Welcome to Friday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

Big Brother is Watching Us!

No we are not referring to the popular TV show! In 1949 a  book was published which was almost prophetic of the time we live in now.

Nineteen Eighty-Four, often published as 1984, is a dystopian novel by English writer George Orwell published in June 1949.^[2][3] The novel is set in the year 1984 when most of the world population have become victims of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance and propaganda.

In the novel, Great Britain (“Airstrip One”) has become a province of a superstate named Oceania. Oceania is ruled by the “Party”, who employ the “Thought Police“ to persecute individualism and independent thinking.^[4] The Party’s leader is Big Brother, who enjoys an intense cult of personality but may not even exist. …

In the year 1984, civilization has been damaged by war, civil conflict, and revolution. Airstrip One (formerly Britain) is a province of Oceania, one of the three totalitarian super-states that rule the world. It is ruled by the “Party” under the ideology of “Ingsoc” and the mysterious leader Big Brother, who has an intense cult of personality. The Party stamps out anyone who does not fully conform to their regime using the Thought Police and constant surveillance through devices such as Telescreens (two-way televisions).

Source: Wikipedia

There are some uncanny similarities in the novel and in our current reality. In the story national borders have been eliminated and replaced by super states, which later in the story are revealed to be essentially all ONE global super state. The well being of the community and the state are preferred over the rights of individuals. History, news and information is replaced by the propaganda media who rewrite history, manufacture stories and twist facts as well as manipulate images to promote their own narrative. Those who refuse to tow the party line are persecuted.

In this little article we want to isolate one subject and focus on it. That is INFORMATION. It has been said “information is power” and that seems to be true for the most part. According to several sources we’ve researched, the top 3 most visited web sites in the world are 1) Google, 2) Facebook, 3) YouTube. These are the three gate keepers of the world’s online knowledge. If all three were totally objective and forthcoming with unbiased information AND respected the rights of individuals, there would be no problem. However, in recent years it has been tested and proven, Google, for example, favored one candidate in the last presidential election during the U.S. election. In Google searches using the keywords “How to vote.” Google suggested one candidate as the words were typed in. Even typing in the the first name then the whole name of the other major party candidate… no suggestions were given. It was as if Google did not even know who the other well known candidate was. This is a blatant example of the world largest search engine deliberately attempting to influence an election for one candidate. This is just one example. Facebook executives also supported one candidate over the other. There are plenty of others we won’t take time to go into now. What happened to news and information services being objective and unbiased and allowing the consumer to make his own decision? To do other wise is to promote an agenda through the use of propaganda.

Sources:  NaturalNews, Washington Free Beacon, TruePundit.

With the demise of ethical, unbiased information sources it is clear we need some alternatives to the mainstream. We can’t trust these companies to give us ALL the facts and options and that’s not the worst of it. Google, Facebook, and YouTube, as much as we enjoy their content, are always tracking our every move and profiting off our personal preferences. Want to know how all the robo callers who hound you everyday on your cell phone with unwanted offers for products get your number? What about all the spam emails and text messages? One of these three likely sold them your phone number. They profited off your personal information and violated your privacy. It’s not just them, they are just the most popular and the biggest, but there are many more who do the same.

Right now it’s just an annoyance but the potential for being used for far more dangerous means is obvious if not often oblivious to us as we go about our daily routines. Unfortunately, some have already been stalked through cyber sources and become victims and even killed. These examples are only the first of many more to come, we fear. Just a  little aside: Remember our story from Project NewMan #1? It involved a man who went into a shopping mall with an arsenal of weapons opening fire on innocent shoppers. We did that story back in the early ’90’s, nearly 30 years ago. That was unheard of then. Now, such shootings, sadly, have become all too common.

To remain in a safe place online, we have found a few alternatives you might want to check out which we ourselves have been using OR come highly recommended:

1. Search Engines: DuckDuckGo is fast becoming a popular alternative to Google as a search engine. There main advantage: They do not track you or sell your information. ’nuff said! Bing is Microsoft’s answer to Google.

2. Browsers: Brave is a fast browser, at least as fast as Chrome and it has shields you can adjust to view no ads or certain ads you are genuinely interested in. It also supports some beautiful themes.

