European Politics

Jer said:
Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia. Since the beginning of your life, since the beginning of the Party, since the beginning of history, the war has continued without a break, always the same war.
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Yeah probably. I had to google it, haven’t read 1984 yet.
 
Onhell said:
So is Huxley. While Orwell wrote of totalitarian dystopias, Huxley's Brave New World is the "free" world's handbook. Life sucks? By a big truck! A bigger TV! Do you guys remember what Bush said after 9/11? Go shopping.
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Agreed.

Funnily enough, I live quite close to the places mentioned in Brave New World.
 
Also there's Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, which predates both aforementioned novels. It influenced both of them. I have read all three novels. My rating: 1) 1984 2) We 3) BNW

About 'We'
 
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It's funny, I vastly prefer Animal Farm, if only because I think while Orwell was trying to write about Communism, he really described a lot of populist movements.
 
This was what kept me off Orwell all these years. I would prefer it more neutral with less references to then systems, say what those ideas would be if written by Kafka.
 
Orwell could only use the observations he made about his time to try and describe where he thought things could be headed.
 
LooseCannon said:
It's funny, I vastly prefer Animal Farm, if only because I think while Orwell was trying to write about Communism, he really described a lot of populist movements.
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What is never mentioned when talking about Animal Farm is that it isn’t an anti-communist book, it’s an anti-authoritarian book. Orwell was a socialist who hated Stalin. That’s why Snowball (Trotsky) and Old Major (Marx) are portrayed in a good light and Napoleon (Stalin) is the villain.
 
Just saw this short (too short) vid on the Reunification of Germany. I thought it was a nice intro into the issue and also one that is a not so microcosm of what happened to Europe, especially the East, as a whole, not just Germany. I remember watching a doc on John Paul II who fought to bring about the end of Communism, but later derided his fellow Poles for buying into Capitalism a tad too much. I remember thinking, "Well, watcha expect?" Anywho, worth a watch:
 
Recently NATO /EU attempts to influence Georgia's politics, have been taken to another level.

A bit of background: Georgia, a country of 3.5 million people with something between 10,000 -20,000 NGOs has recently brought a law for voting so NGOs should disclose their fundings, a.k.a., foreign agents law. Under conservative calculations there is 1 NGO per 350 people in Georgia.
There is a big support in parliament to pass, however the foreign agents law has been temporarily vetoed by the president of Georgia. Who is interestingly ex French ambassador in Georgia and holder of Georgian passport for a mere 20 years.
The whole situation has brought people in the streets who oppose the voting of the law. No surprise if you ask me: with so many NGOs, probably paying much higher salaries than the average wage, thousands of NGO workers would be seriously unhappy if money flow were to be disrupted.

So far so good (kind of), but lately this has geared to a whole new level with ministers from Baltic!! states visiting Georgia to convince government withdraw the law, other EU officials warn against it, Blinken* threatening sanctions!! and EU commissioner all but threatening assassination** to Georgian PM, Kobakhidze. Below Kobakhidze's post revealing the threatening, EU's commissioner's reply pretty much confirming it and Blinken's tweet about sanctions.

*It's funny Blinken threatening sanctions after US just passed a law against foreign agents intervention (Tiktok ban) a month ago.
**Fico is the PM of Slovakia who was shot 3 times in the abdomen last week, still in critical condition. Fico is considered anti-EU /NATO politician.

Georgian PM facebook post.png EU Commissioner's reply.png Blinken threatening sanctions.png

Further reading claiming ~4,000 active NGOs which again is too much in my view for such a small country

 
Vaenyr said:
Man, the results from the European elections are bleak. Germany's in particular are devastating.
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I saw that. We have the same devastating results in France... Man, people never learn from the past... Today, it feels like in 1933 when Hitler won the elections... And we know what happened next... :facepalm: My heart bleeds tonight... My grandfather was a resistance fighter, he fought against the Nazis and he must be angry in his grave today... :(
 
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