Roald Dahl: The first man down the memory hole
Kit Knightly
The first shocking censorship of 2023 dropped last week. As covered by CJ Hopkins in his most recent column, Roald Dahl’s publishers have hired a team of “sensitivity readers”, in order to edit the next edition of Dahl’s books to remove outdated language.
According to this piece in The New Statesman:
The changes range from the removal of outright racist stereotypes to the deletion of the word “fat”, gendered phrases (be it “chambermaid”, “females” or “hag”) and references to “pink” or “white” skin. In some cases, these are minor tweaks to one or two words in a sentence. Others are far more interventionist, including entire songs rewritten in James and the Giant Peach, or new sentences added in The Witches which explain that there are myriad reasons why people might wear wigs.
While that may read like a PC nightmare, it’s more insidious than that. This is not about being woke or unwoke, it’s about the normalisation of post hoc censorship that should concern everyone.
Some have described the edits as a natural by-product of capitalism.
It’s been noted that the edits come in the wake of the Dahl estate closing a huge deal with Netflix for exclusive rights to all of Dahl’s work. So some are framing this as Netflix seeking to protect their investment by making sure Dahl remains profitable in the age of cancel culture.
But even that is a simplification – after all, Netflix is more than just an entertainment company, they have noted political ties and have relentlessly pushed state-backed propaganda in the past.
Even the choice of Dahl as the man to lead a forlorn hope down the memory hole is carefully calculated. His known racist attitudes make him controversial enough that some will be hesitant to defend his work. While the fact he was a children’s author means anyone who does raise concerns can be dismissed with either indifference (“it’s just a kids books, it doesn’t matter”) or false-moralising (“we need to protect children!”).
He’s the perfect choice to be laid down on the wire.
And if they set a precedent that it’s now ok to go back and “revise language”…what’s next? who’s next? Dickens? Twain?
What about the news. That’s the big ticket item after all, right?
What words will no longer be acceptable next year? “Inside job”? “Guantanamo bay”?
What history will be deemed “offensive”? What facts will be “potentially harmful”?
We’ve already had a little taste of this with Covid, when the death rate of the 1918 Spanish Flu was suddenly revised down in February 2020, to literally physically impossible numbers, just to make covid appear more dangerous.
Mainstream precedents would allow this process to switch from small covert examples to much larger overt ones.
In other book-related news, this week it was widely reported, that the UK government’s anti- terror program, “PREVENT” had placed (among others) Shakespeare, Tolkien and George Orwell on their list of “key texts” that could “radicalise right-wing extremists”.
Somewhat ironically, this practice of retroactive censorship is a tactic straight out of 1984.
No wonder they don’t want us to read it. It doesn’t “create extremists”, but it does give away their plans.
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In a Hundred years how many people got off their bottom and checked 1918 influenza death certificates at Public Records Offices.
So we got this “flu” bombardments by on-line Gobshites who can never keep quiet.
FLU dickheads blah blah blah…no no no it was not Them it was You out there Big Gobs! Big Fat Lazy Fuckers no wonder you fuckheads behave like children…you’ve leant Fuckall in a Hundred YEARS.
errr nope.
@Lowkey0nline
Feb 25
Chelsea and Westminster Hospital has removed a piece of artwork by children in G*z* from a corridor in the hospital following a lobbying campaign by the group UK Lawyers for Is***l.
How about this explanation: Article writers have to compete for the public’s attention. Using “catchy terminology” is simply a way of getting people to read the article.
It’s not to browbeat, or present oneself as possessing some special knowledge which the reader could never understand on his own. It’s just to get dude to read the article.
Regarding public censorship:
“Few people have the imagination for reality.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe –
(August 28, 1749 – March 22, 1832)
And yet, if you protested that changing a book’s wording offends you, you would immediately see that it has nothing to do with offense.
Disrespect of an author’s creation carries no weight whatsoever. You are only allowed to be offended according to certain very narrow standards.
What they’re really doing is attempting to transform creative fiction into How To and other types of Technical Manuals, which exist solely to pass along information.
Works of literature will become nothing more than highly specialized information scattered along the Information Highway, fully analogous to turds along the Dog Path.
From the link…..
Marx’s manifesto is famous for summing up his theory of Communism with a single sentence: “Abolition of private property.” But this was hardly the only thing the philosopher believed must be abolished from bourgeois society in the proletariat’s march to utopia. In his manifesto, Marx highlighted five additional ideas and institutions for eradication.
5. The Past
Marx saw tradition as a tool of the bourgeoisie. Adherence to the past served as a mere distraction in proletariat’s quest for emancipation and supremacy.
“In bourgeois society,” Marx wrote, “the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past.”
5 Things Marx Wanted to Abolish (Besides Private Property) – Foundation for Economic Education (fee.org)
The only thing wrong with Marx’s manifesto was that it was entirely rhetorical and suppositional. It’s not Marx’s fault that so many bought into the bullshit…
The Manics warned us
“If you tolerate this then your childrens books will be next”
Roald Dahl, Dr Seuss, Enid Blyton, even Agatha Christie and God knows who else, have all been ‘fiddled with by the Fat Controllers’ if you’ll pardon the pun.
“No one can be offended”
Just locked up, locked down, locked in, locked out, sacrificed on the altar of Mammon or sent to fight and die in manufactured wars.
Logans Run and Zardoz come to mind.
