Just curious here, what do people here think of George Orwell?

[Mc Mike]

34. Wondered if someone would mention this.

Respectfully disagree, S.M. The LA\Seattle Times piece brackets the info of who informed the stupefied Britain of this info. If Orwell worked for the totalitarians, they wouldn't tell you he did. He didn't, so they tell us he did. Just an opinion.

No need for Secker and Warburg's complete works, because there are already a zillion ways you can get all of Eric Blair's writings, if you want. So the fact that they appear to be pro-Orwell, by virtue of adding to efforts to disseminate his works, doesn't lend credence to their act of holding a candle to the gov's attempt to label Orwell as a secret informer. This smacks of COINTELPRO's efforts to use 'snitch jackets' against targeted key activists, to get them discredited or killed. They did it to Huey Newton, Angela Davis, and a bunch of Panthers. They did it to Anna Mae Aquash in AIM. On S&W, keep in mind the money-losing enterprises Regnery, R Mellon Scab, and Murdoch support, just to get their black propaganda out there.

I'd like to paraphrase this excerpt from the L.A. Times:

"As a writer distressed by the social inequities of European life earlier this century, Orwell - and thousands of other intellectuals from all over Europe - had gone to Spain during the civil war of the 1930s to fight against fascism. But his exposure there to some of the more lurid Communist and Stalinist extremist groups on his own side left him with an enduring distrust of the far left."

Paraphrase of second sentence:

Getting shot in the throat, then finding out that he was on a liquidation list as 'pro-fascist' and needed to hustle his ass over the border, made him distrust the Stalinists as much as the corporate Western govs that backed Franco.