Latest news with #1984
Time of India
a day ago
- Time of India
Blast at cracker-manufacturing unit in Muktsar village kills 5 labourers, injures 32
Bathinda: Five labourers were killed and 32 of them were injured in a firecracker unit blast at Singhewala village of Muktsar district near Punjab-Haryana border at around 2am on Friday. The owner of the two-storey unit that was being run without permission has been arrested. The structure of the cracker unit collapsed after an explosion, and nearly 37 migrant labourers working there sustained serious injuries after being buried under the debris. Manufacturing as well as packaging units were being run from a big hall of the industrial unit. Initial investigations indicate that the explosion occurred due to the potash used in manufacturing crackers. Many labourers, mainly from Uttar Pradesh, were sleeping in the cracker unit when the blast occurred and the structure crashed. The labourers did not get any time to react. The injured were taken to various hospitals, mainly Civil Hospital Muktsar, from where some of the seriously injured were taken to All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Bathinda. "No permission was granted to the manufacturing unit under Explosive Rules, 2008. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Cặp EUR/USD: Đà Tăng? IC Markets Đăng ký Undo An application was moved by the owners, but reports from different departments were pending," said Muktsar deputy commissioner Abhijit Kaplish. Muktsar senior superintendent of police Akhil Chaudhary said the police got information around 3am about some mishap at a cracker manufacturing unit at Singhewala village. The police launched a rescue effort, pulling out some of the labourers from under the debris. Five labourers reportedly died while 32 injured workers and were hospitalised. He said a FIR registered under sections 105 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), 118(2) (voluntarily causing grievous hurt), 3(5) group liability, Section 98 of explosives Act, 1984 and Section 92, of the factories Act 1948 has been registered against owner Tarsem Singh and his son Navraj Singh, and the former has been arrested. Forensic experts are investigating the blast. ——- Politicians meet injured Political leaders made a beeline for AIIMS Bathinda where the injured were admitted. Punjabi agriculture minister Gurmeet Singh Khudian inquired about the well-being of the injured and announced that state govt would bear the expenses of the treatment. Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal met the injured at AIIMS and demanded compensation for bereaved families and the injured. While demanding a thorough probe into the incident, Sukhbir said action should be taken against those who had allowed the cracker unit to start production without installing statutory safety measures Amrita Warring, the wife of Punjab Congress president Amarinder Singh Raja Warring met the injured accompanied by district party president Rajan Garg. MSID:: 121518470 413 |
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Opinion - Trump's new DEI: Drama, exaggeration and incoherence
President Trump's war against diversity, equity and inclusion is reverberating throughout nearly every sector, igniting a civil rights pushback. But his executive orders ending DEI cannot halt the historic pace of national racial diversity. According to the Census Bureau, the 'white only' share of the population is now 58.4 percent. Non-Hispanic whites are projected to fall below 50 percent by 2045. So the 'D' in DEI represents America's destiny. Although contentious race-based policy debates will continue, diversity is the new America and must be embraced. The DEI acronym, along with tariffs, ranks among Trump's most frequent utterances. But due to overuse and clouded meaning, change is afoot to rename DEI, starting with the 'Office of Belonging' at the renowned Mayo Clinic. Therefore, I propose changing DEI to mean 'drama, exaggeration and incoherence,' reflecting Trump's unique communication and governing style. 