen told them what to do----he had grasped the frivolity, the shallowness of his attempt to set himself up against the power of the Party. He knew now that for seven years the Thought Police had watched him like a beetle under a magnifying glass. There was no physical act, no word spoken aloud, that they had not noticed, no train of thought that they had not been able to infer. Even the speck of whitish dust on the cover of his diary they had carefully replaced. They had played sound-tracks to him, shown him photographs. Some of them were photographs of Julia and himself. Yes, even . . . He could not fight against the Party any longer. Besides, the Party was in the right. It must be so; how could the immortal, collective brain be mistaken? By what external standard could you check its judgements? Sanity was statistical. It was merely a question of learning to think as they thought. Only----!

In recent weeks, the Kentucky Republican announced political hires in quick succession in Iowa, New Hampshire and Michigan----states key to winning his party's nomination. Staffers mention a future campaign headquarters in Louisville and claim an email list of one million supporters, details most potential presidential hopefuls keep quiet. A super PAC launched by backers shortly before the 2012 election offers a repository for big donors.

The pencil felt thick and awkward in his fingers. He began to write down the thoughts that came into his head. He wrote first in large clumsy capitals:

On Monday, Mr. Paul begins a three-day, 10-stop swing through Iowa, marking his 10th visit in this election cycle to one of the first three states on the traditional nominating calendar. Only Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) has made more trips, at 11.

August 2, 2014

Will This Billionaire Bring $3-a-Month Phone Plans to U.S.?

They had given him a white slate with a stump of pencil tied to the corner. At first he made no use of it. Even when he was awake he was completely torpid. Often he would lie from one meal to the next almost without stirring, sometimes asleep, sometimes waking into vague reveries in which it was too much trouble to open his eyes. He had long grown used to sleeping with a strong light on his face. It seemed to make no difference, except that one’s dreams were more coherent. He dreamed a great deal all through this time, and they were always happy dreams. He was in the Golden Country, or he was sitting among enormous glorious, sunlit ruins, with his mother, with Julia, with O’Brien----not doing anything, merely sitting in the sun, talking of peaceful things. Such thoughts as he had when he was awake were mostly about his dreams. He seemed to have lost the power of intellectual effort, now that the stimulus of pain had been removed. He was not bored, he had no desire for conversation or distraction. Merely to be alone, not to be beaten or questioned, to have enough to eat, and to be clean all over, was completely satisfying.

PARIS----When Iliad SA ILD.FR -7.01%  founder Xavier Niel made a last-ditch attempt this spring to buy a French rival to gain scale, his adversaries thought he was bluffing.

By degrees he came to spend less time in sleep, but he still felt no impulse to get off the bed. All he cared for was to lie quiet and feel the strength gathering in his body. He would finger himself here and there, trying to make sure that it was not an illusion that his muscles were growing rounder and his skin tauter. Finally it was established beyond a doubt that he was growing fatter; his thighs were now definitely thicker than his knees. After that, reluctantly at first, he began exercising himself regularly. In a little while he could walk three kilometres, measured by pacing the cell, and his bowed shoulders were growing straighter. He attempted more elaborate exercises, and was astonished and humiliated to find what things he could not do. He could not move out of a walk, he could not hold his stool out at arm’s length, he could not stand on one leg without falling over. He squatted down on his heels, and found that with agonizing pains in thigh and calf he could just lift himself to a standing position. He lay flat on his belly and tried to lift his weight by his hands. It was hopeless, he could not raise himself a centimetre. But after a few more days----a few more mealtimes----even that feat was accomplished. A time came when he could do it six times running. He began to grow actually proud of his body, and to cherish an intermittent belief that his face also was growing back to normal. Only when he chanced to put his hand on his bald scalp did he remember the seamed, ruined face that had looked back at him out of the mirror.

"We told them: Either you tell us you are really for sale, or we turn to other options that may make it difficult to come back to this later," Mr. Niel said, referring to his attempt to buy France's No. 3 telecom company, Bouygues SA EN.FR -3.74%  's Bouygues Telecom.

His mind grew more active. He sat down on the plank bed, his back against the wall and the slate on his knees, and set to work deliberately at the task of re-educating himself.

