To Orwell Today Readers,
(my commentary in blue)

A year or so ago I was channel surfing, looking for something to watch on TV, and came across the closing scenes of a movie MR JONES which caught my attention. It took a few minutes but I realized that the hero barging into a meeting with newspaper magnate Randolph Hearst was Gareth Jones -- the Welsh journalist who'd exposed the truth about Communism, Stalin and the Ukrainian Famine in the 1930s. I knew about Gareth Jones because 20 years ago his nephew, Nigel Colley, had contacted me and between us both we figured out that Orwell had Gareth Jones in mind when he was writing ANIMAL FARM. That was back in 2004 and since 2008, when I added news updates, I hadn't thought about Nigel or Gareth until seeing those snippets of the MR JONES movie.

I would have liked to see the movie in full but it didn't come on TV again and I forgot about it, being as I am so distracted with other Orwellian events coming down the pike all the time. But then last month a reader wrote in asking if I'd read the latest books about Orwell, ie DJ Taylor's A NEW LIFE and WIFEDOM by Anna Funder and another, JULIA by Sandra Newman. I angrily dashed off a couple negative reviews. See BOOK WIFEDOM ORWELLIAN PROLEFEED and ME-TOO JULIA SAY ORWELL MYSOGYNIST

It turns out that these feminist-written, Orwell-hating books were recommended and reviewed by members of the ORWELL SOCIETY on their website which is the creation of Orwell's adopted son, Richard Blair. They did a GEORGE TALK about it and I quoted some passages in my review. Then, toward the end of their discussion about Orwell books published in 2023, they mentioned the movie MR JONES. Here's the excerpt:

at 1-hour, 7-minutes, Christopher says: "...I'm based in Hollywood and write for the cinema. Do you think that perhaps this genre that you point to as sort of fictionalized biographies, particularly in the United States, is influenced by the cinema and by a sort of interplay by writers who would work in cinema and in fiction because, in cinema, the sort of genre of fictionalized biography is a very established genre... Again to give my background -- I've for many years been adapting Peter Stansky's biography of Orwell [The Unknown Orwell & Orwell The Transformation] into a screenplay for a movie. Do you feel like the issues, particularly in Funder's book, in framing a narrative where it's just not clear what's fictional and what is seen as a biography? Is it all right to sort of try to write scenes, imaginary scenes between these characters -- if it's set up as a movie -- or is this actually just a work of fiction?

Hirst answers: "...Well I'm not a great expert on this. People have commented that the recent Polish film about the Welsh journalist, Mr Jones, which brought Orwell in, is one of those works which definitely played with the edges of reality. There's no certainty at all that Orwell and Jones knew each other..."

I took this as a put-down of Gareth Jones, whom they don't even name in full, and it implies no connection to Orwell. This motivated me to get my hands on the movie ASAP and watch because I hadn't realized, until then, that Orwell was in it. I ordered MR JONES, the dvd, and it arrived within days and I settled in comfortably to watch it. I snapped pics of the TV screen:

I was captivated from the opening scene where, symbolically saluting ANIMAL FARM, we see pigs up close, grunting and shoving and greedily feeding at the trough. Then the camera takes us outside and in the distance looms "the big barn" and then slowly, slowly the camera zooms in closer and closer to a windowpane and behind that window we see, yes, yes, George Orwell -- typing and reading aloud the words he's writing. It brought back vivid memories of when I visited ORWELL'S WALLINGTON HOUSE and ORWELL'S ANIMAL FARM..

The closing scene again shows Orwell typing and reading aloud the opening words of ANIMAL FARM, the finished book of what he'd been working on in the opening scenes where he'd been describing WHY I WRITE and quoting from his PREFACE TO THE UKRAINIAN EDITION OF ANIMAL FARM. The movie recognizably uses Orwell's own words in these opening and closing scenes. And the actor who plays Orwell could be a reincarnation in his appearance and intonation as he talks -- which manages to convey personality and wit, which Orwell had in abundance. The actor's captured ORWELL'S PERSONA -- the closest we'll ever get to seeing and hearing the great man himself.

In the opening and closing scrolls the writers and directors of MR JONES respectively acknowledge Nigel Colley "with special thanks" for his worthy contributions in the creation of the movie. I have since learned that Nigel passed away in 2018 while in the process of advising on the screenplay. Sadly he died before seeing his dream of honouring his uncle Gareth Jones come to fruition upon the movie's completion in 2019.