The question as to whether Dahl’s books were “any good” is surely irrelevant. I never actually read any of them and only know of his tales through film and TV adaptations. To complain they are “nasty” seems incredibly dumb. There is a streak of the sinister running through kids’ stories all the way back to Little Red Riding Hood. The Brothers Grimm had a very apt name. Kids like being scared. I did. Up to a point. But what scared me the most was stuff that wasn’t even meant to be scary. The horror writer Ramsey Campbell said that what spooked him the most as a kid was a Rupert the Bear cartoon in which a tree got up and walked.
But the question as to how good or bad an item is when it is being proposed for banishment is irrelevant. Once the banning starts it continues. Today Dahl, tomorrow Dickens and Dostoevsky.
“Incredibly dumb” is a correct assessment.
My two daughters, when they were little kids, loved the scary aspects of Dahl, and in the grossly politically incorrect teacher which “Matthilda” had to endure in one of his stories, I could see a perfectly credible caricature of some of the monstrous teachers I had to deal with myself way back in the day.
Perhaps such teachers have been filtered out of the system today, but that doesn’t make the reality of their former existence go away – and nor should it.
Kids used to have to put up with such specimens, but they didn’t end up imitating them, any more than a normal child reading “Cinderella” would see the wicked stepmother, or the ‘ugly’ sisters (the whole point was the ugliness of their souls, and not their outer appearance) as a role model…
Fairy tales have a meaning which is not necessarily up there on the surface or staring you in the face. The fairy tale is also a means of passing a certain amount of folk wisdom from generation to generation without being too specific or preachy, and without compelling children to think scientifically at all times and to mistrust their own imagination.
Well said.
The Book of Revelation in the New Testament can also be seen as the record of an initiation document concerning truth and light.
Both good and evil are clearly featured there too, but it takes a certain amount of patience to study the symbolic pictures if one cares to.
As I see it, the Book can be read as a dream-like description of apocalyptic events, or it can be seriously studied for its deeper meanings.
Such documents are so old that there has been a great deal of perceptive commentary about them, as well as a lot of superficial nonsense, but I think we have currently reached the sort of existential crossroads that make it highly appropriate to look into the matter.
Thank you too Kacz. I also feel awake again.
Very perceptive. I’ve had the same thought myself: that we are being buttered up to accept their fake, globalist messiah. As for Revelation, I would urge extreme caution there. Not only was it the last book of the bible to be written, but it is also dripping with the language and symbolism of the so-called ancient ‘mystery schools.’ Nobody knows its real origins either. It was written too late to have been the work of the Apostle John; the second-century bishop, John of Patmos, is himself a mysterious and obscure figure. One thing about the book is certain: its tone and substance recalls the teachings of Christ but little. In his time, Jesus had little use for musing about the ‘end of days.’ When the question was once put to him, he even answered: “Ye know not the answer, not do I. Only our Father in heaven knows.”
For these reasons, I regard Revelation as suspect.
Democidal
Growing up looking down on Your Childrens stories books and films says more about PARENT than it does about the Child.
You grow up not older otherwise your statements are the voice of a self defeatist Man.
You look back Historically as documented fact not as a blabbering baffoon in an open to the public Childs psychiatric ward. In a modern Society a person respects his own upbringing reading material while welcoming a revised edition depending if another Culture so wishes.
The latest victim of erasure / censure is Scott Adams. He’s the cartoonist behind the long running ‘Dilbert’ cartoon strip. Apparently he made some racist remarks last week — I haven’t heard them, they’re apparently on youTube somewhere — which is cause enough for him to be thoroughly cancelled. No syndication, dropping from numerous publications and so on.
I am somewhat annoyed by this. Its not that can I can’t live without Dilbert but its more the Pastor Niemoller thing — “First they came for the socialists, but I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist….”. I am not going to allow some sefl-appointed Robespierre to tell me what I can and can’t think — these people are an absolute menace to humanity and need themselves to be ‘cancelled’. I have no idea what Adams said and I’m not particularly interested; I doubt if he’s a racist in a strict sense because he’s been published for decades so if he was one it would have stood out well before now. (He probably made a critique of something or another, failed to conform to a political or cultural orthodoxy, so needs to be pushed down the memory hole.)
This isn’t an isolated incident. I’m don’t follow games or Harry Potter but our local ‘quality’ paper recently published a rant about JK Rowling’s politically incorrect views and how because of them nobody should buy or play the game. The rant was supposed to be a review but it said a lot more about the prejudices of the author than the actual game. Enough!
His main “crime” was to publicly admit that he had got it wrong over covid “vaccines” and that the unvaccinated had got it right, although that came with the mealy mouthed caveat that the unvaccinated had only got it right by chance, when with me for one, and many other unvaccinated people that I know, we got it right because we availed ourselves of a wide range of information and didn’t blindly follow the word of some “authority” with skin in the game, some known crook in a suit or the herds of the unquestioning looking to peer pressure us into to doing something that our research and our intuition told us was a bad idea.
After that though, they were always going to be gunning for him though. He questioned “the SCIENCE”. Heresy like that is punishable by cancellation. The fact that they can now tie that particular heresy to him being a “racist” or a “right-winger” also seems highly convenient and totally fitting with another strand of that particular narrative.
‘”His main “crime”’ was that he noticed and commented on an unapproved topic.
Whomever is inerrorably dismissive is let go.
If the people-system who wish to censor works of the past really cared about public knowledge they would merely need to document history accurately. Interesting how History textbooks don’t discuss the variety of views of history. They write the books as if they speak unquestioned truth. I can tell you from my experience that school textbooks I ran into were seriously deficient in history, and in not discussing differing methodologies to learning. Part of learning should be an etymology of the process running simultaneously to learning.