On Thursday, the French billionaire made good on his threat.

August 1, 2014.

Gaza Truce in Tatters as Hamas, Israelis Clash

Chapter 4

He was much better. He was growing fatter and stronger every day, if it was proper to speak of days.

A cease-fire meant to last three days and lead to talks on a lasting peace in the Gaza Strip collapsed Friday as heavy fighting erupted between Israeli forces and Hamas.

The white light and the humming sound were the same as ever, but the cell was a little more comfortable than the others he had been in. There was a pillow and a mattress on the plank bed, and a stool to sit on. They had given him a bath, and they allowed him to wash himself fairly frequently in a tin basin. They even gave him warm water to wash with. They had given him new underclothes and a clean suit of overalls. They had dressed his varicose ulcer with soothing ointment. They had pulled out the remnants of his teeth and given him a new set of dentures.

The Israeli military said a suicide bomber blew himself up as its forces were trying to plug up Hamas tunnels near the southern Gaza city of Rafah, and an Israeli soldier was missing and may have been captured during the ensuing clash.

Weeks or months must have passed. It would have been possible now to keep count of the passage of time, if he had felt any interest in doing so, since he was being fed at what appeared to be regular intervals. He was getting, he judged, three meals in the twenty-four hours; sometimes he wondered dimly whether he was getting them by night or by day. The food was surprisingly good, with meat at every third meal. Once there was even a packet of cigarettes. He had no matches, but the never-speaking guard who brought his food would give him a light. The first time he tried to smoke it made him sick, but he persevered, and spun the packet out for a long time, smoking half a cigarette after each meal.

Gaza's Health Ministry said Israeli tank fire killed four Palestinians in the fighting, the Associated Press reported.

July 31, 2014.

U.S. Energy Firms Rewarded With Tax Deferrals

The peculiar reverence for O’Brien, which nothing seemed able to destroy, flooded Winston’s heart again. How intelligent, he thought, how intelligent! Never did O’Brien fail to understand what was said to him. Anyone else on earth would have answered promptly that he HAD betrayed Julia. For what was there that they had not screwed out of him under the torture? He had told them everything he knew about her, her habits, her character, her past life; he had confessed in the most trivial detail everything that had happened at their meetings, all that he had said to her and she to him, their black-market meals, their adulteries, their vague plottings against the Party----everything. And yet, in the sense in which he intended the word, he had not betrayed her. He had not stopped loving her; his feelings towards her had remained the same. O’Brien had seen what he meant without the need for explanation.

The U.S. energy boom is producing a little-noticed side effect: American oil and gas companies are paying less in federal income taxes.

"Tell me," he said, "how soon will they shoot me?"

Energy companies are spending billions of dollars a year to drill in shale formations across the country, sending the nation's daily oil output up by almost 50% in just the past few years. Techniques like hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, which make it possible to tap petroleum in these new fields, make each well cost millions of dollars.

"It might be a long time," said O’Brien. "You are a difficult case. But don’t give up hope. Everyone is cured sooner or later. In the end we shall shoot you."

All that spending has allowed drillers to take advantage of incentives in the tax code for drilling and capital expenditures, deferring billions of dollars in income tax.

July 30, 2014.

Movie Film, at Death's Door, Gets a Reprieve

Winston had stopped weeping, though the tears were still oozing out of his eyes. He looked up at O’Brien.

Faced with the possible extinction of the material that made Hollywood famous, a coalition of studios is close to a deal to keep Eastman Kodak Co. KODK -2.97%  in the business of producing movie film.

"I have not betrayed Julia," he said.

The negotiations----secret until now----are expected to result in an arrangement where studios promise to buy a set quantity of film for the next several years, even though most movies and television shows these days are shot on digital video.

O’Brien looked down at him thoughtfully. "No," he said; "no; that is perfectly true. You have not betrayed Julia."

Kodak's new chief executive, Jeff Clarke, said the pact will allow his company to forestall the closure of its Rochester, N.Y., film manufacturing plant, a move that had been under serious consideration. Kodak's motion-picture film sales have plummeted 96% since 2006, from 12.4 billion linear feet to an estimated 449 million this year. With the exit of competitor Fujifilm Corp. last year, Kodak is the only major company left producing motion-picture film.

