Home » Posts tagged '1984' (Page 3)

Tag Archives: 1984

It’s not breaking news that the internet censors have been hard at work to silence voices that are in opposition to the mainstream media agenda. But after the influence that social media had on the last election, things are going to a whole new level. The internet, that last bastion of truly free speech, isn’t very free anymore.

We’re watching the evolution of Newspeak right before our very eyes as the internet strives to silence any voices that oppose their carefully crafted stories of how guns are bad, there are 291 genders, and anyone who isn’t a liberal is an evil Nazi racist.

If you aren’t familiar with the term “Newspeak,” it’s from George Orwell’s prophetic novel, 1984.

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by eactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. . . . The process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for commiting thought-crime. It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won’t be any need even for that. . . . Has it ever occcured to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?” (source)

YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook have all been participating in a full-on purge of not just conservative voices, but the voices of anyone who is loudly anti-establishment. Any internet personality who is pro-gun or anti-socialism can fully expect to be censored. If you go against the agenda, you will be silenced.

Apparently, we have become too discerning for their liking and we can’t be trusted to hear both sides of the story and decide what seems most accurate.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Survey Find Americans’ Views on Free Speech is a Whole Bunch of Crazy

October 14, 2017

Survey Find Americans’ Views on Free Speech is a Whole Bunch of Crazy

The biggest thing this survey proves is that Orwellian double-speak is working.

If you are unfamiliar, doublespeak is a term from the novel 1984. It is speech intentionally meant to confuse, or obscure reality.

What does free speech mean? What is hate speech? And what laws currently or should exist in regards to speaking freely?

The answers from Americans prove just how successful the media and politicians have been in making Americans less grounded than a satellite.

The powers that be have successfully confused and obscured any hint of rationality in beliefs. There seems to be little method and all madness. People simply make up their minds emotionally, instead of thinking critically. And that is how those in power like it.

When people behave emotionally, they are more easy to control. A rational belief would be something along the lines of Evelyn Beatrice Hall’s “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”

An irrational belief would be that anything that offends you should not be called free speech.

Those who believe the latter fail to understand that practically anything can be considered offensive to someone. Under those circumstances, politicians could limit any kind of critical speech, claiming it promotes violence, offends, or is hate speech.

Holding Two Contradictory beliefs

The survey found:

An overwhelming majority of Americans believe that “it would be hard to ban hate speech because people can’t agree what speech is hateful,” …

Yet a majority of Americans and a supermajority of African Americans believe that “society can prohibit hate speech and still protect free speech.” (To complicate matters, a quarter of Americans, 38 percent of African Americans, and 45 percent of Latinos erroneously believe it is already illegal to make a racist statement in public.)

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The NYT’s Yellow Journalism on Russia

September 16, 2017

The NYT’s Yellow Journalism on Russia

Exclusive: The New York Times’ descent into yellow journalism over Russia recalls the sensationalism of Hearst and Pulitzer leading to the Spanish-American War, but the risks to humanity are much greater now, writes Robert Parry.

Reading The New York Times these days is like getting a daily dose of the “Two Minutes Hate” as envisioned in George Orwell’s 1984,except applied to America’s new/old enemy Russia. Even routine international behavior, such as Russia using fictitious names for potential adversaries during a military drill, is transformed into something weird and evil.

The New York Times building in Manhattan. (Photo credit: Robert Parry)

In the snide and alarmist style that the Times now always applies to Russia, reporter Andrew Higgins wrote – referring to a fictitious war-game “enemy” – “The country does not exist, so it has neither an army nor any real citizens, though it has acquired a feisty following of would-be patriots online. Starting on Thursday, however, the fictional state, Veishnoriya, a distillation of the Kremlin’s darkest fears about the West, becomes the target of the combined military might of Russia and its ally Belarus.”

This snarky front-page story in Thursday’s print editions also played into the Times’ larger narrative about Russia as a disseminator of “fake news.” You see the Russkies are even inventing “fictional” enemies to bully. Hah-hah-hah! The article was entitled, “Russia’s War Games With Fake Enemies Cause Real Alarm.”

