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The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

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Re: The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

#161

Post by emmelaich »

dmix wrote: post #112
emmelaich wrote: post #111

David Crook, mentioned in the article as working for the anti-POUM had a fascinating life. Apparently he apologised for the mentioned spying. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Crook https://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/dec/18/guardianobituar... Hampstead Heath to Tian An Men - The autobiography of David Crook http://www.davidcrook.net/simple/main.html

Crook's books on living in Chinese communism sound interesting, I managed to buy them both used on Abebooks. I've always wanted to read what day-to-day life was like in early Communist china. I've found a lot of older Chinese people I talk to don't like talking about it or change the subject pretty quickly, which I understand, people don't like talking about being poor. The person I last talked to was a teacher in Ch…

Depending on how far back you want to go you could add

https://www.abebooks.co.uk/book-search/title/the-small-woman...

Which is the story of Gladys Aylward, a missionary in China mostly in the first half of the century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladys_Aylward

It was made into a film "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness" featuring Ingrid Bergman. It of course took liberties with the story but I remember it being a good movie.

Re: The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

#162

Post by dang »

julienreszka wrote: post #127
dang wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's baity. We have enough trouble keeping people from going on generic ideological tangents as it is. The policy is " Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait. " ( https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ).

This is exactly what Orwell is talking about in his books. Why are you trying to control our thoughts dang, go find a real job

Yes, but Orwell wrote about it intelligently. If he had let a million internet users comment in his books, they wouldn't be worth reading either.

Re: The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

#163

Post by angry_octet »

dang wrote: post #162
julienreszka wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what Orwell is talking about in his books. Why are you trying to control our thoughts dang, go find a real job

Yes, but Orwell wrote about it intelligently. If he had let a million internet users comment in his books, they wouldn't be worth reading either.

# It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

I can imagine the twitter clock-splaining... "It's 13-hundred dontcha kno.", "I hate it when daylight savings ends" etc.

Re: The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

#164

Post by julienreszka »

dang wrote: post #162
julienreszka wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what Orwell is talking about in his books. Why are you trying to control our thoughts dang, go find a real job

Yes, but Orwell wrote about it intelligently. If he had let a million internet users comment in his books, they wouldn't be worth reading either.

This really isn't the point. I'm not talking about comments but how you manipulate the perception of the public discussion.

By the way your assumption about free comments is really arrogant I guess power corrupts but it could be that you've always believed that.

Anyway 1984 will enter the public domain in 2020, we could actually try and see this then; and I bet the average comment will be more thoughtful than your average comment that seriously doesn't bring to the discussion anything but hate and frustration.

Re: The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

#165

Post by cbnotfromthere »

c0nducktr wrote: post #91
lopmotr wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's already pretty true for many types of resources. Electronics, software, music, plastic parts. All sorts of things cost practically zero today compared to, say, 100 years ago when they required much more labor to produce or didn't even exist. I recently bought a flat-screen TV for half the price of a McDonald's meal. That's as good as free.

I've never heard the term resource scarcity used to refer to something like software, music, or televisions.

Unless one can generate by the click of a button TV series with any selling power, resource scarcity is here to stay.

The fact that you personally are unaware of the basics in the economics of this or that field is, well, irrelevant for the discussion.

Re: The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

#166

Post by cbnotfromthere »

southerntofu wrote: post #132
wtdata wrote: post #123

What I find interesting, is the great number of people - specially in the last decade when reading 1984 suddenly became popular - that keeps telling us all that Orwell's works are a warning specifically against fascism and point Orwell's role in Spain as proof that he was himself a communist. Orwell left quite clear that after having seen both Nazism and Communism in action, he was staunchly against both forms of tot…

> he was staunchly against both forms of totalitarianism Indeed! But unlike capitalism, communism does not require totalitarian structures of power. They're actually quite incompatible. Empires describing themselves as "communist" are more so "state capitalist". The USSR was not a classless society nor a free society so it cannot be called communism: some people had more rights/resources than others (the opposite of…

[dead]

Re: The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

#167

Post by dmix »

amaccuish wrote: post #157
dmix wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crook's books on living in Chinese communism sound interesting, I managed to buy them both used on Abebooks. I've always wanted to read what day-to-day life was like in early Communist china. I've found a lot of older Chinese people I talk to don't like talking about it or change the subject pretty quickly, which I understand, people don't like talking about being poor. The person I last talked to was a teacher in Ch…

Also look up Sidney Rittenberg [0]. He wrote a book and there's a documentary on him. He was friends with Mao and imprisoned by him. He wrote a book [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Rittenberg [1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00CPJB7H4/ref=dp-kindle-redirec...

Looks good, thank you. Added it to my wishlist

Re: The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

#168

Post by amaccuish »

julienreszka wrote: post #127
dang wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's baity. We have enough trouble keeping people from going on generic ideological tangents as it is. The policy is " Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait. " ( https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ).

This is exactly what Orwell is talking about in his books. Why are you trying to control our thoughts dang, go find a real job

No he was talking about totalitarianism.
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