What if this man's right? Trump's Israel First

This brother says nothing but FACT - Tucker Carlson: Let's do genetic testing on all new Israelis

One of Khalid Muhammad’s controversial statements - Israel first: Truck driver on gas prices

😂 British cop has fun being the enforcer - BlackRock CEO wants our pensions to fund his AI

George Orwell: Warning to Humankind (doc)

George Orwell: A Warning to Mankind (documentary)

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Burma's most esteemed American monk

Pat Macpherson and, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly based on Burmese article by Wei Yan Aung translated by Thet Ko Ko, Irrawaddy Times (irrawaddy.com, May 25, 2020)

The sad day Burma's most esteemed foreign monk passed away

RANGOON, Burma - Today in 1966, Italian-American Buddhist monk and missionary Ven. U Lokanatha (who was born Salvatore Cioffi in 1897 and raised in Brooklyn, New York) passed away in Pyin Oo Lwin (Maymyo, Mandalay region). He dedicated his life to promoting Buddhism worldwide.

• Brooklyn Bhikkhu: How Salvatore Cioffi became Ven. Lokanatha (Philip Deslippe, researchgate.net)*

Inspired by the Dhammapada, the "Sayings of the Buddha," New York University graduate in chemistry Cioffi became interested in Buddhism and entered the monastic order in Burma in 1925 at the age of 28.

• The first Westerner to ordain as a Buddhist monk was the Irish freethinker from California Laurence Carroll, who became Ven. U Dhammaloka

Irish Laurence Carroll was the first Western monk.

From his base in Burma, the Italian-American monk traveled to many countries including Thailand, Sri Lanka, Italy, France, and the United States, promoting Buddhism.

When World War II broke out, he was in British India and like other Europeans abroad, he was confined by British authorities in a prison camp, where he introduced some of his fellow prisoners to Buddhism. He also organized a dramatic 96-day hunger strike to demand his religious rights as a Buddhist, until he was eventually forcibly fed by the jailers.

Ananda Metteyya (Elizabeth J. Harris)

He was later incarcerated for seven days in France for collecting alms, which many misunderstand to be begging. [It is offering others the opportunity to volunteer to support and thereby make merit by cultivating charity called dana.]

Although U Lokanatha (Cioffi) preached widely and wrote numerous books about Buddhism, the compassionate vegetarian spent much of his time meditating in caves and forests.

As such he garnered a higher esteem than his predecessor, the foreign monk and English Buddhist missionary Ananda Metteyya (Charles Henry Allan Bennett), and the British writer in Burma George Orwell (Nineteen Eighty-Four, Burmese Days, and 1936's "Shooting an Elephant").

• 

  The Awakening of the West

  Allan Bennett, a colleague of the infamous occultist Aleister Crowley, received the name "Ananda Metteyya" in British Ceylon (Sri Lanka) when he ordained as a Buddhist monk, studying and practicing in the East. He was the second Englishman to become a Theravada Buddhist monk (bhikkhu) and was instrumental in introducing Buddhism to England [as the PTS scholars had done since at least 1881, modeled on EETS of 1864], where he established the first Buddhist mission in the UK (WQ, Wiki, Stephen Batchelor's The Awakening of the West, p. 40).

The Religion of Burma (Bennett)

U Lokanatha attracted many devotees as he crossed Burma and asked spiritual questions of senior monks who were widely considered to be enlightened (arhats), those awakened and thereby freed from the endless cycle of rebirth and suffering.

The Italian-American monk lived in Burma for many decades, moving from the colonial period to post-independence and military domination. He passed from cancer at the age of 68.

• Buddhism in Southeast Asia
  

*The Italian-American monk from Brooklyn

Bennett, Buddhist in England

(Philip Deslippe) BIOGRAPHY: Salvatore Cioffi, who became Venerable Lokanatha (1897–1966), was born in Italy and raised in Brooklyn, New York, USA.

After becoming a Buddhist in his late-20s, U Lokanatha travelled to Burma, took ordination as a monk, and began a remarkable 40 year career as a writer, lecturer, organizer, and Buddhist "missionary" throughout South Asia and the world.

U Lokanatha garnered various responses. They are contextualized in the different cultural spheres in which he operated, from the anti-colonial Buddhist revival in Burma to the mocking indifference U Lokanatha found in the United States.