To extrapolate these ideas onto the bizarre recent systemic reactionary acts of our current ruling elite, those who dictate the acts of government, we are not allowed to vote on these acts, one could suggest a better solution than removing a statue, censoring old fiction works, censoring media, censoring social media or public communications. The statues could have huge plaques clearly putting the sculpture and the people and things depicted in the sculpture in context to the best known history of the facts, and then discuss why the sculpture was made and placed in public.Books could have disclaimers in the preface noting History marks transitions in thought and social norms, and to be aware of some of the language and note how society has changed from when the depictions were made. Instead of “fact checking” slap-arounds currently used in online media, other views could have links, side columns where challenges could be made. Open debate is what we want, not censorship of thought..
Any censorship, removal, or opinion washing, obliteration of history should not be allowed in the US where the First Amendment clearly protects all speech. That this is being done to actually obliterate History, good or bad, is unconscionable. It’s clear what this system is doing now is totalitarian, not consciousness raising.
Another way to obliterate history, is to hoard works of art and demolish the architectural heritage of whole cities. The Guild system has also been reduced to rubble, and “education” has become an alley joke.
Consciousness? Idiocracy: Brawndo Has What Plants Crave! – YouTube
Drink Bwando. It’s got electrolytes…
Some demolitions are for show on video. A good portion is looted. Iraq is the prime victim of this sort.
Yes. I remember pictures of various Iranian street scenes by a pre-invasion photographer years ago. The photos were juxtaposed with photos of the same locations a few months after the “liberation” of Iraq. The devastation of centuries of architecture sickened my heart. Most Iraqi cities have been reduced to rubble, whilst the west enjoys their air travel vacations and ocean cruises…
Correction: I had referred to “Iranian” street scenes in my previous post, whilst I meant to refer to Iraqi street scenes.
I think we should start the process of dirtying down the Bible. Instead of: “He went into her.” (Genesis 29:23 – English version) We could put it more bluntly: “Then he fucked her.”
Jus’ sayin’…
Back in Old Testament times, nobody fucked.
They only begat.
Kit, Why does it have to be mentioned twice in 4 days..?
When I see stuff like this, I try to look for the amazon affiliate link. 😂
I would never presume to answer for Mr. Knightly (or anyone else); but I would like to point out that things which have a short shelf-life (like this Roald Dahl thing) but a far-reaching potential impact deserve as much play as possible before their expiration date.
Denial of what? Of the Devil? You betcha I am. There ain’t no Devil, just like there ain’t no God. And if there were – they’d be one and the same.
See it’s like this my brother: there’s so much evil in the world that they had to invent a Devil to explain it – otherwise the blame falls upon God’s doorstep. Can’t have that!
See, you’re all wrong. Especially you Mr Knightly. Your old haunt has an article smashing up the OffG mask position.
https://www.dumptheguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/27/dont-believe-those-who-claim-science-proves-masks-dont-work
That anyone at this late stage still stands up for the “efficacy” of masks is yet another indication of the brutal stranglehold the parasites have over the media. And see here:
The implication is that the only study worthy of consideration is one in which masks are worn all the time (which is only the case in the psychotically duped) in the same environment (thus irrelevant for all other environments) and where the “transmission risk” (clearly open to infinite qualifications) is always the same.
Thus the goal posts can be moved again and again and again.
I’d agree George. But you’re up against the CDC link in the article that summarises many studies apparently proving the efficacy of mask wearing.
Who are most people going to believe? You, me & OffG, or the CDC?
Could do with a comprehensive breakdown of why the CDC summary (or the studies) are not up to scratch.
You are referring to the power of the mighty gish gallop. This kind of thing:
“A large, well-designed cluster-randomized trial in Bangladesh in late 2020 found that surgical or cloth mask distribution, role-modeling, and active mask promotion tripled mask use to 42.3% in intervention villages compared to 13.3% in comparison villages. In villages receiving mask interventions, symptomatic seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2 was reduced by approximately 9% relative to comparison villages. In villages randomized to receive surgical masks, symptomatic seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2 was significantly lower (relative reduction 11.1% overall). The results of this study show that even modest increases in community use of masks can effectively reduce symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections (COVID-19).”
See? “Seroprevalence”. Yes indeed, let’s chart the nuances of the labyrinthine bio-medico nomenclature for a couple of thousand pages and then insist that no-one can contradict us unless they conduct their own interminable research and answer every single experiment with all the ramifications whilst whistling the national anthem and masturbating at high speed.
Naturally, almost everyone is mightily impressed by this. This is how “The Science” works. It’s also how the legal profession works. And I recall again and again Schopenhauer’s marvellously apt reference to the might squid that hides its meagreness and vacuity with an enormous web of black ink.
No, it’s a mistake to get bogged down in that crap. The basic device here was the initial question begging nonsense dished up by the media over the deadly bug presented through statistics which never justified any of the claims made in the first place. As with 9/11 (in many ways a dry run for covid) the central device was reversal of the burden of proof.
But there is one vast weakness in the pseudo-profundity manoeuvre: no amount of verbal diarrhoea can challenge the actual experience of gasping your way through those wretched masks whilst trying to do a job – and extending this farce for day after day for three years. In the end, having all that splendid “scientific” theory for how well the masks are doing to protect you is no match for the clear distress you actually feel. Cf. the tests that tell you you’re ill when you feel perfectly fine.