In preparation for watching the movie I made a display, in front of the TV, of my Orwell puppet and farm animal stuffies and the SOME PIGS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHER PIGS plaque above a bookcase with signifcant books connecting Gareth Jones to Orwell and his articles exposing Communism and the famine. The book on the far left is THE UNCROWNED KING: THE SENSATIONAL RISE OF WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST which I've had in my library since researching the history of the press in America. Next, of course, is ANIMAL FARM and then the cover of MR JONES the dvd. On the far right is a frame I made of Nigel Colley's generosity of spirit in citing me as a source for his landmark article asking the question about the connection:

...At this point, I entertained the thought that 'Farmer Jones' merely had the same name as my relation, but decided to investigate the concept that a link may have existed, initially by contacting Orwelltoday.com for an informed opinion. Armed with a positive reply to this notion, I subsequently became an avid aficionado of Orwell, whilst developing the arguments below....

At the outset of this hypothesis, there is certainly no question that 'Farmer Jones' in Animal Farm actually alludes to Tsar Nicholas, but I academically asked why Orwell's English farmer was called 'Mr Jones', an albeit common, but Welsh surnmane? Following an email I sent to Jackie Jura of Orwelltoday.com, she thought it quite possible that Orwell had Gareth in mind, in his specific choice of surname, Mr Jones, the farmer. In our initial 2004 email conversation on the subject she wrote:

"In the most recent biography -- INSIDE GEORGE ORWELL, by Gordon Bowker, he mentions on page 385 that one of the influences on Orwell in the writing of 1984 were the writings of Eugene Lyons... I think that more or less clinches that Orwell was aware of Gareth Jones and what had been done to him (ie the 'damning Jones as a liar' episode)..."

In an earlier email dated 15th January 2004, Ms Jura wrote:

"...it struck me that Orwell HAD mentioned Gareth Jones after all in the character of Farmer Jones in Animal Farm!! Just like how the Communists had killed the Tsar and all his family, so too had the Communists just as ruthlessly and cruelly killed Gareth Jones. And so Orwell gave the Tsar character the name of Jones"...

Nigel Colley's citation of my work in his work reads: "With thanks to Jackie Jura of the Orwell Today website for her initial Orwellian advice in helping to attempt confirmation of my long-held belief of a probable link between Gareth and Orwell's "Mr Jones" in "Animal Farm". Click to view our 2003 correspondence on this subject at her website www.orwelltoday.com".

from Nigel: ...You are aware of my relative Gareth Jones with whom you link to his Soviet articles from your website at SOVIET UNION FAMINE EXPOSURE... My specific question to you is: Orwell would have known about my great uncle's famine exposure in 1933 and subsequent mysterious murder which was world news for two weeks in August 1935 -- and as one knows that most characters in Animal Farm have a symbolic name, then why is farmer Jones, called 'Farmer Jones'?...

from Jackie: ...I knew without a doubt that Orwell would have read the Soviet articles by Gareth Jones.... It was therefore very thrilling to get your email saying that you think the very same thing. Obviously we're 100% right on! Orwell will be chuckling that we've found that puzzle piece!... How honoured you must be to know that Orwell had your relative in his thoughts when he penned his two great masterpieces.

from Nigel: ...The first two words of Animal Farm are: "Mr Jones" ...As to circumstantial evidence of the 'Farmer Jones" link with Gareth, given that I now assume Orwell more than probably read this Duranty article (don't forget Duranty was perceived to be at the time the world's most respected reporter on Soviet matters - let alone the highest paid) then Orwell, who was very well read, would have seen the unusually high number of times the word "Mr. Jones" was used within Duranty's article: RUSSIANS HUNGRY NOT STARVING

1. "Its Author is Gareth Jones..."
2. "Mr Jones is a man of a keen and active mind,"
3. "...but the writer thought Mr Jones's judgment was somewhat hasty"
4. "But to return to Mr Jones."
5. "Since I talked to Mr Jones..."

The reply by Gareth to the NYT editor in their letter's page, on 13th May 1933 was simply entitled: "MR JONES REPLIES"...

from Jackie: ...To answer your question of how to academically argue that Gareth Jones was Farmer Jones I suggest you read Orwell's 1946 essay THE PREVENTION OF LITERATURE where he mentions the cover-up of the Ukraine famine (amongst other things). This essay contributes to my opinion that Orwell had a truthsayer of the famine in mind when he wrote about it in ANIMAL FARM and for that reason chose the name of Jones. Orwell also mentions how the Communist press barred journalists from telling the truth about what they saw. That may therefore answer an earlier question about the "five barred gate" which is mentioned in ANIMAL FARM.

