Is Britain on the slippery slope to dictatorship?

Sorry but I´m not cutting this down.

The whole article:

An 82-year-old former bomber pilot I met in the street the other day said: “Supermen. Ha! If Hitler had come over here we would have given him a proper kick up the jackside.” As Michael White suggests, British people are fond of the myth that they won’t tolerate dictatorships, despite the fact that there were many fascist sympathisers in Britain in the 1930s.

Yes, we do live in a relatively free and secular country - just ask any young Afghani woman studying at a college here for her opinion. But there is also evidence around us that the British government is engaging in repression. And not just in Iraq or Afghanistan, but here in Britain. Perhaps those of us who have lived for a time under dictatorships can spot some of the warning signs:

• Inconvenient elections are avoided in the name of getting on with the job.

• Leaders of the opposition are character-assassinated by the state media.

• Institutions like the legislature begin to lose their independence and traditional role.

• Citizens are increasingly afraid to speak openly on certain issues.

• Citizens are observed and monitored on cameras and the government can tap into their conversations at will.

• Governments can snatch anyone from their homes or off the street and detain them without trial on charges of treason or terrorism.

• Ethnic and religious minorities are persecuted and are made into scapegoats.

• The state increasingly intervenes in family and community life in an attempt to control citizens’ behaviour.

• The focus of discussion moves away from the issues and into a narrative of political rivalries and gossip spreads.

• Governments use bread and circuses to shut people up and distract attention away from their increasing political impotence.

• Public spaces for demonstrations are closed down and restricted.

• Large and ridiculous monuments are built to impress the citizens.

• Individuals have to carry ID with them at all times and the government holds large amounts of information on every citizen.

How does the British government rate on the dictatorship scale? How close are we to Zimbabwe under Zanu? How far away are we from, say, Norway?

I suppose we must trust the security services when they say there are dangerous Islamist extremists on the loose who want to do our society harm: we saw the proof on the July 7, 2005. But the measures the British state is taking “to protect us” are beginning to give a tangibly different feel to our society. Britain is slowly creeping up the pH scale from democracy to autocracy.

Aesthetically, at any rate, it does feel as if some of our science fiction dystopias are gradually coming true. In an estate near me, George Orwell’s CCTV cameras are actually trained on the residents’ doors and driveways. Ray Bradbury’s wall-sized TVs flicker in small living rooms. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New Labour government pushes through a bill allowing experimentation on embryos and all British citizens will have to carry an expensive ID card with biometric information on it linked in to humming computer databases in anonymous buildings.

There was something extremely familiar to me about this week’s events. The way they closed down the whole of Whitehall for George Bush’s visit reminded me of how, in Havana, they close the main highway every time Fidel Castro crosses from one side of town to the other.

There was also something unpleasant about the way many in the BBC turned the discussion away from the loss of civil liberties in Britain and instead began to present David Davis as an egotistical oddball, pulling a clever stunt simply to spite the leader of his party. Soviet TV attacked dissidents in the same way. This kind of media character assassination is even more reprehensible because once you destroy a politician’s reputation, you might as well put him down - like a racehorse with a broken leg.

And then, while Labour berates African nations for not adopting Tony Blair’s gold standard for liberal interventionism, Labour itself avoids holding the referendum on Europe it promised.

One gets the feeling that the current crop of neo-monetarist technocrats in power in Britain regard see the whole democratic processes as an irritating stunt, not just David Davis’s upcoming by-election. Certainly Labour politicians show very little respect for the electorate. Any appeal over their heads to the willful and ignorant population probably feels like insufferable interference to them.

So this is the thing. If I, as a citizen, and people like me, don’t agree with the way we are being governed, where do we go to withdraw our consent to be governed? I don’t want to simply switch to the Tories or Liberal Democrats, I want a new contract with my state as a citizen, one that respects my civil liberties.

Everyone that is a regular here know that I don´t believe that terrorists are everywhere as Mr. Bush wants us to believe and when I read articles like this I get really freaked out because people don´t seem to care about their own lives, they only seem to care about what some stupid ass celebrity has done on there free time.

You are walking into a fucking trap! Can´t you see it?

I´m I the only one who does?

I hope not, because if I´m the only one we are fucked people…..

(I would really like some comments on this, please. I just want to know that someone is reading.)

Original site.

WOG out.

War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.

1984 by George Orwell

Brain training games boost IQ, study shows

From the article:

The exercises are an increasingly popular way for people of all ages to keep their minds alert.

It has been suggested before that Sudoku number puzzles improve memory, while crosswords expand the vocabulary. The elderly are also said to benefit from a new generation of computer exercises played on video consoles to improve recall.

However, for the first time, scientists have proven that mental exercise really does limber up the brain and make it more quick-witted.

Your brain is the most important thing you have so take good care of it.

Original link.
WOG out.

Robotic Snake Swims Underwater

From Hirose Fukushima Robotics Lab:

“Why can snakes move ahead on without legs?” From this problem, we started research of snake biomechanisms, which resulted in the development of “Snake Robots”. Snake Robots have many possible applications, even though the structures are simple.

Wow that this is pretty scary, it reminds me of the sentinels in Matrix.

WOG out.

World might be heading towards a new Ice Age

The article:

CANBERRA: Scientists have warned that the world might once again be heading towards an Ice Age, with global warming approaching a possible end.

Evidence in support of this theory has come from pictures obtained from the US Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, which showed no spots on the sun, thus determining that sunspot activity has not resumed after hitting an 11-year low in March last year.

A sunspot is a region on the sun that is cooler than the rest and appears dark.

Some scientists believe a strong solar magnetic field, when there is plenty of sunspot activity, protects the earth from cosmic rays, cutting cloud formation, but that when the field is weak - during low sunspot activity - the rays can penetrate into the lower atmosphere and cloud cover increases, cooling the surface.

According to Australian astronaut and geophysicist Phil Chapman, this might have caused the world to cool quickly between January last year and January this year, by about 0.7C.

“This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record, and it puts us back to where we were in 1930,” said Dr Chapman.

“If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over,” he added.

Dr Chapman has proposed preventive, or delaying, moves to slow the cooling, such as bulldozing Siberian and Canadian snow to make it dirty and less reflective.

“My guess is that the odds are now at least 50:50 that we will see significant cooling rather than warming in coming decades,” he said

These articles have been popping up all over the internet but not alot of people have seen them and I think that you have to see all sides of a problem to fully grasp it and a new ice age is much worse then global warming so maybe you are afraid of the wrong thing? And you should know that cold is much deadlier the heat.

Original site.

WOG out.

New Drug Helps People Grow Super-Brains

From the article:

Drugs that encourage the growth of new neurons in the brain are now headed for clinical trials. The drugs, which have already shown success in alleviating symptoms of depression and boosting memory in animal models, are being developed by BrainCells, a San Diego-based start-up that screens drugs for their brain-growing power. The company hopes the compounds will provide an alternative to existing antidepressants and says they may also prove effective in treating cognitive disorders, such as Alzheimer’s.

This is very interesting and will probably help alot of people and make some so much smarter but let´s put it this way I´m not going to sign up for beta testing…..

Original site.

WOG out.