By that well known science “person”:
Dr. Lucky Tran
O RLY?
It’s hardly needed but more evidence this is indeed a “thing”:
https://dumptheguardian.com/books/2023/feb/27/james-bond-novels-to-be-reissued-with-racial-references-removed
Oh please let me read MI6 propaganda unadulterated!
Fools rush in to buy the originals “before it’s too late!” creating more ker-ching.
i really wish i had bought that full volume of “Flashman” in the charity shop that time,
This is all part and parcel of a trend that’s been going on since day one. Namely, that Art is nothing more than a plaything of society, a frivolous bit of fluff that has no value other than as a way for some people to get rich. (In this regard, Christie’s Auction House is the devil’s own creation. Van Gogh lived and died in poverty; but his works go for millions: how evil is that?)
Society, and its minions (we call them “people”) have always regarded Art as something you do or engage with if and when you get the time. But certainly not on the same exalted level as sports or partying with your chums.
“Hey guys: let’s go down to the pub and watch TV – they’re showing “As You Like It” this evening!” (No, I’ve never received such an invitation either.)
The current state of the “art” is why I never bothered to complete or publish my work… Throwing pearls before swine comes to mind…
OFF-TOPIC: Does anyone know what become of the commenter ‘Jezza Potts’ who used to be a regular here? As I recall, he was a Kiwi living in Australia.
Not being pedantic but it was “Gezza” I think.
Yes, you’re right. It was ‘Gezza’.
Her she be back soon, just before the Europeans and U.k selections screaming how bad Oz is under labour.
Wannabe place a bet on it..?
never did like dahl, adult , or children’ books.
And your point it?
that i don’t like his books.
i did, i loved his children stories when i was a sprite……some of the most memorable, i read them all from fantastic mr.fox to danny champion of the world. reading books is one of the most underrated pastime’s ever
some are better than others.
no shit sherlock
PM
The creep that calls himself the PM of Australia became the first of that rank to attend a certain twisted parade. The same creep that has sent AUD 700 million to Ukraine.
Sorry to disappoint but the Spanish flu was revised downwards only after having been revised UPWARDS starting in the late 1990s when the whole mythology of “flu epidemics” began to be written. If you look at the literature from 1918. you will find that bronchitis was only one of a dozen diseases affecting young men in overcrowded, dirty war hospital camps.
Sometime in the 1990s, they dug out ONE body from some Alaskan village from 1918 and began to claim it was the flu virus and the whole “deadly flu epidemic” narrative began to be constructed using newly developed genome sequencing techniques to make tall claims.
Throughout history there have been epidemics of respiratory disease such as in 1968 where a lot of people in some European cities still remember it to this day. However death rates from such epidemics have never been high. In Milan, for instance, you can find municipal notices of the 1918 respiratory illness epidemic, warning people to take precautions but the death rate itself was not high.
Here here! I remember as a child (in the early1970’s) being fascinated to read about the deadly spanish flu epidemic of 1918, and how it killed 8-11 million people around the world. I accepted it when the media announced the revised level of 14 million sometime in the late eighties or or early nineties. When they then ‘revised’ it to 20 million a couple of years later I began to smell a rat. It very quickly went to 24 million, then 40 milllion, then 50 or 60 million. In 2019 I read a book about natural cures for viral infections which cited the figure of ‘as high as 120 million. Clearly, the 1918 epidemic was being exaggerated for propaganda purposes. I also noted from 2009 onwards how the nightly news would react to a few measles cases as if it were the coming apocalypse. Clearly, the agenda to paralise us with fear over virus’ (Viri?) goes back a long way, with full MSM complicity. We live in the post truth age!
Instead of worrying about the plural of virus, when the very concept itself is under question, I lean towards the word ‘pathogen’, which means: anything that generates pathology, which means sickness, whateverTF it may be. Even a clout on the head with a stick is a pathogen, under this understanding… 😉
Sorry to disappoint you, but the Spanish flu, whatever it’s causes, was a very real situation and you were pretty much toast if you got it – here today, gone tomorrow – no need for a test to find out whether you had it or not. In South Africa, old cemeteries are riddled with 1918 graves (the ones for infants the most heartbreaking). See link for an interesting theory about the origins.
Funnily enough I was in a huge European cemetery recently. Felt very sad because one older part was full of graves of young men from 1914 to 1918. Either died in battle or succumbed to injuries. Not one mention of the flu. People from all the colonies were sent to fight in WWI, from India, from South Africa and a whole bunch of other serfs from around the planet were sent to die in wars of empire. So yes, there will be graves for 1918, including for children. Child mortality was way higher back then. None of this has anything to do with flu.
1918 Influenza is in War Records and Death Certificates Bed clip boards sheets as well as other Diseases for GODS sake are you IDIOTS for REAL! Wake up you bloody MORONS!!!!
ahhh yes 1918 the year us military radar was first deployed all over this planet, 1968 was the intro of colour tv etc etc the 19th century influenza epidemic coincided with the world telegraph system and so it goes
Been available for decades hundred years. 1918, 1968 we do in North of England, because of it I think vaguely around ’58? Manchester, but it wouldn’t much different than other Cities imo. Friend emailed me illness was high in 2017-18. But wouldn’t know I’am not in the British Isles., at the moment.
