Free Republic

“Thought crime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for awhile…but sooner or later they were bound to get you.” George Orwell, 1984 “The fact is we are witnessing an all-out drive to impose thought control that seeks to ban the ability—the right—to think or speak for one’s self. Thinking is becoming a crime.” (Globally Acceptable Truth and the Crime of Thinking, Tom DeWeese, Address to the 10th Annual Freedom 21 Conference, 10/16/09) In an article entitled “Dems Undermine Free Speech in Hate Crimes Ploy,” the Washington Examiner exposes the insidious machinations of House...

Those New Jersey school children singing songs of praise to Obama might remind us of this poem from Animal Farm by George Orwell: Comrade Napoleon Friend of fatherless!Fountain of happiness!Lord of the swill-bucket!Oh, how my soul is onFire when I gaze at thyCalm and commanding eye,Like the sun in the sky,Comrade Napoleon! Thou art the giver ofAll that thy creatures love,Full belly twice a day, clean straw to roll upon;Every beast great or smallSleeps at peace in his stall,Thou watchest over all,Comrade Napoleon! Had I a sucking pig,Ere he had grown as bigEven as a pint bottle or as a...

Senator Ted Kennedy, who is now 76 years old and was ( diagnosed with brain cancer) in May of last year, is telling the world that nationalized medical care is "the cause of his life." He wants to see it pass as soon as possible, before he departs this vale of tears. The prospect of Kennedy's passing is viewed by the liberal press with anticipatory tears and mourning. But they are not asking the proper question by their own lights: That question -- which will be asked for you and me when we reach his age and state in life...

Link only: Ban on tobacco urged in military

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR’’ opens with one of the most famous first lines in modern English literature - the vaguely unnerving “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.’’ The line it ends with is even more famous, and considerably more sinister: “He loved Big Brother.’’ George Orwell’s brilliant, bitter novel turns 60 this month, but after all these years it has lost none of its nightmarish chill. Its hero is the decidedly unheroic Winston Smith, a weak and wistful man who lives in the totalitarian police state of Oceania, which is ruled by the Party...

What would it have been like to be brought up by George Orwell? Pretty grim, you might think. But you would be wrong. In June 1944, Orwell and his wife Eileen adopted a three-week-old boy whom they named Richard Horatio Blair (Eric Blair being Orwell's real name). Now a retired engineer living happily in an immaculate house in a picture-book Warwickshire village, Blair has never publicised the fact that he was related to Orwell, always preferring to remain in the background. But ahead of a talk at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival with Orwell's biographer DJ Taylor (details, below...

It has been sixty years since George Orwell wrote his chilling dystopian classic, 1984, and it has been thirty years since we saw the creepiest example of educated and free people willingly walking into a living dystopia.  November 18, 1978, three decades ago, 918 people drank Kool-Aid laced with cyanide.  Jim Jones, the communist leader of Jonestown, Guyana, had become "Big Brother." Soviet and Communist Chinese propaganda films and condemnations of capitalist and imperialist America blared continually to the subjects of this island of Leftist Hell. Jonestown ended in mass suicide, but the real horror was that ordinary people, Americans...

Californians may soon have to deal with climate change on a different scale -- and this time the culprit isn't greenhouse gas. The California Energy Commission is proposing a plan which allows the government to regulate household thermostats in the event of an "energy crisis." Under the proposed rules, all new thermostats will be fitted with technology that will allow the government to adjust the temperature of someone's home by plus or minus four degrees. Originally the plans called for mandatory compliance; however, amid public outcry, the plans have been slightly altered to allow an individual to turn off the...

Ministers have adopted a new language for declarations on Islamic terrorism. In future, fanatics will be referred to as pursuing "anti-Islamic activity". Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said that extremists were behaving contrary to their faith, rather than acting in the name of Islam. Security officials believe that directly linking terrorism to Islam is inflammatory, and risks alienating mainstream Muslim opinion.

