Nineteen Eighty-four - The Reader's Digest version (Really!)

Ronald J. Jack
May 5, 2016

I have probably been guiding students through the 300-plus pages of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four far longer than is good for me,  but the job is not yet done. "1984" grows more influential each year, and it simply cannot be dispensed with.  Once young adults are convinced of its importance as a literary work, and its significance to modern political criticism, they commit to it, and finish the reading. However, too many students simply cannot read, or refuse to try. Here in British Columbia the novel is still in the Curriculum, but I know of teachers who simply show the movie, thus avoiding the obvious frustrations.  

Now and then I have caught myself giving up on a complainer, "Look, if I had a Reader's Digest edition I would give it to you!"  Frustration often peaks when we hit "Goldstein's book", or to be more precise,  "THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF OLIGARCHICAL COLLECTIVISM".

Image my surprise, and delight, to learn that there really was a Reader's Digest edition of Nineteen Eighty-four.  On Tuesday I encountered an old and very yellowed anthology, printed in postwar England. I paid my Loonie and carried home my prize.  As you will see for yourself, an un-named wordsmith had rendered the 312 page Orwell novel to a scant 29 pages!!!  Of course the irony is as thick as a mattress, given that very brutal process is the subject of the novel.  Winston Smith, a skilled employee of the Ministry of Truth,  spends his days destroying printed texts and condemned images, as well as rewriting other men's prose.

This Reader's Digest novel "condensation" is now 67 years old. Long out of print, it has no commercial value whatever.  And yet I did promise several students, if I had a copy...   So, as a gift to lazy students worldwide, I hereunder present you the scanned pages of George Orwell, his masterpiece gutted and trimmed as no literary work should ever be rendered. 

As an additional service, I would also point readers in the direction of a fascinating investigation into the fate of Eric Blair's literary estate.  Written by Tim Carroll and originally published by the SUNDAY TIMES in 2004, the scanned pages of the article "A WRITER WRONGED" can be read on the website called ORWELL TODAY.  The magazine cuttings are greatly reduced from the original page size, so I have enhanced them a bit,  and share them again here.

On April 22, 1947 Orwell's American publisher, Harcourt, Brace and Company, sent an ADVANCE COPY of the novel to J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the F.B.I.   The key points, I think, are the forthright statements - "The world of 1984 that he depicts is one in which wars are continually maintained without victories or defeats as an economic policy. ... The book leaves the reader with the shocked feeling that there is not a single horrible feature in the world of 1984 that is not present, in embryo, today."   Some embryo.

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR
The READER'S DIGEST version (Sept. 1949)

This is a screen grab from the DVD edition of NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR.  I checked for the official movie trailer on YOUTUBE today, and read a few of the posted comments. I don't know where Amy Cardenas is living, but I would believe Vancouver, Canada. Her experience matches what I have observed.

Book collectors, (and I am one) often favour one edition of a novel over all others.  I have Nineteen Eighty-four in several editions as well as audio and video products,  but I suppose I do prefer the Penguin paperback edition that I encountered in high school English class.  The first London edition (above) had a jacket designed by Michael Kennard. He superimposed the novels title over the numeral "1984".   Students of today's FACEBOOK - TWITTER generation (who are easily bored by vocabulary) often consider spelling out the year date to be a fussy pretence, even after reading the opening line: "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." By the end of the novel they are receptive to Orwell's ideas about language as employed by totalitarian authority.

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.

OBAMA - "If he had a son..." Two killings in Florida

Damn... the trash in the news today is so painful. The media, especially the American broadcast media, is shovelling shit like there is no tomorrow. I couldn't begin to pick the creepiest, slimiest chunk of info-tainment oozing from from my computer this morning... but I guess it is a tossup between "The Hunger Games" becoming the latest box office smash (shades of TWILIGHT vampire dross!!!) or the news that schools in England are now banning elementary school students from declaring each other "best friends". SCHOOLS BAN CHILDREN MAKING BEST FRIENDS Being best-buds is now deemed elitist and marginalizing. Ouch! England is after all the country which invented the perfected dystopian future... BRAVE NEW WORLD and NINETEENEIGHTY-FOUR. The Brits are rapidly achieving double-plus newness, but the Yanks are only just behind them.