July 29, 2014.

To Unplug on Vacation, Your Own Tech Can Help

"No, Winston, you reduced yourself to it. This is what you accepted when you set yourself up against the Party. It was all contained in that first act. Nothing has happened that you did not foresee."

I wanted to write this column over my vacation last week, but my laptop stopped me. "Your time is up," it flashed after 30 minutes online. Begrudgingly I closed the lid, sipped my coffee, looked out at the sailboats on the ocean, then opened a real printed paperback book. I was having a tech timeout.

He paused, and then went on:

I've never been good at unplugging----not from work, not from social media, not from any screen. Of course, I've heard the advice: Disconnecting is good for the mind, body and soul. Yes, but in my guide to Zen, so is aimlessly scrolling through Twitter TWTR +1.74%  and Instagram and having zero unread emails.

"We have beaten you, Winston. We have broken you up. You have seen what your body is like. Your mind is in the same state. I do not think there can be much pride left in you. You have been kicked and flogged and insulted, you have screamed with pain, you have rolled on the floor in your own blood and vomit. You have whimpered for mercy, you have betrayed everybody and everything. Can you think of a single degradation that has not happened to you?"

This summer I vowed to myself and my family to spend more of my vacation and weekend time with the screens off. I didn't promise to go cold turkey. Our phones are so core to our personal lives, that almost seems impossible. Instead, ironically, the best way I found to control myself and my screen time was to use the devices I was trying to take a break from.

July 28, 2014.

In Argentina, Mix of Money and Politics Stirs Intrigue Around Kirchner

Winston began to dress himself with slow stiff movements. Until now he had not seemed to notice how thin and weak he was. Only one thought stirred in his mind: that he must have been in this place longer than he had imagined. Then suddenly as he fixed the miserable rags round himself a feeling of pity for his ruined body overcame him. Before he knew what he was doing he had collapsed on to a small stool that stood beside the bed and burst into tears. He was aware of his ugliness, his gracelessness, a bundle of bones in filthy underclothes sitting weeping in the harsh white light: but he could not stop himself. O’Brien laid a hand on his shoulder, almost kindly.

RIO GALLEGOS, Argentina----During the 11 years that Argentine President Cristina Kirchner and her husband Néstor Kirchner have dominated national politics, they accumulated a small fortune.

"It will not last for ever," he said. "You can escape from it whenever you choose. Everything depends on yourself."

Between 2003, when Mr. Kirchner was elected president, and 2010, when he died, the couple's net worth rose from $2.5 million to $17.7 million, according to their annual filings with the federal anticorruption office. A lot of people in Argentina want to know where that money came from.

"You did it!" sobbed Winston. "You reduced me to this state."

A string of judicial inquiries have roiled national politics by calling attention to the business dealings of top politicians and their associates. In late June, Vice President Amado Boudou was indicted on a charge of bribery and influence peddling related to the takeover of a bankrupt money-printing firm. A former transportation secretary was indicted in April on charges of illicit enrichment. Both have denied wrongdoing. Two years ago, a former economy minister was convicted of obstructing an investigation into a bag of cash found in her office bathroom.

July 27, 2014.

How the U.S. Stumbled Into the Drone Era

"Look at the condition you are in!" he said. "Look at this filthy grime all over your body. Look at the dirt between your toes. Look at that disgusting running sore on your leg. Do you know that you stink like a goat? Probably you have ceased to notice it. Look at your emaciation. Do you see? I can make my thumb and forefinger meet round your bicep. I could snap your neck like a carrot. Do you know that you have lost twenty-five kilograms since you have been in our hands? Even your hair is coming out in handfuls. Look!" He plucked at Winston’s head and brought away a tuft of hair. "Open your mouth. Nine, ten, eleven teeth left. How many had you when you came to us? And the few you have left are dropping out of your head. Look here!"