"...Today one has to defend the freedom of the intellect against Communists and 'fellow-travellers'. One ought not to exaggerate the direct influence of the small English Communist party, but there can be no question about the poisonous effect of the Russian mythos on English intellectual life. Because of it known facts are suppressed and distorted to such an extent as to make it doubtful whether a true history of our times can ever be written... At the same time Russophile publicists in England continued to justify the purges and deportations of 1936-1938 by claiming that the USSR 'had no quislings'. The fog of lies and misinformation that surrounds such subjects as the Ukraine famine, the Spanish civil war, Russian policy in Poland, and so forth, is not due entirely to conscious dishonesty, but any writer or journalist who is fully sympathetic to the USSR -- sympathetic, that is, in the way the Russians themselves would want him to be -- does have to acquiesce in deliberate falsification on important issues....

from Nigel: ...What an excellent essay THE PREVENTION OF LITERATURE by Orwell in 1945/46. The Gareth/Duranty debate does indeed appear to be at the back of his thoughts... Jackie, thanks for bringing this piece to my attention, I am glad I have read it; the hymn excellently describes Gareth's role when applied to political journalism - and helps understand why Orwell alluded to him as Mr. Jones in Animal Farm....

Now below are passages from Nigel Colley's briliiant annotation of ANIMAL FARM's symbolism to Stalin's Famine in his article summarizing our joint findings. This scholarly thesis should be required reading for students required to read ANIMAL FARM, a book of which most of them have no understanding of its satire.

"Mr Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the popholes... As soon as the light in the bedroom went out there was a stirring and a fluttering all through the farm buildings. Word had gone round during the day that old Major, the prize Middle White boar, had a strange dream on the previous night and wished to communicate it to the other animals. It was agreed that they should all meet in the big barn as soon as Mr Jones was safely out of the way...". See MAJOR SPEECH IS ORWELL SPEAK

As brief note on my critique below -- I have attempted to breakdown each paragraph of Orwell's original text and then immediately inserted my personal interpretations of Orwell's symbolism from the previous paragraph:

"IT WAS A BITTER WINTER. The stormy weather was followed by sleet and snow, and then by a hard frost which did not break till well into February. The animals carried on as best they could with the rebuilding of the windmill, well knowing that the outside world was watching them and that the envious human beings would rejoice and triumph if the mill were not finished on time." See ORWELL WALKS WILLINGDON DOWNS

Chapter VII opens with a clear parallel to the 1932-33 Famine with a bleak winter and that the Soviets were aware that the western world was eager to see the USSR fail in its Five-Year Plan.

"Out of spite, the human beings pretended not to believe that it was Snowball who had destroyed the windmill: they said that it had fallen down because the walls were too thin. The animals knew that this was not the case. Still, it had been decided to build the walls three feet thick this time instead of eighteen inches as before, which meant collecting much larger quantities of stone. For a long time the quarry was full of snowdrifts and nothing could be done. Some progress was made in the dry frosty weather that followed, but it was cruel work, and the animals could not feel so hopeful about it as they had felt before. They were always cold, and usually hungry as well. Only Boxer and Clover never lost heart. Squealer made excellent speeches on the joy of service and the dignity of labour, but the other animals found more inspiration in Boxer's strength and his never-failing cry of 'I will work harder!'."

The second paragraph alludes to west not believing that Trotsky (Snowball) was to blame for any failings in the Five-Year Plan -- the plan itself was flawed -- though the Soviet people were still to believe otherwise. 'Build the walls' refers to Soviet grain exports being increased in order to pay for Industrialisation in the midst of severely low grain prices, during the world depression of the early thirties. Again the winter was bad, but work went on with the spring sowing -- but hunger was now prevalent and 'cruel work' perhaps relates to forced labour in Siberia and elsewhere. The rank and file party faithful, represented by Boxer and Clover carried on regardless. Squealer (or the newspapers PRAVDA/IZVESTIA) put a good spin on the results of Collectivisation often highlighting individuals for special praise within their columns.

"In January food fell short. The corn ration was drastically reduced, and it was announced that an extra potato ration would be issued to make up for it. Then it was discovered that the greater part of the potato crop had been frosted in the clamps, which had not been covered thickly enough. The potatoes had become soft and discoloured, and only a few were edible. For days at a time the animals had nothing to eat but chaff and mangels. Starvation seemed to stare them in the face."

In January, famine was widespread; food was taken away from the peasants to keep up grain exports for hard cash. In exchange the party proclaimed that the workers would be given potatoes instead but due to the fact that un-skilled farmers used incompetent farming methods even the potato crop failed. The peasants were forced to eat scraps of anything -- Enter the word 'Starvation' which was seen as inevitable.