Likewise I thought we had already seen the label sewn to the bottom of the bag we know as media-sycophancy ... but this guy Barack Obama can do and say virtually anything he pleases and the media kiss his ass on both cheeks. It's astounding to witness. Worse, the Americans claim to reject the concept of Monarchy and yet the Presidential family has become nothing else but a Royal Family. All monarchs have Praetorian guards... our Queen does, and her successor surely must, because it is inevitable that one day a Muslim party will seize control of Britain's Parliament...

The Americans understand the concept of a dystopian future because THEY are creating one for themselves ... it's a highly militarized future... a shoot first - explain later future, when every killing will have a clearly defined purpose and also be as legal as a Presidential Decree. So the White House, which once made do with a Praetorian guard at Battalion strength, has now been reinforced to Regimental strength. Obama's security detail is now more than capable of defending his excellency from even a rogue U.S. military unit or the deranged pilot of a U.S. military aircraft. Nobody outguns the Presidency. Sad and sick.

Just last week one of Obama's daughters went off on an urban-safari to Mexico City... did the media carp about the White House dispatching a full platoon of Secret Service to provide defensive cover? Not a bit of it. (Nor did they carp with the Obama's recently took a full Battalion of Secret Service as escort on their Hawaiian vacation.) A sickening, Gucci wallet spectacle indeed. To my tired eyes the metaphor was a troop of U.S. cavalry heading out from Fort Apache for a sortie deep into hostile territory.

I always check out Drudge in the morning and the headline today is a direct quote from His Royal Highness Barack the First, the Lion of Chicago... who declared yesterday "If I had a son, he's look like Trayvon." He was talking skin colour... he was talking about good looks, talent and aspiration. But he also knows full well, that is NOT how it is going to play out.

This is politics, not parenting. Obama's staff has urged him to wade into the latest Florida killing of .... (to quote Michael Moore (Bowling for Columbine) "a young black male... a young Afro-American...". If you are an American you already know every itty-bitty detail about Trayvon's life, or at least as much as you are ever going to know. So now the White House, in the run-up to the November national election, has embraced the Michael Moore image of the victimized young black male as its poster boy. Bad move slick! Trying to turn this into a race-thing is not something the Democratic Party is capable of handling with finesse and it's guaranteed to deep-six all those Republican cross-over voters who were willing to give a demo-crat a chance. The Demo-thugs are hogging the camera already and it makes butt-ugly politics.

I see something of interest in an outburst yesterday by Geraldo Rivera, who like everyone else, is seeking to explain the sad Trayvon Martin shooting . He pegged Trayvon Martin as a 'posture boy' NOT a political 'poster boy' as the Democrats will spin him. Millions of young people, including Canadian youth, choose to use fashion as a statement - too often the hoodie. Trayvon used a hoodie to frame his baby face, and it worked. He WAS perceived as threatening. Listen to what Geraldo had to say... LEAVE THE HOODIE AT HOME. Bear in mind that Rivera has already been FORCED to disavow his comments, or risk putting his own career in the crosshairs.

Now for a little juxtaposition - another story of a black youth in Florida. This is also from today's news, but it's unlikely you will encounter the tale, because Mr. Obama has NOT embraced Shawn Martin. If you are a Canadian Snowbird you may have read a little of the story of Shawn Tyson, the good looking 16 year old who executed two British tourists, but not before humiliating them them a little before pulling the trigger. Read the original story for yourself HERE. It takes just two minutes.

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.

WIKILEAKS - is only playing catchup to CRYPTOME and the NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE

Julian Assange is less a "renegade" and more of a Hero than the editorialists will ever admit. Unlike most of those who cultivate celebrity or notoriety, Assange reads books, and literature informs his private thoughts as well as the essential work he does as the Editor-in-Chief of WIKILEAKS. He read Kafka and was ready for arrest and isolation in a London dungeon. He's read Orwell's NINETEEN EIGHTYFOUR and because he also reads history he fears for human destiny. His self-described mission is save us from the daily avalanche of deception which is burying us all. Assange and his cohorts cry out to any who still have ears, guiding us as we struggle and claw our way to blue sky and the promise of pure air.

