Orwell in the Scanner

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In George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, “Thoughtcrime does not entail death. Thoughtcrime IS death”.

by Louise Whiteley*

restraing_chair.gifUnlike the contestants on Big Brother, the citizens in Orwell’s novel tend to hold their tongues, but ultimately surveillance of their actions is guaranteed to uncover any deviant thoughts they might entertain. Recently, neuroscientists have started to decipher the thoughts of individuals even in the absence of incriminating actions, as they lie still and silent in a brain scanner.

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) uses the magnetic properties of blood to infer the amount of oxygen in brain tissue, and thus indirectly the level of neural activity. This allows scientists to test hypotheses about where in the brain various mental processes are carried out, and, once particular brain areas or patterns of activity have functional ‘labels’, to work out which processes are active when the subject cannot, or will not, say what they are thinking. Researchers have been able to identify regions in the brain that produce a higher fMRI signal when subjects tell a lie, and media reports now speculate about a future in which this could be used to judge whether someone is dissembling in court. This future is in fact disturbingly close - a commercial company called ‘No Lie MRI’ is already “working to have its testing allowed as evidence” in the US, and the emerging field of neuroethics is calling for an urgent debate about the potential uses of such research in civil society and the military.

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The blood of innocents

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By Irfan Husain

islamic-women.jpgAISHA Ibrahim Duhulow was 13 years old when she was buried up to her neck in the Somali port city of Kismayu on Oct 27 and stoned to death by 50 men belonging to the Islamic group Al Shahab.

A truckload of stones was brought to the field where this murder took place. When a few members of the thousand-strong spectators tried to save the girl, Al Shahab gunmen opened fire, accidentally shooting a little boy.

It did not take long to kill Aisha. She had been accused of fornication, although according to her bereft father, she had gone to complain of being raped by three men. Her rapists remain at large, and there has been no attempt to apprehend them.

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A Letter to America

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By Anwaar Hussain

risun3.jpgDear Americans,

With your election of Barack Hussein Obama, you have almost realized the dream of Martin Luther King. Now truly you have a chance to rise up as a nation and live out the proper meaning of the creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

Now you have an opportunity to ensure that ‘on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners indeed are able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood’. Now is the time to make certain that your great country does really get ‘transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice’. Now is that moment in time to become color blind forever to the skin tones of not just your countrymen but of all the citizens of our planet. Do that and you have arrived.

But before you can join Barack Obama’s sweet lilting voice in singing, Free at last! Free at last!, Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!, you have one last ritual to perform. And that is the killing of the demons of your recent past lest they come back to haunt you yet again. Unless you perform that sacred rite too, this transformation stands incomplete.

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Here come the liberals

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By Will Hutton*

For decades American conservatism defined global politics. Now we are about to witness a seismic change in Washington. Will Hutton leads a special report on the profound impact the new thinking will have on Britain and the world

turn-left-right-arrow.jpgBritish politicians, commentators and the public like to believe in their sturdy autonomy. We have arrived at our decisions as freeborn men and women. We debate our ideas furiously in pubs, on radio phone-ins or via letters to the editor. We read the opinion pages. We elect a sovereign parliament that passes the laws and regulations that we mandate.

The truth is more subtle. We dance to another country’s tune. It is the United States that makes the political, cultural and intellectual weather. It is the rich American institutes that develop the ideas for XYZ plan or ABC radical reform. Our academics, especially in the social sciences, want to get published in the American journals and ensure they please the editor in question. Our politicians watch closely to see what works in the US. We enjoy their movies and use their technology. The West Wing and Mad Men are part of our culture, as are Sex and the City and Friends. We think we are free; we are painfully and excessively influenced by the US.

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Remembrance Day 2008

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How Should we Honour the War Dead?

by Alan Morrison

poppy-7738861.jpgThe 11th of November is a date which impinges as a dichotomy on our already seared consciousness. Remembrance Day. Remember our war dead - especially from the First World War. Remember the heroes. Poppies. Wreaths. Solemn-faced politicians making a show of care about life and death. Elderly, stiff-gaited uniformed gentlemen with medals. Brass bands. Sentry-like cenotaphs against the dark, dank, drizzly-grey skies of November’s winter foreboding. Pomp and circumstance. Always a glorification of the heroism in militarism but never a hint of condemnation in it.