On Sept. 7, 2000, in the waning days of the Clinton administration, a U.S. Predator drone flew over Afghanistan for the first time. The unmanned, unarmed plane buzzed over Tarnak Farms, a major al Qaeda camp. When U.S. analysts later pored over video footage from this maiden voyage, they were struck by the image of a commandingly tall man clad in white robes. CIA analysts later concluded that he was Osama bin Laden.

He seized one of Winston’s remaining front teeth between his powerful thumb and forefinger. A twinge of pain shot through Winston’s jaw. O’Brien had wrenched the loose tooth out by the roots. He tossed it across the cell.

From that first mission, the drone program has grown into perhaps the most prominent instrument of U.S. counterterrorism policy—and, for many in the Muslim world, a synonym for American callousness and arrogance. The U.S. has used drones to support ground troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and, particularly under President Barack Obama, to hammer the high command of al Qaeda. A recent study by the Stimson Center, a think tank in Washington, D.C., estimates that U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan have killed 2,000 to 4,000 people. Other countries are trying to get into the act, including Iran, which U.S. officials say has flown drones over Iraq during the current crisis there.

"You are rotting away," he said; "you are falling to pieces. What are you? A bag of filth. Now turn around and look into that mirror again. Do you see that thing facing you? That is the last man. If you are human, that is humanity. Now put your clothes on again."

Drones seem to be everywhere these days, buzzing into civilian life and even pop culture. French players complained before the World Cup that a mysterious drone-borne camera had spied on their training sessions. Amazon owner Jeff Bezos hopes to use drones for faster home delivery. Tom Cruise starred last summer as a futuristic drone repairman in the sci-fi thriller "Oblivion," and Captain America himself faced down lethal super-drones in this spring's "The Winter Soldier." Hollywood is even using drones in real life, helping to film such tricky scenes as the chase early in the 2012 James Bond caper "Skyfall," when Daniel Craig as 007 races across the rooftops of Istanbul.

July 26, 2014.

Smart Aid for the World's Poor

He had stopped because he was frightened. A bowed, grey-coloured, skeleton-like thing was coming towards him. Its actual appearance was frightening, and not merely the fact that he knew it to be himself. He moved closer to the glass. The creature’s face seemed to be protruded, because of its bent carriage. A forlorn, jailbird’s face with a nobby forehead running back into a bald scalp, a crooked nose, and battered-looking cheekbones above which his eyes were fierce and watchful. The cheeks were seamed, the mouth had a drawn-in look. Certainly it was his own face, but it seemed to him that it had changed more than he had changed inside. The emotions it registered would be different from the ones he felt. He had gone partially bald. For the first moment he had thought that he had gone grey as well, but it was only the scalp that was grey. Except for his hands and a circle of his face, his body was grey all over with ancient, ingrained dirt. Here and there under the dirt there were the red scars of wounds, and near the ankle the varicose ulcer was an inflamed mass with flakes of skin peeling off it. But the truly frightening thing was the emaciation of his body. The barrel of the ribs was as narrow as that of a skeleton: the legs had shrunk so that the knees were thicker than the thighs. He saw now what O’Brien had meant about seeing the side view. The curvature of the spine was astonishing. The thin shoulders were hunched forward so as to make a cavity of the chest, the scraggy neck seemed to be bending double under the weight of the skull. At a guess he would have said that it was the body of a man of sixty, suffering from some malignant disease.

In September next year, the United Nations plans to choose a list of development goals for the world to meet by the year 2030. What aspirations should it set for this global campaign to improve the lot of the poor, and how should it choose them?

"You have thought sometimes,’ said O’Brien, ‘that my face----the face of a member of the Inner Party----looks old and worn. What do you think of your own face?"

In answering that question, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and his advisers are confronted with a task that they often avoid: setting priorities. It is no good saying that we would like peace and prosperity to reach every corner of the world. And it is no good listing hundreds of targets. Money for foreign aid, though munificent, is limited. What are the things that matter most, and what would be nice to achieve but matter less?

He seized Winston’s shoulder and spun him round so that he was facing him.

The origin of this quest for global priorities goes back to 2000, when Mr. Ban's predecessor, Kofi Annan, picked a set of "Millennium Development Goals," eight challenges to be met by 2015, which were adopted by world leaders. Although some of these goals were woolly, the very brevity of the list and the deadline itself meant that they really did catch the world's imagination and force the aid industry to be more selective.