Julian Assange as Guy Fawkes - this demo was in Madrid. His Spanish supporters did understand the Gunpowder Plot metaphor and the significance of the British Crown throwing an Australian into solitary confinement, while U.S. government prosecutors scramble to concoct excuses for a legal lynching.

Not long before Assange began the controlled release of U.S. State Departments documents in November, he teased an interviewer playfully with the old rhyme "Remember , remember the 5th of November" which refers to Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot. [Read the well written and illustrated account of it HERE. ] Assange knows very well that Fawkes failed 400 years ago. The plotters were crushed by the Crown, and then mocked by generations of pressmen more loyal to Parliament than to their paying readers.

The Crown constantly sought to deny information to the public by controlling media, and that tradition never died out. (CRTC for you and me!) Modern censorship has deep roots. For example, in 1663 Sir Roger L'Estrange became the King's Surveyor of the Press and he relished the work. What he wrote about the riff raff of his own time still applies to you and I. Sir Roger on newspaper publishing: "I think it makes the Multitude too familiar with the actions and counsels of their superiors, too pragmatic and censorious, and gives them not only an itch but a kind of colorable right and license to be meddling with the government." As newspapers disappear, and are replaced by news and information websites, we must decide the level of control and manipulation we will tolerate in our lives. If Julian Assange was a Canadian passport holder the chorus of Opposition MPs and TV network Allstars would rival the din of a pack of lovesick coyotes.

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All of this invites the obvious question - Where are Canada's Info-Anarchists? Do they even exist? We have legions of Winston Smith's in Ottawa "weeding" and "redacting" federal records, but probably not a one who has the gumption to do what U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning did. Not one.

Long before the conception of WIKILEAKS there were plenty of courageous Americans and Europeans willing to web-publish secret government files, some of them won through ATIP research and others delivered by anonymous email. The campus based National Security Archive is a prime example. I've been following NSA since 1994, the year I first surfed the Net on dialup. One of the books NSA published in the 1990s was WHITE HOUSE E-MAIL (1995). It contained the emails of two American Presidents, which are in fact a PUBLIC RECORD. Sadly, we may never read its Canadian equivalent PARLIAMENTARY E-MAIL. (The office emails of a Prime Minister, a Premier and a Mayor, are PUBLIC PROPERTY but who in this country has read any?) John Young's CRYPTOME site in New York also performs heroic service and I am a devoted fan of his excellent work. Young was asked to participate in setting up Wikileaks but his own projects occupy most of his day.

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Of course there are NO CANADIAN WEBSITES offering purloined federal or provincial files. The National Archives of Canada is mandated to decide what is retained for the permanent collection, but the bitter truth is that Ottawa bureaucracy destroys much before the juiciest file groups are perused by archivists. That is one reason Canadian Parliamentarians can make self-serving claims about being vigilant in safeguarding of our democratic system. Their confidence derives from our utter inability to monitor what they get up to. Canada is the only "democracy" which tampers with its citizens private mail, running mail opening operations 24/7. Our "democracy" tolerates the strong arming of Internet Service Providers, requiring them to assist the police by providing surveillance of citizens without a search warrant, and in real time. Our "democracy" requires bank employees, accountants and real estate sales persons to act as a clandestine informant, and rat out any client who offers "suspicious" cash. Muslim terrorism certainly angers Canadians but we don't really fear it. We suppress our anger because government tells us who to like, and punishes the expression of "hate". Actually our greatest fear should be that the American Democracy, its commitment to openness, might degenerate to the level of our own. If that should happen, the so called "Free World" would be doomed.

WHITE HOUSE E-MAIL, a 254 page book compiled by the NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE in 1995, revealed the secrets of two Republican administrations. If a President's personal email is public property, and has been for fifteen years, why should Hilary Clinton's State Department get special treatment?