Of course, the U.S. and its allies also conduct war games against fictitious enemies, but you wouldn’t know that from reading the Times. For instance, U.S. war games in 2015 substituted five made-up states – Ariana, Atropia, Donovia, Gorgas and Limaria – for nations near the Caucasus mountains along the borders of Russia and Iran.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Welcome to 1984: Big Brother Google now watching your every political move

September 11, 2017

Welcome to 1984: Big Brother Google now watching your every political move

Google has taken the unprecedented step of burying material, mostly from websites on the political right, that it has deemed to be inappropriate. The problem, however, is that the world’s largest search engine is a left-leaning company with an ax to grind.

Let’s face it, deep down in our heart of hearts we knew the honeymoon wouldn’t last forever. Our willingness to place eternal faith in an earth-straddling company that oversees the largest collection of information ever assembled was doomed to end in a bitter divorce from the start. After all, each corporation, just like humans, has their own political proclivities, and Google is certainly no exception. But we aren’t talking about your average car company here.

The first sign Google would eventually become more of a political liability than a public utility was revealed in 2005 when CEO Eric Schmidt (who is now executive chairman of Alphabet, Inc, Google’s parent company) sat down with interviewer Charlie Rose, who asked Schmidt to explain “where the future of search is going.”

Schmidt’s response should have triggered alarm bells across the free world.

“Well, when you use Google, do you get more than one answer,” Schmidt asked rhetorically, before answering deceptively. “Of course you do. Well, that’s a bug. We have more bugs per second in the world. We should be able to give you the right answer just once… and we should never be wrong.”

Really?

Think about that for a moment. Schmidt believes, counter-intuitively, that getting multiple possible choices for any one Google query is not the desirable prospect it should be (aren’t consumers always in search of more variety?), but rather a “bug” that should be duly squashed underfoot.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Prisons of Pleasure or Pain: Huxley’s “Brave New World” vs. Orwell’s “1984”

April 22, 2017

Prisons of Pleasure or Pain: Huxley’s “Brave New World” vs. Orwell’s “1984”

Definition of UTOPIA

1: an imaginary and indefinitely remote place

2: a place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions

3: an impractical scheme for social improvement

Definition of DYSTOPIA

1: an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives

2: literature: anti-utopia

– Merriam-Webster.com

Many Americans today would quite possibly consider Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” to be a utopia of sorts with its limitless drugs, guilt-free sex, perpetual entertainment and a genetically engineered society designed for maximum economic efficiency and social harmony. Conversely, most free people today would view Orwell’s “1984” as a dystopian nightmare, and shudder to contemplate the terrifying existence under the iron fist of “Big Brother”; the ubiquitous figurehead of a perfectly totalitarian government.

Although both men were of British descent, Huxley was nine years older than Orwell and published Brave New World in 1932, seventeen years before 1984 was released in 1949. Both books are widely considered classics and are included in the Modern Library’s top ten great novels of the twentieth century.

Brave New World

Aldous Huxley was born to academic parents and he was the grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, a famous biologist and an enthusiastic proponent of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution who was known as “Darwin’s Bulldog”. Huxley’s own father had a well-equipped botanical laboratory where young Aldous began his education. Given the Huxley family’s appreciation for science, it makes perfect sense that Brave New World began in what is called the “Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre” where human beings are artificially grown and genetically predestined into five societal castes consisting of: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon.

Initially, the story centers on Bernard Marx, who is a slightly genetically flawed Alpha Plus psychologist with an inferiority complex due to his short stature.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How to Drain the Deep Swamp

March 9, 2017

How to Drain the Deep Swamp

Pablo Picasso Girl Before A Mirror 1932 Obviously, like hopefully many people, I’ve been following the WikiLeaks CIA revelations, and closely. It’s too early for too many conclusions, if only because WikiLeaks has announced much more will flow from that same pipeline. But one thing is already clear: the CIA is -still- a club that sees enemies behind every tree, and behind every TV set too. Which is not as obvious a world view as it may seem; it’s just something we’ve become used to.

Moreover, as we see time and again, organizations like the CIA and NATO have no qualms about ‘creating’ enemies if they are in short supply. The flavor du jour has now been, for years, Russia, but don’t be surprised if another one is cultivated alongside it. ISIS, China, North Korea, plenty of options, and plenty of media more than willing to aid the cultivation process. It’s a well-oiled machine geared towards making something out of nothing, a machine very adept at making you believe anything it wants you to.

In this way, our friends can become our enemies, and our enemies our friends. What gets lost in translation is that this way in reality we become our own worst enemies. While the upper and most secretive layers of society, filled with folk of questionable psychological constitution -sociopaths and psychopaths-, get to chase their dreams of wealth and power, those who try to live normal decent lives are, for that very purpose, increasingly subjected to poverty, misery and fear. As our economies decline further, this will only get worse.