Converted by, rather than to, ‘Covid’
https://real-left.com/the-making-of-a-left-wing-covid-dissident-part-i/
I am not sure how new this is. There are plenty of heavily abridged. modernised, and/or ‘children’s’ versions of adult books out there, as well as a variety of translations of classic foreign-language titles. Some people are sensitive, and I don’t see why sanitised versions shouldn’t be out there, as long as the originals are on sale too. I personally dislike gratuitous violence in fiction or movies, and perhaps there is scope for releasing separate edited versions?
If they edited the violence from Hollywood movies, all that would be left is the credits and some threatening music.
Don’t watch such movies then and don’t read on in any book that the language offends you… turn the movie off …set the book down . Scan such media before you permit any children near them . Just DONT CHANGE SOMEONE ELSES WORK. If you don’t like it .write your own
Exactly: censor your own intake if you’re such a wuss that you wince easily. But keep your censoring hands off what I choose to read. I want the raw originals, always. Bugger censorship, including its prissy bourgeois version, bowdlerism.
Anything containing “gratuitous violence” is going to be damaging social engineering – so why would anyone want to watch it?
Yea anything including stuffing your stockings with anything for another hundred years including a spaceship to get you off the fucking Planet. BECAUSE it’s OBVIOUS to Everyone else on this bloody Planet, YOU can’t EVEN DECIDE what fucking BOOKS to BUY!
You GREAT SOFT TWAT!
Oh dear was my upper case stuck, I’am terribly sorry.
I have much fun these days. Starting for the first time in my life with a deeper interest for concepts of schoolish education (thanks to John Klyczek) I came pretty soon in questioning the ‘development’ of one of the arms of Hydra UN, the UNESCO, self declared responsible for ‘international education’. UNECSO with its eugenic-fanatic Julian Huxley is a strange thing: he changed the racism and the crimes with his ‘evolutionary humanism’ and the Jews with ‘mental defectives’. He was pretty successfull, as we see now, because all this terrible hate – of cause – must be the sign of someone mentally ill who must be deleted or vaporized (hello CJ….).
UNESCO was also the host for UNs human rights, invented by US, UK, SU and – China. The Chinese Peng chun-Chan was very successful in fighting against any spiritual foundation, so that it was able to comply with his confucian order. The result is in short, that the holy human rights are – negiotiable. And here we are, too. They will soon become granted only for sustainable SC.
Nicy prepared. It is a big lie, that UN has ever been a moral duty against Nazis. They wanted to do their own totalitarism, thats all.
Of course. That’s the main reason why the globalists engineered the two world wars: to convince us that nation-states are bad, and that we therefore need a one-world government. (The other reason was, of course, Zionism.)
I think it will be more important to investigate and to understand systematically the procedures, they are applying to reach their goal of inescapable and complete slavery (“leave no one behind”). The Nazis seem having been the first attempt, some kind of dress rehearsal.
You have to categorize all people. Hitler decided, who is Jewish or not together with experts from IBM – Edwin Black describes in his books, that before this classification there were about 500.000 jews in Germany, after the new criteria there were 2,5 millions. Compare with ICD 10: hundreds of ‘health’-criteria also for being vaxxed or not. Same purpose: separation.
You have to eradicate the ability of thinking and knowledge. Hitler infiltrated with Goebbels the schools and the spare time with events and new schoolbooks. So does UNESCO with the SDG regime and the battle against hate. They eradicate knowledge after weakening the ability to think and decide for yourself in schools. The younger the slaves the easier.
You have to eradicate physical integrity. Hitler separated people by ‘informing’ about dangerous jews. No one could be sure about the other outside, if he is a dangerous jew, and no one could be sure being jewish himself after the IBM- criteria and the racial experts. So is with the criteria of ICD10, what now is to be changed in ICD11. There will never be a crime – if you are out of function, you are sick. Without vaxx – you are mental defect.
Pretty new world, exactly like 1984.
Beirut
The hostility towards Dahl apparently stems from his strong criticism of the Israeli assault on Beirut in 1982. The official count is 18,000 dead besides presumably the 800 killed in Sabra and the other Palestinian refugee camp.
Also search for ptotos/articles of “Beirut blast missile” to look into the 2020 disaster.
I don’t know if off-guardian has cover this
https://aanirfan.blogspot.com/2023/02/who-is-buying-up-ukraine.html
At the end of May 2022, the Australian National Review reported that three large American multinational corporations had bought 17 million hectares of Ukrainian agricultural land (out of a total land bank of 40 million hectares).
If one genuflects too often one can’t stand upright again.
https://www.garydbarnett.com/the-relationship-between-the-american-people-and-its-evil-government-is-the-epitome-of-mass-stockholm-syndrome/
I imagine many of you have heard about Woody Harrelson’s SNL monologue from last night. Well the smear pieces that followed lead me to discovering a very interesting quote by him in a Vanity Fair piece from 2022.
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/05/woody-harrelson-anti-mask-anarchist-cannes-interview-triangle-of-sadness
Check out that last sentence there about Germ Theory. Cheers to Woody!!! An awake intelligent human being
Idiocy knows no limits. Off-G has become the home of know-nothing-ism.
Off Guardian is da bomb diggity. Long live Off Guardian!
FOX and co are a swipe/click away Penelope.
Take some pegs, and a bucket.
That type of criticism, where the person attacks something without having the courage to state their own views, is especially low and despicable.
I would have some respect for you if you had the courage to state your opinion, even if I disagreed with it,
Only the lowest most vapid and intellectually worthless do what you have done there. You deserve only contempt.
While your critique of Penelope might be spot on in a general sense, I think it’s misplaced in the current instance.