Scholarship on modern Buddhism, particularly recent work on the Irish monk, who first traveled to California then Asia, U Dhammaloka [Laurence Carroll], is used to situate U Lokanatha's life and its facets of conservative reformer and transnational actor.

Finally, an account of the source material used to reconstruct the life of U Lokanatha is employed.

It offers a practical methodological explanations for his absence from conventional narratives of modern Buddhism and what his inclusion along with other figures might mean in the future. More

Reading "Nineteen Eighty-Four" (audio)

George Orwell, Blackstone Audio, NMTV; Fandango 1984 movie; Wisdom Quarterly Wiki edit

Nineteen Eighty-Four, often republished as 1984, is a dystopian novel by English novelist in police state Burma George Orwell.

It was published on June 8, 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. The story was mostly written at Barnhill, a farmhouse on the Scottish island of Jura, at times while Orwell suffered from severe tuberculosis.

Thematically, Nineteen Eighty-Four centers on the consequences of government over-reach, totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of all persons and behaviors within society [2, 3].

THE STORY

Hospitals paid to pad pandemic numbers.

The story takes place in an imagined future, and it is not known what year because the government has manipulated things so much.

But the protagonist imagines it might be 1984 (chosen because the author was writing in 1948), when much of the world has fallen victim to perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, historical negation, and propaganda.

Great Britain, known as Airstrip One, has become a province of a superstate named Oceania that is ruled by the Party who employ the Thought Police to persecute individuality and independent thinking [4].

Big Brother, the leader of the Party, enjoys an intense cult of personality despite the fact that he may not exist.

The protagonist, Winston Smith, is a diligent and skillful rank-and-file worker and Party member who secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion. He enters a forbidden relationship with a co-worker, Julia.

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic literary example of dystopian fiction. Many terms used in the novel have entered common usage, including

• Big Brother
• doublethink
• thoughtcrime
• Newspeak
• Room 101
• telescreen [phone, computer, TV screens]
• 2 + 2 = 5
• prole
• memory hole.

Nineteen Eighty-Four also popularized the adjective "Orwellian," connoting things such as official deception, secret surveillance, brazenly misleading terminology, and manipulation of recorded history by a totalitarian or authoritarian state.

Time included it on its 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005 [5].

It was placed on the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels, reaching No. 13 on the editors' list and No. 6 on the readers' list [6]. In 2003, the novel was listed at No. 8 on The Big Read survey by the BBC [7].

Parallels have been drawn between the novel's subject matter and real life instances of totalitarianism, communism, mass surveillance, and violations of freedom of expression among other themes. More

The Left Forum 2014 (audio)

Amber Larson, Pfc. Sandoval, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; NYC, LeftForum.org

Left Forum 2014 Special Programming (KPFKorg) (ARCHIVE)

Greenwald: NSA spying and Snowden (video)

Ashley Wells, Pfc. Sandoval, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Glenn Greenwald (Socialism Conference.org, 2013); Jeremy Scahill; WeAreMany.org; Sonali Kohatkar (Uprising)

Documents show company collaborated closely with NSA and FBI to intercept data

 (WeAreManyMedia) Jeremy Scahill (Min. 2:55), Glenn Greenwald (Min. 10:00)

  

Journalist Glenn Greenwald (The Guardian, guardian.co.uk) recently spoke via Skype to the Socialism 2013 conference in Chicago regarding Edward Snowden's revelations about the NSA's mass surveillance program. Introductions by Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater and the filmmaker behind "Dirty Wars" and Sherry Wolf, author of Sexuality and Socialism.

• NSA collecting phone records on millions of customers
• NSA collects "...everything a user does on the Internet"
• NSA Prism program taps in to tech giants' user data
• Microsoft handed NSA access to encrypted messages
• NSA XKeyscore program – full presentation
• Boundless Informant: the NSA's secret tool
• How the NSA can use US data without a warrant
• How the NSA is still harvesting your online data
• NSA collected email data for more than two years
• There are extremely invasive spying programs going on
• Glenn Greenwald on NSA's domestic surveillance
• Glenn Greenwald: For Liberty and Justice for SOME

Margaret Reagan-Thatcher goes to heaven

Wisdom Quarterly; Billy Bragg (DemocracyNow.org); Letters & Politics

Pres. Obama comments on jobs report: "She's no Kamala Harris" (ocregister.com).