"It was vitally necessary to conceal this fact from the outside world. Emboldened by the collapse of the windmill, the human beings were inventing fresh lies about Animal Farm. Once again it was being put about that all the animals were dying of famine and disease, and that they were continually fighting among themselves and had resorted to cannibalism and infanticide. Napoleon was well aware of the bad results that might follow if the real facts of the food situation were known, and he decided to make use of Mr Whymper to spread a contrary impression...".

Now getting back to my impressions of MR JONES beyond the opening and closing scenes as described in the photos I snapped above. As I continued to watch it became profoundly apparent that the movie was following a script written from articles Gareth Jones had written for newspapers during his three visits to Russia during Stalin's reign-of-terror in the 30s wherein he sent millions of thought criminals to the Gulag. See STALIN: KOBA THE DREAD & SOVIET GULAG HAUNTING LEGACY. Stalin had total control of the press in covering up the truth to the rest of the world -- including the failure of his 5-year-plan to destroy family farms and replace them with communal farms overseen by goons from the GPU -- intelligence and secret police -- and Red Army. The "collective" farms were so unproductive from having imprisoned or killed all the landowning farmers, ie the Kulaks, and replacing them with incompetent labour whose only qualification was they swore allegience to Stalin. The result was the wheat crop failed, which was Russia's main export, and any wheat that did grow was harvested under armed guard and put on trains for transport to Moscow and other urban areas. The rural population of Russia, including in the bread-basket of Ukraine, were left to starve and millions did -- including their cattle and other livestock. There was no bread and no meat to eat and people really did resort to cannibalism. See SEIZURE OF LAND-SLAUGHTER OF STOCK & RUSSIA'S STARVATION. If the truth got out, especially to England and the USA, there would be no chance of Russia gaining recognition status from America.

The movie also had a sub-plot exposing the corruption of the acclaimed American journalist Walter Duranty -- also known as STALIN'S LIAR IN NEW YORK -- for his perverted lifestyle partying with high-ranking communists in homosexual, hard-drug and alcohol-fueled orgies in the fancy hotel where the foreign press-corp were confined. Reporters weren't allowed to leave Moscow to investigate stories unless granted official permission. Jones, because he was renowned for having worked for former Prime Minister David Lloyd George -- and for being the first foreign-correspondent to interview Hitler after he became Chancellor in 1933 -- was given permission to travel by train into the countryside. It also helped that Jones spoke fluent Russian having learned it from his mother who'd worked as a nanny in the Ukraine in her youth. Jones used the pretense that he wanted to visit his mother's village and see the old house.

While in Moscow Jones associated with and quizzed the foreign reporters who were based there writing stories for their newspapers -- and one of them was Eugene Lyons who wrote the book ASSIGNMENT IN UTOPIA in 1937 exposing the truth, after the fact, of the famine and also of his regrets at having betrayed Gareth in 1933 when Jones's expose on the famine hit world-wide. But to protect their jobs, and stay in Stalin's good graces, all the reporters denied knowing what Jones was talking about. Orwell wrote a review of ASSIGNMENT IN UTOPIA in 1938 which proves he knew about what they'd done to Jones and that he'd read Jones's articles.

The movie -- to dramatically emphasize Jones's influence on Orwell in writing ANIMAL FARM -- has a scene where Jones, after becoming "refs unperson" and barred from entering USSR, is introduced to Orwell by their mutual literary agent. They were close in age, born 1903 and 1905, and rising stars in the cause of Socialism -- "government of the people, by the people, for the people" -- and each had written articles for newspapers -- and Orwell was already a published author. Both were brilliant scholars and each spoke several languages. Had Jones lived he too may have become a famous writer like Orwell, a kindred spirit and courageous truthseeker and speaker. Here's where Orwell was career-wise when he and Jones figuratively met (from Wikipedia):

"...After giving up his post as a policeman in Burma to become a writer, Orwell moved to rooms in Portobello Road, London at the end of 1927 when he was 24. While contributing to various journals, he undertook investigative tramping expeditions in and around London, collecting material for use in THE SPIKE, his first published essay, and for the latter half of DOWN & OUT IN PARIS & LONDON. In spring of 1928 he moved to Paris and lived at 6 Rue du Pot de Fer in the Latin Quarter, a bohemian quarter with a cosmopolitan flavour. American writers like Ernest Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald had lived in the same area. Following the Russian Revolution, there was a large Russian emigre community in Paris...."

Since coming back from Burma, where he formed negative opinions about Imperialism, Orwell became aware of Communism from his chess-playing friend -- a White Russian -- who'd fought against the Red Russians during and after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. Orwell was also getting wise to the fact that the "Establishment" -- the Capitalists and Aristocracy in England -- were in bed together screwing the working-man as in all other totalitarian countries.