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The only Canadian secret pertaining to this book is why I had to pay BOLLUM'S BOOKS $21.95 for it in Vancouver, when the cover price in 1995 was $14.95. I'm being facetious of course. We all know why the Canadian dollar was kept artificially low. But hey, making pesky U.S. books unaffordable did keep Pierre Berton and his crack platoon of researchers employed.

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POURING PEOPLE DOWN THE SEWER - COMING SOON TO "ECO-FRIENDLY" CITIES... PERHAPS YOURS

I have examined plenty of ghastly imagery in my time ... "horrors of war" footage, targets of assassinations, monstrous mutilations of clan enemies, and charred chunks of suicide bombers. All of it is repugnant and reprehensible. My reaction to atrocity is often sadness or outrage but even natural carnage becomes objectionable when men fail to show compassion. That was certainly the case when a series of photos which showed me bodies of Haitian earthquake victims being hauled to a landfill mixed with building rubble. Bucket loaders had scooped up corpses and concrete and poured them into dump trucks with no attempt to offer a moment of dignity for the dead, most of whom must have been very spiritual in life.

I had similar feelings of outrage last week as I read a story in the DAILY MAIL about growing interest in a chemical reduction process to get rid of human remains - a gruesome process known as RESOMATION. The cynical attempt of some to sell this outrage as an an "eco-friendly," progressive service to the public, is an insult to the intelligence of anyone who still has a caring bone left in their body. I haven't been this disturbed about callous trends in the Funeral Industry since my first reading of "Behind the Formaldehyde Curtain," extracted from Jessica Mitford's investigative book THE AMERICAN WAY OF DEATH.

You can read the entire DAILY MAIL article (here) or you can settle for all the "Who cares anyway!" responses to the piece which arose next day. Just tickle Uncle Google with a few key strokes and he'll point you to them.

Three grinning funeral "Directors" demonstrate an American version of a Resomation system. I would imagine their first exports will be to Mexican drug cartels, some of which are already know to dissolve their opponents in 45 gallon drums.

A human volunteer lays his body in stainless steel RESOMATION tank which will reduce his body to a bucket of sludge in less than two hours. Unlike the ceramic bathtub destroyed when it was used to dissolve a rival drug dealer's corpse in an episode of BREAKING BAD, this engineered process is guaranteed to destroy thousands of bodies maintenance free.

This bucket holds the sludge recovered after dissolving two large pigs. Dissolving a human being produces half as much sludge, but more guilt than any of us should be willing to bear.
You can watch a slide show of the process demonstrated (here). No, the company is not a subsidiary of I.G. Farbenindustrie. It's a proud American firm named CYCLEDLIFE.


THE FUNERAL INDUSTRY FLIES UNDER JUDICIAL RADAR

CANADIAN CRIMINAL CODE - "Dead Body"
"Section 182 (b) Every one who improperly or indecently interferes with or offers any indignity to a dead human body or human remains, whether buried or not, is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years. R.S., c. C-34, s. 178."

This section of Canada's Criminal Code usually gets trotted out when gang bangers or other outlaws burn or scatter the bodies of people they've murdered. It's about time it was amended to deal with "Resomation" and other processes which may be concocted to make people vanish without trace, as they do in George Orwell's allegory of a world where living memory, identity and history disappear.

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Too many people seem to have come to the conclusion that life has no purpose or meaning. They are not burdened with a sense of responsibility, they feel no loyalty to a community, they have no personal goals, romance is a humbug, Art does not move them, reading is a bore, even raw pornography doesn't stir their flesh. Sadly they chose to forgo the 1.2 children that was their due. Since they have a sneaking suspicion no one will come to their funeral anyway, cremation has become the 'send off' of choice. Almost 75% of "the departed" in Greater Vancouver are now disposed of in the crematoriums. East Asian families are now permitted to burn their dead on an open air pyre located beside the Fraser River.

I have a passion for the past and I often share news of fresh archaeological discoveries with my son. We agree that human remains should be treated with dignity and respect. Always. When we examine the burial practices of past cultures we notice an emphasis on something of the eternal in the human spirit. Love, for instance, is an expression of the eternal and a recognition that we are not simply clever animals residing at the top of a food chain. When for instance we find human remains which have been carefully interred in a fashion which documents love in perpetuity (as below) we have to question our own resolve to do what is fitting and proper. "Would I do any less for those I love?"