Life in southern Israel is unbearable. Since last January, on average, 6.3 mortars and rockets have been fired from Gaza on southern Israel every day. As Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilna'i warned the heads of the communities around Gaza last week, due to the improvements in the Palestinian arsenal since Israel vacated Gaza two years ago, the Palestinians now field missiles and rockets with extended ranges that place 130,000 Israelis under threat of missile attack. Wednesday, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi made clear that if Israel wishes to secure its citizens there is only one thing it...

When it comes to health care, could there be anything more antithetical to the American ideal than Big Government being completely in charge? Actually, yes. It would be big government creating a system that requires private-sector entities whose interests inherently oppose to "come together" to form "partnerships" for the greater good. Yesterday I wrote here about the way in which Hillary's plan forces all Americans, willing or not, to obtain health care insurance, and in an Orwellian twist calling it "choice." More details about Hillary's plan emerge in Davd Brooks's New York Times column [still p.p.v., but free along with...

"War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength" -- Slogan of the ruling party in George Orwell's "1984" With the health care proposal she is about to introduce, Hillary Clinton adds another spooky non sequitur to the list: compulsory coverage is choice. Will the MSM take notice? Clinton cagily calls her proposal "American Health Choices Plan." But according to this AP article, it requires everyone to carry health insurance [emphasis added]: The centerpiece of Clinton's plan is the so-called "individual mandate," requiring everyone to have health insurance — just as most states require drivers to purchase auto insurance. Rival...

In George Orwell's novel "1984," the protagonists in the totalitarian society employed "newspeak," the inversion of words to create false meaning. "War is peace," "good is bad," "moral is immoral" are merely a few of the possible inversions. While Orwell passed this mortal coil years ago, his notion of false meaning is alive and well and residing in the United Nations. In fact, there is scarcely a sentence uttered at this institution that isn't Orwellian. Human rights, for example, the hallmark of U.N. efforts, does nothing to promote these rights. The commission organized to promote this goal is composed of...

Established British families should be given priority over economic migrants for council housing, government minister Margaret Hodge has said. She has called for a rethink of social housing policy, to take account of length of residence, citizenship and national insurance contributions. Social housing was limited and British families had a "legitimate sense of entitlement" to have their own homes. The Lib Dems said the fault lay with Labour for selling off council homes. Industry Minister Mrs Hodge, who was born in Egypt, said rules should "promote tolerance rather than inviting division". Exercising choice She told the BBC she was aware...

House Democrats Offer Plan to Ban Use of 'Global War on Terror' Wednesday, April 04, 2007 WASHINGTON — House Minority Leader John Boehner blasted a Democrat-backed plan on Wednesday to ban the use of "global War on Terror" and "long war" in the 2008 defense budget bill. A memo sent to Democratic staffers on the House Armed Services Committee instructed the aides not to use the specific phrases, the Military Times newspaper reported. Boehner accused Democrats of launching an "absurd effort to deny the fact that America is battling terrorism on a global scale," according to a statement released Wednesday...

VOTE SMARTMY RESPONSE TO'VOTE DIFFERENT'(Obama-Apple 1984 Ad Mashup)by Mia T, 3.10.07 COPYRIGHT MIA T 2007

Dr. Daniels begins predictably witht this: ...Why should Orwell be so desired and desirable, in short so unanswerable, an ally? He is a secular saint, over whose relics everyone squabbles. There are good reasons for this, no doubt. In his essay, Why I Write, published in 1946, Orwell disarmingly tells us that all writers are to some extent egotistical: they desire to seem clever, to be talked about and admired, and to be remembered after their death.... But finally Dr. Daniels points this out: ...But by far the worst aspect of Homage to Catalonia is its strong advocacy of totalitarianism....

TECHNOLOGY These sneakers will track your every move A Miami company is selling shoes embedded with GPS tracking technology to locate people in distress. BY BRIDGET CAREY 2 January 2007 A growing number of companies are developing Global Positioning System technology to track friends and family, using devices like watches and cellphones. But Miami entrepreneur Sayo Isaac Daniel says those systems are flawed. WALTER MICHOT/MIAMI HERALD STAFF IT'S IN THE SHOE: Miami entrepreneur Sayo Isaac Daniel invented sneakers with GPS technology. You can forget to carry your phone, and you can forget to wear a watch, but you can't leave...

TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER THE HON JOHN HOWARD MP ADDRESS TO THE QUADRANT MAGAZINE 50TH ANNIVERSARY DINNER, FOUR SEASONS HOTEL, SYDNEY Thank you very much Paddy McGuinness, Chief Justice, Justices, Your Eminence, Your Grace, my Parliamentary colleagues and ladies and gentlemen. I’m finally succumbing to Peter Garrett’s advice and its great to embrace an evening of culture and poetry and all of that after overdosing on my Philistine sporting pursuits over the weekend in almost the four corners of the Earth, from one side of the country to the other. But it really is an enormous pleasure for Janette...

52 REASONS NOT TO MOW 37 WAYS TO HELP TREES Please download with 100% cotton, rice, recycled, or scrap paper Ron Howard, director of A Beautiful Mind and many other films,made his first film at age 8.. an anti mowing film which showed the nature of mowers' attacks on lawns. Art Buchwald: People shouldn't be judged by the length of their grass. In 2003 through now, the world has seen floods, famine, fire, mudslides, hurricanes, tornados and other disasters created by the unprecedented destruction of trees around the world. Trees are nature's weather stabilizers. We need trillions of trees.. new...

THESE ARE THE SENATORS WHO VOTED TO GIVE SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS TO ILLEGAL ALIENS REGARDLESS OF POLITICAL PARTY, THESE POLITICIANS NEED TO BE DEFEATED IN 2006, 2008 OR 2010, WHENEVER THEY NEXT COME UP FOR OFFICE. SEND THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW; THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES NEEDS TO KNOW THIS INFORMATION -- THAT IS, UNLESS THEY DO NOT MIND SHARING THEIR SOCIAL SECURITY WITH FOREIGN WORKERS WHO NEVER PAID INTO IT AND AMERICAN CITIZENS ARE BEING LEFT OUT. Grouped by Home State Alabama: Alaska: Stevens (R-AK), Yea Arizona: McCain (R-AZ), Yea Arkansas: Lincoln (D-AR), Yea Pryor (D-AR),...

I am curious why none of the media covers the most important aspect of the Malvo shootings. If you look at Newspapers on the dates when the shootings are underway you discover something I find quite interesting. The shootings begin to dominate the news the day before the debate on the Iraq war starts and they catch them the day after the declaration of war??? If you ask most people "do you remember the debate about starting the second Iraq war", they will all answer "yes of course". But if you followup with the question "name one point in the...

I recently received a reply to a post that stated: "This should be beneath a "freeper". Sad." So I asked.. what is it that makes a FReeper? My reply (and I will admit was tasteless) was also questioning. It stirred controversy and was removed? Why Moderators? Can you not tell me? Did it not meet with your "FReeper" mentality? According to all posted guidelines it should be listed but no, you chose to delete it. Yes.. I'm the first one IBTZ, I'm sure you'll nick me for speaking up..

George Orwell's classic dystopian novel 1984 opens with a surveillance helicopter chopping its blades menacingly through London, peeking inside apartment buildings. The protagonist, a conscience-stricken state worker with no way to blow the whistle, goes home to a "telescreen" watching and reporting his every word, move and even mood. The totalitarian state apparatus of Orwell's bleak vision was patterned after the world's Communist parties. But many of today's 21st-century Democrat and Republican politicians see no problem with the kind of permanent police dragnet envisioned in the novel. While Orwell's homeland of the United Kingdom is still the most-surveilled on Earth,...

The term “Fairness Doctrine” exemplifies what George Orwell called “Newspeak”: it uses language to mask the deleterious effects of its purported meaning. The Fairness Doctrine itself was in effect from 1949 until 1987. It required that radio broadcasts devote a reasonable amount of time to the discussion of controversial issues of public importance, and that the broadcaster do that fairly by offering reasonable opportunity for opposing viewpoints to be heard. If the Federal Communications Commission found a radio station in repeated violation of this Doctrine, it could take away the station’s license—a business form of capital punishment. One famous victim...

