Make Orwell Fiction Again (Hunter Biden Edition)

A family member commented on a sticker on the back-window of my van by affirming the idea of “Make Orwell Fiction Again.” (Click to Enlarge) [This will be a continuing series to address this idea]

However,  knowing that his only form of news is essentially late-night [political] comics, CNN, and NPR… he meant it in a differing way than both the novel, and I meant it. So, below will be the beginning of a series of articles with small excerpts that I will continually add to in other posts. And note as well that what we have is a marriage of Orwell as well as Huxley as expressed in the quote from Joshua Charles’ book, Liberty’s Secrets: The Lost Wisdom of America’s Founders, found here: Orwell vs. Huxley (Big Tech Update)

MOST MEDIA EXCLUDES CONSERVATIVE IDEAS

Only a society that can effectively block and censor news, and shut down free expression is the kind the sticker refers to. Non-conservative ideas and news stories can be found readily in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, L.A. Times, San Francisco Chronicle, ABC, NPR, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, etc.

In fact, almost every newspaper WITH THE EXCEPTION of the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, and the New York Post, and at times FOX NEWS, have a more conservative leaning bias and news stories to be considered.

One example is that years ago the L.A. Times carried columns by Dennis Prager (and other conservative voices). Today they carry zero.

TWITTER/FACEBOOK CENSOR MAJOR NEWS STORY

THE NEW YORK POST was censored for many weeks… scrubbed from Twitter as well as Facebook. Here is what my past Twitter looked liked when trying to share the story:

This was all common knowledge [for the most part] because of Peter Schweizer’s March 2019 book, “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends“. And the NEW YORK POST had a wonderful article that Facebook, Twitter, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, NYT, WaPo — essentially ignored or censored.

EVEN LEFTIE GLENN GREENWALD CENSORED

Armstrong and Getty cover Glenn Greenwald resigning from the “free speech” news outlet he founded. The article mentioned them of Glenn’s is this one: “Article on Joe and Hunter Biden Censored By The Intercept”. [As an aside, I added MUCH MORE of the Tucker interview.]:

In Glenn’s article, this stood out (SUBSTACK):

….The U.S. media often laments that people have lost faith in its pronouncements, that they are increasingly viewed as untrustworthy and that many people view Fake News sites are more reliable than established news outlets. They are good at complaining about this, but very bad at asking whether any of their own conduct is responsible for it.

A media outlet that renounces its core function — pursuing answers to relevant questions about powerful people — is one that deserves to lose the public’s faith and confidence. And that is exactly what the U.S. media, with some exceptions, attempted to do with this story: they took the lead not in investigating these documents but in concocting excuses for why they should be ignored.

As my colleague Lee Fang put it on Sunday: “The partisan double standards in the media are mind boggling this year, and much of the supposedly left independent media is just as cowardly and conformist as the mainstream corporate media. Everyone is reading the room and acting out of fear.” Discussing his story from Sunday, Taibbi summed up the most important point this way: “The whole point is that the press loses its way when it cares more about who benefits from information than whether it’s true.”…

50 FORMER SENIOR INTELLIGENCE OFFICERS WERE WRONG

The NEW YORK POST opines on the recent “discovering” of an old story: “Liberal media ‘snuffed out’ Hunter Biden coverage until after election to help defeat Trump: critics” . But a must read article is this one over at RED STATE: “Ric Grenell Blows Up, Big Time, the Group That Should Be Most Ashamed of What They Did on the Hunter Biden Story

So we’ve all been talking a lot about the investigation into Hunter Biden and how the mainstream media seems to have finally caught up to the fact that yes, it’s real and it’s Russian disinformation as some tried to claim before the election.

Now that they think Joe Biden won, they’re free to just say “oh, well, here’s this thing.”

Never mind that they consciously suppressed it from the American people and completely failed in their supposed job prior to the election.

We saw a lot of conservatives chastising the media today for what they did.