Iron Lady Baroness Thatcher, England's longest-running PM, dead at 87 (watdoday.com.au).

Influential British rocker and activist Billy Bragg (beginning with the punk rock band Riff Raff) made the song "It Says Here," a critique of politics and tabloid newspapers that still rings true. Bragg composed music for lyrics written by Woody Guthrie and performed many of the songs alongside the album’s other main contributor, Wilco. His passion for speaking out against injustice and fighting for many social causes. In the 1980s, he called for support for the 1984 strike by the National Union of Mineworkers, one of the most significant chapters in Britain’s trade union history. It was ultimately defeated under the watch of then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and Bragg went on to organize for the defeat of Thatcher and her Conservative government. His long history of activism  continues with "Never Buy The Sun," about the phone-hacking scandal engulfing the Rupert Murdoch media empire.

The Iron Lady's leaden policies
Pat Macpherson, Ashley Wells, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)

Iron Lady in tank and with Reagan (NYDN)

What ruined the American economy? According to progressive talk radio host Thom Hartmann, if the answer were boiled down to one thing, it is Reagonomics. The parallel economic path for England was the destructive policies enacted by Baroness Margaret Thatcher, who passed away today of a stroke. To the extent that Mikhail Gorbachev opened up the USSR to overt capitalist influences, he completed the trifecta of three great superpowers brought down by the same policies we are taught were their ideas. It was, in fact, the bankers, military, and industrialists telling them what policies to enact, what regulations  to subvert, and what wars to pursue. Where we are today has more to do with these three infamous politicians than even the Bushs' (all three of them G.H.W., G.W., and B.S.O.) White House.

Comical Grrrl Power? (BW)

Christian heaven in space is a great place. On one's death bed one need only utter Milli regretti and poof! There one is, forever and ever. Of course, this may just be a fundamentalist misunderstanding or Catholic (universalist) fabrication. It may not be what Jesus told anyone, but his words are in others' hands. And those others want to communicate a different message, one wholly devoted to this world: Make us right, do what should not be done, but there's forgiveness at the end of the day, so don't worry. "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law." This disgruntled-Christian sentiment has become the de facto Christian message. It's not enough to say milli regretti; more hocus pocus is involved. One has to mean it, and pray/beg for forgiveness from the space-father, and go through the son (although the Eastern Orthodox tradition says one can only go through the father with no proxies not even the son). Fortunately, Thatcher was Anglican, the English church not bound to Rome (the Holy Roman Empire's religious arm) and its dictates.

Who was she? The Legacy of Margaret Thatcher

Letters and Politics, April 8, 2013 (Berkeley, KPFA FM, 10:00 am)

The [Robber] Baroness (couriermail.com.au)

• LISTEN NOW

Mitch Jeserich spends an hour on the legacy of Margaret Thatcher and those who opposed her with British-based historian and activist Iain Boal and alternative American economist Richard Wolff.

• British Rocker Billy Bragg on Labor Strikes and Songs, Activism, and the Rupert Murdoch Hacking Scandal 
• PHOTOS: Margaret Thatcher's Life in Pictures
• Original Mouseketeer Annette Funicello dead at 70
• Occupy Wall Street protest heads to Millionaire’s Row, home of Murdoch, Koch, and JPMorgan CEO
• FOODOPOLY: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America from Monsanto to Wal-Mart  
• Capitalism in Crisis: Richard Wolff urges END to austerity; wants new jobs program and bringing Democracy to work
• Billionaires for Austerity: with cuts looming, Wall Street roots of "Fix the Debt" Campaign exposed 
• The Religious Mind of Mrs [Margaret] Thatcher
• Has 30 years of Reagonomics made USA 3rd-world Nation?
• "Saturday Night Live": Obama insults Kamala Harris
• India: a "harmless" (ahimsa) exhibition

Clash of the Titans: Obama vs. NOTA (video)

Pat Macpherson, Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly

"Dad, could you vote for NOTA ('None of the Above') this year and leave it at that?"

It is good to have a Muslim. But it would be better to have one who tells the truth rather than reading a litany of pleasant lies from teleprompters (sociologicalimagination.org).

 

As  Americans we are conditioned to yawn or gag at "politics" -- which we instantly associate with boredom, deception, pointlessness... And that is the way the MIC (Military-Industrial Complex) wants it.

   

Stay out of it, public; it's none of your business. We run this show, selecting and "electing" the most cooperative candidates.
  