Anyone who peruses this forum on a regular basis should pretty much know Penelope’s (and the others of us who comment regularly) position on a range of topics.
As such, it shouldn’t be necessary to re-state that position each time a comment is made.
No Penny. Off-G is the home of know-plenty-ism – LOTS more than you’ll get from the lamestream mediawhores, the pocket politicians, and the deeply-indoctrinated careery-technocrats.
But of course, the crew at Off-G, both the eds and the btls, like absolutely anywhere else, have their blind-spots/hot-buttons, where normal rational thinking goes askew. Just filter out the stuff that looks like article-of-faith-speak to you, and be grateful for the echt good stuff; of which there’s plenty here, both above and below the line.
If there’s one thing that the covid swindle has rammed home into my consciousness like a sledge-hammer, it’s the idea to question absolutely everything; most particularly the stuff that I’ve been taking for truth for a long time, without, when I think about it soberly, ever checking it right down to its foundational nitty-gritty, to see whether their might be some legitimate doubt about it; ‘climate emergency’, for example.
I suggest you do likewise Penny; about – for example – there being ‘plenty of oil still left to raise, and LOTS more still to find’… Er – you certain about that P, even when all pertinent factors are taken into account (hint, hint: EROEI)…? 😉 😀
Penny and others:
If cheap oil is abundant, why are they searching for it in places like the hostile waters around Svalbard?
https://mapcarta.com/Svalbard
Home of question only certain things, I would say. Total rejection of some “truths”, not a single doubt about other “wisdoms”.
Before casting your silly down votes, what’s you thoughts about “cheap fossil fuels are forever”?
They get around that, you know, by saying oil et al are not “fossil fuels.” What exactly they are is hard to pinpoint; but apparently it’s a substance that spontaneously generates as it’s used.
For all I know germ theory may be bullshit but to raise the issue is to drive the rejection of covid to an extreme that is unnecessary. That Harrelson does this may indicate that he is another part of the puppet show. Didn’t “12 Monkeys” feature Brad Pitt as a “germ denier” who was clearly depicted as insane?
Those clever germs. They know where the red zones are. Rockefeller medicine has really done a number on us. A century of medical idiocy is more than enough.
Woody is a spook as is his father, who just confirmed Germ Theory was a Pysop
Well, UNESCO at work
https://www.unesco.org/en/internet-conference
Personally I can’t see what all the fuss is about. His books always were and still are, crap.The owners of Dahl’s drivel are stitching up Netflix and running off into the sunset with wads of cash, and Netflix are left holding another woke baby that will interest no-one.
It’s a variation on the theme of Bowie faking his own death and his record sales going through the roof.
I remember being forced to read ‘James and the Giant Peach’ in school and hating it. People think these works are “great” because they’re told that they are. After investing time and money in such exercises ego then gets in the way of people admitting they’ve been had.
Manufactured talking points by the Conservative alt media to help its hedgefunders manipulate the market.!
I double checked a comment below and yes the book prices have gone up last week by a good few $$.
Serious money involved when your dealing in publishing rights.
Perhaps this back and forth view of Dahl’s works as good or crap makes him an ideal target. Not as many will stand up for him – which makes him the perfect place to start the hard-core censorship.
Make no mistake, this has absolutely nothing to do with the worth of Dahl’s works; and everything to do with re-writing literature to suit today’s “values.”
In a sense, banning and burning books pales in comparison with this approach. Because burning makes it absolutely clear what they’re doing; whereas this cowardly sleazeball version of censorship makes it appear like one of those “good intentions” paving the way to hell.
Damn’ right, Howard. It leads directly to Winston Smith’s desk at the Ministry of Truth.
You are correct. Dahl’s books are total crap. Yet still revered by illiterate snobs…
Oh Paul, dear, you’re SO SUPERIOR! I hardly dare to read your magisterial comments for fear of getting mind-blast.
Your children’s books must be beyond wonderful! 😇
I prefer unabridged copies of Grimms’ Fairy Tales or Carlo Collodi’s ” Adventures of Pinocchio” (1883). And there many other pre-Disneyland works that haven’t been butchered. >
Excerpted from: Land of Toys – Wikipedia
“The Land of Toys (Italian: Paese dei balocchi) is a fictional location in the Italian novel The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883) that is disguised as a haven of freedom and anarchy for boys and occasionally girls, but is eventually discovered to be far more sinister.”
“To its unsuspecting visitors (like Pinocchio and Candlewick), the Land of Toys appears to be a fantastic haven for wayward boys and girls to do whatever they want with no consequences or law; to act as they please without recrimination. However, the truer and more sinister purpose of the Land of Toys is eventually revealed: by means of a disease that affects people who never study, the boys and girls turn physically into donkeys (in Italian culture, the donkey is symbolic of ignorance, stupidity, goofiness and labor). Subsequently, they get sold by the Coachman.”
what did we read as young children?
folklore, faerie tales, collins “guide to..”, commando comics, beano, victor, battle action & 2000ad.. . . . it wasn’t ever just about “books”.
then, i was a child who after playing football or building dens, would go and sit in the library for an hour or two… reading anything and everything,
ahhh, bliss… (maybe the wrong word!). a story and your imagination.
it was only school that introduced their standard reading shtuff, and we now know why. The were our mass media indoctrination, even then.
people just stuff their heid with inane/murder/celeb shite these days – and that’s the “readers” !! charity shops full of dozens of same books, all of them…
ochone, ochone
It’s all so tiresome
Which is precisely what makes it so insidious and dangerous. It garners a big fat “WHO CARES?” from most people – which makes the denizens of Cancel Culture’s job so much easier.
