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https://youtu.be/6a6kbU88wu0

How to recognize a dystopia   YOUTUBE by Alex Gendler
at 2:30  mass media, HG Wells Brave New World
from 2:50 -5:14 Europe, Animal Farm

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The history of Propaganda and how it was transformed into "public relations"

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The history of Propaganda and how it was transformed into "public relations"

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https://youtu.be/sRJAzvi9aEU
2:30 Bernays used propaganda to get American support for World War I and President Wilson
5:12 how that changed into strategy

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"What you're seeing and reading is not what's happening" (words of Donald Trump, President of the USA)

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"What you're seeing and reading is not what's happening" (words of Donald Trump, President of the USA)

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https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-44959340/donald-trump-what-you-re-seeing-and-what-you-re-reading-is-not-what-s-happening

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If you can access Pinterest, there are many many subjects on "Alternative Facts" (the "Newspeak" for "Lies" invented by the Trump Administration)

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expressions and CARICATURES  dealing with "herd mentality"

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expressions and CARICATURES  dealing with "herd mentality"

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"get on the bandwagon"

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Lock Her Up!  Trump supporters shout in unison at all rallies

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Lock Her Up!  Trump supporters shout in unison at all rallies

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It means they want Hillary Clinton to be put in jail because she used her personal email account to send government work email messages

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RNC 2016 Chant: 'Lock Her Up' Goes Mainstream

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American history textbooks don't tell history the same way, depending on where you live...

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American history textbooks don't tell history the same way, depending on where you live...

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Two States. Eight Textbooks. Two American Stories. (Published 2020)

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We analyzed some of the most popular social studies textbooks used in California and Texas. Here’s how political divides shape what students learn about the nation’s history.

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caricatures and cartoons about the consequences of ignorance

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caricatures and cartoons about the consequences of ignorance

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you can compare dystopian novels to our world. See articles such as this one

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The scary similarities and how this dystopian fiction may be a wake up call!

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Edward Bernays and Group Psychology at the Academy of Ideas (Youtube)

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Edward Bernays and Group Psychology at the Academy of Ideas (Youtube)

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https://youtu.be/lOUcXK_7d_c

3:40 - 3:53  4:39 - 5:12 group identification
7:18 - 7:35 group manipulation
8:10- 8:42 divide and conquer
9:30-9:48 eyes are diverted

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"What you're seeing and reading is not what's happening"

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"What you're seeing and reading is not what's happening"

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https://www.truthorfiction.com/did-u-s-president-donald-trump-say-what-youre-seeing-is-not-whats-happening/
Donald Trump and George Orwell

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wikipedia says....

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Trump's tells the press that 4 American Congress-women of diverse origins who criticized his policies should "go back to their country" (however, they are Americans).

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Trump's tells the press that 4 American Congress-women of diverse origins who criticized his policies should "go back to their country" (however, they are Americans).

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And he whipped his crowd into a frenzy about locking up Hillary Clinton - before insisting post-inauguration that the idea of prosecuting his Democratic opponent is "just not something I feel very strongly about."

President Donald Trump returned to a familiar tactic Thursday of blaming others for a problem many believe he created, tossing his own base under the bus to deflect outrage from GOP allies on Capitol Hill and beyond.

It's a throwback to a field-tested Trump playbook: push the rhetoric further than some allies can handle, then tiptoe back to shrug off responsibility.

Days after Trump encouraged four freshman Democrats - Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts - in a pair of tweets to "go back" to other countries, his supporters backed him up Wednesday night by chanting "send her back" about Omar, the only one of the four congresswomen who was born outside the United States.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump reprimanded his supporters who had launched into the racially incendiary chant at a North Carolina campaign rally. Trump, who said he was "not happy" with the episode, claimed that he tried to stop the crowd by "speaking very quickly," at no point mentioning that the chant began only seconds after he told the crowd that Omar "looks down with contempt on the hardworking American" and "has a history of launching vicious, anti-Semitic screeds."

Indeed, the president pushed his adoring audience all the way to the edge and then continued attacking Omar once the chant they started died down. But as more and more Republicans piled onto him Thursday, Trump responded by suggesting it was his audience - not he - who had crossed a line.

"I disagree with it," he said of the chant.

It is hardly the first time the president has denied involvement in a controversial action or comment that, intentionally or not, he provoked.

At a campaign rally the day of the 2016 Iowa caucuses, then-candidate Trump told his supporters to "knock the crap" out of any protesters - promising to cover their legal fees if they did. But one month later, when an anti-Trump protester was sucker-punched at another rally in Arkansas, his campaign aides said they "obviously discourage this kind of behavior."

In another instance from 2016, Trump drew praise from former Klu Klux Klan leader David Duke after he reposted a quotation from Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. He later distanced himself from Duke during a series of cable news interviews.

Close allies of the president said they see no reason to believe he will end his attacks against Omar or her three progressive colleagues, who together make up a group known as "the squad."

"Send her back is over the top. It's not appropriate," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). But otherwise, "you can expect [Trump] to continue."

"I wouldn't dare say he'd change his style. And if he does, it won't be much," added Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.). "The way I view it is, I wouldn't give four freshmen that much attention."

While Trump threw Republicans a bone by disavowing the chants midday Thursday, the damage had already been done to senators who have repeatedly urged him to focus on issues, highlight the booming economy and avoid personal attacks.

"You don't want it to get personal, you hope it doesn't, but unfortunately it has," said Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.). "I think it is good for him to paint a contrast on the philosophies, policy positions, issues, because I think that gives the American people a clear choice."

"The chants were offensive. And very unfortunate and they do not speak well of that crowd," said Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah). Trump has "a special responsibility to unite Americans regardless of our ethnicity, race or national origin. I feel that he failed in that regard."

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) likened the rally to a "rock concert" where crowd control is impossible and said "people are reading too much" into the chants. But he suggested that a more fertile area of attack would be singling out Omar's support for the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement aimed at winning concessions for Palestinians from Israel.

"If we focus on what Omar just proposed yesterday with respect to BDS against Israel, I want the American people to know that stuff," Tillis said. "If we do that, the American people are going to have enough."

But Trump has shown no sign of a course correction, despite distancing himself from his supporters' controversial chant. Even some of his campaign advisers said they worry he will make matters worse while he's visiting his Bedminster, N.J., golf club this weekend. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence are scheduled to speak at a private campaign event there Friday night, while the president's schedule for the rest of the weekend is unknown.

One administration official said Trump bragged about the tweets he posted last Sunday, in which he urged Omar and her colleagues to "go back" to where they came from, after seeing reports that his support among Republicans had increased after the off-message attack. (A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Tuesday showed the president's net approval among GOP voters rising 5 percentage points since a poll taken last week.)

"I'm not relishing the fight. I'm enjoying it because I have to get the word out to the American people," he told reporters before arriving in Greenville, N.C., on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Republicans are weighing how to move forward. They insist - and have privately told Trump and Pence - that the president will benefit more if he focuses on his party's ideological battle with progressive Democrats instead of fanning the flames of racism.

Many GOP lawmakers spent all week deciding how to condemn Trump's tweets without raising his ire and earning themselves an angry phone call or the threat of a primary challenger. Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.), who is seeking reelection in a diverse state, declined to talk about the episode, as did Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who had gently criticized Trump earlier this week.

"I don't know if all of this is strategic or shoot from the hip. I have no idea," said one exasperated Republican senator who insisted on anonymity after speaking previously about Trump's outburst earlier this week. "I'm done on this issue."

Trump campaign officials also dodged questions about the president's tweets and the chant that broke out at his Wednesday rally. Tim Murtaugh, communications director for Trump's 2020 campaign, instead criticized the "socialist ideas" he claims have been espoused by "the squad" and other Democrats.

"The Squad, as they call themselves, are now the leaders of the Democrat Party," Murtaugh said in a statement. "Americans don't like it when elected officials consistently disparage this country."

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Trump's field-tested strategy: Whip up a frenzy, then disavow

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And he whipped his crowd into a frenzy about locking up Hillary Clinton - before insisting post-inauguration that the idea of prosecuting his Democratic opponent is "just not something I feel very strongly about."

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Photos of the Women's March on Washington were modified

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Photos of the Women's March on Washington were modified

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After Trump's election, women marched on Washington, but when one museum displayed photos of the demonstration, they changed them. Now they apologize.

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or this one

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The seemingly fictional plot of The Hunger Games provided us with entertainment and enjoyment, although it has occurred to me that that some of the themes reflect some of the very real present day themes in today's society. Now of course there is no such thing as an actual Hunger Game, and definitely no event that involves children fighting to the death, however, the topics that it addressed seemed to hit close to home.

Warning: If you haven't seen the movie, don't read this post.

One of main themes was the application of "Districts" and their associated trades. Power plant workers, coal miners, and lumber were just a few of the trades represented in each district, similar to the same concept of unions that we have today. A rough explanation of a labor union is, "an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members (rank and file members) and negotiates labour contracts (collective bargaining) with employers. The most common, but by no means only, purpose of these organizations is "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment"

These "Districts" have been grouped in order of their trade and the rebellions they participate in were a result of the unfair working conditions and unjust laws.

Another more obvious theme that can be seen in the movie and our society is the apparent divide of the rich and poor. One of the most recent events that supports this theme is the Occupy Wall Street protests. See link below for more detail:

One of the main goals behind the the protest was the unrighteous divide of the 1% Wall Street rich and the more common 99% of the working class. In the movie the working class encounters problems such as lack of food, shelter, clothing -- the bare necessities that we are accustomed to. Whereas, the other half of the people in the movie were exposed to the finer things in life ranging from decadent pastries to glamorous costumes and wardrobe. Needless to say the lifestyles of the rich and the poor are made very apparent in the movie.

Another theme that's present in our society and the movie is the obsession with celebrities and fame. I found myself finding a lot of similarities between the Hunger Games contestants and those on shows like American Idol and The Voice. Both have stylists that dress them up to make them look more dazzling and attractive, and both have mentors that help guide them through the process.

I'm not sure if Suzanne Collins intentionally wrote the trilogy to reflect some of the common themes in society, but it seems that there are a lot of cross overs and correlations that beg the question, are the odds ever in our favor?