The B.C. Government will punish any property owner who discovers aboriginal remains and fails to accord those remains their lawful due. It is very strange that respect for our own dead continues to erode and that we may reach a point where traditional burial and the provision for perpetual care disappears from our culture.

Although the family relationship of these adolescent remains are in dispute - a brother/sister, or a bonded couple, there is no denying the fact that their burial ceremonial was invested with a degree of love and loyalty that is rarely matched in our own time. I am overjoyed that their bodies were not left exposed to the jackals or the vultures, because their embrace is a promise that something of human existence, and our individual lives, is eternal. We can count on it.

The Final Word: My thanks to Sandy Chang, a student in Burnaby, B.C. who drew my attention to a Japanese book called THE CATALOGUE OF DEATH which includes a section on plans or current practices for disposing of the unwanted dead. This illustration (from the Taiwan edition of the book) shows how Swedes are getting the job done. The human sludge is not washed down the drain but instead used for garden fertilizer. I like how the machine has an earth friendly" recyle" logo.

ANN COULTER - Vancouver SUN steals a car and does a Drive-By Hit

I know this is a sucker's game. Spouting off about what is published in the local paper is like shouting invective at the TV. Once they've got you mad, they win. So we put them on ignore. They become background noise. I've gone from buying three daily papers in the 90's down to buying NONE .... my tally is three editions of the Vancouver SUN in ten years. Just think of the trees I've saved, and the thousands of display ads I wasn't exposed to. Since my wife has left Chinese newspapers laying around, that explains why our house is full of stuff from Chinese owned shops. If whitey wants to sell us furniture he better advertise in the "non traditional" media.

That said, I Googled the current flap over Ann Coulter's invitation to speak in Ottawa. Just a few days ago I read a snotty, intimidating email (on display below) which a kook hackademic in Ottawa (Francois Houle) shot across Ms. Coulter's bow. His snot-gram caused a little buzz on the Net. That was his plan. Pre-emptive engagement. I guess it was too much to be hoped that Ms. Coulter would appear, stand her ground, and when Houle provoked her, kick the sissy boy in the nuts. Instead her event gets cancelled. Sissy boy wins.

Googling for an update, what do I find but today's colour splash on the VEE SUN page? Seven... count 'em, 7 photos of the lady smeared with good 'ole Canadian mud. "right-wing U.S. firebrand"... "Ultra-conservative", Blah, Blah, Blah. Coulter is best selling book author, but the SUN runners don't read books. They settle for Google search and double click on pages which promise to put bullets in their gun. Scrape and reshape pre-chewed nuggets of tasty invective. The Sun steals a car, does a drive-by, hides the gun for the next hit... and calls that journalism. They give Coulter the Sarah Palin treatment, and the public is well served?? Not!

Die Ann Die! What to make of the SUN pasting seven photos of Ann Coulter on their wall, like a collection of WANTED POSTERS. Wanted for expressing a non-conforming opinion.

This is the snotty email that Francois Houle launched in a pre-emptive strike against Ann Coulter's invitation to speak in Canada. Mr. Houle is the stereotypical Canadian sneak - the smiler with a knife, grunting and sweating as he cowers in the bushes for his next victim. "I therefore encourage you to educate yourself.." wrote Houle. Huh? "How many fingers do you see now Winston?" "Two? No Winston. In Canada that's three." If you like this, you will love Houle's email to Stephen Harper, critiquing the Tory Blue Paper addressing the Crisis in University Funding. "... I draw your attention to the Globe's editorial on the sixth quarter of the Ninth Three-Year Plan."

Dateline Toronto: March 1987 - A group of pod people swarm a university student who holds a dissenting view on foreign affairs. This is what was planned for Ann Coulter in Ottawa. This is what constitutes political "discussion" in the Canadian mobocracy. I have research binders filled with crap like this. Anyone who has read Nineteen Eighty-four will recognize this as a Canadian variant of Orwell's Two Minutes Hate.

