A2 - Sunday, January 1, 1984, - North Shore News strictly personal _. by Bob Hunter - Welcome to 1984 I] first read the book with those numbers on its title in the late 1950s. 1 read it because 1 thought it was science fiction. It was in fact the first political book I'd ever stumbled across. It seemed to me then that George Orwell was one of the finest writers in the English language and that he had an - incredible imagination. There was nothing about the book I could quibble with — except the title. There was no denying that the bleak and hopeless world Orwell envisioned could hap- pen sometime in the future, but surely not until at, least the next century! Innocent youth that I was, I didn’t know then that in the Communist dictatorships, ex- cept for a few technical details, 1984 had already ar- rived. ° That accounted, and still does, for more than half of the world’s population. The masses in the totalitarian * countries might not have tele- toils under military dictatorships,. screens in their apartments monitoring even their heart- beats, relaying every detail of their behavior back to Big Brother, but in most .other respects, they have no more freedom than the ‘‘proles’’ Orwell's: Dark-Age-without. end. ’ As for the ‘‘free world’”’ to- day, well, how free ARE we? Obviously, except for a hand- ful of democracies, the rest the whip of religious tyrannies, tribal cabals, one-party oligarchies and racist regimes. Of the democracies them- - selves, it has to be admitted. that many of them are thinly- disguised. police states that call themselves ~- democratic ‘merely to preserve the capitalist perogatives of a rul- ing elite. The actual functioning democracies can almost be counted on the fingers of both hands. Canada, ob- viously, is one of them — otherwise I wouldn’t be able EVEN SOCREDS AGREE Do it Better. As a matter of fact, auto insurance to write about whether it was or it wasn’t without being hauled away and tortured. Yet even in Canada there is a dangerous drift in the direc- tion of oppression. I refer, of course, to ‘Solicitor - General Robert Kaplan’s 800,000 personal in- formation. files on Cana- dians, gathered by RCMP agents behaving suspiciously like Orwell’s Thought Police cops. I refer as well to the 1,500 databanks which the federal govérnment has in its posses- sion with confidential infor- mation on individuals. In Orwell’s .1984, Big Brother was ubiquitous. In Canada’s 1984, Big Govern- ment is appallingly ubi- quitous too. We are probably the most overregulated socie- ty ‘among the industralized nations. Of course, it is most- ly benign regulation but the net effect is to make us less free every year. The power of the Party in Orwell’s grim vision was bas- would probably cost you a lot‘ more OF FICE & TECHNICAL if we lost ICBC. Ask questions. Get the facts. Find out who profits and who loses if we lose our public insurance corporation. Then let your MLA know that...ICBC is better for British Columbia. EMPLOYEES’ UN? With public auto insurance B.C. premiums are among the lowest in Canada whereas 10 years ago under private insurers British Columbians paid the highest rates m the country. Private firms return only 74¢ of eve premium dollar in claim payments. ICBC is able to return 95¢ paid an average of $125 less than private insurance would have had to charge you. is means that last year you ICBC is a norprofit crown corporation which turns its capital and any surplus toward benefitting its customers and our provincial economy. _ICBC is one of the great business success stories of this province. Even Socred MLA, Angus Ree, who is a member of the Committee on Crown Corporations and chairs the sub-committee on ICBC, admits that “in essence they were effective and efficient”’ North Vancouver Chamber of Commerce has opposed the move to privatize ICBC stating that, “we looked for any benefits that would flow to the province — but were unable to identify any.” They further claimed that retaining ICBC, “will ensure that general insurance is available to all people in the province and jobs are retained in the province.” ON % ed on absolute secrecy, falsification of the record, destruction of the truth. The parallel in Canada today is the fact that provincial and federal cabinets routinely’ hand down their edicts in the unchallengeable form of orders-jn-council. that are passed behind closed doors. Ottawa uses the mentally handicapped to shred tons and tons of documents and Co VU ‘* eo} e spout glitzy gibberish. A fairly recent study of Orwell’s book showed that of 137 specific ‘‘predictions’’ he made, at least 100 had already come true. In his bureaucratic essence, Big Brother looms larger in Canadian society than ever. This is a very good year to dwell on the degree to which our freedoms have been erod- ed, because the truth is, no matter how much we con- gratulate ourselves on our relative liberty, it grows more relative every day. Welcome, again, to 1984. And good luck. 9 nt Humanities: Divisio Samia ) “Microcomputer Applications _ Small ‘Business CAPILANO: COLLEGE t ene Purcell Way, > North Vancouver rey the Hill from he Coac