Who needs your -conscious- vote or voice if these can be easily manipulated? Or do you not think you’re being manipulated? How many of you, American or European, think Russia is an actual threat to you?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

10 Years (Or Less): Orwell’s Vision Coming True

July 10, 2016

10 Years (Or Less): Orwell’s Vision Coming True

orwell-map

In the wake of all of the Brexit vote, a chilling blurb made headlines and it went largely unnoticed and uncommented upon. The line was couched within comments made by Boris Titov, an economic policy maker for Russia’s Kremlin. Actually all of the following merits attention, but one line stands out. The source for this excerpt is a Facebook post by Titov. Here it is:

“…it seems it has happened — UK out!!! In my opinion, the most important long-term consequence of all this is that the exit will take Europe away from the anglo-saxons, meaning from the USA. It’s not the independence of Britain from Europe, but the independence of Europe from the USA. And it’s not long until a united Eurasia — about 10 years.”

This is a very revealing post to show how unfavorably the past 50 years of post-World War II American imperialism has been viewed. The tipping point, as mentioned in a previous articlewas the outright 180-degree that George H.W. Bush pulled on Mikhail Gorbachev: the promise of NATO membership upon reunification of the two Germany’s and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and then not fulfilling that promise.

The American corporate interests inserted themselves, as the communist government shattered, leaving in its wake oligarchs, the Russian mafia, and a “Wild West” environment within Russia proper and the ex-SSR’s, the former Soviet satellite nations. A tremendous amount of chaos occurred for a decade that was both enabled and further fostered by the United States. The perception in Russia even before the Soviet Union came into being was that Russians were in an economic war with Great Britain, and the United States was looked upon as an “extension” of Britain: a country with language, law, and cultural parallels,especially in terms of expansion.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Welcome to 1984

May 16, 2016

Welcome to 1984

Protester Bob Bowes, of Somerville, Mass., displays an American flag featuring corporate logos outside a meeting of U.S. elites in Boston. (Steven Senne / AP)

The artifice of corporate totalitarianism has been exposed. The citizens, disgusted by the lies and manipulation, have turned on the political establishment. But the game is not over. Corporate power has within its arsenal potent forms of control. It will use them. As the pretense of democracy is unmasked, the naked fist of state repression takes its place. America is about—unless we act quickly—to get ugly.

“Our political system is decaying,” said Ralph Nader when I reached him by phone in Washington, D.C. “It’s on the way to gangrene. It’s reaching a critical mass of citizen revolt.”

This moment in American history is what Antonio Gramsci called the “interregnum”—the period when a discredited regime is collapsing but a new one has yet to take its place. There is no guarantee that what comes next will be better. But this space, which will close soon, offers citizens the final chance to embrace a new vision and a new direction.

This vision will only be obtained through mass acts of civic mobilization and civil disobedience across the country. Nader, who sees this period in American history as crucial, perhaps the last opportunity to save us from tyranny, is planning to rally the left for three days, from May 23 to May 26 at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., in what he is calling “Breaking Through Power” or “Citizen’s Revolutionary Week.” He is bringing to the capital scores of activists and community leaders to speak, organize and attempt to mobilize to halt our slide into despotism.

“The two parties can implode politically,” Nader said. “They can be divided by different candidates and super PACs. But this doesn’t implode their paymasters.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

5 things George Orwell understood

April 24, 2016

5 things George Orwell understood

Famed author implores us to be vigilant, and to keep the faiths of decency, tolerance and humanity

George Orwell at the BBC in 1941. The insights of his books and many other writings still resonate today.

George Orwell at the BBC in 1941. The insights of his books and many other writings still resonate today. (Penguin Books India)

Related Stories

“Big Brother is watching you” is George Orwell’s most famous line from his most famous book. But there’s so much more to the man who gave us terms like “doublethink,” “thoughtcrime” and “newspeak”; Orwell reminds us there’s a connection between clarity of language and truth.

That’s why he implores us to be vigilant, to be on guard for freedom, and to keep the faith: the triple faiths of decency, tolerance and humanity.

I’ve long been fascinated by Orwell and, in the summer of 1983, when it was still possible to meet people who knew him — from his first days to his final hours — I spent two hectic months in England, Scotland and Spain recording 75 interviews.