'Drama' captures the daily, head-splitting, inescapable second Trump term. Every day is Trump Day, as Americans are surrounded by media and compelled to tune in. The president's insatiable desire to consolidate power, combined with his unconventional need to create drama, leads to constant breaking news that affects every citizen's life to some degree. Such intentional 'drama by design' could be perceived as a subtle form of domination. Through daily headlines — regardless of whether the news is good or bad, since bad news is spun, justified or rationalized as good — Trump keeps himself prominently on your screen. He 'wins the day' by overshadowing or blotting out others. His need to be on your screen evokes George Orwell's classic dystopian novel '1984,' written long before screen viewing became a daily ritual. In '1984,' a totalitarian state dominates and controls its people through pervasive surveillance via their 'telescreen.' Maintaining a constant screen presence is 'Big Brother,' the all-powerful leader who is always watching and enforcing ideological purity throughout the land. Remarkably, Trump maintains a communication advantage over the fictional Big Brother. He holds a 65 percent stake in Trump Media and Technology Group, which operates Truth Social, his primary communication platform, with a market capitalization of $5 billion. Thus, a drama-loving president who owns and controls his main media dissemination vehicle is rationalized as 'Trump being Trump.' Through Truth Social — an Orwellian sounding name — Trump crafts his version of 'truth.' He generates non-stop drama, attacks America's premier institutions, denigrates his enemies, spews factually incorrect statements, picks fights with celebrities and, most egregiously, conducts official presidential business with no filters or guardrails. How long will Americans tolerate the pace of Trump's move-fast-and-break-things presidency? What most affects presidential job approval ratings are the prices for food, gas, cars, homes and consumer goods. Rising costs and shortages driven by uncertainty due to Trump's tariffs, further complicated by this week's anti-tariff court ruling, and then blocked on appeal, suggest he could 'pay' in the midterms. More damaging is that Trump had promised to combat inflation, the key reason he won in 2024. The president, well aware of this problem, has instituted an ongoing operational plan to prevent Republicans from losing the House of Representatives. Trump also believes (with good reason) that a Democratic victory could trigger his third impeachment. Therefore, cue the 2026 election drama along with nonstop judicial drama. Exaggeration is Trump's default mode of communication. Since facts are often inconvenient, it's easier to use exaggerated words or phrases to enhance a narrative. Nearly every day, on any issue, Trump straddles the line between embellishment and outright lies, known in Trump-speak as 'alternative facts.' His flair for stretching the truth is baked into his always great, best-ever, big, beautiful persona. Although Trump continuously exaggerates his past, present and future achievements — most notably falsely claiming victory in the 2020 election — he occasionally faces the consequences of his exaggerations. After repeatedly saying, 'I will end the Ukraine-Russia war in 24 hours,' he now claims he was only speaking 'in jest.' Continuously fact-checking Trump's exaggerations is a thankless task, and why much of what he says goes unchecked and repeated as fact in Trump-friendly media, on X and Truth Social. Incoherence is Trump's enemy. His 79th birthday, coming in June, will bring more comparisons to former President Joe Biden's diminished mental state. And Trump is exhibiting increasingly bewildering behavior. At all hours, he is always on the attack, often posting bizarre Truth Social videos and tweets unbefitting of a president. Trump's Memorial Day 'scum' remarks and meandering West Point 'trophy wife' address, along with his usual 'weave' of rambling speech patterns bordering on gibberish, explains why the White House is purging its website of official transcripts. This action evokes another detail from '1984,' in which embarrassing documents are disappeared 'down the memory hole.' This new version of DEI represents our president governing through drama, exaggeration and incoherence, brazenly consolidating power with a 'dare you to stop me' attitude. That invites the question of what the presidency will look like after Trump. Do Americans prefer an all-powerful chief executive who enriches himself and tries to rule with fear and an iron fist? If so, Donald Trump Jr. could be our next president. Myra Adams is an opinion writer who served on the creative team of two Republican presidential campaigns in 2004 and 2008. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
a day ago
- General
- Yahoo
Same as It Ever Was