It may now be 2006, but George Orwell’s 1948 novel 1984 – which predicted a dark dystopian future in which a totalitarian government watches its subjects relentlessly - is still terrifyingly prescient. Its influence can be seen in many movies, from Brazil to this year’s V For Vendetta, while Michael Radford directed a screen version in, wait for it, 1984. But if Tim Robbins has his way, there’ll soon be a brand-new movie version coming our way. Robbins is currently directing a stage version of the novel for his LA theatre troupe, The Actors’ Gang. That runs until April 8,...

Hot frogs at Christmas By: RICK REISS - For The Californian Have you heard the urban legend about putting a frog into a pot of boiling water? If you haven't, it goes something like this: A frog placed in water that is gradually brought to boil will make no attempt to escape. On the other hand a frog placed directly into boiling water will make every effort to escape. This folklore has no scientific backing, but it is a good metaphor to describe the gradual eroding of American liberties by paternalistic government and political correctness. Simply put, complacency gets you...

Have you ever noticed how self-righteously outraged liberals become if you DARE to accuse them of being sympathetic to communism? They will accuse you of trying to smear them as well as go into a "How dare you question my patriotism?" mode. However, if you actually READ what the DUmmies and their leftist cohorts actually say to each other on the subject of communism, you will see not only sympathy but flat out LOVE for communism as you can see in this DUmmie THREAD titled, "Why do some people (DU'ers too) think that Communism is the worst?" As usual,...

With critics charging he misled Americans on the war in Iraq, President Bush says, "These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops." Is it right to argue about the reasons for going to war, or should we "put this debate behind us," as the president's national security adviser suggests?

George Orwell, author and lifelong socialist, entered into a tax avoidance scheme on his deathbed as money began to flood in from the success of his final two books, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. He was seeking to escape the full weight of the Labour government's punishing surtax regime as all his royalties arrived in a short period and he feared leaving his widow and six-year-old son with a gigantic bill for death duties. After Orwell died, his accountants underplayed the copyright value of those two great works, which between them have sold millions of copies in dozens of languages,...

In George Orwell’s classic book entitled 1984, one of the brainwashing pillars used by Big Brother was “ignorance is strength.” All citizens were constantly reminded of this principle to diminish their desire to know the truth. Adherence to this principle kept the government strong and the citizens weak. The Democratic leadership in Congress has apparently adopted this philosophy as a strategy to defeat the idea of optional personal retirement accounts to restructure our dysfunctional Social Security system. Week after week their rhetoric attempts to deny, distort, distract, and deceive the public on the facts about President Bush’s optional accounts proposal....

Many argue that communism will never be possible because of "human nature". The essence of this false argument is the belief that a communist society would consist of an all-powerful central government that would tell everybody what to do--and would therefore undermine the creative initiative of individuals and the search for happiness. • This argument is based on two false assumptions: (1) It assumes that a communist society will look like the former Soviet Union, or the current China, North Korea, etc (ie: corrupt police states with a feudal-style ruling class) (2) It assumes that people will only work in...

why do people keep banning me everytime I put up interesting articles? I work for a website I think some of you are familiar with called phantirath weekly world news and each time we put somthing up on FR no matter how conservative it is it keeps getting banned. Whats the matter with it?! Damn man what are you marxist socialists communists? I just got a call this mroning from a Juwish friend of mine who said that you banned an important article about Zionism and Noam Federman and about how we were to support israel. I thought you guys...

Belmont Club History and history in the making Thursday, December 09, 2004 The Defense of the Realm Dr. Ian Stephen "an Honorary Lecturer (Forensic Psychology) at Glasgow Caledonian University" and "a consultant to forensic psychology television series Cracker" gave some advice to British householders on the appropriate way to handle a home invasion. The advice was given in response to heightened public fears caused by the murder of British financier John Monckton. Burglars tricked him into opening his door by impersonating mailmen. He was killed in the hallway of his multimillion-dollar home. His wife, Viscountess Monckton of Brenchley, was stabbed...

