Jeff Danziger for February 22, 2023

Should read Animal Farm too. Or should that be for Americans to ponder over?

In Soviet Russia, George Orwell novel reads you!

Read 1984 in 1956.

When I recently re-read it, it occurred to me that it was about what happens when corporatists take over the government. The entire premise was based on the industrial/military establishment Ike warned us about.

Putain would love it.

Ignorance is strength.

I assume they’re either already familiar with, or are also reading the inspiration for 1984, namely We, by Evgeny Zamiatin?

Give it a few years and we’ll all be living in the world of THX-1138….

At the end of 1984 Smith loves Big Brother and is finally content.

Wrong book. Try “All quiet on the Western Front.”

It’ll be banned in Florida soon.

Under Putin, NOTHING ends happily.

The GQP uses it and 1984 and The Handmaid’s Tale as training manuals. Mein Kampf is their training bible

No worse than McCarthy giving info to Tucker Carlson!

‘Atlas Shrugged’ as their favorite fantasy.

And it NEVER ends!

Oh, it ends very happily. For Big Brother.

I’m sure that 1984 is really a banned book in Russia. Or Animal Farm.

Brave New World (with vodka subbing for soma) would be acceptable, though. The “utopia” alternative is close enough to the Western world, and dystopian enough to make the “dystopia” of the Brave New World enticing.

Everyone except Putin, who most ought to.

Way back in 1980 I toured the Soviet Union from Leningrad to Siberia; in Leningrad I met a young Russian man named Anatoly who made it his “hobby” to seek out American and other Western tourists, befriend them and get their assistance in purchasing books for him and his friends to read — books for sale only to Soviet officials and visitors with “hard” currency (dollars, pounds, kronor, marks, francs, etc.) in special stores called beryozki. I bought several such books (romantic escape novels and political satires) for Anatoly and when I brought them to him, he led me to a nearby subway station where, after first glancing around to be sure we were not being watched, he passed them to a friend who reached out and placed them inside his coat, all without even looking up to see who it was. When I asked Anatoly why he did this, he replied that his friend would read the books, pass them on to another friend, and eventually they would make their way back to Anatoly, who would read them. There was a desire for forbidden knowledge among educated Russians back then that I found both fascinating and admirable. I wonder if such a desire still exists in that unhappy country. I also briefly described the plot of Orwell’s “1984”, emphasizing the constant surveillance of the “telescreens” in everyone’s home. Anatoly listened carefully and nodded knowingly; the concept was understood, even if the technology did not then exist.

Senator Whitehouse suspects ex-FBI agent ‘may have knowledge of’ efforts to ‘damage’ Clinton in 2016

In January, former FBI agent Charles McGonigal was arrested on federal charges that included money laundering and violating U.S. sanctions against Russia. The charges pertained to his connection to Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska.

Now, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, the Rhode Island Democrat who chairs a Senate Judiciary subcommittee, is reaching out to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland regarding the issues that McGonigal’s case raises about Russia and the United States’ 2016 presidential election. McGonigal reportedly worked on the FBI’s Trump/Russia probe that year.

Whitehouse went on to express concerns that because of his work in the FBI’s New York Field Office in 2016, McGonigal “may have knowledge of or have participated in political activities to damage then-candidate Hillary Clinton and help then-candidate Donald Trump.”

“The situation is even more troubling given that McGonigal was arrested for, among other things, allegedly working with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, whom McGonigal was assigned to investigate while working for the FBI,” Whitehouse told Garland. “Deripaska, a known associate of Trump 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort, was sanctioned for interfering with the 2016 presidential election to help Donald Trump.”

In the letter, the Rhode Island Democrat told Garland it was “vital” that “any plea” in McGonigal’s case “be accompanied by a full debrief.”

It stated selling like hotcakes when Trump became president.

Such a great how to book.