The following images, in articles reviewing MR JONES, depict the cinematic beauty of the film which is not a Hollywood production by any stretch of the imagination. This "TV" movie is being suppressed, rather than promoted in the mainstream press, ie the Orwellian Ministry of Truth.

"The media's role in concealing Stalin's evils is exposed in MR JONES (Walter Duranty and The New York Times have blood on their hands in this historical re-enactment)... MR JONES remembers when Stalin weoponized famine (The horrors of the Holodomor, in which millions of Ukrainians starved, are dramatized, but not inflated...)"

Here's passages from the book ASSIGNMENT IN UTOPIA by Eugene Lyons who worked alongside Jones in Moscow in 1933 and jumped on the bandwagon of Moscow journalists saying Jones was wrong about conditions in the USSR. Then, four years later, in 1937 -- after Jones's murder by the KGB in 1935 -- Lyons came clean and admitted he'd been playing along to get along with Stalin.

"...The first reliable report of the Russian famine was given to the world by an English journalist, a certain Gareth Jones, at one time secretary to Lloyd George. Jones had a conscientious streak in his make-up which took him on a secret journey into the Ukraine and a brief walking tour through its countryside. That same streak was to take him a few years later into the interior of China during political disturbances, and was to cost him his life at the hands of Chinese military bandits. An earnest and meticulous little man, Gareth Jones was the sort who carries a note-book and unashamedly records your words as you talk. Patiently he went from one correspondent to the next, asking questions and writing down the answers. On emerging from Russia, Jones made a statement which, startling though it sounded, was little more than a summary of what the correspondents and foreign diplomats had told him. To protect us, and perhaps with some idea of heightening the authenticity of his reports, he emphasized his Ukrainian foray rather than our conversation as the chief source of his information. In any case, we all received urgent queries from our home offices on the subject. But the inquiries coincided with preparations under way for the trial of the British engineers. The need to remain on friendly terms with the censors at least for the duration of the trial was for all of us a compelling professional necessity. Throwing down Jones was as unpleasant a chore as fell to any of us in years of juggling facts to please dictatorial regimes -- but throw him down we did, unanimously and in almost identical formulas of equivocation. Poor Gareth Jones must have been the most surprised human being alive when the facts he so painstakingly garnered from our mouths were snowed under by our denials. The scene in which the American press corps combined to repudiate Jones is fresh in my mind..."

With that background in mind here's excerpts from Orwell's review of ASSIGNMENT IN UTOPIA:

"To get the full sense of our ignorance as to what is really happening in the USSR, it is worth trying to translate the most sensational Russian event of the past two years, the Trotskyist trials, into English terms. Make the necessary adjustments, let Left be Right and Right be Left... Meanwhile the truth about Stalin's regime, if we could only get hold of it, is of the first importance... It is difficult to go to Russia, once there it is impossible to make adequate investigations, and all one's ideas on the subject have to be drawn from books which are so fulsomely "for" or so venomously "against" the the prejudice stinks a mile away. Mr Lyon's book is definitely in the "against" class, but he gives the impression of being much more reliable than most. It is obvious from his manner of writing that he is not a vulgar propagandist, and he was in Russia a long time (1928-34) as correspondent for the United Press Agency, having been sent there on Communist recommendation. Like many others who have gone to Russia full of hope he was gradually disillusioned, and unlike some others he finally decided to tell the truth about it. It is an unfortunate fact that any hostile criticism of the present Russian regime is liable to be taken as propaganda against Socialism; all Socialists are aware of this, and it does not make for honest discussion. The years that Mr Lyons spent in Russia were years of appalling hardship, culminating in the Ukraine famine of 1933, in which a number estimated at not less than 3 million people starved to death. Now, no doubt, after the success of the Second Five Year Plan, the physical conditions have improved, but there seems no reason for thinking that the social atmosphere is greatly different... All real power is concentrated in the hands of 2 or 3 million people, the town proletariat, theoretically the heirs of the revolution, having been robbed even of the elementary right to strike; more recently, by the introduction of the internal passport system, they have been reduced to a status resembling serfdom. The GPU are everywhere, everyone lives in constant terror of denunciation, freedom of speech and of the press are obliterated to an extent we can hardly imagine. There are periodical waves of terror, sometimes the "liquidation" of kulaks or Nepmen, sometimes some monstrous state trial at which people who have been in prison for months or years are suddenly dragged forth to make incredible confessions, while their children publish articles in the newspapers saying "I repudiate my father as a Trotskyist serpent". Meanwhile the invisible Stalin is worshipped in terms that would have made Nero blush. This -- at great length and in much detail -- is the picture Mr Lyons presents, and I do not believe he has misrepresented the facts. He does, however, show signs of being embittered by his experiences, and I think he probably exaggerates the amount of discontent prevailing among the Russians themselves. He once succeeded in interviewing Stalin, and found him human, simple and likeable. It is worth noticing that H G Wells said the same thing, and it is a fact that Stalin, at any rate on the cinematograph, has a likeable face..."