But I wanted to talk about another group.

We expect the Democrats to cover for Biden. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) told CNN it was a “smear” straight from the Kremlin. CNN’s Jeff Zucker said in his morning conference call to impress upon people this stuff about Hunter was just more “Russian disinformation.” A lot of mainstream media has become little more than Democratic operatives at this point.

There’s a group that we don’t expect and for sure shouldn’t be playing this game and that’s the intelligence community.

But they have and they did in this instance as well.

There were 50 former senior intelligence officers who signed a letter saying that Hunter Biden’s emails had all the signs of a Russian disinformation campaign……

MEDIA “DISCOVERED” STORY AFTER BIDEN ELECTED

Except the story was [and still is] 100% true. It was Russian disinformation UNTIL BIDEN WON, then the media discovered it’s veracity.

After the New York Post’s reporting was dismissed and characterized by members of the media as a “baseless conspiracy theory,” a “smear campaign,” and “Russian disinformation,” Wednesday’s announcement from Hunter Biden was ultimately too much for the media to ignore.

All three major networks’ evening newscasts addressed the controversy, with “NBC Nightly News” spending the most time on the subject, clocking in at roughly one minute and 16 seconds of coverage while “CBS Evening News” came in a distant second, with roughly 45 seconds of coverage, followed by ABC’s “World News Tonight” with roughly just 30 seconds. 

CNN anchor Jake Tapper reported the breaking news as it happened during his program, which was quite the opposite tone that he took during the election when he dismissed the allegations against Hunter Biden as “too disgusting” to repeat on-air.

Tapper’s colleagues Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper also mentioned the explosive development on their shows, while CNN anchors Erin Burnett, Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon avoided the subject….

(FOX)

  • Jake Tapper declares Hunter Biden claims ‘too disgusting’ to repeat on CNN: ‘The rightwing is going crazy’ — CNN is among other major news outlets that continue to downplay the growing Biden controversy (FOX)
  • CNN boss, political director spiked Hunter Biden controversy, audiotapes reveal: ‘We’re not going with’ story — Project Veritas’ James O’Keefe vowed he will release ‘raw recordings’ of the over 50 conference calls every day until Christmas. (FOX)
  • Ric Grenell calls out CNN’s Jake Tapper for belatedly covering Hunter Biden story — ‘This story broke in October. You didn’t do it then,’ former acting DNI scolded the CNN anchor (FOX)

1984 JUMPS TO #1 ON AMAZON AMID EXPANDED CENSORSHIP

JUST THE NEWS notes the jump to #1 of 1984 on Amazon

As “big tech” companies have moved to silence conservative voices on the Internet, mega-marketer Amazon reports on Sunday that its overall top-selling book is 1984, a decades old novel that portrays a society completely controlled by government “Thought Police.”

The spike in sales comes amid a rush of shutdowns in which these moves occurred in rapid succession:

  • Twitter on Friday booted Donald Trump from its platform and erased the entire history of his tweets;
  • Facebook deleted a grassroots organization for disenchanted Democrats, WalkAway;
  • Apple and Google banned the messaging platform Parler from its app stores;
  • and Amazon said it imminently will ban Parler, which is used by many conservatives, from company servers.

As of Sunday morning, Amazon book sales showed that the top-selling book is the dystopian novel published by George Orwell more than 70 years ago. The classic novel, published in 1949, depicts how government Thought Police eavesdrop on citizens in their own homes, searching for heresy of any kind. Anyone whose beliefs deviate from the official norm are declared “unpersons” who never existed.

Reviewers on Amazon drew parallels between the book’s plot and current events in the United States.

“Born and living in communist Romania I went through the same ordeal described in 1987,” wrote Constantin Turculet, who is listed as making a verified purchase. “After 40 years I managed to escape to America, only to find after 35 years of living in freedom that this country is pushed toward the same horror scenario I thought mankind will never forget.”

