George Orwell released after 13 years

Last UK Balagansk Detainee Lands In Britain

05 January 1950

The last British resident to be held in Balagansk Prison has landed in the UK, having been detained for 13 years.

 

Socialist writer Eric Blair was held at the Russian GULAG camp in Balagansk over allegations he had led an anarchist unit in Catalonia and had met Buenaventura Durruti, but was never charged.

Downing Street said there were "no plans" to detain him after his arrival.

Mr Blair said he felt "obliged" to everyone who fought for him to be released, and to "bring an end to the gulags".

Number 10 said Prime Minister Clement Attlee "welcomes" the release of Mr Blair.

It also said any necessary security measures "will be put in place".


Historical footnote: was the real George Orwell murdered?
http://www.counter-currents.com/2015/05/who-killed-george-orwell/


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Sussing out strangers

What do you think of David Cameron or Jeremy Corbyn? Do you like or trust them? Have you met them? Do you know them well enough to have any view at all?

For the vast majority of voters, these two guys are virtually strangers, the nuances of their respective characters closed books, their suitability for an evening in the pub unknown. Although Corby is teetotal which isn’t a good start for a convivial evening. Yet even comparatively apolitical people form character views of both men. Are those views worth anything?

No - not much.

We cannot have a worthwhile opinion on the character of a stranger even if we see them regularly on TV or online. Not even if we have met them briefly in some kind of controlled context. All we usually have is reported public behaviour. For politicians that means we put them in their political context and judge their behaviour accordingly but not necessarily accurately.

Unfortunately the public domain is managed, manipulated, edited, falsified by friend and foe alike. Like football it is a game with three points for a win, one for a draw and no points for a loss. Perhaps a narrative emerges, but it is the winner’s narrative and we have to accept that winners are not always worthy winners. They and their minders call in favours, twist arms and create distractions.

This is the problem. There is no point guessing at information which simply isn’t there, guessing that it has been successfully suppressed. It isn’t enough. Instinct, allegiance and suspicion aren’t enough, not if we value our own integrity. Too often the guilty get away with it because that is the nature of the game – winners win and losers lose.

In these cases it isn’t easy to accept the role of loser, to accept that many public people successfully hide their failings and failures from the public domain. Guesswork, instinct and allegiances cannot bridge the gap, cannot expose what has been successfully hidden or spirited away. A game lost is a lost game.

We cannot know public people in a personal sense, their foibles, strengths, weaknesses and tendency to be conventional, adaptable, imaginative or whatever. We cannot know them beyond their public behaviour and we cannot substitute gossip for what we do not observe. Obvious enough, but not so obvious when it comes to stories of sexual deviancy we hear so much about these days. Here we depart from David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn who as far as we know live blameless personal lives.

Our culture expends much time and vast amounts of money creating a false sense of familiarity between celebrities and their public, including major politicians. We are excessively familiar with gossip about people in the public domain. Millions go along with the stories, fantasies and fabrications as if they actually know the people concerned. Many soap opera fans behave as if the characters are real, many football fans seem to think they know football stars personally.

There is only reliably reported or observed behaviour and evidence admitted in court. Apart from that, people in the public domain are virtually strangers and best viewed as such. Strange strangers perhaps, but still strangers.

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The year is 2030 -

Hi there

Today we are taking a look at a cool trend which isn’t new, but my how it has taken the world by storm! Yes we are talking about NoKlik Marketing, or NKM as it is called by those in the know and I know that includes you!

NKM is always moving on, developing into new customer areas and refining itself as you must be aware if you aren’t holed up in a cave somewhere like those old style hermit guys with big beards and skinny legs – only joking.

Yes there were a few teething problems such as my batch of Guatemalan racing snails which arrived only this morning. Charming little fellows they are too, but they have to go back unfortunately. Score another tick for the NoKlik learning curve I say.