In their upside down, Alice-in-Wonderland version of reality, the left has a point when they cast George Orwell as a prophet of our times. Our world increasingly resembles the soul-crushing landscape of manipulation the English writer limned in the pages of "1984" and "Animal Farm." Powerful forces in government, media, academia, and business have transformed much of the news into propaganda. During the Biden years, for example, the left cast their push for censorship as a commitment to truth and the coercive control of everyday life as the flowering of freedom. Talk about Orwellian. Now that Donald Trump is back in office, they are once again insisting the president and his populist supports on the right are an existential threat to liberty. Blessedly, however, we still live in a relatively open society. Many of us can see through and expose their deceit. Thats why Hans Christian Anderson rivals Orwell as our most useful modern prophet. His tale, "The Emperors New Clothes," captures the daily experience of watching very serious people holding very serious conversations about total nonsense. Its why watching the news makes us channel our inner Elvis - give me a gun so I can shoot that TV. The most recent front-page example is the wall-to-wall coverage of Jake Tapper and Alex Thompsons new book, "Original Sin: President Bidens Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again." They report that hundreds of people knew that Biden was not up to running the country, and yet this scheming horde hid this secret from the legacy media. It was only after they lost the election that these conspirators decided to spill the beans. In fact, polls show millions of people knew the score on Biden well before the election. One didnt need special access, just two eyes to see the truth. Yes, it is nice to have the books detail on the consternation about Bidens infirmities, but that just confirms rather than expands our knowledge. Even as it pretends to reveal the truth, "Original Sin" is another exercise in gaslighting, because it tries to make the starting point of the story - the effort to hide Bidens incapacity - its endpoint. The pressing issue, however, is not the cover-up, but the cover-up of the cover-up. Which unelected officials were running the government in Bidens name? How did they do it? How did they justify it? Turning the old Watergate question around: What did the president not know and when did he not know it? And, why did so many of the nations most influential news outlets participate in this charade? How was Bidens health discussed in top newsrooms? Who made the decision to dismiss these consequential concerns? Answering those questions and naming names is the urgent task for media outlets who have already lost the trust of much of the country because of their partisan coverage. Instead of experiencing a come-to-Jesus moment, however, the legacy media is likely to use its coverage of the book to bury the Biden years under the claim that the key questions have now been asked and answered. It will use the "lessons" it learned as a reason to pound Trump even harder, including questioning his mental fitness. If Democrats and their media stenographers have learned anything, it is that they will almost certainly get away with it. The Biden cover-up is part of a decades-long pattern in which they have stridently misled the American people - against all evidence - about the biggest issues of the day. The short list includes advancing the clearly bogus claims that Trump conspired with Vladimir Putin to steal the 2016 election; attacking those who made the obvious connection between the origins of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology; delegitimizing reports about the material on Hunter Bidens laptop detailing the Biden familys influence-peddling schemes; and the truly Orwellian effort to disparage honest challenges of official narratives as "misinformation" and "disinformation." Going back nearly two decades, there was the 2006 Duke lacrosse case, in which local and national media outlets echoed a local Democrat district attorneys assertion that a bunch of rich preppies had raped a poor black stripper. There was never any real evidence for this heinous crime, apart from the troubled womans claims. Yet the young men were convicted in the press simply because of their alleged privilege. A few years after this shameful episode, the media were back it, advancing false narratives about the deaths of Trayvon Martin in 2012 and Michael Brown in 2014 to allege a war on blacks - setting the stage for the racist convulsions of the Black Lives Matters movement and DEI programs. None of these missteps resulted in soul-searching - though a few did result in Pulitzer Prizes. The next few years promise more of the same: the Orwellian twisting of facts that will bombard us with dangerous lies. As the aptly named group "Talking Heads" once sang: Same as it ever was, same as it ever was. Its enough to make you go full Elvis. J. Peder Zane is an editor for RealClearInvestigations and a columnist for RealClearPolitics. Follow him on X @jpederzane.