CLICK TO ENLARGE

  • Later ages are always surprised by the casual brutality of totalitarian regimes. What those innocent ages neglect is the unshakeable (though misguided) conviction of virtue that animates the totalitarians. The historian John Kekes, writing about Robespierre in City Journal some years ago, touched on the essential point. If we understand Robespierre, “we understand that it is utterly useless to appeal to reason and morality in dealing with ideologues. For they are convinced that reason and morality are on their side and that their enemies are irrational and immoral simply because they are enemies.” That is the position of conservatives in American culture today. (AMERICAN GREATNESS)

WARNINGS YEARS AGO

Tammy Bruce’s book, “The New Thought Police: Inside the Left’s Assault on Free Speech and Free Minds,” was an important salvo in all this. Not the first book, but one of the most relevant for it’s day. Tammy has noted for years the censorship of the Left, one example is an older post:

Well, this explains why I never got a response to my #AskPOTUS questions, “What’s wrong with you?” and “What meds are you on?”

Via Washington Examiner.

A former Twitter CEO took measures to ensure messages critical of President Obama wouldn’t circulate too widely on the platform during a 2015 question-and-answer session, according to a new report.

The incident allegedly occurred during a May 2015 “#AskPOTUS” event on the platform, when former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo purportedly ordered the creation of an algorithm to suppress the messages and used employees to manually scrub any critical content missed by the software.

Costolo kept the decision secret from company executives for fear that someone might object, several sources told Buzzfeed….

Related: NY Observer: Tech Companies Apple, Twitter, Google, and Instagram Collude to Defeat Trump

The tech companies are just emboldened now. That’s all.

TONY BOBULINSKI AND LEFTIE LEGAL SCHOLAR, JONATHAN TURLEY

Yep, there were MANY disgusting videos on Hunter Biden’s laptop: him sexually abusing underage girls, including a family member, smoking crack, etc. But what was more disgusting was covering up a real news story [evidence of pay to play in the Ukraine and China] by almost all news outlets (print or media), as well as the censoring of it on social media. However, as Jonathan Turley notes wisely about NPR….. the designation as “a distraction” shows a bias rather than a news outfit, video precedes Turley’s article for context:

Tony Bobulinski will attend Thursday night’s debate as guest of President Trump.

JONATHAN TURLEY [Lefty Legal Scholar] notes this about Tony Bobulinski giving AMPLE evidence of who “the big guy” is:

A former business partner to Hunter Biden, Tony Bobulinski, has made a bombshell statement that not only are the emails on the Biden laptop authentic but the reference to giving a cut to “the big guy” was indeed a reference to former Vice President Joe Biden. More emails are emerging that show Hunter Biden referring to his family as his asset in these dealings.

The emails that have attracted the most attention refer to an actual meeting of Joe  Biden with these foreign figures and one referring to a proposed equity split of “20” for “H” and “10 held by H for the big guy?” Bobulinski confirms that “H” was used for Hunter Biden and that his father was routinely called “the big guy” in these discussions.

Another email Bobulinski being instructed by James Gilliar not to make any mention of the former veep’s involvement: “Don’t mention Joe being involved, it’s only when u [sic] are face to face, I know u [sic] know that but they are paranoid.”

 Bobulinski said he was brought on as CEO by Hunter Biden and James Gilliar and stated that he believes Joe Biden was lying in denying any knowledge of these dealings, stating Hunter “frequently referenced asking him for his sign-off or advice on various potential deals.”  He added that “The Biden family aggressively leveraged the Biden family name to make millions of dollars from foreign entities even though some were from communist controlled China.”

His statement reads in part:

I am the CEO of Sinohawk Holdings which was a partnership between the Chinese operating through CEFC/Chairman Ye and the Biden family. I was brought into the company to be the CEO by James Gilliar and Hunter Biden. The reference to “the Big Guy” in the much publicized May 13, 2017 email is in fact a reference to Joe Biden. The other “JB” referenced in that email is Jim Biden, Joe’s brother.