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The Hunger Games Themes That Apply to Our World Today

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I'm not sure if Suzanne Collins intentionally wrote the trilogy to reflect some of the common themes in society, but it seems that there are a lot of cross overs and correlations that beg the question, are the odds ever in our favor?

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https://youtu.be/v7iWP-4rYg4
at 2:40  "post-truth" and Fake News
4:32 slide about truth manipulators
5:42 symbols and feelings
13:38 Fahrenheit 451 - politicians keep citizens away from politics

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Trump treats FOX news like state-run television

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Trump treats FOX news like state-run television

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https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/01/media/fox-trump-reliable-sources/index.html
(NEWS= les informations télévisées)
President Donald Trump uses the channel Fox News to express his point of view and demands that they only give his point of view
2:47-3:43  they look like news but they're not
4:10- 4:45 the 2020 election
6:00 - 6:20 lies, exaggerates and "spins"
6:48 - 7:18 how journalism works, obstruction of a shared truth

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2016 Presidential election manipulated by Google and Cambridge Analytica (video from Youtube)

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Trump is accused of dealing with Russia, so he accuses Hillary Clinton of being the true criminal who dealt with Russia

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Trump is accused of dealing with Russia, so he accuses Hillary Clinton of being the true criminal who dealt with Russia

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Photos of the Women's March were modified

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Photos of the Women's March were modified

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This is the full article on-line (for the preceding subject) in the New York Times

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F.B.I. Search of Trump's Home

A photo from the march displayed at the National Archives was altered to blur signs that were critical of President Trump or might be offensive, officials said.

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Officials on Saturday turned around a photo of the 2017 Women's March at the National Archives that was altered and posted a statement. Credit... Leigh Vogel for The New York Times

The National Archives and Records Administration, which calls itself the country's record keeper, apologized on Saturday for altering a photo of protesters at the 2017 Women's March that blurred out references critical of President Trump.

"We made a mistake," began a statement the archives released on Saturday.

The photo of protesters holding signs was part of an exhibit, "Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote," which examined the struggle of women to gain the right to vote.

But signs critical of the president that appeared in the photo - including one that said "God Hates Trump" - were doctored to blur out Mr. Trump's name, according to The Washington Post, which first reported on the alterations.

Initially, in a statement to The Post, an archives spokeswoman defended the decision and said "modifying the image was an attempt on our part to keep the focus on the records."

"As a nonpartisan, nonpolitical federal agency, we blurred references to the president's name on some posters, so as not to engage in current political controversy," the spokeswoman, Miriam Kleiman, said.

But by Saturday afternoon, three museum officials were seen turning around the photo display, which was a lenticular image that from one perspective showed the 2017 Women's March and from a different perspective shimmered to a 1913 photo of a women's demonstration on Pennsylvania Avenue.

The display was positioned so that only a blank canvas could be seen. Officials then posted a statement to the public that also apologized for the alterations.

"In a promotional display in this spot, we obscured some words on protest signs in a photo of the 2017 Women's March," the statement said. "This photo is not an archival record held by the National Archives but one we licensed to use as a promotional graphic. Nonetheless, we were wrong to alter the image."

The statement said the display would be replaced "as soon as possible with one that uses the unaltered image." It also said that a review would begin immediately into what happened.

This statement was posted on the back of a photo that was turned around on Saturday at the National Archives. Credit... Leigh Vogel for The New York Times

"As the National Archives of the United States, we are and have always been completely committed to preserving our archival holdings, without alteration," the statement said.

The controversy unfolded as tens of thousands of women gathered in Washington and other cities on Saturday for the fourth Women's March.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters, galvanized by the 2016 election of Mr. Trump, came to Washington in January 2017.

They also marched in cities across the country, holding signs about issues as diverse as abortion, sexual assault, equal pay, voter suppression and environmental protection.

One of the photos of the Washington march, taken by Mario Tama, a photographer for Getty Images, showed a sea of protesters holding signs criticizing Trump, The Post reported.

The National Archives, which featured the photo in its exhibit, blurred Mr. Trump's name on a sign that originally read "God Hates Trump." Another sign "Trump & GOP - Hands Off Women" also has the word Trump blurred out, The Post reported.

A sign with the word "vagina" was also blurred and the word "pussy" was erased from another sign. The references to the female anatomy were a rebuke of Mr. Trump's comments about women in a 2005 recording that captured him boasting how he used his celebrity status to force himself on women, even groping their private parts.

Those words were altered because the museum has many young visitors and there was concern they might be inappropriate, Ms. Kleiman told The Post.

Rinku Sen, a president of the board of directors for the Women's March, on Saturday called the alterations a "symbol of the degradation of democracy."

"The National Archives are our public historians and historians are not meant to change history but to report it," she said. "To me, it says that censoring women is a thing that people think they can do."

The decision was criticized by historians and archivists who said changing the photo was a violation of public trust.

"Museums, archives, and stewards of our historic artifacts should absolutely never change or alter visual or written content in primary sources," said Rhae Lynn Barnes, a professor of American Cultural History at Princeton University. "That is something totalitarian governments do."

She added: "American history is hopeful and uplifting and triumphant, but it's also dark and disturbing. Our job is to hold both of those truths and tensions together and properly contextualize the past so current and future generations can make up their own minds about the significance of what happened and empower themselves."

Archivists follow a strict code of ethics that forbids them from altering any images put into the public record, said Kathleen Roe, who was an archivist for 40 years at the New York State Archives, where she served as director of archives and records management.

The National Archives decision to display an altered photo is "really disappointing" and could undermine the faith of the public in archivists in general, she said.

"We are charged with providing access to the record as it exists not to the record as we wish it would exist or how it should be made to look for certain situations," Ms. Roe said. "If there is any place that you should be able to go to for the record as it was recorded it is in government archives."

The "Rightfully Hers" exhibit "examines the relentless struggle of diverse activists throughout U.S. history to secure voting rights for all American women," the archives said in its description of the exhibit.

The exhibit features more than 90 records, artifacts, photographs and other items meant to capture the advances of women as they struggled for decades to secure the right to vote. The exhibit opened in May and is scheduled to run through January 2021.

A Post reporter, Joe Heim, noticed the photo during a chance visit to the museum, he said on Twitter.

Ms. Sen said the altered images would likely infuriate women and encourage them to continue protesting the Trump administration.

"We're here to represent ourselves directly and exercise democracy directly, and we're not going to be shut down," she said.

Leigh Vogel contributed reporting.

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National Archives Apologizes for Altering Image of 2017 Women's March (Published 2020)

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F.B.I. Search of Trump's Home A photo from the march displayed at the National Archives was altered to blur signs that were critical of President Trump or might be offensive, officials said. Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month.

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We love The Hunger Games every bit as much as the next superfan, but these recent news stories have us wondering if we're headed toward a dystopian future similar to the one lived by Katniss and all her kin.

Hungry children aren't fiction

District 12 is one of Panem's poorest, but it's not the only district where children go hungry. Katniss and Peeta, as the movie's protagonists, are very sensitive to the imbalances they witness while on their Victory Tour, whereas citizens in the Capitol seem oblivious to the fact that people are starving and suffering in other districts.

Sound familiar?

The sad truth is an unbearable number of children are starving all over the world, and a considerable number of disadvantaged children are right here in the United States. According to a report by the National Center on Family Homelessness, nearly 2.5 million American children were homeless at some point in 2013. That's one in 30 children!

A planet in jeopardy

It may not get a lot of focus in the movie, but in the book, the Games come about as the result of warring that happened after a loss of natural resources due to global warming. In Book 1, when Katniss narrates the reaping, she tells us that the mayor of District 12:

"...tells the history of Panem, the country that rose up out of the ashes of a place that was once called North America. He lists the disasters, the droughts, the storms, the fires, the encroaching seas that swallowed up so much of the land, the brutal war for what little sustenance remained. The result was Panem, a shining Capitol ringed by thirteen districts, which brought peace and prosperity to its citizens."

While we're not seeing mass food shortages in the States yet, we are seeing higher prices for certain items at the grocery store, and we could see some of our favorite items disappearing from our grocery shelves completely. For instance, drought-stricken California grows 95 percent of America's avocados, but some farmers are letting their farms go dry due to exorbitant water prices. The Golden State is also seeing lower numbers of salmon because of the drought.

Don't care about salmon or avocados? What about chocolate? Yep, chocolate is on the endangered list, too.

Coal mines are really, really dangerous

Katniss' district is responsible for all of the coal mining in Panem. The workers toil in underequipped mine shafts that occasionally blow up, trapping and even sometimes killing everyone inside. But that couldn't happen in the States, right?

Wrong.

NPR just ran an in-depth news report on the insane lack of regulations on coal mines in the States. Turns out, a total of 2,700 mining company owners have failed to pay nearly $70 million in delinquent penalties over the past 20 years.

These mining companies get fined for safety violations, but there aren't enforcements in place to make them actually pay the fines, much less fix the violations. So the millionaires and billionaires operating the mines can continue to reap profits off the backs of their underpaid employees. And we mean literal backs - one of the miners NPR interviewed spent two hours pinned under a slab of rock, hitting the panic button on his radio between blackouts, before someone finally came to rescue him.

Bread and circuses are Hollywood's bread and butter

Am I the only one who thinks the The Hunger Games' rabid press tours look a little too much like the rabid press tours that are roundly criticized in the movie? The entire franchise centers around Panem's obsession with riches, fame and artifice, the whole doing it's best to point out just how frivolous and destructive such grotesque displays of grandiosity are, and yet The Hunger Games is still a movie. It still needs to be promoted, to be premiered, to sell tickets! Which puts it the film in the super awkward position of needing to engage in its own promotional frenzy, contradicting the very themes the movies are built on.

Some of the headlines we can't wait to click on out here in the real world could be pulled directly from the Capitol's news. Can't you hear Caesar Flickerman inviting you to check out Jennifer Lawrence's new dress or learn Elizabeth Banks ' makeup tricks? That's because Hollywood is a circus... and, just like the Capitol circus in the film, Hollywood distracts us from the fact that:

The rich keep getting richer

NPR recently reported that, according to a new study published by Oxfam, just 1 percent of the world's population controls nearly half of the planet's wealth.

