In our age of social media, that phenomenon is no longer surprising.The Germans announce over the wireless that as the inhabitants of a Czech village called Lidice [...] were guilty of harbouring the assassins of Heydrich, they have shot all the males in the village, sent all the women to concentration camps, sent all the children to be “re-educated”, razed the whole village to the ground and changed its name. [...] It does not particularly surprise me that people do this kind of thing, nor even that they announce that they are doing them. What does impress me, however, is that other people’s reaction to such happenings is governed solely by the political fashion of the moment. [...] In a little while you will be jeered at if you suggest that the story of Lidice could possibly be true. And yet there the facts are, announced by the Germans themselves and recorded on gramophone discsScrewing the other side is far easier to sell than having things be good for the average person. Some pretty gross displays of greed and hypocrisy.
Sometimes it’s just ideology ploughing through as in the cases that happened in Ukraine before WWII but after Lenin died.
Do... you refer to the "korenizatsiya" [0] effort during which the Russian language/culture/tradition was heavily penalized and the local ethnic languages/cultures/traditions elevated to the official and mandatory status?
There are enough of open letters from the local Russian-descended population to the central papers that complained about such policy, and even more articles in those papers as the response that declare that yes, the Party absolutely wants to stamp out the Russian cultural influences from the national republics because otherwise there is no chance to build the socialism, so if the not quite politically correct workers would please stop complaining so much and keep in with the Party line, thank you — or else. Thankfully, until the mid-30s that "or else" was mostly sacking from the current place of work and expulsion from the Party.
... and in typical fashion of Stalin, first he substantially created this policy, and then he completely reversed it in 1938, so that Russian became mandatory to teach in all schools and the local nationals in leadership positions were purged.
"Ploughing through". I see what you did there.
This entry piqued my curiosity, and I did a cursory search for the original broadcast; what wording does a government use to position an announcement like this? I didn't find a recording, but I did find a related article from June 12, 1942
https://nytimes.com/1942/06/12/archives/nazis-kill-34-more-i...
...and a newsreel statement from Czechoslovakian President-in-exile Beneš from June 29, 1942
I was also curious as I haven't heard of this before. There's a Wikipedia page about the massacre: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidice_massacre
It links to a Wikimedia page including photos of written announcements of the massacre in German: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Lidice_massacre#...
Wikipedia also links to Nurembourg Trial proceedings where apparently footage of the anihilation was presented. See sections 120-121 of https://archive.is/http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/02-22-46.a...
And footage of the immediate aftermath, kept in a secret German archive: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn556023/
I wasn't familiar with the incident either. At first, I assumed it was Oradour-sur-Glane, which was a similar case but in France. I have seen drone footage of current-day Oradour-sur-Glane on Youtube.
I remember this blog! It was posting diary entries 70 years after they were written. This was a good time in the history of Internet and the diary/blog ended at the dawn of the golden era of the "blogosphere".
George/Eric paid a lot of attention to how many eggs his hens laid. It almost became somewhat of a joke in the comments. But good content!
https://orwelldiaries.wordpress.com/2008/12/01/11238/
Lots of great quotes (quite a few hen related):
> This morning a disaster. One hen dead, another evidently dying.
I am pretty sure he wrote more about hens and other birds than the ongoing world war.
My neighbor, who raises chickens for eggs, and has lost many to predation, has expressed grief over losing some of them.
She does not spend her time grieving the dead in various conflicts currently ongoing, although we both are saddened by them.
Proximity amplifies emotion.
I picked a book of his diaries up recently, it's been great to pick at. The copy I have has _a lot_ about his garden and the countryside around him, which has been fun to read whilst working on mine.
Lots of very terse household entries like, "July 11: 12 eggs".
I guess this is the key biographic context,
> "In August 1941, Orwell finally obtained "war work" when he was taken on full-time by the BBC's Eastern Service.[111] He supervised cultural broadcasts [sic] to India, to counter propaganda from Nazi Germany designed to undermine imperial links.[112] "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell#Second_World_War...