The Hill
a day ago
- Politics
- The Hill
Trump's new DEI: Drama, exaggeration and incoherence
President Trump's war against diversity, equity and inclusion is reverberating throughout nearly every sector, igniting a civil rights pushback. But his executive orders ending DEI cannot halt the historic pace of national racial diversity. According to the Census Bureau, the 'white only' share of the population is now 58.4 percent. Non-Hispanic whites are projected to fall below 50 percent by 2045. So the 'D' in DEI represents America's destiny. Although contentious race-based policy debates will continue, diversity is the new America and must be embraced. The DEI acronym, along with tariffs, ranks among Trump's most frequent utterances. But due to overuse and clouded meaning, change is afoot to rename DEI, starting with the 'Office of Belonging' at the renowned Mayo Clinic. Therefore, I propose changing DEI to mean 'drama, exaggeration and incoherence,' reflecting Trump's unique communication and governing style. 'Drama' captures the daily, head-splitting, inescapable second Trump term. Every day is Trump Day, as Americans are surrounded by media and compelled to tune in. The president's insatiable desire to consolidate power, combined with his unconventional need to create drama, leads to constant breaking news that affects every citizen's life to some degree. Such intentional 'drama by design' could be perceived as a subtle form of domination. Through daily headlines — regardless of whether the news is good or bad, since bad news is spun, justified or rationalized as good — Trump keeps himself prominently on your screen. He 'wins the day' by overshadowing or blotting out others. His need to be on your screen evokes George Orwell's classic dystopian novel '1984,' written long before screen viewing became a daily ritual. In '1984,' a totalitarian state dominates and controls its people through pervasive surveillance via their 'telescreen.' Maintaining a constant screen presence is 'Big Brother,' the all-powerful leader who is always watching and enforcing ideological purity throughout the land. Remarkably, Trump maintains a communication advantage over the fictional Big Brother. He holds a 65 percent stake in Trump Media and Technology Group, which operates Truth Social, his primary communication platform, with a market capitalization of $5 billion. Thus, a drama-loving president who owns and controls his main media dissemination vehicle is rationalized as 'Trump being Trump.' Through Truth Social — an Orwellian sounding name — Trump crafts his version of 'truth.' He generates non-stop drama, attacks America's premier institutions, denigrates his enemies, spews factually incorrect statements, picks fights with celebrities and, most egregiously, conducts official presidential business with no filters or guardrails. How long will Americans tolerate the pace of Trump's move-fast-and-break-things presidency? What most affects presidential job approval ratings are the prices for food, gas, cars, homes and consumer goods. Rising costs and shortages driven by uncertainty due to Trump's tariffs, further complicated by this week's anti-tariff court ruling, and then blocked on appeal, suggest he could 'pay' in the midterms. More damaging is that Trump had promised to combat inflation, the key reason he won in 2024. The president, well aware of this problem, has instituted an ongoing operational plan to prevent Republicans from losing the House of Representatives. Trump also believes (with good reason) that a Democratic victory could trigger his third impeachment. Therefore, cue the 2026 election drama along with nonstop judicial drama. Exaggeration is Trump's default mode of communication. Since facts are often inconvenient, it's easier to use exaggerated words or phrases to enhance a narrative. Nearly every day, on any issue, Trump straddles the line between embellishment and outright lies, known in Trump-speak as 'alternative facts.' His flair for stretching the truth is baked into his always great, best-ever, big, beautiful persona. Although Trump continuously exaggerates his past, present and future achievements — most notably falsely claiming victory in the 2020 election — he occasionally faces the consequences of his exaggerations. After repeatedly saying, 'I will end the Ukraine-Russia war in 24 hours,' he now claims he was only speaking 'in jest.' Continuously fact-checking Trump's exaggerations is a thankless task, and why much of what he says goes unchecked and repeated as fact in Trump-friendly media, on X and Truth Social. Incoherence is Trump's enemy. His 79th birthday, coming in June, will bring more comparisons to former President Joe Biden's diminished mental state. And Trump is exhibiting increasingly bewildering behavior. At all hours, he is always on the attack, often posting bizarre Truth Social videos and tweets unbefitting of a president. Trump's Memorial Day 'scum' remarks and meandering West Point 'trophy wife' address, along with his usual 'weave' of rambling speech patterns bordering on gibberish, explains why the White House is purging its website of official transcripts. This action evokes another detail from '1984,' in which embarrassing documents are disappeared 'down the memory hole.' This new version of DEI represents our president governing through drama, exaggeration and incoherence, brazenly consolidating power with a 'dare you to stop me' attitude. That invites the question of what the presidency will look like after Trump. Do Americans prefer an all-powerful chief executive who enriches himself and tries to rule with fear and an iron fist? If so, Donald Trump Jr. could be our next president. Myra Adams is an opinion writer who served on the creative team of two Republican presidential campaigns in 2004 and 2008.