Hunter Biden called his dad ‘the Big Guy’ or ‘my Chairman,’ and frequently referenced asking him for his sign-off or advice on various potential deals that we were discussing. I’ve seen Vice President Biden saying he never talked to Hunter about his business. I’ve seen firsthand that that’s not true, because it wasn’t just Hunter’s business, they said they were putting the Biden family name and its legacy on the line.

I realized the Chinese were not really focused on a healthy financial ROI. They were looking at this as a political or influence investment. Once I realized that Hunter wanted to use the company as his personal piggy bank by just taking money out of it as soon as it came from the Chinese, I took steps to prevent that from happening.

This is obviously just one side and the documents do not show a direct role or benefit for Joe Biden. However, it would seem that between the FBI statement and this witness statement, there is ample foundation for media scrutiny.  Yet, organizations like NPR has dismissed the story on Thursday as a “distraction.”

[….]

I have written for years that Hunter Biden was clearly influence peddling and he contradicted his father’s denial of any knowledge of his dealings.  The media can continue to hold its breath for weeks to try to avoid the obvious in this story.  That could well guarantee Biden the presidency but it will destroy the media’s credibility for years.

THIS CENSORSHIP PUSHED BIDEN INTO THE “WIN” COLUMN

It did guarantee a Biden victory BTW:


OMISSION


Click to enlarge:

(CNS NEWS)


…For the post-election surveyThe Polling Company interviewed 1,750 Biden voters in seven swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, six of which (excluding North Carolina) were called for Biden. The voters were asked about their knowledge of eight news stories, all of which the liberal media had downplayed or censored.

The survey showed “a huge majority (82%) of Biden voters were unaware of at least one of these key items, with five percent saying they were unaware of all eight of the issues we tested,” reported the MRC.

For instance, despite the #MeToo movement and the media coverage it garnered, the survey found that 35.4% of Biden voters were unaware of the serious allegations of sexual assault made by Tara Reade against Joe Biden. Reade had worked for Biden in the 1990s.

“If they had known about Tara Reade’s sexual assault allegations, 8.9% told us they would have changed their vote — either switching to Trump or a 3rd party candidate, not voting for any presidential candidate, or not voting at all,” said the MRC.

“By itself, this would have flipped all six of the swing states won by Biden (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin), giving the president a win with 311 electoral college votes,” said the organization.

Another important story buried by the major media was the Hunter Biden laptop story, which showed that Joe Biden was aware of his son’s business dealings in the Ukraine and in Communist China.

Yet 45.1% of Biden voters said they were unaware of the laptop story.

“According to our poll, full awareness of the Hunter Biden scandal would have led 9.4% of Biden voters to abandon the Democratic candidate, flipping all six of the swing states he won to Trump, giving the President 311 electoral votes,” reported the MRC.

Similar results were found when Biden voters were asked about the other six censored stories – Kamala Harris’s radical left-wing policies; positive economic and job reports; Middle East peace deals brokered by Trump; energy independence; and the swift vaccine production as a result of Trump’s Operation Warp Speed.

“Looking at all eight of these issues together, our poll found that a total of 17% of Biden’s voters told us they would have changed their vote if they had been aware of one or more of these important stories,” reported the MRC.

“This would have moved every one of the swing states into Trump’s column, some by a huge margin,” said the MRC. “The President would have trounced Biden in the electoral college, 311 to 227.”

The MRC noted that the Biden voters who said they would have voted differently had they been properly informed by the media, did not have to vote for Trump for the president to have won a second term.

“Just by choosing to abandon Biden, these voters would have handed all six of these states, and a second term, to the President — if the news media had properly informed them about the two candidates,” said the MRC. (Emphasis added.)

(SEE NEWSBUSTERS)

Contact Tracing (Why George Orwell Is Still Important)

From reality TV show Big Brother to warnings about surveillance, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four has had a lasting impact on modern society.

