This Violence of Lies: The Red Line in the Sand?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtGOQFf9VCE

“They use their media to assassinate real news. They use their schools to teach children that their president is another Hitler. They use their movie stars and singers and comedy shows and award shows to repeat their narrative over and over again. And then they use their ex-president to endorse the resistance.

“All to make them march, make them protest, make them scream racism and sexism and xenophobia and homophobia. To smash windows, burn cars, shut down interstates and airports, bully and terrorize the law-abiding — until the only option left is for the police to do their jobs and stop the madness.

“And when that happens, they’ll use it as an excuse for their outrage. The only way we stop this, the only way we save our country and our freedom, is to fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth. I’m the National Rifle Association of America, and I’m freedom’s safest place.”


A Digital Noose ‘Round Every Corner

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

Graduation season.  Parties, commencements, speeches and lots and lots of photos.  Recently, I loaded all of the pictures onto a PC and saved them into a folder, digitally labeled and timestamped, for posterity.  The next day, I noticed a message from Microsoft.  It said:  “Click here to see the photo album we created for you!”  I clicked and saw the very same photos I had loaded just hours before.  However, I never requested for my personal memories to be shared, let alone arranged into an album organized by the company whose operating system runs my computer.  Evidently, somewhere a while back, a box must have been checked, or unchecked, thus surrendering my right to privacy.

Every day I receive e-mail requests from Linkedin.com, Facebook and other networking websites to follow, like, or join, with people I am actually acquainted with in the real world.  The messages ask me if I “know” them as I see their photos and information along with the opportunity to electronically consummate with them, should I so choose.


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

by Uncola via TheBurningPlatform.com

 

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.

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