Comment on Burger King will use AI to check if employees say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 3 weeks agoOrwell was a British police officer in Myanmar, breaking up labor organizations and suppressing an independence movement, so…
Probably he would
Gsus4@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
Wispy2891@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
That style of moustache went out of fashion very rapidly after that photo
ToTheGraveMyLove@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
He joined the Imperial Police at the urging of his family because they couldn’t afford to send him to university and his poor grades meant that he would likely not be able to get a scholarship. He hated his time with the police force and called imperialism “an evil thing.”
So no, probably he wouldn’t.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Incredibly, the man once accused of communist tendencies and the creator of Big Brother, was by 1949 surreptitiously working for British intelligence. He drew up a list of names of crypto-communists for Britain’s Foreign Office Information Research Department, the spies who led the UK propaganda war.
Orwell’s contact was Celia Kirwan, a former flame who visited the author while he battled tuberculosis at a sanatorium in England. Orwell had proposed to her years earlier but they were simply friends at that point - friends in high places. During her visit, Celia and Orwell discussed the secretive projects the IRD was doing “in great confidence, and he was delighted to learn of them, and expressed his wholehearted and enthusiastic approval of our aims,” according to Britain’s National Archives and Foreign Office records.
Orwell listed the names of suspected communists who might betray Britain if they were hired to work as writers in the propaganda unit. In his now-famous letter dated April 6, 1949, Orwell writes: “I could also, if it is of value, give you a list of crypto-communists, fellow-travelers or inclined that way and should not be trusted as propagandists.”
Orwell wanted his list to be ‘strictly confidential’. It includes dozens of literary luminaries of the ‘40s including J. B. Priestley, the novelist and playwright, and Manchester Guardian industrial correspondent John Anderson, described by Orwell as: “Probably sympathizer only. Good reporter. Stupid.”
…
Orwell collapsed with tuberculosis after writing the first draft of Nineteen Eighty-Four and typed the second version of his novel while recovering in bed. He collapsed again when he had finished and died on January 21, 1950. The CIA, US Army, and British spies began courting his young widow, his second wife Celia, almost immediately hoping to buy the firm rights to Animal Farm. The CIA closed the deal with a promise of cash and an introduction to Hollywood movie star Clarke Gable. The Brits settled for the rights to turn Animal Farm into a comic strip.
ToTheGraveMyLove@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Not sure how any of that discounts his anti-imperialist and anti-authoritarian beliefs.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Read it again. Think harder.