Person speaking is, Dorian Lynskey, author of, “The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell’s 1984

Authorities have found a new excuse to delay reopening America: The need for hundreds of thousands of so-called ‘contact tracers.’

Bill Gates suggests mass surveillance of Americans to combat coronavirus pandemic.

The Covid-19 pandemic is likely to have a long-lasting impact not just on the world economy and the global population but also on the way we use our gadgets. To keep up with the changes brought by the pandemic, tech giant Apple has released iOS 13.5 with Face ID enhancements, Exposure Notification API and more.

iOS 13.5 speeds up access to the passcode field on devices with Face ID when the user is wearing a mask. Several users who wear masks, were facing difficulty unlocking their handset with Face ID. The Face ID would reject the login attempt multiple times and then the option to enter passcode will appear, causing significant delay.

With iOS 13.5 update, the iPhone will detect when the user is wearing a face mask and the passcode field will now be automatically presented after swiping up from the bottom screen.

The feature is only available on devices with Face ID, that is, iPhone X, iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone XR, iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone 11 Pro Max. This also works when the user is authenticating with the App Store, Apple Books, Apple Pay, iTunes and other apps which support signing in with Face ID.

iOS 13.5 also comes with an Exposure Notification API, which supports Covid-19 contact tracing apps from public health authorities. The exposure notifications, for the uninitiated, are alerts that users will receive on their phones if they have been exposed to someone who has tested positive for or is highly likely to test positive for Covid-19….

(emphasis added)

The original post (OP) on this second strain was a graphic. I will link to the Kent County (Michigan site through it. Here is my FB description of the following: “A person named B.M. wrote on a friends Facebook wall the following regarding “contact tracing.” (The original post had to do with hiring government employees to trace citizens with Covid.)”

(See also this BRIDGE article)

  • [A reader of JP’s noted] Actually, contact tracing sounds like a legitimate work of government. Rather than quarantining the healthy, quarantine the sick and monitor those exposed to the disease.

JP responded:


Sorry in advance for the novel! Heh, I started thinking of other interesting things to add and just decided to run with it.

Contact tracing might work for illnesses that don’t spread very easily (it probably would have exterminated HIV, according to what I’ve read; I’m no expert but it seems reasonable), but for upper respiratory stuff like colds and flus (and the Wu Flu), it’s pretty much doomed, especially with up to 10% of the whole country already having the it.

The original point of the lockdowns (which don’t seem to have worked; lockdown and non-lockdown countries and states have almost identical statistics) was to slow the spread to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. It wasn’t to stop spread, since even the CDC admits that after about 1% of people are infected with a contagious disease, you can’t really close the door on it anymore. Contact tracing is a relatively invasive way of closing the door on a virus, so I don’t think it will work here**.

The data points to a much less lethal bug, though. Stanford’s meta analysis of all of the large-scale antibody testing shows an IFR (Infection Fatality Rate) between 7 times less than the seasonal flu and 2.8 times more. It’s probably in the middle, making it slightly less lethal than regular seasonal flus. And since we know it has been in the US at least since January (probably since December or earlier), the R? (Basic Reproduction Number or Rate) is also much lower than people originally thought. So it spreads like the flu and is as deadly as the flu.

The main difference seems to be the 24/7 media terrorizing of citizens, the complete ignorance most of us (that’s me, too) had in the real pneumonia/influenza deaths each year, and the downright evil policy of many Democrat governors of sending the sick to recover (while contagious) at nursing homes, boosting the deaths by up to 50%.

Sorry for the novel!! Reading every little bit about this thing has become an unfortunate hobby of mine. I’m of the mind now that the best strategy is to fight the fear instead of the virus and to get back to normal in virtually every way. If this is anything like it’s older brother SARS, it will die out in the next couple of months. But if not, keeping everyone from immunity just means extending the risk.

** I think contact tracing may -appear- to work because I think we are naturally bottoming out cases. Same, in my mind, for other measures.