And if that statistic doesn't make you want to punch a banker, these stats will:

The world's 85 richest people own as much as the poorest 50 percent of humanity.

In the U.S., where the gap between rich and poor has grown at a faster rate than any other developed country, the top 1 percent captured 95 percent of post-recession growth (since 2009), while 90 percent of Americans became poorer.

So, although we may not see wealthy Americans wearing white pancake makeup with hand-cut paper butterfly eyelashes on their lids walking around in head-to-toe purple roses and professionally coiffed blue wigs, we're not really that far off.

Oh, wait...

OK, so other than the occasional celebrity rock star, we don't see a lot of our one-percenters brandishing their wealth by wearing The Hunger Games fashion. We just see them buying million-dollar mansions, private jets and wearing watches that cost more than most people's homes.

At least they aren't rounding up our children and making them kill one another for entertainment... yet.

The exploitation of children

The The Hunger Games are the ultimate reality TV experience, and you know there are scary people out here in the real world who kind of wish the film's murder games were real. We don't want to know those people.

But we can't ignore the fact that a great many of us find a lot of pleasure in reality TV. From The Real Housewives series to Duck Dynasty and everything in between, audiences never seem to get tired of watching "real" people on their TVs. And for the most part, reality TV can be chalked up as harmless fun or a guilty pleasure. But as recent news about Here Comes Honey Boo Boo demonstrates, our "harmless" entertainment can come at a big cost when it involves children.

Life imitating art: Thai protesters arrested for using The Hunger Games salute

When Suzanne Collins invented the film's by-now-distinctive three-finger salute as a sign of admiration from District 12 citizens, I bet she had no idea it would one day become a cause for arrest in Thailand. But that is exactly what happened earlier this year when Thai protesters began using the symbolic gesture as a sign of protest.

Obviously, the film's themes of class oppression and totalitarian rule struck a nerve with the people of Thailand. As Brad Adams, director of Human Rights Watch's Asia division, told Time, the The Hunger Games salute is "a symbolic act of peaceful defiance."

And yet, most fans here in America seem to skim over the film's message, seeing the movie's extravagant sets, costumes and fight sequences as pure entertainment instead... panem et circenses, indeed.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 opens in theaters on Friday, Nov. 21.

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These real-life similarities make us wonder if The Hunger Games could really happen

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We love The Hunger Games every bit as much as the next superfan, but these recent news stories have us wondering if we're headed toward a dystopian future similar to the one lived by Katniss and all her kin. District 12 is one of Panem's poorest, but it's not the only district where children go hungry.

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https://youtu.be/ZXb-NjqyXrg
Hal Roberts on the news tells how social media brainwashes the masses in politics

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Trump creates an alternative reality and he wants you to join him there

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Trump creates an alternative reality and he wants you to join him there

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2018/07/25/daily-202-trump-creates-an-alternative-reality-and-he-wants-you-to-join-him-there/5b57c83e1b326b1e64695515/
The Washington Post article (click on "browse for free")  July 25 2018
(the motto of the Washington Post is "Democracy Dies in Darkness")

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Fake news given by Donald Trump is analyzed regulary: the wall between the US and Mexico, for example

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Fake news given by Donald Trump is analyzed regulary: the wall between the US and Mexico, for example

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There are many more caricatures on herd mentality on-line

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With the movie release of Catching Fire onNovember 22, trilogy fans are excited to watch the next installment of the young-adult fiction series on the big screen. Although the many fantastical elements of the Hunger Games series make it alluring to fans, author Suzanne Collins was inspired by current events, crises and politics more than you might think.

Four College of Charleston professors show how the government, scientific advances and sociological elements of the Hunger Games' Panem - post-apocalyptic America - is not so fictitious after all.

1. Power disparity.

The people of District 12 (protagonist Katniss' home), specifically those in "the seam" are poor, working class folk who struggle daily to put food on the table. Even the wealthier among them, the mayor and his family, for instance, are still confined to the district, unable to rise in power or status.

Sociology Professor Idee Winfield studies distribution of power and wealth. She notes, "There are a lot of similarities between Panem and the world we live in today. In the U.S. the gap between the upper and lower classes is growing wider; we're seeing conditions similar to those that have caused young adults to bring radical change to countries around the world, and to the conditions that threaten to start a revolution in the Hunger Games.

"If you look at the Arab Spring uprisings, educated young adults frustrated with the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of people who disregard the needs of the poor and unemployed propelled the uprisings."

2. Celebrity

No country in the world idolizes celebrities like the U.S. does. Some theorists suggest America's emphasis on celebrity culture is tied to the Latin concept of panem et circenses, or "bread and circuses," a concept used to distract the populace from their problems. The name Panem comes from that concept. In the book, the Hunger Games contestants become celebrities who distract the people of the 12 districts from the inequalities that define their lives.

"If you look around and see how pervasive reality TV is in our lives, how frequently we make celebrities out of nothing, you'll notice that distraction is everywhere," Winfield said. "Celebrities are always in the news next to updates about politics and wars. The Hunger Games take the idea of celebrity and distraction to a more extreme level through the circus that is the annual Hunger Games"

3. Totalitarian Government

President Snow, the dictator who rules Panem, is not the kind of president you'd vote for - because there is apparently no voting in Panem. The idea of democracy is gone, replaced by totalitarian fascism. Snow serves himself and his supporters and poisons those who challenge him.

Professor of Political Science Claire Curtis studies utopias and dystopias, commenting, "A dystopia is supposed to be a fictional world that's significantly worse than the world the author comes from. It's written to critique the author's own world. Collins' dystopia includes both a post-apocalyptic setting and a totalitarian government.

"The U.S. government, as we understand it, didn't survive the post-apocalyptic fallout that resulted in the government of Panem. So Collins is both critiquing the patterns of consumption and environmental degradation that put us on a path where one faction is able to control the survivors. Collins seems to have little faith in the sustainability of our world and in our capacity to effectively resist the rise of this centralized power."

4. Biological Advances

While genetically engineering new species with one specific purpose (i.e. the Mockingjay) may not yet be possible, biotechnology and genetic engineering advances go beyond genetically modified foods and cloned sheep.

Biology professor Christopher Korey argues that the technology to identify and reproduce hyper-specific qualities in different organisms isn't as far off as it seems. "Scientists have created bacterial and viral life from scratch already. People are also working on genetically engineering a type of salmon to mature faster," he said. "Cross-breeding between species is trickier because if you can get offspring they are often sterile, but the technology to genetically modify animals already exists."

5. Censored communication

One crucial element of the Hunger Games government's power is its ability to minimize or eliminate communication between districts. This helps prevent free speech and commiseration from sparking a revolution.

"Today you see countries like China and Russia where freedom of speech and access to information is filtered, censored and even criminalized," Professor of Communication Amanda Ruth-McSwain said. "Recently, there has been significant controversy over the efforts of U.S. government agencies in monitoring our communication - not censoring, monitoring - and it's unsettling to the American people from both a trust and a control aspect. So clearly there is a difference between where we are with communication surveillance and that of the Hunger Games, but perhaps not as much as we'd like. "

For more information, contact Idee Winfield at winfieldi@cofc.edu, Claire Curtis at curtisc@cofc.edu, Christopher Korey at koreyc@cofc.edu or Amanda Ruth-McSwain at ruthmcswaina@cofc.edu.

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5 Ways the Hunger Games is More Realistic than you Think

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With the movie release of Catching Fire on November 22, Hunger Games trilogy fans are excited to watch the next installment of the young-adult fiction series on the big screen.

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Introduction to Propaganda at the Academy of Ideas

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Introduction to Propaganda at the Academy of Ideas

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https://youtu.be/-WpFzTplp28
Adolf Hitler said "the bigger the lie, the more easily it will be accepted"

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A leader is commander in chief so he has to "look the part" (medals, salutes, weapons).  Compare to the pig Napoleon.

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A leader is commander in chief so he has to "look the part" (medals, salutes, weapons).  Compare to the pig Napoleon.

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Donald Trump's press secretary invented the term "alternative facts" to avoid saying "lies"

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Donald Trump's press secretary invented the term "alternative facts" to avoid saying "lies"

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instructions for presenting the topic "herd mentality"

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instructions for presenting the topic "herd mentality"

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Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm: Dystopian novels

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Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm: Dystopian novels

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Animal Farm Vs. Lord Of The Flies As seen by Kate Cellucci Similarities Lord of the Flies Jack Hitler "Listen all of you. Me and my hunters, we're living along the beach by a flat rock. We hunt and feast and have fun. If you want to join my tribe come and see us. Perhaps I'll let

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Lessons in Propaganda Slavko Martinov (New Zealand) Ted X

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Lessons in Propaganda Slavko Martinov (New Zealand) Ted X

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https://youtu.be/hUygyiVgg70
3:30 "ever since I was a little kid, I felt like I was being lied to"
5:00 Public relations is propaganda

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Donald Trump:  insults and calling names (or name-calling)

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Donald Trump:  insults and calling names (or name-calling)

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how to berate others

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On the 4 July, US Independence Day, the country launched its most powerful missile yet, an intercontinental ballistic missile, which they said was capable of "hitting anywhere in the world".

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Deranged! Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un's war of words

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On the 4 July, US Independence Day, the country launched its most powerful missile yet, an intercontinental ballistic missile, which they said was capable of "hitting anywhere in the world".

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Are we losing our self-identity? Do we know who we are in this world of social media and herd mentality?

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Are we losing our self-identity? Do we know who we are in this world of social media and herd mentality?

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an article on this phenomenon

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Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm: dystopian novels

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Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm: dystopian novels

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t times, the authority of a group of people becomes displaced due to discontent among the populace. When this vital authority is removed, another one must take its place in governing the body. George Orwell and William Golding both illustrate different outcomes of such a situation in their novels Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies respectively. In both stories, a stable government is replaced by a volatile, even hostile environment. These books share the same concept in that a new government can easily appear to be better than the former one, when in reality it could be much worse.