What should Canadians worry about more - the rise of an intrusive Post 911 Orwellian police state, or the tenured hacks on university campuses who do the heavy lifting for the Thought Police? Remember the immortal words of Clarence Darrow - "There is no such crime as a crime of thought: there are only crimes of action." If you are willing to condone the public gagging of a woman who is law abiding, then why not just send your kids to an Iranian university? In Iran they will be taught to lynch or stone the non-conformers. Houle is not on record for denouncing Islamic fascists. That takes balls, which he ain't got.

POST TOUR UPDATE: Rex Murphy devoted his column to Coulter today. What startles is that he took the opportunity to take a shot at Michael Moore, making him the leftist foil to Coulter. "Both are agile in their approach — Moore being the slickest of slick pseudo-documentarians, a foil to Coulter’s Don Rickles conservatism. Absolute and deliberate attack on the preciousness of political correctness is Coulter’s main game, and she plays it with vicious relish. Guileful shaping of documentaries lambasting capitalism, and posing as an outsized champion of the little guy is Moore’s self-assigned beat, one he’s walked to fame and fortune since Roger and Me.

It doesn’t take much courage to be Michael Moore. For a while anyway, he owned near hero status with the activist base (and some of the leadership) of the Democratic party. He charms the trendy minds of the glitterati. I dare say there’s a statue, complete with candles and incense, of Michael Moore in Sean Penn’s living room."... Read his column (here).

DISTRICT 9 - The genesis of Neill Blomkamp's dystopian allegory

I'm old enough now that I can draw circles around genres which once excited publishers and Hollywood agents, but which were just as quickly discarded. Can you recall for instance, the sinister South African gangsters and rogue Apartheid agents who once populated movies like Lethal Weapon 2 and books like VORTEX the Larry Bond thriller?
The genre exploded in the late 1980s when the Soviet Union collapsed and fiction producers were suddenly desperate to find a viable alternative to the KGB. The nemesis for the 90s had to be a viable stereotype, and one which was hated by a broad demographic. Apartheid-era South Africans were perceived as vile villains who fit the Bill. They were after all, sophisticated, cunning, privileged and desperate to survive.

Well sir, our world changed too quickly. The mafia emerged as the new Russian strongmen and Muslim terrorists were a gift to our pop culture, scarier than the KGB ever was. As for the Republic of South Africa, the A.N.C. regime is already into its third president and a couple of million black kids were born under A.N.C. slogans and promises. Those who didn't like "the New South Africa" simply left, and now constitute an extremely tame diaspora in their adoptive countries. That said, a South African born Canadian has just crafted his first feature film, and his unique vision might trigger something akin to a new genre. That would be fun !Where CHARLIE JADE , the Canadian-funded South African television series failed, perhaps DISTRICT 9 the riskier Science Fiction - allegory may just succeed in stirring our imagination.

In 2005 Neill Blomkamp and friends crafted a six minute short called ALIVE IN JOBURG. The server couldn't keep up with the demand and the film became an Internet phenomenon. Peter Jackson was impressed and invited Blomkamp to try the creative atmosphere in New Zealand.

PART ONE: Original Sin

Neill Blomkamp arrived in Vancouver, B.C. with a South African high school diploma and a burgeoning talent for computer graphics. It seems he was not born with "original sin" as his family had avoided the taint of active participation in the organs of "White Rule". Neill never could wash the R.S.A. out of his hair, and so after some training here in computer VFX he secured steady employment and made it a personal priority to return to his native land each summer and discuss creative collaboration with young filmmakers who had stayed behind.

My research into Blomkamp's life shows that he has surprising depth, and that he will not shy from social issues that would crucify less sure men. With this movie, DISTRICT 9, Blomkamp is engaging in political allegory every bit as clever and biting as George Orwell pulled off with ANIMAL FARM several decades ago. We are witnessing a creative concept which is unique and possibly significant.

A production still from DISTRICT 9, a low budget Science Fiction - Allegory produced by Director Peter Jackson. The movie goes into general release on August 14. The INDEPENDENCE DAY type Alien spacecraft of Blomkamp's 2005 short, has been replaced by vessels equally sinister looking.