One final bit: I’ve followed lots of different predictions to see who might get things most accurately to see what they did differently. This guy’s been right on (it’s been almost scary) using SARS as a comparison instead of the Spanish Flu (since this bug is SARS 2). This is a really good visual of the whole thing:

(Click to enlarge)

ALSO, a short bit from Bruce Carrol:

“If you are waiting for a “cure” for COVID-19, you’ll never leave your home again.

Even the flu vaccine (not vaccine, flu shot. There is a vaccine for the Polio, not HIV or SARS) results in 60-80,000 deaths every season.

We have to stop the fearmongering and start learning to live with a new virus in a string of new viruses that have emerged for tens of thousands of years.

Boomers and Millennials aren’t that special of a species.”

— Bruce Carroll (Co-founder of the gay Republican group GOProu, and founder of GAYPATRIOT)

Orwell vs. Huxley (Big Tech Update)

George Orwell’s fictionalized world where Big Brother reigns supreme is no longer a figment of the imagination, but a prophetic vision of present-day threats. Brent Bozell, founder of the Media Research Center, explains how and why Big Tech is making Orwell’s 1984 a 21st century reality.

OLDER POST…. (1/2016)

Someone recently said:

  • Why is it that the left loves to rewrite history? My theory is that to them the end justifies the means ironically in history that has led to genocide here and there.

To which I replied, “I agree.” (And I continued, as I am wont-to-do):


Another reason is that history is a giant mirror reflecting their failed paths to equality. From the French Revolution, to segregation and eventually the Civil War, to their terrorist arm of the Party (the KKK), to pouring water and oil into a pot and calling it a “melting pot” (multiculturalism in leftist terms is really segregation all over again). From the Fabian Socialists to Bernie Sander “types,” from the founder of Planned Parenthood having guest columns in her newsletter by NAZI doctors to allowing gender abortions and legislating to make it legal to leave a baby on a table to die from the environment… it is all an embarrassing mirror that they need to change and obfuscate. (And, there is nothing analogous.)

In reading an excellent book, early on there was this nugget:

We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another—slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture….  As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.

Joshua Charles, Liberty’s Secrets: The Lost Wisdom of America’s Founders (Washington, DC: WND Books, 2015), XIV; that is a large quote itself from Neil Postuman’s book, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2006), XIX-XX.

While Charles and Neil take the “Brave New World” route… I think we can split the horns of the dilemma a bit (so-to-speak) and say yes… a small percentage of dedicated persons (to their faith or ethos) are feeling the boot mentioned in Orwell’s epic tale. From fining people out of business by taking their bank accounts because they refuse to make cakes for celebrations they wish not to support, to $250,000 for people who wish to call people by their real gender.

However, outside of this smaller percentage who is feeling the [sarcasm] equality of State [/sarcasm], there is a much larger percentage who do not want to be bothered as they amuse themselves to death (totalitarian bents ignored in political theories).

They do not want to be bothered by what would have in our history brought people to arms. All they care about is the next text on their iPhone or another round online with friends playing Call of Duty, or who got injured in the last NFL game that impacts the chances of their team winning. THESE people who have replaced worldviews with entertainment will one-day get a rood awakening when their toys are gone.

Liberals — especially — want this amusement to curtail knowing about history so they can get another radical candidate in office who likewise thinks the Constitution is a living/breathing document.

Sorry for the rant… but you got me thinking.

The BBC Has Killed Comedy ~ John Cleese and 1984

JoNova notes:

Cleese on political correctness:

“Political correctness is a bit like granny or your maiden aunt arriving at a party when you’re all having a good time,” John Cleese said.

“She comes in and they all start buttoning up and becoming self conscious and behaving properly and then when she leaves you can have fun again.

“Well a lot of humour is just about enjoying life, it’s spontaneity. We’re always teasing each other. It’s with affection. It’s nasty teasing we don’t want. There’s certain jokes that are mean and actually not funny.”