There's quite a visible gap between his nominal role as a propagandist for Britain in India, and his private views expressed here. I mean: "quite truly the way the British Government is now behaving upsets me more than a military defeat"—wow!
(Meta: the part where Wikipedia's obviously very not-neutral editors inserted that exemplar of newspeak, "cultural broadcasts" for "propaganda", into the biography of Orwell himself is just... doubleplus).
In 1984, the office rooms for the ministry of lies were directly inspired from his work for the BBC ..
> ministry of lies
Winston worked in the Ministry of Truth.
By doublethink, internally you know there are two meanings although you can never actually do the crimethink of believing or saying any ungood connotations. Edit - added quote:
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. ... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, [and remember it if necessary]. To deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies.
My bad. You are of course correct.
Also I never said anything about a ministry of lies. I only spoke of a ministry of truth of course.
(That is, if the 2 h edit window would not have been already over now)
Eileen's work at the "Ministry of Information" could also be an influence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Information_(Unite...
That put me into a deep, deep rabbit hole, learning lots of previous unknown facts of WW2 along the way. Thanks for wasting my time/giving me the opportunity to learn new things ..
I wonder how he’d feel about current trends. There’s a certain honesty to just blaring out propaganda that’s kinda missing in this era of influence operations.
The winning strategy in the previous US presidential election was to scream obvious lies blaming the immigrants, minorities, or opposition for any perceived slight.
I think Orwell would find this all very familiar.
Isn’t Orwell a fed informant screwing over the left he claimed to be a part of? Can’t imagine he’d have good takes.
After he went to fight for the left in Catalonia, and had to flee Catalonia for being the wrong kind of Marxist, he believed that the best thing for the left was to keep out actual Stalinists in order to preserve freedom for socialism.
Always funny when people not on the left talk about left-wing stuff. You’re not even part of the in-group.
A former partner of mine is a literal communist; I forget which kind of communist exactly, but the Life Of Brian thing about them constantly splitting into even more niche groups and being more angry with the other lefty groups than they are with the political right, is 100% correct.
There's a TV interview of her in the lead up to 2016 saying Trump would be better than Clinton. (Not that she liked Trump, that's different, just that she thought Clinton was worse). Still shares Demexit memes on FB, last I saw.
Actual, literal, communist. Was part of the Socialist Worker's Party in the UK just when that exploded.
Sooooo… who's the in-group?
That name is a Trotskyist party name. In my humble opinion, left-wing means being against the hegemonic status quo. While you described a [European] stereotype/cliche.
Politics and life is about your actions and output than what you nominally say out loud. “literal communist” is a label. Labels in isolation are not meant for serious convos. The actions of many Trots is and was to collaborate with the right, collaborate with western hegemony, attack the left, and trash actual existing leftism in the world.
If your ex is a Nazi leftist (Strasserites etc) or a communist Zionist who loves apartheid you’d presumably understand how useless political labels can be and not wonder “Sooooo… who's the in-group?”
> In my humble opinion, left-wing means being against the hegemonic status quo.
Originally it was literally just a seating plan. The left wing was the wing of the assembled politicians that were *physically on the left*.
But if that's your definition, it would make capitalists the "left wing" of Cuba.
> The actions of many Trots is and was to collaborate with the right, collaborate with western hegemony, attack the left, and trash actual existing leftism in the world.
That far left is a circular firing squad, IMO.
(I assume the same about the far right, except the bits of the far right that get in the news seem to have "circular firing squad" less metaphorically and more literally).
But her actions were, and continue to be, doing everything in her power against the right wing. I think she even managed to get arrested for some protest or other against, IIRC, a US defence sector company. She happens to find the left of the Overton Window to be too right wing. As do I, but then, I moved from the UK to Germany to get away from the politicians and politics I can't stand, while she works in a trade union (in the UK) to support the workers who need help and make a positive difference.
> If your ex is a Nazi leftist (Strasserites etc) or a communist Zionist who loves apartheid you’d presumably understand how useless political labels can be and not wonder “Sooooo… who's the in-group?”
The British SWP, not the American SWP:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Workers_Party_(UK)#A...
