“Angols’s Agnst” | “The Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola, is the size of Manhattan. It has a legacy of inhumane conditions and human rights abuses- they also give tours and host a rodeo. Journalist Beth Shelbourne wrestles with this prison’s painful past, present, and future. Read the article, look at the photos. – The Bitter Southerner

Illustration by Leonardo Santamaria

“Orwell on the future | George Orwell’s ‘1984’ predicts a state of things far worse than any we have ever known.” – This is a book review of the book published in the June 18, 1949 Atlantic Magazine

“In 1984, nationalism as we know it has at last been overcome, and the world is organized into three great political entities. All profess the same philosophy, yet despite their agreement, or because of it, the three Super-States are always at war with each other, two always allied against one, but all seeing to it that the balance of power is kept, by means of sudden, treacherous shifts of alliance. This arrangement is established as if by the understanding of all, for although it is the ultimate aim of each to dominate the world, the immediate aim is the perpetuation of war without victory and without defeat. It has at last been truly understood that war is the health of the State; as an official slogan has it, “War Is Peace.” Perpetual war is the best assurance of perpetual absolute rule. It is also the most efficient method of consuming the production of the factories on which the economy of the State is based. The only alternative method is to distribute the goods among the population. But this has its clear danger. The life of pleasure is inimical to the health of the State. It stimulates the senses and thus encourages the illusion of individuality; it creates personal desires, thus potential personal thought and action.”