Vishnal Mangalwadi Quotes George Orwell

This was a great quote from a book I am currently reading. The quote from Orwell comes from his letter/notes entitled “A Patriot After All: 1940-1941 (The Complete Works of George Orwell, Vol. 12)“:

India-born British author George Orwell (1903-50) was a socialist, inclined toward atheism. The horrors of Fascism, Nazism, Commu­nism, and the two World Wars forced him to face the consequences of the “amputation of the soul.” In his “Notes on the Way,” Orwell wrote that the writers who sawed off the West’s soul included “Gibbon, Vol­taire, Rousseau, Shelley, Byron, Dickens, Stendahl, Samuel Butler, Ibsen, Zola, Flaubert, Shaw, Joyce—in one way or another they are all of them destroyers, wreckers, saboteurs.” These “Enlightenment” writers led the West into its present darkness.

In his essay Orwell was reflecting on Malcolm Muggeridge’s book The Thirties, which describes the damage these writers had done to Europe. Muggeridge, then still an atheist, was astute enough to per­ceive that

we are living in a nightmare precisely because we have tried to set up an earthly paradise. We have believed in “progress.” Trusted to human leadership, rendered unto Caesar the things that are God’s. . . . There is no wisdom except in the fear of God; but no one fears God; therefore there is no wisdom. Man’s history reduces itself to the rise and fall of material civilizations, one Tower of Babel after another . . . downwards into abysses which are horrible to contemplate.

I first discovered the Bible as a student in India. It transformed me as an individual and I soon learned that, contrary to what my uni­versity taught, the Bible was the force that had created modern India. Let me, therefore, begin our study of the book that built our world by telling you my own story.

Vishnal Mangalwadi, The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (Nashville TN: Thomas Nelson, 2011), 22-23.

“Illegal” the New “N” Word? ~ Orwell Would Be Proud

This incredible story comes via The Blaze:

Progressive commentator Sally Kohn took aim at a word she deemed derogatory and dehumanizing in a CNN column published on July 4.

She compared the term to “n*****” and “f*****” and called for an end to its public usage.

The word: “illegal.”

Here’s how she opened her column:

During the civil rights era, Alabama Gov. George Wallace was asked by a supporter why he was fixated on the politics of race. Wallace replied, ‘You know, I tried to talk about good roads and good schools and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened. And then I began talking about n*ggers, and they stomped the floor.’

In the 1980s, during the rise of the gay rights movement, North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms accused a political opponent for supporting ‘f*ggots, perverts [and] sexual deviates of this nation.’

Today, opponents of immigration reform attack undocumented immigrants as ‘illegal immigrants.’ Even worse, like anti-immigration extremists, some prominent elected officials use the term ‘illegals.’ Maine Gov. Paul LePage, a Republican, said, ‘I urge all Mainers to tell your city councilors and selectmen to stop handing out your money to illegals.’

Not the same thing? Of course it is.

She goes on to call for the elimination of the term “illegal” from public discourse, essentially arguing that social pressure should be employed to rid American parlance of the adjective.

Walter Hudson (PJ Media) explains what we are not going to do… and that is, dilute real evil, real meaning, to terms that are TRULY offensive:

  • “We’re not changing our language to suit your agenda. We’re not going to stop categorizing people objectively as illegal immigrants. We’re not going to dilute the gravity of truly derogatory terms by conflating them with one that is not.

Even the MMA guys/gals get it… but don’t hold your breath for the cultural Marxists to do anything else thean want to change and control language — to suit their purposes.

Guess Who Obamas Minister of Truth Is? Husband of Gal Who Helped Make MoveOn.orgs~General Betray Us~Ad

Ministry of Truth? Hmmmm…. seems like I heard that somewhere before…. oh, yeah:

The Ministry of Truth (or Minitrue, in Newspeak) is one of the four ministries that govern Oceania in George Orwell‘s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. As with the other Ministries in the novel, the Ministry of Truth is a misnomer and in reality serves an opposing purpose to that which its name would imply, being responsible for the falsification of historical events; and yet is aptly named in a deeper sense, in that it creates/manufactures “truth” in the newspeak sense of the word.