E-mail Author Author Archive Send to a Friend <% printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%> Print Version August 11, 2004, 8:59 a.m. 1984, c. 2004Doublespeak is alive and well. George Orwell's novel 1984 depicted Earth as a totalitarian planet. Twenty years after that date, most of the world — and America specifically — has avoided his dystopian vision. Even if Big Brother is watching, no one is required to love him. And, at a minimum, he quadrennially faces the voters. Still, a new study finds Orwell's ghost haunting America's public dialogue. More accurately, the hollow and oxymoronic rhetoric the late British writer...

Somewhere between Guantanamo Bay and bin Laden, madness lies DOUBLETHINK, George Orwell wrote, “means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them”. The reaction of those who object to the manner in which the American and British governments are conducting the campaign against Islamist terrorism illustrates his point perfectly. During the past ten days, we have witnessed sneering cynicism and despondent defeatism. Neither attitude is justified by the evidence. The response of one vocal camp to the wave of captures in Pakistan, the elevation of terror alert levels in the United States...

There’s a reason why literate Americans should be familiar with classic books. A solid example arose last week. Those Americans who went to college a generation ago would have read the book that explains the situations of Joe “Isuzu” Wilson and Sandy “Shoplifter” Berger. That book was written in 1948; its title is 1984. The author of that book, George Orwell, died in 1950. Still, he better understood these events in 2004 than most of the reporters covering them in newspapers and on TV, today. Does that sound impossible? Here’s the proof: As of a week ago, a special website...

In his book The Betrayal of Dissent, Beyond Orwell, Hitchens and the New American Century, author Scott Lucas attempts to write a final obituary for George Orwell and contemporary intellectuals – notably Christopher Hitchens – whom Lucas maintains unfairly use Orwell’s life and work to silence legitimate dissent. Instead, Lucas inadvertently digs his own grave, revealing in over three hundred pages of meandering cut and paste, not the unpardonable transgressions of St. George and his “apostles,” but the muddled thinking and moral ambiguity of what now passes for “dissent” within the anti-war left. Lucas, a native of Huntsville, Alabama, now...

Pizza Hut Order - Year 2010 Pizza Hut order in a few years Operator: "Thank you for calling Pizza Hut. May I have your national ID number?" Customer: "Hi, I'd like to place an order." Operator: "May I have your NIDN first, sir?" Customer: "My National ID Number, yeah, hold on, eh, it's 6102049998-45-54610." Operator: "Thank you, Mr. Sheehan. I see you live at 1742 Meadowland Drive, and the phone number's 494-2366. Your office number over at Lincoln Insurance is 745-2302 and your cell number's 266-2566. Which number are you calling from, sir?" Customer: "Huh? I'm at home. Where d'ya...

BAGHDAD (AFP) - The name of Saddam Hussein has been removed from the list of descendants of Islam's Prophet Mohammed, the head of the union of Ashrafs, who guard the genealogical tree, told AFP. Al-Sherif Najeh Mohammed Hassan al-Faham al-Aaraji admitted that the ousted dictator had been able to cheat despite the great value and honour attached to the line which is guarded in Baghdad. "Saddam had forced the origin experts to falsify his genealogical tree so that it went back to the Prophet," he said. "We will inform all the experts, and particularly those who yielded to Saddam and...

When Evelyn Waugh died, only a bold man would have bet on his reputation. 1966 was the apotheosis of "Swinging London," but Waugh, while a Londoner born and bred, was the antithesis of swinging. Waugh was, in modern parlance, a snob, a racist, and a sexist. He was a self-styled "craftsman" who loathed proletarian culture. He was a political reactionary, and a lonely and anguished opponent of the Second Vatican Council that was soon to render unrecognizable his beloved Catholic Church. He was a man of the past. Of course anyone who had bet on Waugh then could easily retire...

My op eds on Buggering American Civilization and Ten Reasons to Defend Marriage earned the best hate mail. The people who disagree with my Conservatism speak from the overflow of their hearts. They can’t refrain from calling me names. None of them challenged the ideas. Their hate mail even proves my points. Thank you. If the fundamental issues weren’t so important, it would be laughable that we even have to address this question of same-sex marriage. As George Orwell said, “We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent...

