Adonis Diaries

Who is controlling the Present? Controlled the Past? Is set to control the Future?

In 1948, author George Orwell, in an anticipatory vision, published “1984“.  Orwell wrote:

“Who controls the Present has the control of the Past; and who manages to control the Past can control the Future”

In the 10th century, western Europe civilization was far behind in civilization, culture, and knowledge compared to the Arabic, Indian, and Chinese civilizations.  Europe had the foresight of instituting this routine of keeping detailed records of all political, and economic transactions.

Officials, anywhere they were assigned, had to send detailed reports of daily transactions, behavior of the people, and communicating the existing culture of the indigenous communities.

Archives were centralized, kept secured and well maintained, and opened to the public for further investigation and analysis of trends and changes.

This habit is currently applicable:  Secret files and reports are made public after a set period for researchers to dig in and dust off the manuscripts and mine old pieces of intelligence.

Most other civilizations barely kept archives on topics related to the common people and the general interests. Their Past is almost forgotten.  What remains are altered customs and traditions…

For example, if the new Arab Empire didn’t translate Greek works, we would never had any Greek civilization to ponder upon or try valiantly referring to Greek culture as European sources for democracy, liberty, freedom of opinions, and ….

Western Europe controlled their present, and consequently, managed to control their Past by interpreting what suited their present conditions.  Currently, many ethnic minorities, even those with a written language, are being assimilated within the dominant culture.  Why?

It is expensive and not readily profitable to encourage people to write and publish in their own language: Lacking a large pool of dedicated readers to support conserving the memory of the present.

It is also a daunting task to find academics willing to learn and translate original works and manuscripts in minority languages.

To the question “Have you dreams for the future?”, asked by Hans Ulrich Obrist to Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, Assange replied:

“What I am dreaming of is starting to happen. my project is that every published digitized documents, articles, intellectual work, musical works, movies, videos, pieces of intelligence in social platforms…carries a particular name, (a sort of alphanumeric code), a system of indexing, so that any editing or revision or modification in any document will necessarily receive another name and keep track of the original version…This is one of my dreams for ensuring the continuation of this Tower of Babel, of pure knowledge…”

Why Assange is having this daydream project?

For example, since the advent of digitized  technology, many documents have been tampered with, if not literally killed, destroyed, and removed from public scrutiny.  As if this piece of knowledge and intelligence has never existed.

For example, a court order or an injunction to retire an article will result in “page not found” on the internet if you search for a specific article including “banned” keywords.

In 2008, an Iraqi billionaire during Saddam Hussein regime, named Nadhim Auchi, hired the British law firm of Carter-Ruck to attack in justice dailies that published articles in 2003 related to his indictment in France to 15 months of prison term in the affair of Elf.

Why Auchi wanted these articles retired from public scrutiny?

It turned out that Auchi had contributed $3.5 million to President Obama Presidential campaign via Tony Rezko.  Rezko was indicted for corruption in 2008.  Consequently, the British court ordered the published article retired from circulation.  Eight articles were deleted, among them 3 in the The Guardian and one in The Daily Telegraph.

For example, if WikiLeaks didn’t publish the 400, 000 leaked documents, the information on the Task Force 373 with order to assassinate 2,000 individuals on a list, would have certainly be erased for ever… Examples of killing documents abound, even during ancient times.

Mind you that neuro sciences have established that the area of memory of the past is the same that is activated when you plan for any project.

No memory, no good potential for planning out the future 

Note 1: You may read on banned manuscripts https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2009/04/19/famous-manuscripts-banned-by-the-vatican-part-2/

Note 2:  European adventurers since the 16th centuries left a wealth of information on countries they traveled too, using any means, adding hand drawn pictures and hand drawn maps…