    One shudders to put one’s head over the parapet to interject a thought which may detract from all that jingoistic fervour but… dare I ask: Is there any genuine substance to it all?

    I venture to suggest that Remembrance Day as we know it is an outmoded institution which is not only inappropriate for the purposes of the remembrance of the foulness and futility of war but is also an affront to those whose lives have been wasted by it. There was no heroism in World War I. Not really. It may have felt like that for some as they gave their lives for their country. But if ever there was a futile gesture it was laying down one’s life in World War I.  Heroism is wasted if it leaves no lasting legacy. Death, if it is futile, is a jumping into the void devoid of moral virtue.

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In Lies We Trust

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The CIA, Hollywood, and Bioterrorism

lyes.jpgIts hard to explain the full depth and breadth of the depravity of the pharmaceutical industry, the medical research industry, and the federal government.

The film above (click on the sub-title) does a pretty good job.

Hang on to your hat.

The model for modern biological warfare was “discovered” during the conquest of the Americas and has been repeated over and over again.

A recent example:

“American missionaries had first come to southwest Suriname in the early 1970s…At the time of their first contact with missionaries, the Tirios were suffering from diseases that had been introduced by explorers, Maroons, and other Indians, and possibly even by the evangelists themselves.

Tirio ethnomedicine had been ineffective against these strange illnesses. The missionaries, however, provided remedies that worked, thereby “proving” to the tribal elders the superiority of Western culture over indigenous traditions.”

Creating new diseases, releasing them on the public, and then providing the magic cure - for a price - will work just as well as a social control tool in New York and Los Angeles as it does in the Amazon.



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Remembrance day salutes man’s ancient instincts

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By James Delingpole

flo.jpgEvery man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, and I’m sorry to repeat such a hoary cliché, but the reason it’s so hoary is it’s true. There’s barely a chap I know who doesn’t wonder how he’d fare if forced to undergo the ultimate male test - combat. And the ones who claim not to wonder such things I find frankly a bit weird. Are they not in denial of almost everything it means to be a man?

A boy’s childhood is - even now, in an era when we’re supposed to have evolved from all that militaristic nonsense - a preparation for war. Some of it’s plain obvious, like the way boys love to fight one another with sticks, and shoot each other from behind corners going ‘peeeooing peeeooing’ (or, better still, ‘trrrrrrrrrrrrr’ if they can roll their ‘rs’ and do machine guns) with their pointed fingers.

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Barack Obama’s Victory Speech

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obama-family.jpgPRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA: If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

Its the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference.

Its the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled - Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America.

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Americans Murdering Their Judges, and the US Crisis of Judicial Corruption

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By Dr Leslie Sachs

prison-bars-image.gifIn the headlines are the appalling news stories of Americans carrying out murderous attacks on judges and their families. In a matter of days, one judge was shot and killed in his own courtroom, while another judge had family members brutally murdered in their home.

These news stories are, however, related to another news story, which is the most taboo subject of the American media - the expanding crisis of corruption among American judges and lawyers. At question is whether the deepening despair of Americans about their own legal system, is fueling some of these violent attacks on judges.

Much is written now about how America’s economy is resembling that of a banana republic, given how America is sunk in preposterous debt, and how the US dollar currency is sinking toward a possible collapse in the near future.

But there is another way that America is also like a banana republic, in that its legal system - contrary to its Hollywood image - has become a sinkwell of secret proceedings, the jailing of the innocent, and political misconduct; and how it is sullied with documented corruption, fake trials and court fraud.

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What’s up, Comrade Bush?

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By Vincent Bevins

combush.jpgCajoled for years to take on Western-style economic liberalism there’s more than a wry smile on the faces of some of South America’s left wing leaders as George Bush and others step in to save collapsing financial institutions, writes Vincent Bevins

The irony has not been lost on the political leaders of Latin America’s insurgent left movements that the governments of Europe and the US are now taking measures that involve far deeper state intervention in the economy than actions they themselves used to harshly criticize when attempted in other regions.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez joked that George Bush “is finally beginning to understand the road to socialism” and notes that “he isn’t criticized for nationalizing the largest bank in the world.”

“What’s up, Comrade Bush,” he said.

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Anwaar’s articles appear simultaneously here at Truth Spring and at Soul Vibes in The Pakistan Tribune.


US loses its status as economic world power
DAVOS, Switzerland, 2008
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ON MARCH 2008
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