When SONY announced this project back in November of 2007, I was impressed by Blomkamp's tenacity and skill at getting the "Big Boys" to trust his creative judgement. The Fan Blogs are currently busy scraping up every studio dangle or minute clue needed to assemble a prediction of what this movie will look like. It is clear that the viral marketing campaign for the film has only succeeded in creating confusion, which is never a good thing in marketing. (see for example this site) A few leaked photos from the production show us a small outdoor set representing the entrance gate to DISTRICT 9. They confirm that production money was very tight, as does the Casting which was also very low budget.

We were told that Blomkamp co-wrote the DISTRICT 9 script with "his partner" Terri Tatchell. Now that's rather extraordinary. Blomkamp is certainly a wunderkind, but Ms. Tatchell has no S.F. track record whatsoever, except in her relations with Blomkamp. Tatchell attended the Vancouver Film School in 2001, earning her diploma in Writing for Film, Television & New Media. She then got a job at Rainmaker Studio under the late Bob Scarabelli, and was designated as Rainmaker's "Industry Relations Co-ordinator". At the same time she joined the Board of the Vancouver chapter of Women in Film and Television. (She served one term as its President but is no longer a member.) This thumbnail photo, which dates to 2003, is still archived on the WIFTV web page:It was at Rainmaker that Terri met Neill, who was then employed in VFX. She has no experience with Science Fiction and probably no cultural knowledge of South Africa beyond what she has picked up through Neill. Tatchell's best known creative effort is actually a stage play written for high school students, which is added to the curriculum of some schools because it teaches kids about the legal fight to gain Canadian women the vote. It's called "Woman Idiot Lunatic Criminal" and tells the story of a girl transported back to 1910 to meet her Suffragette great-grandmother. (The story takes its name from the awkward wording of the Canada Elections Act of 1918.) I'm not trying to pick on the lady but the truth is that while Neill was sequestered for most of last year directing the movie, Tatchell was back here in B.C. involved in her own thing. I can't believe she added much to the movie project, but who knows?

In PART TWO of this article I plan to comment on some of the creative aspects of DISTRICT 9.

UPDATE: It seems that the makers of DISTRICT 9 have themselves shill over on Wikipedia. In my naivete (When will I EVER learn?) I decided to contribute a few helpful sentences to the Wiki page that was created for this flic. In FOUR minutes some creepy wiki-guardian had removed my contribution. Some techno-Hobbit down in New Zealand perhaps.

The ORWELL DIARIES - my 100th Runagates Club Post

It is hard to pick a favorite Orwell essay but I suppose that of the half dozen short pieces I use with young students, one always gets a greater response than others.

MARRAKECH begins:

"As the corpse went past, the flies left the restaurant table in a cloud and rushed after it, but they came back a few minutes later."

Orwell was convalescing in North Africa in 1938 when his eyes were blasted open to the majesty and misery of that burned landscape. What if blogging had been available to such a man? Mr. Blair had a body which sometimes failed him, but he was also a human being endowed with incredibly acute observational skills and whose narrow shoulders bore a social conscience of heroic proportion. Beginning today, and for months to come, we can read Orwell's North Africa diary and share in his daily discoveries.

Canadian Runagate - The Basic Bethune

Last week a university student of my acquaintance launched into an excited introduction of a extraordinary and important Canadian from the past, whom he had just "discovered" while researching a term paper at U.B.C. The great hero had sacrificed his life for Mao's China and more students "should be taught about him". Within a moment or two I broke into a broad grin, as I realized he was referring to Dr. Norman Bethune, one of Canada's most notorious runagates.
"Discovered"? When did Bethune ever become lost? During my time at university, the late 1970s, the political ghost of Norman Bethune attracted more press than the average NHL star. The CBC has a webpage with over a dozen interviews available for download, and you can judge for yourself the dimensions of Bethune mania in the 1970s. The fact that we are now in the period of the 70th Anniversary of the sojourn of the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion to Spain, fairly guarantees that Dr. Bethune's story will be popping up soon enough. In fact I had a heads up today from UBC Press that they have a new book on Canadians in Spain coming in March.