The US one is reportedly pro-Israel, the UK one appears to be pro-Palestine: https://socialistworker.co.uk/news/swp-conference-2024-pales...
Sorry this got a bit long
I was doing hypotheticals. Not specifically talking about your ex.
—
You’re right about my definition. The other addition is being against unjustifiable hierarchies (yes some will say Cuban regime is unjustifiable but I disagree and it’s not the same as capitalists) and being critical of capitalism.
That aligns with the French Revolution and left wing being progressive tho obviously that was a different stage of societal development and times.
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“She happens to find the left of the Overton Window to be too right wing.”
Yes that’s what a lot of people say. Ultras, left coms, anarchists etc.
I feel similar to all of you except for me I find all these people to primarily be chauvinists masking that behind pretending to be too left for the left.
I have my own personal criteria for “true” left-wing which is how you are thinking of people not in your in-group. European fascists historically want to help the workers of the in-group people they care about.
It’s why I despise Europe. Always going on about social democracy being so left-wing and how Europe is so left wing compared to America as if European fascism doesn’t want to help their own too.
I will never put worth into someone helping their own in-group. To me it matters if you care about the global south if you’re a westerner or European. And most western leftists and European leftists don’t really care.
Btw Not saying you or your ex partner are chauvinists or don’t care about others. I was saying overall or generally
I didn’t say that he’d have a “take”. I said he’d find the climate familiar.
His main gripe was that government wasn't doing enough, that it was too passive. He had problems with lot of their other policies, but as most people, he understood that defeating Nazis is worth compromises.
It's strange why Orwell gets so much more attention than Aldous Huxley. I feel like modern reality is a lot closer to 'Brave New World' than '1984'.
Brave New World describes a world saturated with endless streams of information and entertainment and yet almost everyone basically acts the same way; everyone chooses to engage in the same kinds of 'pleasure seeking' activities; they all think the same and they all want to watch and experience the same things, despite the fact that many alternatives exist.
Ironically, it might be partly because BNW is becoming real that those in charge are drawing attention towards 1984; this form of subtle attention manipulation is very BNW-like.
Another thing though is that as the world becomes more like BNW, the book itself becomes less interesting to read for younger people. For example, I remember being surprised when characters in the book asked each other if they had watched a 'Feelie' (a Movie with sensory experience) about 'Swimming with whales'.
I remember thinking that the way the characters kept asking each other about their opinions on the same boring things and expecting them to answer in the same predictable way as some kind of status symbol was weird... But nowadays it's basically the reality; people praise each other for compliance. Basically for being boring and having predictable boring thoughts.
I suspect young people reading BNW wouldn't pick up on that... It would go right over their heads that things were once different and expressing compliance with the mainstream ideology didn't earn you any social status (at least not in the west). It was kind of the opposite.
There’s a lot more in 1984 than the high-level ideas which are held in contrast to Huxley (risks of oppression versus risks of opulence). Both are certainly at play.
A few of the things from 1984 that I’ve noticed or have been told about and often reflect upon:
* 1984 is a book that is concerned with the physical body and the deprivations experienced in Oceania — ie Winston’s gastric distress is articulated on the first page; many of us experience meaningful bodily distress on account of our food systems, stress, disconnection, and other issues
* 1984 is largely about alienation — many of us prioritize our work and other fears over connection in the same ways that Winston and Julia do (engaging in sex is taboo in Oceania); although engaging in sex is not forbidden in our culture, taking the time to really connect with others when so many of us feel so much constant pressure to work can feel “wrong”
* stirring up hatred among the populace in 1984 is a common theme; in our culture, on both the right and the left, an insistence on hating others, other political parties, other countries, and injustice (ie as opposed to cultivating love and compassion for those suffering) form the basis of profound issues we face today
Orwell suffered and died from tuberculosis. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/george-orwell-wrot... talks about the parallels with Winston's experiences in the book.
For sure. Much of what is so dark about 1984 may be related to his frame of mind. During his time, tuberculosis patients such as himself were extremely limited by the medical system — having to adhere to very strict routines and oppression.