In reading the above review, written 8 years before the publication of ANIMAL FARM, discerning readers of Orwell's other masterpiece, 1984, will recognize themes he put directly into that book too. And now, continuing with Orwell's own words revealing he had Gareth Jones in mind, here's the personal message Orwell wrote to the Ukrainian people in 1947:

"...I spent many months studying the conditions of the miners in the north of England. Up to 1930 I did not on the whole look upon myself as a Socialist. In fact I had as yet no clearly defined political views. I became pro-Socialist more out of disgust with the way the poorer section of the industrial workers were oppressed and neglected than out of any theoretical admiration for a planned society. In 1936 I got married. In almost the same week the civil war broke out in Spain. My wife and I both wanted to go to Spain and fight for the Spanish Government... In Spain I spent almost six months on the Aragon front until, at Huesca, a Fascist sniper shot me through the throat... In the middle of 1937, when the Communists gained control of the Spanish Government and began to hunt down the Trotyskyists, we both found ourselves amongst the victims. We were very lucky to get out of Spain alive, and not even to have been arrested once. Many of our friends were shot, and others spent a long time in prison or simply disappeared. See SOLDIER ORWELL AT SPANISH FRONT. These man-hunts in Spain went on at the same time as the great purges in the USSR and were a sort of supplement to them. In Spain as well as in Russia the nature of the accusations was the same and as far as Spain was concerned I had every reason to believe that the accusations were false. To experience all this was a valuable object lesson: it taught me how easily totalitarian propaganda can control the opinion of enlightened people in democratic countries. My wife and I both saw innocent people being thrown into prison merely because they were suspected of unorthodoxy. Yet on our return to England we found numerous sensible and well-informed observers believing the most fantastic accounts of conspiracy, treachery and sabotage which the press reported from the Moscow trials. And so I understood, more clearly than ever, the negative influence of the Soviet myth upon the western Socialist movement.

"And here I must pause to describe my attitude to the Soviet regime. I have never visited Russia and my knowledge of it consists only of what can be learned by reading books and newspapers.... But on the other hand it was of the utmost importance to me that people in western Europe should see the Soviet regime for what it really was. Since 1930 I had seen little evidence that the USSR was progressing towards anything that one could truly call Socialism. On the contrary, I was struck by clear signs of its transformation into a hierarchical society... Nothing has contributred so much to the corruption of the original idea of Socialism as the belief that Russia is a Socialist country and that every act of its rulers must be excused, if not imitated. And so for the past ten years I have been convinced that the destruction of the Soviet myth was essential if we wanted a revival of the Socialist movement. On my return from Spain I thought of exposing the Soviet myth in a story that could be easily understood by almost anyone and which could be easily translated into other languages... I proceeded to analyse Marx's theory from the animals' point of view. To them it was clear that the concept of a class struggle between humans was pure illusion, since whenever it was necessary to exploit animals, all humans united against them; the true struggle is between animals and humans... I do not wish to comment on the work; if it does not speak for itself, it is a failure. But I would like to emphasize two points: first, that although the various episodes are taken from the actual history of the Russian Revolution, they are dealt with schematically and their chronological order is changed..."

Here's a recent article from the Holodomor Museum website about Walter Duranty and Gareth Jones:

"...A certain Gareth Jones (1905-1935), was a journalist who dared to tell the truth about the horror he saw in Ukraine in the spring of 1933. For his courage, he paid with a professional reputation and for many years almost sank into oblivion. And the "negative hero" in this story is Walter Duranty who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for reporting from the Soviet Union, which he admitted "reflected the official views of the Soviet government", not his own. And here begins the story of a journalist who was killed for honesty, and his colleague, rewarded for lying....

"Walter Duranty, born in Liverpool, England in 1884, was always something of a scoundrel and openly relished in being able to get away with it. In S.J. Taylor's excellent biography, STALIN'S APOLOGIST: WALTER DURANTY: THE NEW YORK TIMES MAN IN MOSCOW, he is seen lying even about his own family origins... After finishing his university studies, he drifted to Paris, where he dabbled in Satanism, opium, and sex on both sides of the bed-sheets. By the time World War I broke out, he had a job as a reporter for the New York Times and could thus avoid actual combat... His reportage was always lively, eminently readable, and usually -- but by no means always -- had some relationship to the facts. Still, he realized that in the American free press, newspapers are made to make money for their owners... the more effective a worker is at helping his employer make more money, the better chance he stands of getting higher pay, a better job, or other attributes of worldly success....