In both stories, the former government is seen as absolutely necessary to take down, no matter what the cost. Mr. Jones of Animal Farm delegates many strenuous tasks to the animals of his farm including pulling carts, sowing, laying eggs, etc. but keeps the profit to himself. Naturally, the animals do not like being bossed around and therefore become very angry and designate Jones as an enemy to their welfare. The only thing on the animals' minds is to overthrow the terrible leader of the farm, not thinking of what they would do with power in their own hands. In Lord of the Flies, Ralph gives the job of tending the fire going to some of Jack's hunters, only to become furious when they let it go out, missing a possible chance of rescue. The children only do what they find fun, making them rebel against Ralph's logical way of managing things. Because they dislike following their jobs assigned by Ralph, they blindly migrate to Jack's side, advertised as the opposite of Ralph's tribe -- fun. The desire for change, as shown here, blinds the intuition of people on who is right, causing them to rebel harshly against authority.

Even when the leaders of both groups become as terrible or even more terrible than the previous leaders, the people still comply with the new standards. When Napoleon kills some supposed traitors, other animals question Napoleon but do not stop him from killing. Napoleon, showing off his attack squad of dogs, effectively stops opposition, controlling his subjects through fear. Because the animals are so afraid of Napoleon's strength, they accept Napoleon's beliefs. In Lord of the Flies, when Jack tortures Robert, Roger, unsure of if the torture was ethical, just goes along with it. Roger, along with many other children on the island, wants to fit in and obeys Jack out of a lack of a better option. The children despised the logical, rule-based society of Ralph and just went with the only other option, driven by a desire to have fun and play. Although a leader may seem attractive because they are different than the old leader, the new leader could be as bad as the former one.

When the new government gradually becomes a violent, turbulent society, the citizens begin to follow the new government with the idea that the former society was worse. In Animal Farm, Napoleon often conjures outrageous rules, telling the animals to follow or Jones would come back; the animals of course comply. The vision of the past society is unclear, so the animals accept this new society, assuming their past government was worse. Despite what the new society would become, the animals just let their issues be and were glad to not have the old society. In Lord of the Flies, Piggy is killed after being crushed by an intentionally dropped boulder, and the members of Jack's society do not even question the murder. As innocent children, members of Jack's tribe likely wonder if it were moral to kill enemies. Because the new society allows killing and promotes it, the children never speak up and just accept it to be part of the society. A new society of change appeals to the people -- even if the changes are worse -- because they automatically view a different society as a better society.

These two stories illustrate well that a new society can often bring change that makes the society worse than what it started as. While it may seem attractive to get rid of the evils of a current government, a new, but more evil government may emerge. Change does not necessarily mean for the better. These books firmly illustrate the fact that a different society is not always a better society.

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A Comparison of Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies

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At times, the authority of a group of people becomes displaced due to discontent among the populace. When this vital authority is removed, another one must take its place in governing the body. George Orwell and William Golding both illustrate different outcomes of such a situation in their novels...

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Beyond the propaganda by Scott Taylor TedEx HEC Montreal

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Beyond the propaganda by Scott Taylor TedEx HEC Montreal

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https://youtu.be/F8LgNKjJHCY
from 0:45 - 3:00 the different words we use to talk about nations we like and "enemy nations":  An enemy nation has "a regime" while a "friendly nation" has "an administration"...

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Donald Trump and Kim Jung Un "I'm the biggest and the baddest and the best" : the war on words to be Number 1 ...

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Donald Trump and Kim Jung Un "I'm the biggest and the baddest and the best" : the war on words to be Number 1 ...

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April 30: Trump gives North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a backhanded compliment, calling him, "a pretty smart cookie."

During an interview with a CBS news program, Trump noted that Kim came to power at the age of 27 - in 2011 - and had to fight to hold on to that power.

"He's dealing with obviously very tough people, in particular the generals and others. And at a very young age, he was able to assume power. A lot of people, I'm sure, tried to take that power away."

So, Trump concluded, "obviously, he's a pretty smart cookie."

May 1: Even when Trump attempts to be diplomatic it comes across as bombastic, saying he would be "honored" to meet, face-to-face, with the North Korean leader: "If it would be appropriate for me to meet with him, I would absolutely, I would be honored to do it."

Clearly aware of the power of his declaration, Trump added: "We have breaking news."

The two sides technically remain at war. The Korean Armistice signed in July 1953, merely froze the conflict that began in 1950. A line was drawn along the 38th parallel dividing North and South Korea.

May 11: North Korea's UN Mission accuses US and South Korean intelligence agencies of plotting to kill North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, calling the unsubstantiated claim a "declaration of war."

The statement added that a "Korean-style anti-terrorist offensive will be commenced to mop up the intelligence and plot-breeding organizations of the US and South Korea. And for good measure, the statement went on to say that North Korea will "hunt down and mercilessly smash every single one of the terrorist maniacs of the CIA and the South Korean" Intelligence Service.

May 15: Trump warns in an interview with Reuters news agency that a "major, major conflict" with North Korea is possible. He adds that the "era of strategic patience" with North Korea is over.

May 26: At the G20 meeting in Hamburg Germany, Trump vows the threat posed by North Korea's development of long-range missiles and its nuclear program "will be solved."

June 29: Referring to meeting with his South Korean counterpart at the White House and the subject of North Korea, Trump said: "We're going to have tremendous discussions tonight."

July 5: North Korean state media described leader Kim Jong Un as "feasting his eyes" on an ICBM, which is said to be capable of carrying a large nuclear warhead.

"With a broad smile on his face," Kim urged his scientists to "frequently send big and small 'gift packages' to the Yankees," the state-run news agency said, an apparent reference to continuing the parade of nuclear and missile tests Kim has ordered since taking power in late 2011.

August 4: North Korea condemns US imposition of travel ban to the communist country, calling it "a vile measure to limit the people-to-people exchange so as not to allow the US citizens to see the true picture of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

"Now is the time for the Trump administration to come to its senses and make a decision to abandon its hostile policy," the statement continues. "We will always leave our door wide open to any US citizen who would like to visit our country out of good will and to see the realities with their own eyes."

August 5: The UN Security Council votes unanimously for tough new sanctions against North Korea. Trump hails the vote, saying the sanctions will have "very big financial impact!" He also thanked Russia and China for backing a measure that either one could have vetoed.

August 7: Pyongyang blasts the UN sanctions, saying it would make the US pay a "thousand-fold for all the heinous crimes" committed against North Korea.

August 8: US President Donald Trump seeks to outdo Pyongyang in rhetorical bombast, warning of "fire and fury like the world has never seen," against North Korea.

He also warned that "North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States."

bik/ng (AP, Reuters, AFP, dpa)

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Donald Trump - Kim Jong Un 'war of words' timeline | DW | 09.08.2017

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April 30: Trump gives North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a backhanded compliment, calling him, "a pretty smart cookie." During an interview with a CBS news program, Trump noted that Kim came to power at the age of 27 - in 2011 - and had to fight to hold on to that power.

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The Washington Post analyzes Trump's statements and tells the truth about them

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The Washington Post analyzes Trump's statements and tells the truth about them

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You can see many more examples on-line

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an interview with Noam Chomsky about /1/ surveillance technology and losing freedom /2/ climate change and pollution /3/ nuclear weapons and the threat of war /4/ US mutlinational companies' domination of the world: all based on lies and manipulation

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Websites check the facts on fake news

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Mrs Trump wore a jacket that said "I really don't care, do u?" to visit an immigrant detention center.  Read the tweet reactions.

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Mrs Trump wore a jacket that said "I really don't care, do u?" to visit an immigrant detention center.  Read the tweet reactions.

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Trump lied when he said "The crowd at my inauguration was the biggest in the history of the USA"

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Trump lied when he said "The crowd at my inauguration was the biggest in the history of the USA"

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(note: "by-laws" are local laws for a city)

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That 🤬 Obama!  Don't worry, Donald Trump will put out all of Obama's 🤬 fires!
See "Citizens for Trump" on Facebook: the comments people write about Obama and Trump

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President Trump has made over 15000 lies or false statements since he became President

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President Trump has made over 15000 lies or false statements since he became President

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The Fact Checker is keeping a running list of the false or misleading claims Trump says most regularly. Here's what you need to know. (Video: Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)

In 2017, President Trump made 1,999 false or misleading claims. In 2018, he added another 5,689, for a total of 7,688.

Now, with a few weeks still left in 2019, the president already has more than doubled the total number of false or misleading claims in just a single year.

As of Dec. 10, his 1,055th day in office, Trump had made 15,413 false or misleading claims, according to the Fact Checker's database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement he has uttered. That's an average of more than 32 claims a day since our last update 62 days ago.

In fact, October and November of this year rank as the second- and third-biggest months for Trumpian claims. They are exceeded only by October 2018, when Trump barnstormed the country in a desperate - and unsuccessful - effort to thwart a Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives. Both Octobers had more than 1,100 claims, with an average of nearly 40 claims a day.

A key reason for this year's jump: The uproar over Trump's phone call with Ukraine's president on July 25 - in which he urged an investigation of former vice president Joe Biden, a potential 2020 election rival - and the ensuing House impeachment inquiry. Nearly 600 of the false or misleading claims made by the president in the past two months relate just to the Ukraine investigation.

The president apparently believes he can weather an impeachment trial through sheer repetition of easily disproven falsehoods.

For instance, more than 60 times he has claimed that the whistleblower complaint about the call was inaccurate. The report accurately captured the content of Trump's call and many other details have been confirmed. Eighty times, Trump has claimed his phone call with the Ukrainian president was "perfect," even though it so alarmed other White House officials that several immediately raised private objections. This is a talking point that even Trump's Republican defenders have trouble repeating.

Three claims about the Ukraine investigation have now made it on our list of Bottomless Pinocchios. (It takes 20 repeats of a Three or Four Pinocchio claim to merit a Bottomless Pinocchio, and there are now 30 entries.) Besides the claim about the whistleblower, the two other claims on the Bottomless Pinocchio list are that Biden forced the resignation of a Ukrainian prosecutor because he was investigating his son Hunter and that Hunter Biden scored $1.5 billion in China after hitching a ride on Air Force Two with his father.

Trump crossed the 10,000 mark on April 26. From the start of his presidency, he has averaged nearly 15 such claims a day.

About one in five of these claims are about the economy or jobs.