Also the doublespeak, the "War is peace": we need soldiers, we need more guns; the surveillance, everyday terrorism, etc.
“Peace through strength” is a fairly disturbing related phrase used today
> everyone chooses to engage in the same kinds of 'pleasure seeking' activities; they all think the same and they all want to watch and experience the same things, despite the fact that many alternatives exist.
This seems contrary to reality. Shared culture is becoming more disparate and people are living in alternative realities according to their own individual algorithms.
I think the polarisation we see in society may be because everyone seems to end up getting to the same handful of places rather than to individual bubbles.
I'm a little tired of this comparison and this point. Its fine if you like Brave New World more than 1984. But does this need to be mentioned every time Orwell is mentioned? Orwell wrote a lot more than 1984 and Animal Farm.
I mean, this article doesn't mention 1984 at all.
In the typical childish hive-mind logic of comments on this site, yours get downvoted for no discernible reason other than, apparently, politely adding a slightly different point of view and mentioning the interesting contrast with another book. Upvote from me, at the very least to counter such idiocies.
Maybe this resonates a bit too uncomfortably here:
>I remember thinking that the way the characters kept asking each other about their opinions on the same boring things and expecting them to answer in the same predictable way as some kind of status symbol was weird..
I too thought that Brave New World gets nowhere near enough attention despite being much closer to the mark on describing our present world, though i'd say we live more in something of our own unique creation, with elements from both novels: BNW closer to the mark in describing our social world and 1984 somewhat resonating with creeping tendencies in mass politics. However, I'd say we live in a reality much more fragmented and complex than the simplistic and very era-bound one described by 1984.
Orwell tried to anticipate the reception of his own book by projecting it into fiction as Immanuel Goldstein’s Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, but it ultimately became fully integrated into our society, which leans more toward Brave New World. Ironically, Goldstein’s book is ideologically closer to Brave New World than to 1984.
Another interesting example of a meta-reflexive dystopia is the British series Utopia. Its plot revolves around a fictional comic book of the same name, which is believed to predict a conspiracy to cause population reduction through forced vaccination following an engineered pandemic. There is something fascinating about these narratives; intentionally or not, they seem to call fiction into reality. It’s as if Orwell genuinely tried to create a transcendent critique to out-compete the very system whose rise he was witnessing. Ultimately, he may have failed, not because the system is inherently stronger, but because our thoughts are never entirely our own to begin with.
Edit: what I'm talking about is no stranger to what is called "predictive programming", and whichever meaning you attach to this phrase, I believe the poster I'm replying to is sensing its effects.
The question then becomes: to what extent are we merely engaging in hindsight bias or reacting to engineered shifts in attention? Furthermore, is it possible to analyze these mass manipulation techniques, even just for one's own clarity, without the guarantee that your own line of thinking won't become a mental trap?
After all, if I were one of "them" – subtly pulling the strings in an open society where consent is manufactured rather than coerced, where events are influenced rather than dictated – the social stigma against "conspiracy theorists" would be a far more efficient and durable tool than any of the impossibly risky plots those theorists imagine. In fact, it would be the only tool I would dare to use.
So perhaps the safest way to run a conspiracy is to first astroturf a community of conspiracy theorists.
Yet even this thinking keeps us trapped, circling the idea of 'them.' The crucial idea I must utter is this: it's not about their existence or non-existence. It is that at the genesis of these roles, there is an infinitely nested psychological bedrock. Isn't thi common ground from which the mind of the conspirator, who seeks to impose a hidden order, and the mind of the theorist, who seeks to reveal one, both arise ?
I really loved “Down and out in Paris and London” and “Homage to Catalonia”.
I was actually looking into reading some of his other candid works:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_Paris_and_Lond...
Semi-autobiographical about when he was nearly homeless and living in poverty in Europe. He also went after how hospitals mistreat patients and poor people in Paris.
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About seven years before he was sending letters to the British Foreign Office of who to blackball during the UK's version of the Red Scare - people like Charlie Chaplin.