"Sold to the  highest bidder!" M disapproves.

You tacitly consent because we manufacture your consent. You tacitly consent because you give up your voice, which could sway us (not that we will admit to having been swayed) and stave off or at least delay our more draconian plans.
  
So hold your nose and stomach, and pick the "lesser of two evils."
  

He was an Indonesian Muslim, but so what?

Whomever you choose, the choice is the same: evil, to a lesser or greater degree. The MIC went too far to the right propping the Naziesque Bush Dynasty. So now we get a smooth talking "liberal" who SAYS all the right things, all  the things the MAJORITY of Americans want to hear. He doesn't do them, but he does SAY them. (Thank you, PR Firms and Focus Groups, for the 411). Debates-schmebates!

• AUDIO: Why Obama is WORSE than Bush (and almost as bad as Romney)
• Finally a DEBATE that tackles about climate change, drones, drugs, civil liberties (slate.com)
• Jill Stein: My response to the presidential debates
• "Researchers" say our politics are rooted in our genes
• Fury over Republican candidate's rape comment (BBC)

There is nothing to choose when we have no choice. Our ONE-party system (two wings, moderate-right and extreme-right) offers no real choice at all. But there are other candidates. Wisdom Quarterly is rooting for Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein.

  

However, we would be happy to see just about anyone else elected:
 

Gov. Ventura, Congressman Kucinich, nun Pema Chodron, anchor Amy Goodman, Republicans Dr. Ron Paul or son Senator Rand Paul, Gary Johnson (Libertarian Party), Rocky Anderson (Justice Party), Virgil Goode (Constitution Party), Prof. Noam Chomsky, crank Ralph Nader, even billionaire Oprah Winfrey -- anyone other than the corporate shills engaged in this media-orchestrated horse race to the White House finish line.
  

Who will win, Barry or Mittens or "None of the Above"? What a nailbiter! Psychic Sean David Morton says Hillary Clinton is a surprise shoo in for 2012, but that may be on another timeline! (See Bruce Goldberg to go live in that segment of our multiverse).  Here we present the the REAL debates:

DemocracyNow! expands the debate by including the voices of three presidential candidates shut out of the official debate with parts of the Obama-Romney excuse for a debate that excluded third-party candidates. Here they get a chance to respond.

• VIDEO: The OTHER Presidential Debate: Oct. 24, 2012

"Lies." ... "More lies!"

From one dishonest broker to another: Donald Trump threatens to withhold $5 million dollars for charity unless Barry Soetoro (Pres. Barack Hussein Obama) releases his college and passport applications, which Barry cannot do without revealing that he was qualified to be President of the Corporation of the USA but not the country formerly known as the USA. 
  
His birth certificate was fake, a poor forgery, and he has a very questionable social security number, but details-schmeetails. He was installed with a mission to become a the benevolent face of a very violent dictatorship; he has no real power other than to be a mouthpiece. He killed that guy (Akbar Khan) he brags about killing; he did hard drugs with gay partners, getting them killed to ensure their silence... What are some more doctored documents going to do to his legacy? He is a so-so debater and a great orator, and isn't that all that matters? Pornographer Flint offered a million to see Romney's tax forms.

Show Me Your Papers, Ese (comics)

Ashley Wells, Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)

How our dictators justify killing. "This Modern World" by Tom Tomorrow (East Bay Express)

  

In "Show Me Your Papers, Comrade" we pointed out how the US was more and more becoming a police state.

  

A police state is all about authoritarian control -- where we go, what we do, whom we associate with, what is said, and ultimately what we think.
  
The worst offense in Nineteen Eighty-Four's dystopia was "thought crime." If one even seems to be thinking a radical thought, one is hauled into the Ministry of Love and violently and painfully re-educated, sometimes to death.

   

If the Bush Family wants Obama, should we?

Sure, why should people who live in the "Land of the Free" (that's what we Americans are told is the other name of our country) not be asked for papers and passports to step over into Canada or Mexico? But now there are border checks at every state line. There are "sobriety" checks whenever police feel like it. There are wanton "stop and frisk" policy violation, but no one cares if most of the people complaining are black and brown.

   

Now the Supreme Court has let stand a small but significant portion of Arizona's draconian anti-undesirable statutes. The "Show Me Your Papers, Ese" portion targets Latinos throughout Arizona and copycat states.
   