(click poster for larger-fuller version of it)

BigGovernment has this on who this Minister of Truth is:

This week President Obama revealed his latest attempt to control the media, the Internet, and the information revealed to the people of the United States by creating a new “press” office of sorts, an Obama ministry of truth, if you will. Obama’s grandiose name for this new office is the Progressive Media & Online Response department. Also named was its new director, Jesse Lee. Lee, it turns out, has an interesting connection to one of the most outrageous anti-American, anti-military media efforts in recent memory.

Jesse Lee, you see, is married to Nita Chaudhary, one of the people responsible for the 2007 MoveOn.org newspaper ad that maligned General David Petraeus as “General Betray Us.”

That’s right, the guy that President Obama has chosen to “correct” the Internet and media and to relay the president’s “truth” is connected to one of the most anti-American, anti-military, left-wing activist groups in America. Lee and his wife are typical, hardcore, leftist extremists yet now they are in the People’s House with Lee responsible to “correct” the people themselves when they dare to question The One.

As David Steinberg notes, “Lee’s relationship with Chaudhary was not a negative for his White House career.” On the contrary, the man married to the woman that helped head an attack on the very general Obama himself has given greater duties has found her baleful influence to have either helped him reach a position inside the White House, or at the very least been a non-factor.

Shouldn’t it have been a factor, though? Shouldn’t Obama have shied away from hiring a man for his ministry of truth who is cozy with someone who stands against the very country he leads? One would think that being married to someone who belongs to one of the leading anti-American activist groups in the country would be a draw back. Apparently, Obama sees it as a plus. And need we be reminded that Moveon.org is funded by George Soros? Now we have a guy who can be directly influenced by George Soros in a new position right in the White House.

The Washington Post critiqued the ad by MoveOn.org, saying this:

However, MoveOn.org does not provide adequate factual support for its larger assertion that Petraeus is “constantly at war with the facts” and is “cooking the books” for the White House. In the absence of fresh evidence, we award MoveOn.org three Pinocchios [out of four].


 

And to catch those up on this controversy — if you hadn’t known about it — this deceitful ad was removed from MoveOn’s site after Obama appointed Petraeus to a position. Newsbusters reported this, then:

In a classic example of liberal hypocrisy, the far-left leaning, George Soros-funded group MoveOn.org has removed its controversial “General Betray Us” ad from its website.

For those that have forgotten, shortly after General David Petraeus issued his report to Congress in September 2007 concerning the condition of the war in Iraq and the success of that March’s troop surge, MoveOn placed a full-page ad in the New York Times with the headline, “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?”

This created quite a firestorm with media outlets on both sides of the aisle circling the wagons to either defend or berate both the Times and MoveOn.

Now that President Obama has appointed Petraeus to replace the outgoing Gen. Stanley McChrystal to lead the war effort in Afghanistan, the folks on the far-left that castigated Petraeus when he worked for George W. Bush have to sing a different tune.

With that in mind, the ad, which has been at MoveOn’s website for years, was unceremoniously removed on Wednesday as reported by our friends at Weasel Zippers:

It was there the last time Google cache took a screen shot of it (June 18th), so it was scrubbed sometime between then and today. If you try the link now (http://pol.moveon.org/petraeus.htm) it goes to MoveOn’s default page.

I guess MoveOn couldn’t possibly bash this General now that he’s working for Obama.

To give readers an idea of the firestorm this created at the time, here are some NewsBusters articles published after this ad hit:

With Petraeus now part of the Obama administration, it’s going to be fascinating watching all of the media members and outlets that supported MoveOn’s ad now backtrack and gush over the General they once despised.