He even wrote a book a year before this (1984) denouncing societies that had people denouncing each other for political heresy. Psychological projection. What a htpocrite.
Pretty interesting, I had no idea about this:
The George Orwell Paradox: From Spy Target to Informant https://spyscape.com/article/surveillance-state-how-british-...
I think most people stop at 1984 or animal farm and have no idea what Orwell really thought about society and politics.
Yeah. Western hegemony has an interest in presenting the Animal Farm guy a certain way.
Yes very much so. Thankfully someone in this thread (even if only you) saying the correct context.
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The combination of reverse chronological order and infinite scroll is a little silly, no?
(Note that there's also an index on the right-hand side.)
This seems to be a Wordpress thing and I hate it.
We have supercomputers in our packets and websites can't even do a thing as basic as showing a list of posts, all the posts, on one page.
lists have become a lost technology. youtube, spotify are not able to implement a list correctly.
Indeed, I feel exhausted by this. Listless, even.
Reminder to myself: My journal entries on my computer in Obsidian won‘t survive even a year after I die. My child probably won’t look into the thousands of files to find my journal entries. Whereas my paper diaries from 30years ago will be perfectly fine in a few decades from now.
This is why I use markdown. I figure that will be easily viewable for as long as the files are around.
Obsidian is all markdown. I assume OP was referring to no one keeping that data preserved post death.
I see. I'm not a user of Obsidian, but is it really obvious where the markdown files live? I use naked markdown and have a printed "read this first" that tells the locations of all the files (and where the backups are). I've tried to make it as simple as possible to find things.
Yeah it's actually one of the things I like most about Obsidian - your "vault" is literally just a directory. Everything is just a markdown file and it's just a normal directory structure and it's all exactly as you'd expect.
I used to take my normal notes as plain text or markdown in a similar structure, so "moving" to Obsidian was just opening the directory. It doesn't show plain text by default, so you'll have to rename them to .md files, but other than that, you're up and running immediately. It's saved the exact same way on mobile as well.
It's the most extensive note management software I've used that also doesn't remove the basics like letting me control the files myself.
Sounds good. I just installed it and pointed it to my "howto/" directory (which has everything in regular markdown, with .md files). Normally I use emacs to edit my markdown, but I can definitely see some advantages to using this. Thanks!
And why I still use paper. Hard drives die, and I don't expect any one to be going through them when I'm gone.
Paper on the other hand they at least will pick it up to throw away, likely flipping through it just to look for anything of monetary value.
I agree, so for that reason there are some things I print, but I do keep 2 local copies and 1 remote copy of all my files.
But will your grandchild be able to read handwriting?
I’ve already used a computer to interpret old handwriting.
print and staple it.
startup idea? upload an obsidian vault, receive a printed, bound notebook(s)
You can pretty much do this already by sending it to a Staples
"Publish or perish"
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He literally fought fascists. And during that time became anti-communist. He was a socialist in the end and against both extremes. I think he was involved with The Labour Party after the war - can you explain your view?
Unless we are literally doing Orwellian doublespeak, he was pretty much the polar opposite of a fascist/authoritarian. He was against strong central governments and was quite critical of his own government (In one of the diary entries even lamenting that the germans failed to jam one of the British propaganda broadcasts).
> Nehru, Gandhi, Azad and many others in jail. Rioting over most of India, a number of deaths, countless arrests. Ghastly speech by Amery, speaking of Nehru and Co. as “wicked men”, “saboteurs” etc. This of course broadcast on the Empire service and rebroadcast by AIR. The best joke of all was that the Germans did their best to jam it, unfortunately without success.
I suspect we'll never know, but it's somewhat typical of blithe idealists who would rather hear supportive platitudes than confront hard decisions or tradeoffs. Painting complex individuals who are a product of their time (pretty much everyone) with a broad reductive brush makes life decisions easy and forces others to deal with reality. It was a fairly effective trope from the 60s to the 2010s (the end of history), and even Chomsky failed to really spot the turning point for the Manufacture of Discontent until 2020, a solid 4 years too late. Now they seem lost in the old narrative, fighting old inconsequential battles in a new world.