Chicago Tribune
a day ago
- Politics
- Chicago Tribune
Adam Patric Miller: A teacher's end-of-year reflection
Recently, in the middle of the last class of the day, while I was teaching George Orwell's '1984,' the sky went from blue to black, a severe weather alert went off on students' phones and we all found ourselves sitting in a hallway, our backs against the lockers. A tornado in St. Louis would leave five people dead and 5,000 homes damaged. My colleagues were calm and concerned. The students were well behaved. With decades of teaching and hundreds of drills for school shooters, fires and tornadoes under my belt, I told the students one of the jokes I've refined, while we waited for the danger to pass. (Ah, teacher jokes!) One student, Emily, should go outside to determine the rotation of the tornado and another, Ben, who is very tall, could get out there and spin in the opposite direction. 'That would neutralize the tornado,' I said. 'End of problem.' As this school year ends, I'm forced by our administration to reflect. I logged that reflection online, and it was approved. I also logged the results from my 'research' the state forces me to do. I studied students' thoughts about the grading contract I've been using to 'decenter grading' and 'alleviate anxiety.' Here's a funny truth: Students will learn without grades. Here's a not-funny truth: Grades measure compliance. As a teacher, I can choose to motivate students by manipulating their fear of grades or I can subvert their ideas about grades and inspire them to learn because a good human being becomes a better human being when they are learning for real. Anyway, I want to keep my job, so I comply with my school's mandates, even though my colleagues and I know it is mindless hoop jumping that keeps us unfired. We know Big Brother is watching us. I'm a double-plus good teacher. Well, I still have a job. A former student of mine who is an adult with children argues back and forth with me before sunrise via messaging on Instagram. He's conservative and thinks President Donald Trump can challenge the status quo of Washington and make necessary changes. He thinks Trump will make things better for 'the average Joe.' I push back, asking him: 'Who is Average Joe?' I ask him: Who is being harmed the most without Roe v. Wade in place? Trump will make the wealthy wealthier, and Trump won't help the environment and will send tax dollars to private schools. I tell my former student I don't have faith in either party. They resemble each other, and both fund a genocide in Gaza, the most disgusting thing on our toasted planet. Fortunately, my former student doesn't like war crimes either. When I was a new teacher in my 20s, I never thought I'd be debating a former student in his 40s. Where I teach, students, staff members and administrators are deadly silent about Israel's horrific actions, funded by the very tax dollars that make our elite suburban public school possible. In order to keep my job, I've taken to saying to my students — whenever we might nudge against the real world in the books we study, and some Americans despite their luxury connect with the suffering of others in our city schools or across the sea, where children lose limbs and lives — 'As you know, as a teacher, I'm politically neutral.' Sometimes, I'll add, I can't share my religious beliefs with you either. But because of their race, gender, educational background, age and sexual orientation, teachers are always sharing their political views. There is no nonpolitical moment in a school, even in math or science classrooms. If you've read Orwell, you know the main character, Winston Smith, knows 'freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.' But there is the potential for that freedom to be lost. If one group of people has enough power, the members of that group can say that news is fake news, they can say you are not an American even if you are born on American soil and they can say structural racism no longer exists. Orwell knew that the battle for freedom happens at the level of language. That's why I teach English and write. That's why I try to help my students gather strength with their use of language — vocabulary, syntax and figures of speech — so when destruction arrives in a spinning vortex of ignorance, they will know how to spin in the opposite direction.