They came for Dahl; and I wasn’t effete so I ignored it…now they’ve come for my Superbowl, and no one is left to speak out for me.
Oh! Is he effete? I never noticed…
They’ve been in your Superbowl for some time
if you object to this thin end of the wedge you are obviously a ‘right wing extremist’……..perfect……..bollocks!
i can just imagine secret readings in dark cellars of original pressings being hunted down by the literature correction stasi……the mind boggles
First I was a liberal, then they ruined that. Next I was a lefty, but they ruined that. Then I became an independent, but they told me I was wrong. So now I’m a righty because Orwell was right. Freedom is Slavery. That’s amazing.
There’s two groups that have done much to destroy the meaning of the political term ‘the left’:
the left, and those who blame the left for everything…
If you’re innocent of everything dont say it as there are many waiting to blame you…
George Orwell was right…
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/117358
The Nazi Hydra in America suppressed in history of a century Paper back Nov 17, 2008
0930852495 97809308953436
mentions Brown Brothers and Harriman, and Sullivan and Cromwell.
worth the coins if you want to understand things today..
I continue to say the problem is the Oligarch have move the power of the several nation states from government to private oligarch ownership which means government is now managed by a few Oligarch controlled global corporations. This book explains how that happened if you can find an uncensored copy of it. I suggest you read it.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) will put MANY out of work. But if the Good Folk over at the WEF have any brains thery’ll promote the idea that the armies of unemployed people be “voluntarily” enroled in “Work Units” that’ll be used to Clean Up the Bloody Enviromental Mess we’ve made – a sort of ‘work for your UBI scheme (aka currently as ‘work for your dole schemes’)…(Win -Win)…
Hidden Costs . Ecological Realism and the ‘Green’ revolution.
https://stoneageherbalist.substack.com/p/hidden-costs-ecological-realism-and
Such a scheme would only be temporary. The real plan is to kill us off and render the survivors sterile.
Hello les online: Excellent article…
If mankind immediately initiated a concerted effort toward cleaning up the existing mess, it would take many THOUSANDS of years of meticulous effort to clean up the pigsty.
That’s why everyone’s pumping up the Armageddon theme. It’s a much simpler process, and they can continue to pig the place up until they’re all rotted and dead.
He’s naive about re-gaining any control over our national governments, but the struggle must be undertaken…
A start in Australia is to pressure politicians to not allow the national government to rubber stamp the WHO ‘treaty’…
We in the western world are so close to actually living the book written by Orwell it’s embarrassing. However did we let things get so out of hand? Roald Dahl will be turning in his grave about now.
To take classics and rip out bits which offend a bunch of opinionated Marxist elites is asking for trouble. So far, the only places where one might have seen the bastardisation or destruction of classical works are junta’s, banana republics, regimes, and the old Soviet union.
Both Lenin and Marx wrote their works whilst living in London and traveled around the country noting the abuse of working people by their employers and authorities. It was shysters in Blighty who gave them their bright ideas.
It’s these ‘good old days’ that the NWO want you & yours to return to. What one reads is just another activity they want to control. Their madness won’t stop with Roald Dahl either. Prepare for hit squads in fire protective gear to rush round at breakneck speed to burn your subversive books on giant peaches.
Netflix can make them but that doesn’t mean we have to watch them.
Rewriting the past is routine and entrenched. Researching or questioning much of what happened in the first half of the 20th century will get you jailed in most of the Free World®.
Good point.
I’ll never understand why people are so quick to blame the burning of the world on Marxism when it’s been dominated over the past 50 years by fascist privatization. Capitalism has turned into Head-Like-A-Holeism, where logic has been replaced by lies, chaos, woke virtue signaling and legal theft.
Good points, all. Don’t criticize corporate/capitalism though. It’s the sacred cow of the chosen ones…
More on the mass murderers:
https://www.winterwatch.net/2023/02/an-up-pill-battle-rethinking-antidepressants/
This one’s for you George Mc:
https://www.winterwatch.net/2023/02/the-arrival-of-the-gen-z-confusexuals-2/
Sorry, off topic:
https://www.winterwatch.net/2023/02/the-latest-abuse-from-the-harma-industry-benzos/
Big pHarmer’s history of mass murder goes way back.
But we already knew that, didn’t we?
I think the problem began when the honest preaching medicine man decided the best way to deny competition was to require everyone to be licensed to practice and to dispense medicine about 1896.. since then the barriers to entry have been increasing.. Thanks for the link.
Sensitivity readers employ the revisionist technique called ‘Presentism’ to do their sanitising. This is where the past is rewritten because it offends hypersensitive wokelings in the present time.
Even that most hallowed book, the Bible, has been censored.
How else can one explain the hundreds of Christian sects.
Wouldn’t have anything to do with money and control would it?
Boycott ALL books from the publisher PUFFIN.
Both the Dahl revisions and a reprint of the originals are to be available and sold by the publisher.
A simple case of maximising profit by pleasing all audiences. This has then been amped up by great PR and hijacked (as would have been hoped) by the culture war enthusiasts on both sides of the great false binary, undoubtedly taking sales to otherwise unreachable heights.
There is no censorship here. Cut off the air supply.
I’m sure that Dahl, victimised and flogged mercilessly by his masters at school for not being English enough, was not really that concerned about calling someone a twit.