I made a total of 50 hours’ worth of recordings which, taken together, give a detailed and nuanced picture of a man who was one of the most influential writers of our time.

I included some — but by no means all — of this unique archive in George Orwell, a Radio Biography which aired on CBC Radio 1 on Jan. 1, 1984. Recently I went back into those original recordings, to bring out insights that had never been aired before, and created a new three-hour series for CBC Radio’s Ideas called The Orwell Tapes.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Letter from Europe

April 24, 2016

Letter from Europe

Dear Sir , Inside of 25 years I’ve observed the shift of the mass-media in Europe from somehow different and somehow independent /original and free as much the official media can be in this “democracy-capitalism” to a “European Media” which is absolutely identical and absolutely uniformity qua content, being different only the name of that media and the country language . Does not matter the language I read (English, Dutch, Romanian, French , Italian …) it is almost the same text, very badly translated from a general source, I suppose. The only “free” journal in the West it is “Le Monde Diplomatique” from France! Mass media in Europe is an Imperial Orthodoxy of an Orwellian informational terrorism in one absolute monotone monologue of one schizophrenic world. About your Dutch correspondent , he said the truth, but I would like to add that according to my experience a lot of Dutch people don’t agree with the Dutch gov. and Parliament, which are only a machine to repeat what USA/Israel and Bruxelles has to say ! The manipulation, brainwashing and the diktat of “political correctness” and “we know better, always” are the perfect picture of our political ruling class . It is sometime worst than some periods of Stalin proletcultism or Mao’s so called “cultural revolution”. Yes it is a Western democracy “cultural revolution” of His Majesty The LIE ! About anti- Russian propaganda, the insanity has reached the infinite! Even Shakespeare /Dostoevsky/Kafka and Cervantes are out of words to explain such insanity. To me as a doctor it is crystal clear that all politicians in West are really psycho-sociopaths. No chance left! I can say this because I was living 38 years on the other side of the Iron Curtain, I know perfectly all it was about in all former Communist Socialist systems, but sometime painfully I discovered that the Western democracy (if exists) is worst then that! Therefore I highly appreciate what are you doing. I would like to thank you and to all like you, trying to do something positive for this world.

Dystopian Fiction of Yesterday is the NWO of Tomorrow: “The Shift is Toward Totalitarianism”

March 30, 2016

Dystopian Fiction of Yesterday is the NWO of Tomorrow: “The Shift is Toward Totalitarianism”

1984

Many of the things that are happening this very moment have direct parallels in literature of the past. Whether it is an account such as the “Gulag Archipelago” by Solzhenitsyn or a work of “fiction” such as “1984” by George Orwell is irrelevant. Elements of the history or the storyline (regarding the former and the latter works) are now becoming thoroughly inculcated into the fabric of modern reality.

All of the measures taken by the Soviet Union to crush and control its population are beginning to manifest themselves today in the United States. The courts are “stacked” to reflect the decision of the regime and not to rule by law. The Military Industrial Complex contracts are still being shuffled, along with government policies that just happen to substantiate those business interests with kickbacks for all. Laws serve political and corporate interests, and the lawmakers themselves do not represent any of their constituents: they are self-serving thieves, selling out their country and its populace for money and power.

The police departments have (for all intents and purposes) been “federalized,” with budgets and marching orders becoming increasingly dependent upon federal and not local or state policies. Sheriffs who follow their appointed roles as duly-elected law enforcement officials upholding Constitutional guidelines are being “phased out” of existence. The changed demographics of “forced” insertions of illegal aliens and “refugees” into populations are rapidly negating the remainder of the two-party system to ensure that the Democratic party takes control ad infinitum.

Orwell envisioned it. His work is labeled a work of fiction, although all of the measures Oceania pursued are either currently in place in the United States or they’re being developed.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Where Does the Future Lie?

March 18, 2016

Where Does the Future Lie?

QUESTION: Are you more worried about a 1984 esque future or A Brave New World esque future?

Orwell_George ANSWER: Unfortunately, the two go hand in hand. George Orwell simply took the past and laid out what government ALWAYS gravitates toward – total control. We live in a delusion with our brains filled with propaganda. Over the years, I have encountered comments from people who ask, “Why would anyone want to live outside the USA? We are the greatest nation on earth!” I typically reply, “Have you ever traveled outside the country?” The response is telling: “No. What’s the point?”