“Call you a waitperson?” I asked. What the hell was a waitperson? But that was what a girl told me to refer to her as after I called her a waitress. The year was 1991 and it was my first introduction to the totalitarian phenomenon known as “political correctness” or PC. I had been previously shielded from it, although my friends who graduated from Michigan or Michigan State were already well familiar with its iron requirements. I was lucky to have attended a Jesuit university which, back then, was devoid of a womyn’s studies program or a queer devotional center...

"It was taken for granted among us that [Julius and Ethel Rosenberg] were guilty. We had this kind of double thinking. While they were guilty, of course they were innocent. They were framed. Because anyone ... indicted by the capitalists was ipso facto framed." -- Ronald Radosh quoting John Gates, member of the U.S. Communist Party's central committee, in The Rosenberg File. You'd think this verdict, coming from a bona fide red-diaper New York intellectual, would end the argument over this notorious duo, who went defiantly to their execution in 1953. But the campaign to deify the Rosenbergs and other...

<p>His real name wasn't even George Orwell, but he left the world with an adjective -- Orwellian -- that has been used, misused and overused to the point that it may stand forever as a warning about the danger of totalitarianism, whether in the darkness of "1984" (his inversion of 1948, a bleak time in early postwar England) or in the deceptively benign order that some fear may evolve into "friendly fascism." Orwell -- real name Eric Blair -- made an indelible mark on a century and a world he understood and described so well.</p>

LONDON (Reuters) - Giant of 20th century political thought or sick and quirky loner -- the legend of British author George Orwell is coming under review 100 years after his birth. The man whose incisive brain gave the world Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty Four, in the process embedding the terms Big Brother and Thought Police into the English language, has been generally deified since his death in January 1950. But true to his own quip that "saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent," the Orwellian myth is coming under new scrutiny around the centenary of...

Hartford Advocate: My Own Private Orwell Why the high priest of dystopia still matters My Own Private Orwell Why the high priest of dystopia still matters Why the high priest of dystopia still matters by Alan Bisbort - June 19, 2003 Also see cover art PETER M. MORLOCK PHOTO ILLUSTRATION Orwell with his mother in 1903 Orwell's fether in 1903 Before an Eton game, 1921 While he was still Eric Blair, late 1920s One of Orwell's early novels, 1936 Orwell in Wallington Churchyard, 1939 The animal fable that made Orwell famous, 1945 Had he lived to be an old man...

Andrew Weiss November 29, 1998 The History of Europe from 1715   Homage to Catalonia and The Spanish Civil War In the 1952 novel, Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell relates his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. In 1937 Orwell traveled to Spain to cover The Spanish Civil War for a British newspaper, but soon after he arrived he joined the P.O.U.M Militia and fought against Franciso Franco. The Spanish Civil War started when Franco, a Spanish general, led a revolt against the republican government. Franco, although not a fascist himself, was backed by Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, the Spanish...

'Take up the White Man's burden," Rudyard Kipling implored the Americans in 1899 as they began ruling the Philippines, hoping that they would better the lot of the inhabitants, whom he characterised as "new-caught, sullen peoples,/ Half devil and half child". That poem has wrecked Kipling's standing with bien-pensant opinion ever since, but as the United States now bravely embarks on its much more modern form of empire-lite, his reinstatement as a serious political figure - as opposed to merely a pre-eminent phrase-coiner - has received a huge boost. The Elizabeth Longford Historical Biography prize has been awarded to David...

The Left's Orwellian Use of HistoryBy Ben JohnsonFrontPageMagazine.com | May 9, 2003 WERE HE ALIVE TODAY, GEORGE ORWELL would be flabbergasted by the political Left's attempts to appropriate history for its own agenda.  Whereas both sides of the ideological spectrum have historically sought to present themselves as the rightful heirs to mankind’s greatest leaders, the modern Left has attempted to throttle political discourse by denying conservatives’ right to even refer to many great men.  In other words, the Left has asserted ownership of certain historical figures. President John F. Kennedy now stands pre-eminent within this gated pantheon.  When Republicans recently...