I got this emailed to me today and thought it was absolutely true. Enjoy.
Here’s a language lesson in Newspeak which I’ve excerpted from Eduardo Galeano’s *Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World”
“Today, there are certain thinks one can’t say in the face of public opinion:
* capitalism wears the stage name “market economy”
* imperialism is called “globalization”
* the victims of imperialism are called “developing countries”, much as a dwarf might be called a “child”
* opportunism is called “pragmatism”
* treason is called “realism”
* poor people are called “low-income people”
* the right of bosses to lay off workers with neither severance nor explanation is called “a flexible labour market”
* official rhetoric acknowledges women’s rights among those of “minorities,” as if the masculine half of humanity were the majority
* torture is called “illegal compulsion” or “physical and psychological pressure”
* people annihiliated in military operations aren’t dead: those killed in battle are “casualties,” and civilians who get it are “collateral damage”
* in 1995, when France set off nuclear tests in the South Pacific, the French Ambassador to New Zealand declared, “I dont like that word “bomb”. They aren’t bombs. They’re exploding artifacts”
* “Dignity” is what the Chilean dictatorship called one of its concentration camps, while “Liberty” was the largest jail of the Uruguayan dictatorship.
* “Peace and Justice” is the name of the paramilitary group that in 1997 shot forty-five peasants, nearly all of them women and children, in the back as they prayed in the town church in Acteal, Chiapas, Mexico.
Will
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