Weasel words are the words of the powerful and the treacherous and the unfaithful, spies, assassins and thieves. Bureaucrats and ideologues love them. Tyrants cannot do without them. The Newspeak of George Orwells 1984 is an invention, but also a satire on real states such as the Soviet Union where death from starvation and abuse in slave camps was recorded by officials as "failure of the heart muscle" Were any five words ever more melancholy than this?".....Don Watson (author of Weasel words and Death watch)