3. Encyclopedias: Encyclopedia Britannica Online is an online encyclopedia that doesn’t have the bias or inaccuracies of Wikipedia. All entries have been written and fact-checked by professionals but requires a subscription of $69.95 per year.  Infoplease is a free online encyclopedia that is a part of Pearson Education, the largest educational book distributor in the world. Conservapedia is a great, free alternative to Wikipedia. We have used Wikipedia a lot but we have discovered Wiki doesn’t always tell everything or even get it correct, similar to Google. So we are adding Conservapedia as one of our online encyclopedias in addition to Wikipedia because a second opinion never hurts. 😉 Check out he excerpt below concerning Nineteen Eighty-Four and compare it with the Wikipedia excerpt above.

In the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four, individual, free nations no longer exist; the world has been divided up into three massive empire-states: Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia. Religion is not mentioned in the book and is speculated to have been stamped out. A worship of Big Brother, similar to Juche, is imposed as an alternative.

Oceania is, roughly, the English-speaking world: the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia, and South Africa. It is perpetually at war with either Eurasia or Eastasia, and allied with the other. The book describes a hyper-liberal dystopia where the government, known as the Party, monitors and controls nearly all aspects of every individual’s life. Extreme liberal fanaticism and ignorance are promoted by Oceania through relentless propaganda. This is practiced to the point that citizens unthinkingly (or, in Newspeak, use bellyfeel) accept everything said and done by the Party, and hate everything associated with the empire-state which happens to the enemy at the moment. Relationships among people, whether platonic or intimate, are discouraged or sometimes forbidden outright, as they distract from worship of the leader, Big Brother (who may or may not exist). It is later revealed that in reality all three empire-states have the same government and are essentially identical in their pursuit of a liberal, pagan social system.

Source: Conservapedia

4. Social Media: myPraize is the Christian Social Network which has been around almost as long as Facebook with more than a million users. Definitely as safe space. SocialGo is a pay social network a little more geared to business but in a more casual way than LinkedIN. Snabbo is free social networking geared to Baby Boomers, which explains the retro look. ;-). Diaspora is a decentralized social network. Instead of everyone’s data being held on huge central servers owned by a large organization, Diaspora exists on independently run servers “pods” all over the world. You choose which pod to register with, and you can then connect seamlessly with the Diaspora community worldwide.

Those are just a few we have searched out. There are others. We’ll update you more in future blog postings as we discover other alternatives. This may not seem that important now but it won’t be long before it becomes painfully plain that we all need to be more secure with our online presence. Enjoy safe, web surfing, wayfarer!

Watch games LIVE on the AAF App for iPhone and Android

AAF Second Half of the Season 

AAF season week 6 begins Saturday! The Birmingham Iron was beaten by the Orlando Apollos 31-14. Orlando now remains the sole undefeated team in the AAF. The Iron defense have been good all season but this Apollos offense has a lot of weapons! Of course the Apollos have a great defense as well and managed to get a pick six early in the game which gave them lot of momentum. A lot of credit goes to Head Coach is Steve Spurrier, legendary University of Florida Gators Head Coach from the ’90’s. Spurrier also coached the Washington Redskins for a few years and the South Carolina Gamecocks. Spurrier is now in his ’70’s and while he may not get around as well as he use to he still knows how to get his team moving!

The AAF Winter/Spring Football season is half over. We now start down the stretch to see who will be the first AAF Champion team of the inaugural season. Check out the latest standings, schedules, where to watch, and game highlights below.

If you are a football fan, support these teams, players and this league so we can keep it and them around. Having a Winter/Spring Football League helps shorten the the off season!

Most of Alliance of American Football games can be viewed on the NFL Network. A few early games were on TNT, and there is one on TNT this weekend. One very week has appeared on the pay subscription CBS All Access. Last week games began showing on B-R (Bleacher Report) Live. For full details and lots more go to the AAF website and your local listings, natch.

The AAF Standings starting week 6. The West is starting to tighten up as Orlando is king in the East. Things are starting to get interesting now!

AAF Begins 2nd Half of the Season!

5 games left in the regular season! Check your local listings. Some the TV games are on the NFL Network. CBS is only showing the on their online CBS Direct Access service. One will be on TNT this weekend. You also can see games streaming live at AAF.com and B-R Live. And follow the action in real time on The Alliance app, available on the App Store and on Google Play.

(Read more about it at Wikipedia or go to the AAF website.)

Okay, now let’s take a look at some comics from the Mega Comics Group!…