Without checking my sources, whilst being caned at the age of 7 he spoke of the tears forming puddles on the carpet.
https://people.com/tv/woody-harrelson-supports-covid-vaccine-conspiracy-theory-snl/
Woody Harrelson commits blasphemy and – engage passive tone – the gig “has found the star surrounded by controversy….. the star was met with criticism online, with many calling him, SNL and series creator Lorne Michaels out for platforming lies about the life-saving vaccine….”
“”With Woody Harrelson’s monologue on SNL last night, the anti-vax stupidity in America just peaked,” wrote one person.”
Who? Never mind!
“Another tweeted of Harrelson’s comments: “Does #SNL think [it’s] just harmless noise? Normalizing #antivaxx conspiracies does real harm!”
“Another”? Who? Never mind!
And so it goes:
“…one other individual posted….. another Twitter user wrote.”
Meanwhile of course: The vaccines are fucking great! They have saved everyone! They are saving the planet too! They are keeping away asteroids!
A key word used against him was the word rambling. Any time the media says this about someone’s rambling speech it’s best to check the speech for any so called ramblings.
Funnily enough, there’s never a mention of JB “rambling” – perhaps tripping on the stairs to Airforce One is the limit.
He makes President Shrub, Dumbf and Raygun sound like Rhodes scholars.
Last week, Vladimir Putin delivered his Address to the Federal Assembly– roughly the equivalent of the US “State of the Union” address. Unlike the surrealistic, melodramatic, utterly decadent SOTU farce, Putin delivered a typically thoughtful, lucid, fact-dense assessment of the Russian and geopolitical status quo.
A more extreme counterpoint to Woody’s weed-seasoned commentary cannot be found, but the US media response treated Vlad and Woody as if they were twins.
It scorned and dismissed Putin’s crisply rational, highly-informed, disciplined remarks as “a saber-rattling snooze-fest”, wild and especially “bizarre”. I’m not bothering to furnish examples and references, but I noticed that “bizarre” was specifically invoked in several headlines; it obviously was highlighted in the memo distributed to all of the supposedly diverse Putin-bashing venues.
I don’t have to expand this comment with a comprehensive review, but just consider the way the Western media respectfully reports the demented gibberish and self-serving mendacities spewed by Western leaders. It’s all repetitious lies inflated with bumptious and supercilious bombast.
But in our Through the Looking-Glass dystopia, it’s straightforwardly (if not soberly) rational and sensible speakers who are dismissed and rejected out of hand as depraved villains and lunatics. 😡
Putin conducts such long press conferences every year, taking questions from the local and foreign press, and from other citizens.
Harrelson and Djokovic hey?
Both outspoken, unvaxxed vegans.
Gotta watch those vegans.
Can’t trust em.
Just sayin.
Down under, in Stralya, perhaps the ‘Wests’ premier PharmaKrim koveed lockdown gulag, enthusiastic vax zombie inmates (94% multiple injection compliance) roundly condemned ol’ Texas Woody for his brief SNL monologue.
‘Red pill the masses’: Woody Harrelson pushes popular COVID conspiracy theory on live TV
(They’re real busy keepin PharmaKrim happy at the Bezos WaPo propaganda holding company.)
https://www.theage.com.au/world/north-america/red-pill-the-masses-woody-harrelson-pushes-popular-covid-conspiracy-theory-on-live-tv-20230227-p5cnrd.html
The Age?
That’s just a real estate brochure with titillating titbits.
Bird cage linings.
I wonder whether the aboriginal Australians will be getting their land back again, after all the white zombie-Aussies have vaxxed themselves into extinction….
Under “equal opportunity”, the gov’t is trying to ensure that the aboriginals get the jab too.
“PREVENT” had placed (among others) Shakespeare, Tolkien and George Orwell on their list of “key texts” that could “radicalise right-wing extremists”.
translation: students who study literature are now considered potential terrorists.
“History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.” – Mark Twain
FWIW, due to substantial complaints, Penguin has already announced that it would be publishing the original Dahl books as “Roald Dahl Classics” or some such stuff as that, while publishing the “revised” versions under its Puffin label.
Don’t buy them.
Fucking tolerance. Embracing the dregs of society for political power. Legitimizing and enabling aberrant behavior as normal through acceptance and reward. Like giving your dog a treat every time it shits in the living room. Eventually you will have no choice but to shoot it.
The Streisand effect generated by this attempted memory-holing is going to strong. There will be more people who seek out the original stories than people who accept the new sanitized versions.
Nah the herd will lap up the new shite they always do. Those of us who’d actually look it up and miniscule in numbers.
The word you’re looking for is “Bowlderize”. Thomas Bowlder was a English physician who felt that books like Shakespear’s plays were a bit racy for the delicate sensitivities of the better classes of people of the late 18th and early 19th centuries so he published editions of these works, and by doing so gave his name to the preparation of literary works edited to remove any trace of offensive material.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bowdler
This won’t be the first time we faced this onslaught and it certainly won’t be the last. Roald Dahl’s works are just one in an honorable list of publications deemed too racy for the public (“Will Someone Think Of The Children?”).
I’d guess that the other reason for bringing out a new edition is financial. Although copyright has been extended time and again it will eventually expire. The way that music publishers dealt with this for many years was to edit the music. This made it a new work that was entitled to its own copyright protection.
For once the Wikideceivia cesspit is right Martin: ‘bowdler/bowdlerise’ – not – ‘bowlder’…