Perhaps I am the doubting Thomas. I went through Checkpoint Charlie into East Germany before the wall fell because I really wanted to see what was true and what was false. You cannot just accept the indoctrination of society as it is systemic.

So what George Orwell wrote was not pure fiction; no more than “Star Wars” being based on nothing. “Star Wars” is the epic battle between the Republic and Imperialism that dominated the Roman period going into the 1st century AD. They just changed it to planets and updated the swords to light sabers. In the case of Orwell, he took history and postulated what would happen in a modern context. He was only off in terms of technology advancement.

So the bottom line is both will unfold. However, you cannot reach the second without causing pain with the first. With the NSA and socialism, you have seen terrorism used as the excuse to further the control of society so we cannot buy or sell anything ultimately without government approval. l.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The New Mind Control

March 4, 2016

The New Mind Control

The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence that can flip elections and manipulate everything we say, think and do

March 02, 2016 “Information Clearing House” – “Aeon” – Over the past century, more than a few great writers have expressed concern about humanity’s future. In The Iron Heel (1908), the American writer Jack London pictured a world in which a handful of wealthy corporate titans – the ‘oligarchs’ – kept the masses at bay with a brutal combination of rewards and punishments. Much of humanity lived in virtual slavery, while the fortunate ones were bought off with decent wages that allowed them to live comfortably – but without any real control over their lives.

In We (1924), the brilliant Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin, anticipating the excesses of the emerging Soviet Union, envisioned a world in which people were kept in check through pervasive monitoring. The walls of their homes were made of clear glass, so everything they did could be observed. They were allowed to lower their shades an hour a day to have sex, but both the rendezvous time and the lover had to be registered first with the state.

In Brave New World (1932), the British author Aldous Huxley pictured a near-perfect society in which unhappiness and aggression had been engineered out of humanity through a combination of genetic engineering and psychological conditioning. And in the much darker novel 1984 (1949), Huxley’s compatriot George Orwell described a society in which thought itself was controlled; in Orwell’s world, children were taught to use a simplified form of English called Newspeak in order to assure that they could never express ideas that were dangerous to society.

These are all fictional tales, to be sure, and in each the leaders who held the power used conspicuous forms of control that at least a few people actively resisted and occasionally overcame.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The new mind control

February 28, 2016

The new mind control

The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence that can flip elections and manipulate everything we say, think and do

Header essay 42 70635245

Photo by Corbis

Are search engines and social media sites manipulating the important decisions we make every day?

Over the past century, more than a few great writers have expressed concern about humanity’s future. In The Iron Heel (1908), the American writer Jack London pictured a world in which a handful of wealthy corporate titans – the ‘oligarchs’ – kept the masses at bay with a brutal combination of rewards and punishments. Much of humanity lived in virtual slavery, while the fortunate ones were bought off with decent wages that allowed them to live comfortably – but without any real control over their lives.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Mitch McConnell Moves to Grant the President Unlimited War Powers with No Expiration Date

January 24, 2016

Mitch McConnell Moves to Grant the President Unlimited War Powers with No Expiration Date

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.

– From George Orwell’s, 1984

This morning, I came across an extremely important story with tremendous long-term negative implications for freedom in these United States. It relates to the fact that the always shady Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is moving to fast track an Authorization of Military Force (AUMF) for the President that would allow for unrestricted warfare against ISIS. There would be no time or geographic restrictions on this authorization. Rather than being a favor to President Obama, this is primarily a means to ensure that whoever takes control in 2017 receives a blank check for unrestrained militarism with no expiration date. This is terrifying.

Before I get into the issue at hand, some background is necessary. Many legal scholars, and indeed, even many members of Congress have admitted that Obama’s war against ISIS is illegal and unconstitutional. One of the best articles I’ve read on why this is the case, was published in the New York Times in 2014, which I covered in the post, Obama’s ISIS War is Not Only Illegal, it Makes George W. Bush Look Like a Constitutional Scholar. Here are a few excerpts:

President Obama’s declaration of war against the terrorist group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria marks a decisive break in the American constitutional tradition. Nothing attempted by his predecessor, George W. Bush, remotely compares in imperial hubris.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Tag Archives: 1984

Content

Post categories

Economic Links

Energy/Resource Links

Environmental Links

Geopolitical Links

Liberty Links

News Links

Other Links

Survival Skills

Post Archives by Category

The biggest thing this survey proves is that Orwellian double-speak is working.

Post navigation

Latest Posts