As he approaches a tough reelection campaign, Trump's most repeated claim - 242 times - is that the U.S. economy today is the best in history. He began making this claim in June 2018, and it quickly became one of his favorites. The president can certainly brag about the state of the economy, but he runs into trouble when he repeatedly makes a play for the history books. By just about any important measure, the economy today is not doing as well as it did under Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson or Bill Clinton - or Ulysses S. Grant. Moreover, the economy is beginning to hit the head winds caused by Trump's trade wars, with the manufacturing sector in an apparent recession.

About one in six of Trump's claims are about immigration, his signature issue - a percentage that increased earlier in the year when the government was partially shut down over funding for his promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. In fact, his second-most repeated claim - 235 times - is that his border wall is being built. Congress balked at funding the concrete barrier he envisioned, so he has tried to pitch bollard fencing and mostly repairs of existing barriers as "a wall." He tried to redirect funds from other projects but run into trouble with the courts. The Washington Post has reported that the bollard fencing is easily breached, with smugglers sawing through it, despite Trump's claims that it is impossible to get past. As of October, the Trump administration had acquired just 16 percent of the private land in Texas it needs to build the president's border barrier, with less than four miles completed.

Trump has falsely said 181 times that he passed the biggest tax cut in history. Even before his tax cut was crafted, he promised it would be the biggest in U.S. history - bigger than Ronald Reagan's in 1981. Reagan's tax cut amounted to 2.9 percent of the gross domestic product, and none of the proposals under consideration came close to that level. Yet Trump persisted in this fiction even when the tax cut was eventually crafted to be the equivalent of 0.9 percent of GDP, making it the eighth-largest tax cut in 100 years. This continues to be an all-purpose applause line at the president's rallies.

On 175 occasions, Trump has claimed the United States has "lost" money on trade deficits. This reflects a basic misunderstanding of economics. Countries do not "lose" money on trade deficits. A trade deficit simply means people in one country are buying more goods from another country than people in the second country are buying from the first country. Trade deficits are also affected by macroeconomic factors, such as currencies, economic growth, and savings and investment rates.

The president frequently offers inflated estimates for trade deficits with various countries and insists they are being reduced on his watch, even though they are climbing.

The president's constant Twitter barrage also adds to his totals. Nearly 20 percent of the false and misleading statements stemmed from his itchy Twitter finger.

Trump's penchant for repeating false claims is demonstrated by the fact that the Fact Checker database has recorded nearly 400 instances in which he has repeated a variation of the same claim at least three times.

Even as Trump's fact-free statements proliferate, there is evidence that his approach is failing.

Fewer than 3 in 10 Americans believe many of his most-common false statements, according to a Washington Post Fact Checker poll published in 2018. Only among a pool of strong Trump approvers - about 1 in 6 adults in the survey - did large majorities accept several, although not all, of his falsehoods as true.

The award-winning database website, created by graphics reporter Leslie Shapiro, has an extremely fast search engine that will quickly locate suspect statements the president has made. We encourage readers to explore it in detail. We recently added a new feature that provides a URL for every claim that is fact-checked, allowing readers to post the link on social media.

We intend to publish our next update of our count on Jan. 20, the third anniversary of Trump's inauguration.
Note: The Fact Checker welcomes academic research of the Trump claims database. Recent examples include work done by Erasmus University Send us facts to check by filling out Sign up for The Fact Checker The Fact Checker is a verified signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network code of principles weekly newsletter this form , University College London and the University of California at Santa Barbara. You can request our data files with an explanation of your research plans by contacting us at factchecker@washpost.com.
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Analysis | President Trump has made 15,413 false or misleading claims over 1,055 days

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In 2017, President Trump made 1,999 false or misleading claims. In 2018, he added another 5,689, for a total of 7,688. Now, with a few weeks still left in 2019, the president already has more than doubled the total number of false or misleading claims in just a single year.

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snopes.com is a fact-checking wegsite. You can read lots of amazing fake news and learn the truth about the story. Why not choose one of these stories and report to the class about it? You could certainly relate it to Squealer and Napoleon in Animal Farm.

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Definitions and characteristics of Dystopia

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Definitions and characteristics of Dystopia

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on Mr Ko's English website

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"Make American great again" really means "Make America white again"

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"Make American great again" really means "Make America white again"

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There are many articles, videos and cartoons/caricatures about this idea. You can also analyze the propaganda used in this type of message

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here is a short powerpoint on fake news that may inspire you

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"Newspeak" is the name given to the new terms that dishonest leaders invent to manipulate their citizens.  (Think of Squealer and his "tactics"). (See also under the column "Propaganda" the video by Scott Taylor. enemies have "insurgents" while friends have "protestors" or "demonstrators").

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Newspeak is the fictional language of Oceania, a totalitarian superstate that is the setting of the 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell. In the novel, the Party created Newspeak to meet the ideological requirements of Ingsoc (English Socialism) in Oceania. Newspeak is a controlled language of simplified grammar and restricted vocabulary designed to limit the individual's ability to think and articulate "subversive" concepts such as personal identity, self-expression and free will. Such concepts are criminalized as thoughtcrime since they contradict the prevailing Ingsoc orthodoxy.

In "The Principles of Newspeak", the appendix to the novel, Orwell explains that Newspeak follows most of the rules of English grammar, yet is a language characterised by a continually diminishing vocabulary; complete thoughts are reduced to simple terms of simplistic meaning. The political contractions of Newspeak- Ingsoc (English Socialism), Minitrue (Ministry of Truth), Miniplenty ( Ministry of Plenty)-are described by Orwell as similar to real examples of German and Russian contractions in the 20th century. Like Nazi ( Nationalsozialist), Gestapo ( Geheime Staatspolizei), politburo ( Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), Comintern ( Communist International), (collective farm), and (communist youth union), the contractions in Newspeak, often syllabic abbreviations, are supposed to have a political function already in virtue of their abbreviated structure itself: nice sounding and easily pronounceable, their purpose is to mask all ideological content from the speaker.

The word "Newspeak" is sometimes used in contemporary political debate as an allegation that one tries to introduce new meanings of words to suit one's agenda.

Orwell was interested in linguistic questions and questions pertaining to the function and change of language. This can be seen in his essay " Politics and the English Language" (1946) as well as in the Appendix to Nineteen Eighty-Four. As in "Politics and the English Language", the perceived decline and decadence of the English Language is a central theme in Nineteen Eighty-Four and Newspeak. In the essay Orwell criticises standard English, with its perceived dying metaphors, pretentious diction, and high-flown rhetoric, which he would later satirise in the meaningless words of doublespeak, the product of unclear reasoning. The conclusion thematically reiterates linguistic decline: "I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those who deny this may argue that language merely reflects existing social conditions, and that we cannot influence its development, by any direct tinkering with words or constructions."

Orwell's main objection against this decline of the English language is not so much based on aesthetic grounds, but rather that for him the linguistic decline goes hand-in-hand with a decline of thought, the real possibility of manipulation of speakers as well as listeners and eventually political chaos. The recurring theme in Nineteen Eighty-Four of a connection between authoritarian regimes and (authoritarian) language is already found in "Politics and the English Language":

When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find - this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify - that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship. But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

Newspeak is a constructed language, of planned phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, like Basic English, in which Orwell showed interest while working at the BBC during the Second World War (1939-1945), but soon came to see the disadvantages of. Newspeak has considerable similarities to the system of Basic English proposed by Charles Kay Ogden in 1930. Basic ('British American Scientific International Commercial') English was a controlled language and designed to be an easy-to-learn English with only 850 core words. Like Newspeak, the Basic vocabulary is classified into three categories, two of them with two subcategories. The classification systems, however, do not coincide.

The political purpose of Newspeak is to eliminate the expression of the shades of meaning inherent in ambiguity and nuance from Oldspeak (Standard English). In order to reduce the language's function of communication, Newspeak uses concepts of simple construction, such as pleasure vs. pain and happiness vs. sadness. Additionally, goodthink and crimethink linguistically reinforce the State's totalitarian dominance of the people of Oceania. The Party's long-term goal with regard to the new language is for every member of the Party and society, except the Proles-the working-class of Oceania-to exclusively communicate in Newspeak, by A.D. 2050.

In Newspeak, English root words function as both nouns and verbs, which reduce the vocabulary available for the speaker to communicate meaning. For example, think is both a noun and a verb, thus, the word thought is not functionally required to communicate the concepts of thought in Newspeak and therefore is not in the Newspeak vocabulary.

As personal communication, Newspeak is to be spoken in staccato rhythm, using words that are short and easy to pronounce. The Party intends to make speech physically automatic and intellectually unconscious in order to diminish the possibility of critical thought occurring to the speaker. English words of comparative and superlative meanings and irregular spellings were simplified into regular spellings; thus, better becomes gooder and best becomes goodest. The prefixes plus- and doubleplus- are used for emphasis (for example, pluscold meaning "very cold" and doublepluscold meaning "extremely cold"). Adjectives are formed by adding the suffix -ful to a root-word, e.g. goodthinkful means "Orthodox in thought."; while adverbs are formed by adding the suffix -wise, e.g. goodthinkwise means "In an orthodox manner".

The intellectual purpose of Newspeak is to make Ingsoc-approved thoughts the only expressible thoughts. As constructed, Newspeak's vocabulary communicates the exact expression of sense and meaning that a member of the Party could wish to express. It excludes secondary denotations and connotations. The linguistic simplification of Oldspeak into Newspeak was realised with neologisms, the elimination of ideologically undesirable words, and the elimination of the politically unorthodox meanings of words.

The word free still existed in Newspeak, but only to communicate the absence of something, e.g. "The dog is free from lice" or "This field is free of weeds". The word could not denote free will, because intellectual freedom was no longer supposed to exist in Oceania. The limitations of Newspeak's vocabulary enabled the Party to effectively control the population's minds, by allowing the user only a very narrow range of spoken and written thought; hence, words such as: crimethink (thought crime), doublethink (accepting contradictory beliefs), and Ingsoc communicated only their surface meanings.

In the story of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the lexicologist character Syme discusses his editorial work on the latest edition of the Newspeak Dictionary:

By 2050-earlier, probably-all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron-they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of The Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like Freedom is Slavery when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking-not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.

Newspeak words are classified by three distinct classes: the A, B, and C vocabularies.

The words of the A vocabulary describe the functional concepts of daily life (e.g. eating and drinking, working and cooking). It consists mostly of English words, but they are very small in number compared to English, while for each word, its meanings are "far more rigidly defined" than in English.