Since Wikipedia seems to be the primary source for most curious students these days, I took a look at the Bethune page and was arrested by the bald claim that he was "virtually unknown in his homeland during his lifetime." Unknown? As apposed to whom? Anyone who cared to follow Canadian politics in the 1930s, especially the significant inroads achieved by the Communists among labour and arts groups, or anyone who had any sort of opinion about the Spanish Civil War, knew of Dr. Bethune. Because he was famous, and had credibility, he made appearances across the country after his return from Spain. Bethune was one of the most interesting personalities of his era, and a master at self promotion. Indeed, as early as 1943 his story was in script development at 20th Century Fox - because China was then a war Ally, one of the "Big Five Powers". The propagandists were hungry for material.

I have researched Bethune for about thirty years, (he is one among a large cast of runagate Canadian communists) and suspect that a legion of the curious but silent also invest productive hours studying his legacy. I hope to contribute my "rendition" of a Bethune profile, but not yet. Not yet. I do agree that the Bethune story needs to be taught to every generation of young Canadians, but surely not in the fashion that the Maoists and Trudeau Era Liberals sold it. That tune is worn out from over playing.
To assist curious students in finding inexpensive material on Dr. Bethune I have put together what I choose to call "The Basic Bethune" - the most common material published during the Bethune Boom of the 1970s. I put the set together for $15, tax included, and you can too. Of course there were other important Bethune milestones in the 1970s, like an NFB documentary and a telefilm, but those are not easily accessed.

This is Dr. Bethune in one of the many publicity photos made in Madrid. The Renault motor ambulance is nifty but note the sedan with Great Britain motor registration CXE 26, which he and Henning Sorensen drove into Spain. It was given a military two colour disruptive camouflage pattern and an "S.R.I." Socorro Rojo Internacional insignia above the bumper. (It tickles me that the boys in the communist paint shop didn't remove the chrome Automobile Association "A.A." badge screwed to the licence plate. The badges had serial numbers, and remained the property of the A.A.) I doubt the car or badge ever made it back to England. Bethune was a committed Communist, but like George Orwell became the victim of Communist duplicity and infighting. Orwell learned, and left us his prophetic warning Nineteen Eighty four. Bethune just became angrier and threw his life away in China.
1. The Scalpel, the Sword, revised edition, Toronto 1971
2. Prologue to Norman: The Canadian Bethunes, Oakville. 1976
3. Bethune – a Play, Vancouver, 1975
4. The Chinese Voyages of Angus Bethune, [article] The Beaver, 1977
5. BETHUNE, [paperback edition] Don Mills, 1973
6. BETHUNE, Toronto, 1973
7. The Mind of Norman Bethune, Toronto 1977

Roderick Stewart's BETHUNE is still the standard biography although his scholarship has been surpassed recently by that of Larry Hannant and Michael Petrou who had access to higher grade archives. Stewart's later book - The Mind of Norman Bethune has wonderful photos. Beth loved posing for photos. Ted Allan's The Scalpel, the Sword is crap, and manages to combine plagiarism with two other tricks of fraudulent writing. The article on Angus Bethune is fun because it describes the grandfather's voyages to China, history which Dr. Bethune's biographers missed, and which even the runagate grandson was probably unaware. (Items 1, 4, 5 and 7 contain photographs.)

Much more has been published since the 1970s on Dr. Bethune. So much that it fills an entire shelf... the 1990 movie and postage stamps, memoirs by the Ewen's, new books on the Canadian volunteers in Spain, the archives of the COMINTERN etc, etc. Still, it was the Trudeau - China political agenda which will always be credited with the national popularization of Norman Bethune. He may be reassessed by future generations of historians, but surely never forgotten.

Playwright Rod Langley published a play in 1975 called simply "Bethune". First performed at the Globe in Regina, and then the Centaur in Montreal, this poster was for the show at the Owen Sound Little Theatre (OSLT).

ronjackbc@yahoo.ca