"In fact, there is no famine or starvation", Duranty explained, "but deaths from malnutrition are very common...". Yes, that, of course, explained everything -- at least enough for the United States to recognize the Soviet Union in November of that year. Moreover, at a dinner, in honor of Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov, at the luxurious Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, when it was time to pay tribute to Duranty, the applause was deafening...

"Jones had attempted to defend himself in a letter to the New York Times and Malcolm Muggeridge, once out of the Soviet Union declined to write a letter in support of Jones, although Jones had publicly commended Muggeridge's unsigned articles in the Manchester Guardian. Various organizations, mostly on the Right, took up the cause of the telling the world about the Great Famine of 1932-1933, but within two or three years the issue faded into the background and was largely forgotten. Gareth Jones was puzzled. In a letter to a friend who intended to go the the USSR, Gareth wrote: 'Alas! You will be very amused to hear that the inoffensive little 'Joneski' has achieved the dignity of being a marked man on the black list of the O.G.P.U. and is barred from entering the Soviet Union. I hear that there is a long list of crimes which I have committed under my name in the secret police file in Moscow and funnily enough espionage is said to be among them. As a matter of fact Litvinoff [the Soviet Foreign Minister] sent a special cable from Moscow to the Soiviet Embassy in London to tell them to make the strongest of complaints to Mr Lloyd George and me". Jones and those who sided with him were snowed under a blanket of denials. When one by one the American journalists left the Soviet Union, they wrote books about what they had seen. Muggeridge wrote a thinly disguised novel, WINTER IN MOSCOW (1934), in which the names were changed, but it was clear who everybody was..."

In wrapping up my thoughts on the movie MR JONES I can't help but feel the spirits of Orwell, Gareth and Nigel here with me. It was a 'godcidence' that I learned of its existence, the way it teased me on TV and then, having been ignored, made itself known again through the discussion about MR JONES on Orwell's adopted son's website. I remember the first time Nigel and I communicated and came to the mutual awareness of Gareth being Mr Jones in ANIMAL FARM. I conjectured Orwell would be chuckling that we'd put the puzzle pieces together. I'm feeling the same way now about Gareth and Nigel up there with Orwell.

All the best,
Jackie Jura, on a bright cold day in April 2024

ORWELL'S EILEEN'S JULIA IN 1984

(...In THE LOST ORWELL Peter Davison published the full crypto-commie list Orwell sent to British Intelligence in 1949 -- and for which the 'Establishment' hate him to this day -- which proves where their allegience lies. . See ORWELL'S CRYPTO-COMMIE LIST

listen ORWELL FAN JURA ON JEFFRIES RADIO (Jeffries asks at 8-min/55-seconds "...What are your thoughts, someone wants to know, on Orwell being British Intelligence asset Eric Bair?... Jackie responds: "Out of this world -- you just have to see what he wrote. I think some people think that because he wrote a crypto-commie list after the war, when the government was setting up counter-intelligence wanting to find if there were spies infiltrating the English government -- which of course there were, ie Philby and all sorts of them. And because Orwell was such an anti-communist -- warning so much about Stalin and everything -- he couldn't get ANIMAL FARM published during the war. And the only reason, I guess, he got 1984 published is because he wrote it in code. The thing is, he wrote a crypto-commie list that included people that he divided into crypto-commies which are "maybe" and ones that are "definite". And he said that these are the type of people who should not be in positions of media; should not be in positions of teaching people; should not be in positions of having a voice to influence the British people -- we've had enough propaganda..."

