Rotten Apple

Do you remember when Apple Corporation wowed the world with its creativity -  thirty years ago?  When APPLE introduced the Macintosh computer it managed to strike just the right note with its television ads - spoofing George Orwell's prophetic novel NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR.    Apple's vintage ad is archived on You Tube   here.

Now it  2013, and thanks to one one man's heroism...   not Winston Smith,  but Edward Snowden,  we now know for certain that APPLE  and YOU TUBE  are both  willing accomplices in ongoing multi-billion dollar American surveillance programs.  Echelon,  PRISM... take your pick.   In its paranoia the U.S. government insists upon monitoring everyone, everywhere and the White House frequently uses its reservoirs of secret knowledge to intervene in the day to day affairs of the entire planet  (not to mention remote control murder with drone technologies).  How Orwellian is that?

This morning in THE WASHINGTON TIMES   I see this:

An extract from the article:

"Dr. Karl Albrecht, author of more than 20 books, claims there are only five basic fears which include sub-categories for all human fears which he describes as an anxious feeling caused by our anticipation of some imagined event or experience. However, it could easily be argued fear is the realization of an impending event or series of events with a foreseeable, fearful conclusion based on history and experiences. The fears listed (in no special order) by Albrecht are

1. Fear of ceasing to exist via annihilation, aka fear of death

2. Fear of mutilation such as losing our body parts or becoming incapacitated

3. Fear of separation which includes abandonment, rejection, unwanted and disrespected. Albrecht also uses the term a “non-person”, essentially an Orwellian adjective.

4. Fear of shame, humiliation, and loss of self- integrity, lovability and feeling worthless.

5. Fear of loss of autonomy, where one feels restricted, paralyzed or feels controlled by circumstances."

Fear is of course a major tool employed by any Orwellian state. Control people by manipulating their worst fears.  Of course the Intelligence Community labours under its own self-induced  fears -   

 1) the fear of losing its multi-billion dollar funding

 2) the fear of losing the ear of the President and the ruling elite

 3) the fear of public disclosure of their unwarranted violations of our liberties

You can read  the Paul Mountjoy  article  "ORWELLIAN AMERICA"  here  (STORY). 

"PUBLICITY THE REMEDY"
This article was published over 100 years ago, but it could have been written this morning.

"Publicity is one of the most popular remedies for all abuses and grievances in the state."   NEW YORK SUN.

"Now the only history men really care about, that of their own times, is spread before the world."  NEW YORK SUN

 In George Orwell's novel  NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR,   the "Prols" have no knowledge of history, and cannot even remember the events of their own childhood with any degree of certainty.  In the novel, all unauthorized memories -  books, letters, photos, films - had to be physically destroyed - BURNED.  Today human records, and human lives,  are deleted with a twitch of the finger.

Big Brother telescreen for sale in London - expected to fetch more than 5000 pounds at auction.

An historic piece of television gear is coming up for auction this month in London. The earliest surviving British television set, it has a 12 inch B&W screen and a hardwood table top cabinet. In order to get a true image, the picture was reflected off a mirror set in the top of the wooden lid. In late 1936, when this TV receiver was purchased, there was one channel available in London, and that for only one hour per day. When war was declared in September 1939, BBC television was switched off. Broadcasts only resumed in June 1946. By then George Orwell had pondered the potential of television and how quickly the technology would seep into every home. In his chilling novel Nineteen Eighty-four, automobiles have no role in people's lives and are virtually absent, but the telescreen is ubiquitous and a vital instrument of government repression. This is a 1936 Marconi Model 702. It was purchased new for just under 100 British pounds. It has had two owners, and has been kept repaired and in full working order for 75 years. The set predates George Orwell's two-way, wall mounted telescreens by twelve years. It will be auctioned by Bonhams and is expected to sell for over 5000 pounds.

At the time this television set was sold, George Orwell was involved in the Spanish Civil War, where he learned the true nature of communist and fascist ideology and witnessed their competition for a mass audience. It was also in Spain where Orwell was shot by a sniper; a nasty bit of life experience which few urban wordsmiths manage to pick up. During WW2 Orwell wrote for and read on air for the B.B.C., England's government broadcaster. All of his scripts were filtered by censors, every word and phrase having to be checked for security reasons and for his adherence to official policy. It is no accident that Orwell's literary masterpiece is a story which tells us we are doomed if we let governments mess with our language and set the narrative.

In the grim novel Winston Smith sits in a shallow alcove, to hide his first act of defiance against Big Brother - writing in a diary. Of course he must conceal himself from the telescreen, which is both a viewer and a surveillance camera. Nineteen Eighty-four has been filmed many times, but no director has ever thought it necessary to recreate the alcove, or to illustrate Orwell's point that much can be deduced from body language and posture.

One of the great ironies of modern political literature is that television, as an instrument of repression, is identified with the British, and not with Stalin's Russia or Nazi Germany. This is largely do to the power and worldwide influence of Orwell's dystopian novel. It is also a fact that while the Nazis used television to spread propaganda, they never considered it as a tool of surveillance, as it certainly became and still is used in England. There is no question that television became more advanced in Germany during WW2 while the Brits had their transmitters turned off. The German people were still able to watch television programs in their homes until 1944, at which time the Allies began crossing their borders. Hundreds of hours of Nazi television news and dramas still exist, and a sampling is available on Youtube here.