July 25, 2014.

After Flight 17 Crash, Agony, Debris and Heartbreak in Ukraine Villages

"You are the last man," said O’Brien. "You are the guardian of the human spirit. You shall see yourself as you are. Take off your clothes."

PETROPAVLIVKA, Ukraine----Even before Malaysia Airlines 3786.KU -2.22%  Flight 17 was shot down, the war raging between Ukraine and pro-Russia rebels created crushing challenges for the mayor of this small, worn-down village.

Winston undid the bit of string that held his overalls together. The zip fastener had long since been wrenched out of them. He could not remember whether at any time since his arrest he had taken off all his clothes at one time. Beneath the overalls his body was looped with filthy yellowish rags, just recognizable as the remnants of underclothes. As he slid them to the ground he saw that there was a three-sided mirror at the far end of the room. He approached it, then stopped short. An involuntary cry had broken out of him.

Natalya Voloshina couldn't pay municipal salaries, pensions or energy bills because money from the central government in Kiev was frozen. The coal mine where her husband and high-school sweetheart works largely shut down. The fighting was creeping closer.

"Go on," said O’Brien. "Stand between the wings of the mirror. You shall see the side view as well."

Then the plane crashed. The second-row cabin's overhead compartment is in a tree across from the village hall----and suitcases and clothes are in backyards and gardens of square-windowed cottages.

July 23, 2014.

Facebook Results Keep Surging on Mobile Ad Growth

O’Brien did not speak. Two other voices were speaking. After a moment Winston recognized one of them as his own. It was a soundtrack of the conversation he had had with O’Brien, on the night when he had enrolled himself in the Brotherhood. He heard himself promising to lie, to steal, to forge, to murder, to encourage drug-taking and prostitution, to disseminate venereal diseases, to throw vitriol in a child’s face. O’Brien made a small impatient gesture, as though to say that the demonstration was hardly worth making. Then he turned a switch and the voices stopped.

Facebook Inc. FB +2.92%  showed no signs of slowing down Wednesday, posting a second-quarter profit that more than doubled while wringing more mobile-advertising dollars from its users.

"Get up from that bed," he said.

Results easily beat expectations, pushing shares up almost 4% after hours.

The bonds had loosened themselves. Winston lowered himself to the floor and stood up unsteadily.

Revenue increased 61% as advertisers continued to pour money into the social network's deep well of users and unparalleled stockpile of personal information. This is especially the case on mobile devices, where users are gravitating in large numbers. Mobile-advertising accounted for 62% of advertising revenue in the quarter, up from 59% in the first quarter and 41% a year ago.

July 20, 2014.

U.S. Points to Russian Missile Connection in Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 Crash

"Yes."

New U.S. intelligence assessments indicate that Moscow likely provided pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine with sophisticated antiaircraft systems in recent days, matching evidence put forward by Ukraine and bolstering charges that Russia was the source of the weapon that shot down Malaysia Airlines 3786.KU -11.11%  Flight 17 this week, killing 298.

"If you are a man, Winston, you are the last man. Your kind is extinct; we are the inheritors. Do you understand that you are ALONE? You are outside history, you are non-existent." His manner changed and he said more harshly: "And you consider yourself morally superior to us, with our lies and our cruelty?"

U.S. officials say they now suspect that Russia supplied the rebels with multiple SA-11 antiaircraft systems by smuggling them into eastern Ukraine with other military equipment, including tanks.

"Yes, I consider myself superior."

Further, U.S. officials believe the systems were moved back across the border into Russia following the shoot down of the jetliner, buttressing what Ukraine charges is an attempt by the rebels and their Russian advisers to cover up their involvement in the crash.

July 18, 2014.

The Innocent Lives of Flight 17: Parents, Children, Lovers, Friends

"Then what is it, this principle that will defeat us?"

AMSTERDAM----Cor Schilder woke early Tuesday to help his longtime girlfriend, Neeltje Tol, open her flower shop one last day before the couple headed to Bali.