Angry Farmers Stirring Revolt (it's war between Greens & farmers), NewYorkTimes, March 2024
...There's no point talking about farm practices that help save the environment, if farmers cannot make a living. Ecology without an economy makes no sense... Farmers have blocked highways and descended on the streets of European capitals in a disruptive outburst against "existential challenges"... Europe's decision to open its doors to cheaper Ukrainian grain and poultry added to competitive problems... The E.U. has reduced subsidies to farmers if they do not shift to more environmentally friendly methods. Farmers have attacked Green party events... they spread a manure slick on a highway... Spanish farmers have destroyed Moroccan produce grown with cheaper labor. Polish farmers are enraged by what they see as unfair competition from Ukraine.... The cost for electrified irrigation more than doubled in 2023, and fertilizer costs tripled as the war in Ukraine increased energy prices... It's Russia's war in Ukraine that's destroying us... The Bugey nuclear plant could be seen belching steam into the blue sky. Urban development and industrial zones encroach on highly mechanized farms abutting deserted villages where small stores have been crushed by hypermarkets that offer cheaper imported meat and produce. "The graduates of elite schools that run this country have no idea about farm life, or even what a day's labor feels like. They're perched up there, the successors to our royal family, Macron chief among them... The countryside is the custodian of national traditions under assault from modernity, political correctness and immigration, in addition to a thicket of environmental rules that defies common sense.... "True exile is not to be banished from your country, but to live in it and no longer recognize it"... Close to 18 percent of French farmers live below the official poverty line, and 25 percent are struggling... The E.U.'s "Green Deal" and "Farm to Fork Strategy", which aim to halve chemical pesticide use and cut fertilizer use by 20 percent by 2030 as part of a plan to be carbon neutral by 2050, are a thinly disguised attack on the French economy.... A farmers' protest in January denounced politicians who exert control over people by "imposing things like climate ideology, gender madness and all that nonsense".... "It's war between the Greens and farmers. You don't bite the hand that feeds you.... Tariff-free imports from Ukraine -- where labor is even cheaper -- have given a sobering sense of what eventual Ukrainian membership in the E.U. would mean...). See LENIN BEHIND ENVIRONMENTALISM & ENVIRONMENTALISM is ANIMALISM is COMMUNISM

Engels' influence from Eastbourne to Beijing, Morning Star, June 24, 2023
...an international conference to celebrate the 175th anniversary of The Communist Manifesto, organized by the University of Brighton and the International Association of Marx and Engels Humanities Studies... During the last 15 years of his life Engels adopted Eastbourne as his favourite go-to English seaside town.

ORWELL WALKS WILLINGDON DOWNS (Evidence is forming that a sleepy quarter of East Sussex could well be the inspiration for one of the 20th century's greatest political novels -- Animal Farm... Retrace your steps to Eastbourne's Grand Parade. Opposite the delightful Victoria pier there is still a hotel on the corner and here at number 4 was Friedrich Engels' holiday home on his regular visits to England. Maybe when Karl Marx and his family came to visit him from June to July 1881 they also stayed here as Engels' guests. The twin founders of Communism had worked together on the Communist Manifesto in 1848. Engels was a great financial supporter of Marx who was frequently reduced to great poverty and possibly the main purpose of Marx's visit only two years before his death, was to improve his health. After Engel's death in 1895, in accordance with his last request, Friedrich Engels' ashes were scattered in the sea off Beachy Head...

CHALK FARM ORWELL'S ANIMAL FARM & MAJOR SPEECH IS ORWELL SPEAK

How Soviet spies targeted George Orwell during Spanish civil war (Newly unearthed files from Soviet archives document surveillance of the author and his wife who were fighting in civil war...), ObserverGuardian, February 2021

SOLDIER ORWELL AT SPANISH FRONT

ORWELL 2 + 2 = 1984 EXPOSURE (...There's a new book out -- THE WHISPERERS -- that describes life in Stalinist Russia based on hundreds of interviews of thought-crime survivors of the torture chambers and gulag etc. Their stories sound like they're reading straight from the pages of "1984", instead of vice versa...)

Traitors in the family: Stalin's informers (Neighbours, Friends. Even your closest loved ones. In Stalin's Russia, everyone was an informer. And as a chilling new book THE WHISPERERS reveals, one word from a resentful child was enough to send you to the firing squad....)

The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia, by Orlando Figes (The public aspects of Stalin's dictatorship -- the arrests and trials, the enslavement and killing in the gulags -- have been well documented. No previous book, however, has explored the regime's effect on people's lives, what one historian called "the Stalinism that entered into all of us"... Moving from the Revolution of 1917 to the death of Stalin and beyond the author re-creates the moral maze in which Russians found themselves, where one wrong turn could destroy a family...where minor squabbles could lead to fatal denunciations...

SOVIET GULAG HAUNTING LEGACY (In Gulag: A History, the accomplished journalist Anne Applebaum writes... Soviet prison-labour camps might have been born as an "emergency measure in the heat of the civil war" raging in Russia from 1918 to 1921, but they had considerable "prior appeal." From their earliest days, Lenin's Bolsheviks took delight in forcing Russia's former "exploiting classes" to work. With the end of the civil war, the brutality of the camps flourished. On the northern Solovetsky Islands between one-quarter and one-half of camp inmates may have died each year throughout the 1920s. Prisoners were deliberately crippled, starved or tortured. Some were tied overnight to posts, where mosquitoes would swarm them for hours. Others, perhaps the lucky ones, were executed, seemingly at random...)