The words of the B vocabulary are deliberately constructed for political purposes to convey complex ideas in a simple form. They are compound words and noun-verbs with political significance that are meant to impose and instill upon Oceania's citizens politically correct mental attitudes required by the Party. In the appendix, Orwell explains that the very structure of the B vocabulary (the fact that they are compound words) carries ideological weight. The large amounts of contractions in the B vocabulary-for example, the Ministry of Truth being called Minitrue, the Records department being called Recdep, the Fiction Department being called Ficdep, the Teleprogrammes Department being called Teledep-is not done simply to save time. Like with examples of compound words in the political language of the 20th century-Nazi, Gestapo, Politburo, Comintern, Inprecor, Agitprop, and many others-Orwell remarks that the Party believed that abbreviating a name could "narrowly and subtly" alter a word's meaning. Newspeak is supposed to make this effort a conscious purpose:

[...] Comintern is a word that can be uttered almost without taking thought, whereas Communist International is a phrase over which one is obliged to linger at least momentarily. In the same way, the associations called up by a word like Minitrue are fewer and more controllable than those called up by Ministry of Truth. This accounted not only for the habit of abbreviating whenever possible, but also for the almost exaggerated care that was taken to make every word easily pronounceable.

The B words in Newspeak are supposed to sound at least somewhat nice, while also being easily pronounceable, in an attempt to make speech on anything political "staccato and monotonous" and, ultimately, mask from the speaker all ideological content.

The words of the C vocabulary are scientific and technical terms that supplement the linguistic functions of the A and B vocabularies. These words are the same scientific terms in English, but many of them have had their meanings rigidified in order to, just like with the A vocabulary, attempt to prevent speakers from being able to express anti-government thoughts. Distribution of the C vocabulary is limited, because the Party want the citizens of Oceania to know only a select few ways of life or techniques of production. Hence, the Oldspeak word science has no equivalent term in Newspeak; instead, these words are simply treated as specific technical words for speaking of technical fields. The C vocabulary gave the Party the ability to invent the technology they use to enforce their laws, such as the telescreens they use to spy on the proles.

Newspeak's grammar is greatly simplifed compared to English. It also has two "outstanding" characteristics: Almost completely interchangeable linguistic functions between the parts of speech (any word could function as a verb, noun, adjective, or adverb), and heavy inflectional regularity in the construction of usages and of words. Inflectional regularity means that most irregular words were replaced with regular words combined with prefixes and suffixes. For example, the preterite and the past participle constructions of verbs are alike, with both ending in -ed. Hence, the Newspeak preterite of the English word steal is stealed, and that of the word think is thinked. Likewise, the past participles of swim, give, bring, speak, and take were, respectively swimmed, gived, bringed, speaked, and taked, with all irregular forms (such as swam, gave, and brought) being eliminated. The auxiliaries (including to be), pronouns, demonstratives, and relatives still inflect irregularly. They mostly follow their use in English, but the word whom and the shall and should tenses were dropped, whom being replaced by who and shall and should by will and would.

"Un-" is used to indicate negation, as Newspeak has no non-political antonyms. For example, the standard English words warm and hot are replaced by uncold, and the moral concept communicated with the word bad is expressed as ungood. When appended to a verb, the prefix "un-" communicates a negative imperative mood, thus, the Newspeak word unproceed means "do not proceed" in Standard English.

"Plus-" is an intensifier that replaces very and more; thus, plusgood replaced very good and English words such as great.

"Doubleplus-" is an intensifier that replaces extremely and superlatives; to that purpose, the Newspeak word doubleplusgood replaced words such as fantastic and excellent.

"Ante-" is the prefix that replaces before; thus antefilling replaces the English phrase "before filling."

"Post-" is the prefix that replaces after.

In spoken and written Newspeak, suffixes are also used in the elimination of irregular conjugations:

"-ful" transforms any word into an adjective, e.g. the English words fast, quick, and rapid are replaced by speedful and slow is replaced by unspeedful.

"-d" and "-ed" form the past tense of a verb, e.g. ran becomes runned, stole becomes stealed, drove becomes drived, thought becomes thinked, and drank becomes drinked.

"-er" forms the more comparison of an adjective, e.g. better becomes gooder.

"-est" forms the most comparison of an adjective, e.g. best becomes goodest.

"-s" and "-es" transform a noun into its plural form, e.g. men becomes mans, oxen becomes oxes, and lives becomes lifes.

"-wise" transforms any word into an adverb by eliminating all English adverbs not already ending in "-wise", e.g. quickly becomes speedwise, slowly becomes unspeedwise, carefully becomes carewise, and words like fully, completely, and totally become fullwise.

Therefore, the Oldspeak sentence "He ran extremely quickly" would become "He runned doubleplusspeedwise".

This is a list of Newspeak words known from the novel. It does not include words carried over directly from English with no change in meaning, nor does it include regular uses of the listed affixes (e.g. unbellyfeel) unless they are particularly significant.

The novel says that the Ministry of Truth uses a jargon "not actually Newspeak, but consisting largely of Newspeak words" for its internal memos. As many of the words in this list (e.g. "bb", "upsub") come from such memos, it is not certain whether those words are actually Newspeak.

ante - The prefix that replaces before

artsem - Artificial insemination

bellyfeel - The blind, enthusiastic acceptance of an idea

blackwhite - To accept whatever one is told, regardless of the facts. In the novel, it is described as "...to say that black is white when [the Party says so]" and "...to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary". (See also 2 + 2 = 5)

crimestop - To rid oneself of or fail to understand unorthodox thoughts that go against Ingsoc's ideology

crimethink - Thoughts and concepts that go against Ingsoc such as liberty, equality, and privacy, and also the criminal act of holding such thoughts. Frequently referred to by the standard English "thoughtcrime".

dayorder - Order of the day

dep - Department

doubleplusgood - The word that replaced Oldspeak words meaning "superlatively good", such as excellent, fabulous, and fantastic

doubleplusungood - The word that replaced Oldspeak words meaning "superlatively bad", such as terrible and horrible

doublethink - The act of simultaneously believing two, mutually contradictory ideas

duckspeak - Automatic, vocal support of political orthodoxies

equal - The same in amount or quantity. Not used in the sense of having equal rights or freedoms.

facecrime - A facial expression which reveals that one has committed thoughtcrime

Ficdep - The Ministry of Truth's Fiction Department

free - The absence and the lack of something. "Intellectually free" and "politically free" have been replaced by crimethinkful.

fullwise - The word that replaces words such as fully, completely, and totally

goodthink - A synonym for "political orthodoxy" and "a politically orthodox thought" as defined by the Party

goodsex - Sexual intercourse only for procreation, without any physical pleasure on the part of the woman, and strictly within marriage

goodwise - The word that replaced well as an adverb

Ingsoc - English Socialism (the political ideology of The Party)

joycamp - Labour camp

malquoted - Inaccurate representations of the words of Big Brother and of the Party

Miniluv - The Ministry of Love, where the secret police interrogate and torture the enemies of Oceania (torture and brainwashing)

Minipax - The Ministry of Peace, who wage war for Oceania

Miniplenty - The Ministry of Plenty, who keep the population in continual economic hardship (starvation and rationing)

Minitrue - The Ministry of Truth, who manufacture consent by way of lies, propaganda, and distorted historical records, while supplying the proles (proletariat) with synthetic culture and entertainment

Oldspeak - Standard English

oldthink - Ideas from the time before the Party's revolution, such as objectivity and rationalism

ownlife - A person's anti-social tendency to enjoy solitude and individualism

plusgood - The word that replaced Oldspeak words meaning "very good", such as great

plusungood - The word that replaced "very bad"

Pornosec - The pornography production section (Porno Sector) of the Ministry of Truth's Fiction Department

prolefeed - Popular culture for entertaining Oceania's working class

Recdep - The Ministry of Truth's Records Department, where Winston Smith rewrites historical records so they conform to the Party's agenda

rectify - The Ministry of Truth's euphemism for manipulating a historical record

ref - To refer (to someone or something)

sec - Sector

sexcrime - A sexual immorality, such as fornication, adultery, oral sex, and homosexuality; any sex act that deviates from Party directives to use sex only for government approved procreation

speakwrite - A machine that transcribes speech into text

Teledep - The Ministry of Truth's Telecommunications Department

telescreen - A two-way television set with which the Party spy upon Oceania's population

thinkpol - The Thought Police, the secret police force of Oceania's government

unperson - An executed person whose existence is erased from history and memory

upsub - An upwards submission to higher authority

Fiction:

Burgess, Anthony. Nineteen Eighty-Five. Boston: Little Brown & Co, 1978. ISBN 0-316-11651-3. Anthony Burgess discusses the plausibility of Newspeak.

Green, Jonathon. Newspeak: a dictionary of jargon. London, Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985, 1984. ISBN 0-7102-0673-9.

Klemperer, Victor. LTI - Lingua Tertii Imperii: Notizbuch eines Philologen.. Original German language editions.

Klemperer, Victor & Watt, Roderick H. LTI - Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist's Notebook. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1997. ISBN 0-7734-8681-X. An annotated edition of Victor Klemperer's LTI, Notizbuch eines Philologen with English notes and commentary by Roderick H. Watt.

Klemperer, Victor & Brady, Martin (tr.). The language of the Third Reich: LTI - Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist's Notebook. London, UK; New Brunswick, NJ: Athlone Press, 2000. ISBN 0-485-11526-3 (alk. paper). Translated by Martin Brady.

Young, John Wesley . Totalitarian Language: Orwell's Newspeak and Its Nazi and Communist Antecedents. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991. ISBN 0-8139-1324-1. John Wesley Young wrote this scholarly work about Newspeak and historical examples of language control.

The Principles of Newspeak

George Orwell's 1984

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Newspeak is the fictional language of Oceania, a totalitarian superstate that is the setting of the 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four , by George Orwell. In the novel, the Party created Newspeak to meet the ideological requirements of Ingsoc (English Socialism) in Oceania.

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How do you deal with 25 years of fake news?

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By Dhruti Shah
BBC News

How do you survive 25 years in the fact-checking business?