"I don’t know. The spirit of Man."

Ms. Tol asked the shopkeeper next door to collect the mail while she was away, and then left a note on her store window. "Postman, please deliver the mail next door to Radio Jump we are on holiday." (Follow the latest updates on the Malaysia Airlines crash in Ukraine.)

"And do you consider yourself a man?"

Mr. Schilder, who worked at a landfill and played drums in a band, posted on Facebook FB +3.03%  a photograph he took Thursday of the Boeing BA +1.40%  777 that was Malaysia Airlines 3786.KU -11.11%  Flight 17. "Should it disappear," he wrote, tongue-in-cheek, "this is what it looked like." Then he and Ms. Tol boarded.

July 17, 2014.

Malaysia Airlines Plane Was Hit by Surface-to-Air Missile, U.S. Officials Say

"No. I believe it. I KNOW that you will fail. There is something in the universe----I don’t know, some spirit, some principle----that you will never overcome."

A Malaysia Airlines 3786.KU -11.11%  plane carrying 283 passengers and 15 crew crashed Thursday in the battle-torn east Ukraine region of Donetsk, where U.S. intelligence agencies say it was struck by a ground-to-air missile.

"Do you believe in God, Winston?"

The U.S. agencies are divided over whether the missile was launched by the Russian military or by pro-Russia separatist rebels, who officials say lack the expertise on their own to bring down a commercial airline in midflight.

"No."

"All roads lead to the Russians to some degree," said a U.S. official. (Follow the latest updates on the Malaysia Airlines crash in Ukraine.)

July 14, 2014.

Obama Contends With Arc of Instability Unseen Since '70s

"We control life, Winston, at all its levels. You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us. But we create human nature. Men are infinitely malleable. Or perhaps you have returned to your old idea that the proletarians or the slaves will arise and overthrow us. Put it out of your mind. They are helpless, like the animals. Humanity is the Party. The others are outside----irrelevant."

WASHINGTON----A convergence of security crises is playing out around the globe, from the Palestinian territories and Iraq to Ukraine and the South China Sea, posing a serious challenge to President Barack Obama's foreign policy and reflecting a world in which U.S. global power seems increasingly tenuous.

"I don’t care. In the end they will beat you. Sooner or later they will see you for what you are, and then they will tear you to pieces."

The breadth of global instability now unfolding hasn't been seen since the late 1970s, U.S. security strategists say, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, revolutionary Islamists took power in Iran, and Southeast Asia was reeling in the wake of the U.S. exit from Vietnam.

"Do you see any evidence that that is happening? Or any reason why it should?"

In the past month alone, the U.S. has faced twin civil wars in Iraq and Syria, renewed fighting between Israel and the Palestinians, an electoral crisis in Afghanistan and ethnic strife on the edge of Russia, in Ukraine.

July 12, 2014.

Will a Wounded Girl Be Saved?

"Nonsense. You are under the impression that hatred is more exhausting than love. Why should it be? And if it were, what difference would that make? Suppose that we choose to wear ourselves out faster. Suppose that we quicken the tempo of human life till men are senile at thirty. Still what difference would it make? Can you not understand that the death of the individual is not death? The party is immortal."

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan----Keyan Riley answered the phone and reached for his green, clothbound notebook. He began scrawling notes about the two Afghan girls whose lives had just fallen into his hands. "5 yr." the doctor wrote of the younger girl. "40 mm grenade."

As usual, the voice had battered Winston into helplessness. Moreover he was in dread that if he persisted in his disagreement O’Brien would twist the dial again. And yet he could not keep silent. Feebly, without arguments, with nothing to support him except his inarticulate horror of what O’Brien had said, he returned to the attack.

On the other end of the line was a surgeon from a Special Forces outpost in the Afghan hinterlands. The girls had accidentally detonated a discarded grenade. The younger one had chest wounds; the second, a six-year-old, was pierced by shrapnel in the abdomen.

"I don’t know----I don’t care. Somehow you will fail. Something will defeat you. Life will defeat you."

Could Dr. Riley send a medevac helicopter, the surgeon asked, to take the girls to the U.S. hospital at Bagram?