The police are merely asking a question, we are told. The fact is they are being put in a position to lie while engaging in racial profiling, stopping, frisking, and detaining those the law (blind Lady Justice) presumes to be innocent. They might be guilty of something. Then police look for that something, anything, in violation of every freedom we once took for granted.
  
But it's not happening to us (yet), so what do we care?

  

Thank you, Obama. You have made the Bush Dynasty and your cousin Dick Cheney very proud to have voted for an ostensibly black president.

The allowance is rife for police abuse and civil rights violations.

WikiLeaks' Julian Assange goes to Eucador Embassy for help.

United POLICE States of America (video)

Wisdom Quarterly (ANALYSIS)

Politics makes strange bedfellows. "Kinky Sex Makes the World Go Around" (Dead Kennedys) explains how economics and war go hand in hand.

The MIC (military-industrial complex) is safe. Co-opting the language of the Occupy Movement without ever once mentioning the word "occupy," Wall Street's own B.S. (Barry Soetoro) Obama puts the final touches on the Bush family's New World Order.

"We're not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that's fairly earned. I mean, I do think at a certain point you've made enough money. But, you know, part of the American way is, you know, you can just keep on making it..." — on Wall Street reform, Quincy, Illinois, April 29, 2010. More

Naomi Klein explains how "shock" and awe of entire populations produces the same results as torturing a detainee. "Disaster Capitalism" provides the economic shock.

But first to fake a popular election. How to get people to vote for more of the same? Vow "No more bailouts!" The damage is done. We won't be getting public money back from the massive bailouts industry already got:

Welfare fattened corporations and put the rest of us on the verge of homelessness and joblessness (facing foreclosure, underemployed, or very job-insecure). And let's give more money than Dick Cheney and W gave to the military.

The debt widens. Fear spreads. And if we feel insecure, we can rest assured that the name has already been changed from the Department of "War" to the Department of "Defense."

Pick a candidate, any candidate. All three are beholden to Wall Street, the Pentagon, Israel lobbyists, and clandestine services (CIA, TSA, NSA, NSC, FBI, police, Facebook...)

• Google goes "evil" - no more privacy
• VIDEO: Killing women and children in Iraq is naughty: US soldiers "shoot first, ask questions later"
• Santorum on rape: "Make the best of a bad situation"
• Top 10 racist Ron Paul friends and supporters
• Obama did NOT stop Internet destruction bill (SOPA)
  

Knock-knock at your front door. It's 1984!

California Uber Alles
Dead Kennedys

I am Governor Jerry Brown. My aura smiles and never frowns. Soon I will be president. Carter Power will soon go away. I will be Fuhrer one day. I will command all of you. Your kids will meditate in school. Your kids will meditate in school.

California Uber Alles
California Uber Alles
Uber Alles California
Uber Alles California

Original version (slicker version)

Zen fascists will control you, 100% natural. You will jog for the master race and always wear the happy face. Close your eyes, can't happen here. Big Bro' on white horse is near. The hippies won't come back you say. Mellow out or you will pay. Mellow out or you will pay.

Now it is 1984. Knock-knock at your front door. It's the suede/denim secret police. They have come for your uncool niece. Come quietly to the camp. You'd look nice as a drawstring lamp. Don't you worry, it's only a shower. For your clothes here's a pretty flower.

Die on organic poison gas. Serpent's egg's already hatched. You will croak, you little clown when you mess with President Brown.

It's too hard to read a book, even "1984" (video)

Emmanuel Goldstein (BBC production of 1984; Rosary Films; Wisdom Quarterly; Space Kimono

BBC Television's original 1954 live production of George Orwell's classic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. (Creative Commons license: Public Domain).

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic book everyone should read at some point. We are living it now. It is by British author George Orwell (who lived in Burma). Written in 1948 (which led to the title by simply reversing the last two digits) and published in 1949, it is set in an unknown year (at least a year no one can be certain of).

It focuses on a repressive, totalitarian regime. The story follows the life of one seemingly insignificant man, Winston Smith. He is a civil servant at the "Ministry of Truth" (a kind Times building which serves as the document of record) tasked with falsifying records and political literature.

He effectively perpetuates propaganda, knowing what is true yet making sure the records show otherwise, disappearing people, rewriting history, and so on. He grows disillusioned with his meager existence and so begins a rebellion against the system.