Snopes began as a forum for sharing and investigating urban legends and cool folklore.

But in a world where "fake news" dominates, where disinformation is a part of the political sphere and misinformation touches every single corner of the internet, what is it about this online encyclopaedia which has made it become the go-to bible for many fact-checkers?

And how is it evolving to deal with the current landscape?

The Snopes website and social feeds have become a reservoir of bizarre facts, political nuggets, investigative journalism into hard-hitting subjects - as well as the most weird stories you can imagine.

From questions around President Donald Trump's tweeted policy suggestions to queries around Disney's Goofy and whether he is actually a cow, there seems to be very little that the fact-checkers haven't had to cast a sceptical eye over.

News events keep the trending list of top 50 rumours current with a question over the veracity of images emerging as a result of Hurricane Dorian popping up. But often older debunks turn up again and again such as ones focusing on a story about 'dangerous cosmic rays passing close by the earth' and viral 'deathbed warnings' by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

David Mikkelson, the co-founder of Snopes, says: "People come to look up things they've encountered on the internet and find out whether they are true or not.

"We're hoping that the site doesn't end up like this permanently but that's the niche we're in right now. We're like a number of other sites that fact-check mostly political items. But we still look at the sort of odd things people post on Facebook and elsewhere and examine the sorts of urban legends we started out with years ago."

Of course there are regular debunks his team come across again and again. Mr Mikkelson says: "There are certain stories that never go away. There's a note that says if you are using an ATM and someone pulls out a gun on you, then if you enter your PIN (personal identity number) in reverse it will summon the police. That comes back again and again.

"And there's that message that is always circulating on Facebook that states that Facebook is about to make all your private messages public or urging people to assert copyright over everything they have ever posted. It doesn't matter how long ago these rumours started or how frequently they've been debunked - they come back time and time again."

Mr Mikkelson, who is based in Tacoma, Washington, says that he's no longer surprised by the variety of topics that his team of 15 spread out across the country now end up covering but they do have rules about what they will cover.

"The standards we use for fact-checking are about going after what most people are questioning or asking about.

"We don't make any judgments about what's too silly or obvious or frivolous or not important enough."

However he added that sometimes he found it disconcerting what the audience considered to be important and how it was sometimes very different to what his team would consider reporting.

"There may be rumours of a chemical attack against civilians in Syria and all sorts of rumours about whether that happened and who was involved. There are questions around did the government do it; was it an outside force etc and that doesn't get much interest.

"But then you might have a ridiculous story about something like a woman giving birth in an elevator and it gets millions of views."

He said the team got their ideas from a variety of sources from emails to queries posted on Facebook to tools showing them what was trending across Google, Twitter and Reddit.

Some articles could take just several minutes to pull together and stamped as "fake" as the source from which they came would be a site known for pumping out misinformation.

"Other things can take days or weeks and we have to track down stories, locate various experts, wait for people to get back to us or in extreme cases try to get access to records using tools like the Freedom of Information Act."

The site has a section dedicated to debunking fake images - describing it as fauxtography - and most recently, it's come out stating that it's trying to avoid using the term 'fake news' with Mr Mikkelson preferring to use the label 'junk news' instead. In August, Snopes revealed a new rating system including identifying content which its creators have described as satire.

In a note published on the Snopes site, Mikkelson states that it's important to cover humour and satire and highlight the viral stories that fall under this label - such as a dog pictured with a slice of ham on its face with a note stating it had been badly burned.

"Our mission is to service that audience as best we can by providing them with accurate and helpful information. It's not our job to disparage them for being confused by something that appears ridiculous to others, or to disdain them because it's their "own fault" for misunderstanding the "obvious," or to ignore them because they're puzzled by something that wasn't deliberately created to fool them."

While Snopes remains a valuable resource for fact-checkers - it has more than 235,000 followers on Twitter and 690,000 followers on Facebook alone - it has had a bumpy few years.

Snopes pulled out of a fact-checking partnership with Facebook earlier this year, choosing not to renew its contract.

Mr Mikkelson had co-founded Snopes with his then wife Barbara. The couple divorced and Barbara sold her share of Snopes' parent company Bardev Inc to five individuals in 2016 who at that point were all associated with a company called Proper Media. But Mr Mikkelson is now locked in a litigation battle with a number of ex-business associates from the company regarding the commercial interests of the site with numerous court dates called.

Snopes has been fundraising for money to help with its costs.

While Mr Mikkelson is optimistic that Snopes will survive, he says that he doesn't know exactly what the site's future will look like until the dispute is resolved.

The site also comes under attack over the stories it covers and is regularly accused of being biased but Mr Mikkelson states this is "an occupational hazard" when a company is involved in fact-checking: "It doesn't matter how impartial you were, there is always some subset of the audience that is determined to believe what they want to believe."

"We're an element of pop culture now and we're a vital part of the journalistic world. But we're also a business with multiple employees now and it's a very different challenge to be heading up a business to operating a hobby site.

"We've lasted this long and it's a pretty good bet that we are resourceful. We are always going to be here one way or another."

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Snopes: How do you survive 25 years debunking fake news?

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By Dhruti Shah BBC News How do you survive 25 years in the fact-checking business ? Snopes began as a forum for sharing and investigating urban legends and cool folklore.

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Caricatures and cartoons for manipulation/ mind control/ advertising

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Caricatures and cartoons for manipulation/ mind control/ advertising

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Have you heard about the dangers of DHMO?  Read this website to learn all about DHMO and its dangers.

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Have you heard about the dangers of DHMO?  Read this website to learn all about DHMO and its dangers.

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https://www.dhmo.org/
in English at the link above.
Translated in French at the site below

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comptes rendus
FAQ : DHMO
effets du DHMO sur l'Environnement
monoxyde de dihydrogène et cancer
études et recherches sur le DHMO
le DHMO dans l'industrie laitière
la conspiration du DHMO
Éditorial: la vérité sur le DHMO
la fausse alerte au spam par email
Ajoutez un lien vers DHMO.org à votre site Dépêches & Renseignements NOUVEAU
inscrivez-vous pour recevoir les bulletins périodiques d'information sanitaire de DHMO.org.

BIENVENUE
Bienvenue sur le site Web du Groupe de recherche sur le monoxyde de dihydrogène (Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division - DMRD), présentement situé à Newark (Delaware, USA). La polémique relative au monoxyde de dihydrogène n'a jamais été plus largement débattue, et le but de ce site est de fournir une documentation de référence objective ainsi qu'un forum de discussion publique.

Explorez nos nombreux comptes rendus , parmi lesquels la FAQ DHMO , qui donne une introduction complète sur le sujet, ainsi que des rapports concernant l' environnement , les cancers , les recherches en cours, et un exposé sur le véritable usage qui est fait du DHMO dans l' industrie laitière .

Le succès de ce site dépend de vous, en tant que consommateur conscient des dangers du monoxyde de dihydrogène. Vos commentaires et suggestions sont les bienvenus.

Écrivez-nous!

En raison du volume élevé de courrier que nous recevons, nous ne pouvons pas toujours répondre à chacune de vos lettres. Cependant, nous les lisons toutes.

informations associées National Consumer Coalition Against DHMO

Greenpeace
Français, écrivez à votre député

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Groupe de recherche sur le monoxyde de dihydrogène - informations sur le monoxyde de dihydrogène

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comptes rendus FAQ : DHMO effets du DHMO sur l'Environnement monoxyde de dihydrogène et cancer études et recherches sur le DHMO le DHMO dans l'industrie laitière la conspiration du DHMO Éditorial: la vérité sur le DHMO la fausse alerte au spam par email Ajoutez un lien vers DHMO.org à votre site Dépêches & Renseignements NOUVEAU inscrivez-vous pour recevoir les bulletins périodiques d'information sanitaire de DHMO.org.

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Have you heard about the endangered species of the tree octopus? 

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Have you heard about the endangered species of the tree octopus? 

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go to this website and please, help save the tree octopus.

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Help Save The ENDANGERED

From EXTINCTION!

The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus

Rare photo of the elusive tree octopus
(Enhanced from cropped telephoto)

The Pacific Northwest tree octopus ( Octopus paxarbolis) can be found in the temperate rainforests of the Olympic Peninsula on the west coast of North America. Their habitat lies on the Eastern side of the Olympic mountain range, adjacent to Hood Canal. These solitary cephalopods reach an average size (measured from arm-tip to mantle-tip,) of 30-33 cm. Unlike most other cephalopods, tree octopuses are amphibious, spending only their early life and the period of their mating season in their ancestral aquatic environment. Because of the moistness of the rainforests and specialized skin adaptations, they are able to keep from becoming desiccated for prolonged periods of time, but given the chance they would prefer resting in pooled water.

An intelligent and inquisitive being (it has the largest brain-to-body ratio for any mollusk), the tree octopus explores its arboreal world by both touch and sight. Adaptations its ancestors originally evolved in the three dimensional environment of the sea have been put to good use in the spatially complex maze of the coniferous Olympic rainforests. The challenges and richness of this environment (and the intimate way in which it interacts with it,) may account for the tree octopus's advanced behavioral development. (Some evolutionary theorists suppose that "arboreal adaptation" is what laid the groundwork in primates for the evolution of the human mind.)

Reaching out with one of her eight arms, each covered in sensitive suckers, a tree octopus might grab a branch to pull herself along in a form of locomotion called tentaculation; or she might be preparing to strike at an insect or small vertebrate, such as a frog or rodent, or steal an egg from a bird's nest; or she might even be examining some object that caught her fancy, instinctively desiring to manipulate it with her dexterous limbs (really deserving the title "sensory organs" more than mere "limbs",) in order to better know it.

Map of estimated tree octopus maximum range, including spawning waters

Tree octopuses have eyesight comparable to humans. Besides allowing them to see their prey and environment, it helps them in inter-octopus relations. Although they are not social animals like us, they display to one-another their emotions through their ability to change the color of their skin: red indicates anger, white fear, while they normally maintain a mottled brown tone to blend in with the background.