George Orwell wrote a lot, and not just novels. It's actually pretty easy to know where he was, politically: he wrote political columns in the newspaper and you can read them.
what is the difference between socialism and communism
Bertrand Russell published a collection of essays in 1935 titled _In Praise Of Idleness_ which are well worth reading.
One of the essays is called _Between Scylla and Charybdis_ (the original rock and a hard place!) which explains why he rejects the commonly accepted idea that an intellectual should naturally be politically either a Communist or a Fascist. Remember Fascism was not a dirty word at this point; the Nazis destroyed it's legitimacy through their actions.
Anyway, if you want a better understanding read that. And the rest because they're very interesting.
Read The Lion and the Unicorn if you want an overview of Orwell's political views: https://www.fadedpage.com/books/20180531/html.php
He was was in favor of wealth redistribution and nationalisation of key industries, but his political views were very far from Communism.
the guy hated the USSR for its authoritarianism. And he hated lefties who forgave Communist crimes.
Anyway, I really like this piece of his:
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
> During the years 1918-33 you were hooted at in left-wing circles if you suggested that Germany bore even a fraction of responsibility for the war. In all the denunciations of Versailles I listened to during those years I don’t think I ever once heard the question, ‘What would have happened if Germany had won?’ even mentioned, let alone discussed. So also with atrocities. The truth, it is felt, becomes untruth when your enemy utters it.
Now to type that in the search field…
Please don't ask Grok!
It's all just labels.
"United" States of America. "People's" Republic of China. "Democratic People's" Republic of Korea.
At the end of the day you either get services in return for your taxes, or you don't.
Not in the 1940s it wasn't: neither Orwell nor the communists would have claimed the other, and it wasn't just a matter of "labels."
Like, communism has some specific ideas about how to organize society that your average democratic socialist or Labour person just doesn't agree with.
Depends on your definition amd usually requires more specific words, like marxist style socialism, anarcho communism, maoism ...
Very trivially speaking, socialism is communism light.
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I'll respond to this on its face, because its important:
The "socialist" part of the moniker was 2 things.
First, it was misdirection. Hitler believed that Bolshevisim, and left-wing revolutions in general, were Jewish plots. He was stridently anti-communist, yes, but also anti-socialist, and anti-democratic. The party he took over called themselves "socialist" because they needed a way to telegraph that they were the party of the workers, and at the time, workers' parties were socialist parties, at least in name. Mussolini did the same thing (although, he did start out as a socialist, so that's a bit more complex).
Second, the nazis were all about socializing the property of the outgroups. Vis the banning of Jewish businesses, the confiscation of Jewish property, etc etc. Several pretty prominent Nazis were tried, convicted and imprisoned or executed for stealing Jewish property for themselves (Amon Goth was dismissed from his role as commandant of the Plaszow concentration camp of Schindler's List fame over exactly that). The Nazis considered such theft to be stealing from the Reich.
All of that to say, fascists are happy to exercise socialism, provided the people they are taking from are part of the vilified outgroup that the fascist identity opposes.
Please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News. We're trying for something different here.
The nazis were socialist in the same sense that the German Democratic Republic was democratic, and the same way the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is democratic. hth
the nazis where?
The original ones, in Germany. It was short for "national socialist" - that is literally where "Nazi" comes from. They were different from the communists in that they were national rather than international socialists.
At least, that's what it said on the tin. Not sure, once they got into power, how actually socialist they were. (On the other hand, once the communists got into power, I'm not sure how communist they actually were.)
Argh. I totally missed the point of the GP to this (a snarky comment on a typo).
Worse, I missed it until after the edit window closed...
I mean, they claimed to be. It was in the name, "Nazi" was a contraction of "National Socialists". But that's kind of the problem with much of these conversations online. They figure way too much on the naming of things and not enough on the outcomes of things. I think anyone with an honest understanding of the Nazi party would admit it was much, much more about the "Nationalism" then it ever intended to be about the "Socialism". Much like how the modern "Republican" party doesn't seem to care too much about republics.
"First they came for the communists"
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If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
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