The novel has become famous for its portrayal of secret surveillance and society's increasing encroachment on the civil liberties and natural human rights of the individual. Since its publication the terms "Big Brother" and "Orwellian" have entered the popular language.

Orwell, who had "encapsulated the thesis at the heart of his novel" in 1944, wrote most of Nineteen Eighty-Four on the island of Jura, Scotland, during 1947-1948. He was critically ill with tuberculosis. He sent the final typed manuscript to his friends Secker and Warburg in 1948, and the book was published on June 8, 1949.

Nineteen Eighty-Four has been translated into more than 50 languages (like his popular children's story of totalitarian tactics Animal Farm). The novel's title, its terms, its new language ("Newspeak"), and its author's surname are bywords for personal privacy lost to national state security.

The adjective "Orwellian" denotes totalitarian action or organization, as well as governmental attempts to appropriate and misuse information (disinformation) for the purposes of controlling, pacifying, and subjugating its population.

"Orwellian" can also refer to twisting language so that it says the opposite of what it really means (like Citizens United, Secure Communities, No Child Left Behind, Helping America Vote Act, Clean Water Act, Department of Defense, etc.). Specifically it is governmental propagandizing by the misnaming of things: the "Ministry of Peace" in the novel is actually the Department of War; the "Ministry of Love" actually tortures people; the "Ministry of Truth" is all about lying and fomenting propaganda.

Since the novel's publication, "Orwellian" has in fact become somewhat of a catch-all for any kind of governmental overreach and dishonesty.

The phrase "Big Brother is Watching You" refers to invasive surveillance. In the novel most information is gathered through the "telescreen," a sort of screen that spies on watchers. There are also surveillance cameras, helicopters, countless spies and informants, entrapment schemes, and microphones. (Most of this is now accomplished through iPhones, computers with cameras, CoIntelPro, and unwarranted wiretaps of all kinds).

Although the novel has been banned or challenged in some countries -- along with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, Kallocain by Karin Boye, and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury -- among the most famous literary representations of dystopia (an anti-utopia).

In 2005, Time Magazine listed it among the hundred best English-language novels published since 1923.

The book has often been misinterpreted as an attack on socialism. But Orwell himself had occasion to refute such claims, both privately and in public.

In a letter to Francis A. Henson of the United Automobile Workers (dated June 16, 1949 or seven months before he died), excerpts from which were reproduced in Life (July 25, 1949) and the New York Times Book Review (July 31, 1949), Orwell stated the following:

"My recent novel [1984] is NOT intended as an attack on Socialism or on the British Labour Party (of which I am a supporter) but as a show-up of the perversions... which have already been partly realized in Communism and Fascism.... The scene of the book is laid in Britain in order to emphasize that the English-speaking races are not innately better than anyone else and that totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere."

In his 1946 essay "Why I Write," Orwell described himself as a Democratic Socialist.

Nineteen Eighty-Four is set in Oceania, one of three intercontinental totalitarian super-states (the future Euro, Amero, and Other-o Zones).

The story occurs in London, the "chief city of Airstrip One," itself a province of Oceania that "had once been called England or Britain."

Posters of the ruling Party's leader "Big Brother" (a kind of Gen. Than Shwe, Hitler, Stalin, Churchhill, Bush, Cheney), bearing the caption BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, dominate the cityscapes.

Two-way screens (the "telescreen") dominate the private and public spaces of the population.

Oceania's people are in three classes -- the Inner Party, the Outer Party, and the Proles (or 99%). The Party government controls the people via the Ministry of Truth ("Minitrue" in Newspeak), the workplace of protagonist Winston Smith, an Outer Party member.

As in the Nazi and Stalinist regimes, propaganda is pervasive; Smith's job is rewriting historical documents to match the current party line, the orthodoxy of which changes often.

The job (like that of Douglas Dietrich at The Presidio library) includes destroying evidence, amending newspaper articles, and deleting the existence of people identified as "unpersons" (the disappeared).

The only hope is a revolutionary party led by Emmanuel Goldstein. But that is a myth or an appropriated reality used by the Inner Party to entrap rebels like Winston Smith and his love interest Julia, who only pretends to be a member of the Anti Sex League.

Here are more details on the story if reading it still seems impossible. It is also available as an audio book, Kindle, and a more modern movie was made, which is not nearly as good as the original BBC version.