The reproductive cycle of the tree octopus is still linked to its roots in the waters of the Puget Sound from where it is thought to have originated. Every year, in Spring, tree octopuses leave their homes in the Olympic National Forest and migrate towards the shore and, eventually, their spawning grounds in Hood Canal. There, they congregate (the only real social time in their lives,) and find mates. After the male has deposited his sperm, he returns to the forests, leaving the female to find an aquatic lair in which to attach her strands of egg-clusters. The female will guard and care for her eggs until they hatch, refusing even to eat, and usually dying from her selflessness. The young will spend the first month or so floating through Hood Canal, Admiralty Inlet, and as far as North Puget Sound before eventually moving out of the water and beginning their adult lives.

Why It's Endangered

Route 101, separating the rainforests of the Olympic Peninsula from Hood Canal

Although the tree octopus is not officially listed on the Endangered Species List, we feel that it should be added since its numbers are at a critically low level for its breeding needs. The reasons for this dire situation include: decimation of habitat by logging and suburban encroachment; building of roads that cut off access to the water which it needs for spawning; predation by foreign species such as house cats; and booming populations of its natural predators, including the bald eagle and sasquatch. What few that make it to the Canal are further hampered in their reproduction by the growing problem of pollution from farming and residential run-off. Unless immediate action is taken to protect this species and its habitat, the Pacific Northwest tree octopus will be but a memory.

The possibility of Pacific Northwest tree octopus extinction is not an unwarranted fear. Other tree octopus species-including the Douglas octopus and the red-ringed madrona sucker-were once abundant throughout the Cascadia region, but have since gone extinct because of threats similar to those faced by paxarbolis, as well as overharvesting by the now-illegal tree octopus trade.

Tree Octopus hat from 1923

The history of the tree octopus trade is a sad one. Their voracious appetite for bird plumes having exhausted all the worthy species of that family, the fashionistas moved on to cephalopodic accoutrements during the early 20th Century. Tree octopuses became prized by the fashion industry as ornamental decorations for hats, leading greedy trappers to wipe out whole populations to feed the vanity of the fashionable rich. While fortunately this practice has been outlawed, its effects still reverberate today as these millinery deprivations brought tree octopus numbers below the critical point where even minor environmental change could cause disaster.

While efforts were made in the past to preserve remaining tree octopus habitat, these were met with resistance by the timber industry, which has traditionally viewed the tree octopus as a nuisance, both because the octopuses favor the valuable, moss-shrouded trees of old growth forests-pitting conservation needs against lucrative sources of lumber-and because octopuses hiding among felled trees often gummed up sawmills and stained pulp vats with their ink.

Traveling sideshow exhibits, such as this one by Glen "Bones" Hartzell from 1942, demonized tree octopuses to the ignorant masses
(Click to enlarge)

These nuisances led many loggers to regard tree octopuses as bad luck, resulting in the pointless killing of octopuses on sight at logging camps in a misguided attempt at eradicating the troublesome species. Anti-octopus sentiment was so strong among loggers that some even began to fear that the octopuses were prone to attacking humans.

These fears were fueled in no small part by gratuitous stories involving tree octopuses harassing lumberjacks and distressing damsels in Northwestern-themed pulp magazines of the 1930-40s and variously "nipping", "entangling", or "suckering the flesh" of the heroes of men's action magazines of the 1950-60s. (The magazine publishers depended on cheap paper made from wood pulp and were glad to contribute to the anti-octopus propaganda campaign of the timber industry.)

To this day, misunderstanding and fear of these gentle creatures can still be found among many old timers, although education campaigns-and special octopus-separators installed at sawmills-have largely halted the practice of tree octopus eradication.

How You Can Help

More Tree Octopus Information

Posters motivate the citizenry to action! Post them!

Tree Octopus FAQs - Frequently asked questions, now with answers.

Tree Octopus Sightings - Includes photos of and behavioral research on the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus and other tree octopus species.

Tree Octopus In The Media - appearances of tree octopuses, both real and fictional, in the media and popular culture.

Research On Other Tree Octopus Species:

The author of this article and its subsections is Lyle Zapato.
This site is not associated with any school or educational organization,
other than the Kelvinic University branch of the Wild Haggis Conservation Society.
Not to be confused with the Pacific Northwest Octopus Tree.

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Information about the endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus and what you can do to save it.

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‘Animal Farm’ Perfectly Describes Life in the Era of Donald Trump: George Orwell’s allegorical tale predicts Sean Spicer and fake news

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‘Animal Farm’ Perfectly Describes Life in the Era of Donald Trump: George Orwell’s allegorical tale predicts Sean Spicer and fake news

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Following President Donald Trump's inauguration, the Left's must-read book was George Orwell's Published in 1949, the dystopian novel predicts a world of authoritarian thought control, and it shot to the top of Amazon's best-seller list. This summer, a 1984 play from London is opening on Broadway, co-produced by none other than Scott Rudin. There have been countless media references to the novel, including Paul Krugman's op-ed in The New York Times on May 8, "Party Like It's 1984."

Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is also getting a second wind. In her 1985 book, the powerful have reduced fertile women to reproductive slaves for the elite's infertile wives. Already released as a film (with the screenplay by Harold Pinter), the book has now reappeared as a miniseries on Hulu. Part of the marketing plan is to make the story an allegory to the Trump administration. Almost everyone is having fun with the comparison.

But these are the wrong books to read and shows to watch. A much more relevant work is Orwell's 1945 novella Animal Farm. As in 1984, he imagines a harsh political landscape. Yet, Animal Farm is much subtler-and more powerful-than 1984 or the improbable Handmaid's Tale.

There is no sign that there is or will be any effective thought control or political repression as described in 1984. Democracy seems as powerful as ever: The courts "on an island in the Pacific" effortlessly tie up Trump's immigration orders and the ratings on late night television's anti-Trump rants are through the roof. The bogeyman in the night, Trump, seems to fade with each morning's sunrise of policy reversals and statements like, "I don't stand by anything." The White House and the Republican-dominated Congress barely agree on a few basics, such as a budget.

Animal Farm envisioned a somewhat different scenario for political promises. Writing about the Russian Revolution's failures, Orwell imaged a farm that overthrew its human master and replaced him with a collective leadership of pigs. These clever pigs promised to reorganize society along egalitarian (populist) lines with the animal workers being rewarded for their labor on a just and fair farm. Mirroring Russia, where Stalin replaced Trotsky and Lenin's vision with the Gulag camps and a system of brutal repression and corruption, the ruling pigs of Animal Farm gradually became human-like and their promises of change forgotten.

The leaders of Animal Farm maintained thought control by obscuring the facts with smokescreens. In this way, the allegory to the Trump administration is dead on. Executives from Wall Street, once lambasted by Trump as "get[ting] away with murder," are now in charge. The "currency manipulator" to be punished on Trump's first day in office, China, is now a strategic ally helping to fend off North Korea.

Trump's transformation into a golf course habitué after roundly criticizing his predecessor's golf outings is right out of Animal Farm. Then, there is the NAFTA withdrawal-a pillar of his platform that is not happening.

That the populist Trump has offered unprecedented access to some of the largest corporations in America in exchange for their millions of dollars of donations is another page straight out of Animal Farm. The entire façade of governance in Animal Farm was meant to placate the horses, sheep and chickens with feel-good slogans and false agendas. Trump's "drain the swamp" mantra would have been an appropriate Animal Farm infrastructure slogan. The pigs, who were afraid they would lose control of the farm, created imaginary threats as a tactic to bind their subjects. How is this different from Trump's alerting us to the threat of Mexican rapists?

Orwell, who had perhaps the most brilliant political mind of the twentieth century, even anticipated the phenomenon of fake news. The historic Battle of the Cowshed, in which the animals liberated the farm from the humans, was told and retold with fake news added as the pigs began to squabble. New spins on the facts were constantly required. Thus, a true hero of the Battle of the Cowshed, Snowball, was later reported to have sided with the humans. Even Trump's deleted tweet about how it was an "honor to host [Palestinian] President Mahmoud Abbas" at the White House was foreseen in Animal Farm, as writing on the barn wall was changed and erased as politically necessary. The animals could not recall the original writings or how they were altered.

Orwell even anticipated Sean Spicer. The pigs have a spokespig named Squealer who is in charge of reconciling the irreconcilable and parsing the absurdities of non sequitur pronouncements from the pigs' administration. To read Squealer's spin on the changes in farm policy is a literary treat no reader will ever forget.

So, if you are looking for allegorical literature to understand today's politics, Animal Farm is a great guidepost. It is much more politically relevant than 1984 or Handmaid's Tale. It should be the next book to jump to the top of Amazon's bestseller list. Do yourself a favor and secure a copy fast.
Jonathan Russo has been observing and writing about the Mid-East, domestic politics and China for decades. In the last 10 years his articles have been published in The Huffington Post, Times of Israel and his own site JavaJagMorning.com. He's been an executive in New York media world for over 40 years and resides in Manhattan.

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'Animal Farm' Perfectly Describes Life in the Era of Donald Trump

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Following President Donald Trump's inauguration, the Left's must-read book was George Orwell's Published in 1949, the dystopian novel predicts a world of authoritarian thought control, and it shot to the top of Amazon's best-seller list. This summer, a 1984 play from London is opening on Broadway, co-produced by none other than Scott Rudin.

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the most amazing news stories : read some amazing stories at the site above, now!

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the different types of conformity and what motivates people to conform.

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Conformity is the act of matching one's beliefs or actions to the norms of a larger social group. Norms are the usually unspoken rules that govern the attitudes and behavior of a group of people.

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how herd behavior affects the actions of humans.

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CommonLit | Herd Behavior: Herd Mentality Lesson and PDF | CommonLit

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This 7th-grade level text on herd behavoir explores examples of how herd mentality can influence people's decision-making. Assign and download the PDF here.

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In 1967, history teacher Ron Jones conducted a social experiment with the students in his class at Cubberley High School in Palo Alto, CA. He was the only person who knew it was an experiment, and by the fifth day, it had gotten out of control.
---->"how people create a sense of superiority over others and how this can lead people to justify doing horrible things in the name of the state's honor"

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CommonLit | The Third Wave by CommonLit Staff | CommonLit

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NEW: With CommonLit Crosswalks, our literacy experts hand-pick CommonLit lessons that align to your curriculum to help meet your instructional goals. Learn more. Dismiss Announcement Dismiss Announcement For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Click here for instructions on how to enable JavaScript in your web browser.