As you know if you aren’t that hermit guy I referred to aeons ago, NoKlik Marketing is a great way to anticipate and supply what customers really want. Your personal web assistant or PA as we call them knows what you need anyway, so it was no surprise when a whole bunch of eggheads worked out a way to deliver your goodies without you having to do any of the donkey work such ordering them yourself.

Efficiency, it’s what the modern world is all about as I’m sure you’ll agree. It works just fine too. I listen to some great music and hey – my PA uses NoKlik to add another few tracks to my music store. It already knows I’ll like its choice and I do! My PA already knows all about my credit rating too, so wham-bam and my new music is delivered and paid for behind the scenes. I love it. I love NoKlik.

Who needs retro style choice anyway? We have supercharged choice which is kilometres better than plodding through a ton of stuff you don’t like to find that nugget of pure gold which a PA would have found in about a millionth of a second. Now NoKlik delivers it automatically.

Now here’s something you probably didn’t know. A new NoKlik app called Foney is about to make landfall. Foney knows who your friends are and in a quiet moment it phones one of them for you.

"Hmm suppose I don't have anything to say?" you ask me. Well here’s the really cool bit – Foney uses your PA to suggest topics of conversation, stuff which interests both of you. It even pops in a few comments during your phone conversation, just to keep things going. Your PA will keep you posted on that one.

Now NoKlik is moving into food as you will have heard because your PA makes sure you know everything you should know doesn’t it? What you may not know because it isn’t yet out on general release is that NoKlik food delivery is being refined before general rollout.

Yes the food delivered via NoKlik has proved fantastically healthy and nutritious, but there has been an unusual amount of helpful customer feedback. So much in fact that lessons are being learned big time.

Apparently the food delivered via NoKlik was so insanely healthy that folk were overwhelmed with it and couldn’t get started in the morning without a few cups of coffee and some other stuff delivered outside the NoKlik system. Strictly speaking that isn’t allowed but hey – it’s a free country. So no more lettuce for breakfast and food boffins are working on those bean patties.

More NoKlik news as it rolls out.

This article was brought to you by SlikGab™ the social commentary app everyone isn’t talking about because SlikGab does it for them! SlikGab If you like it you already bought it!

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Red meat - the new wonder food

Red meat
source

The Daily Mail has yet another story on the great killer food debate. This time it's... hang on I've forgotten this week's diet narrative...

Forget red meat - you're more likely to get bowel cancer from eating CHOCOLATE: Leading colorectal surgeon on why he eats meat regularly - and how sugar is the true culprit

Ah yes, it's now red meat that leads to everlasting health and sugar causes a ghastly lingering death where your innards are slowly chewed to pieces by poisonous statistics. Something like that.

We eat a lot of fish and very little meat although I wouldn't turn my nose up at a hot beef cob with lots of fried onions. Will we die from a lack of red meat or would the occasional bacon cob ensure our survival? How about a beef and horseradish sandwich with a pint of real ale?

Why shouldn't the NHS dish out these little life-savers? Hot beef and onion cobs at the local doctor's surgery anyone?

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The totalitarian within us

A recent Sunday found us walking the hills above Matlock. For some reason lost in the mists of time, Matlock attracts hordes of motorcyclists, especially on a fine day and especially on a Sunday.

The rumble of exhausts seems continuous. Even high up on the hill it was loud. Low frequency sound carries and motorcyclists seem to love it. At street level it can drown out a conversation. Looking down on yet another stream of big blokes on big machines it momentarily seemed ridiculous, excessive in the something should be done sense...

...but not for long. I was once a motorcyclist myself and even now I fancy a ride on a big beast of a bike. Not through Matlock though. Yet the worm of intolerance was there right enough, poking a scowling head out of its little hole when the rumble became particularly loud.

All of us seem to have these worms of intolerance, the inner totalitarian who would ban even the most innocuous activity. Politics thrives on it, but where does it come from, this totalitarian worm? Why has it become such an integral feature of modern life?

A fundamental aspect of human behaviour is the way we follow whatever path seems to lead to the minimum number of surprises. It’s a survival trait. When confronted with a range of possibilities we seem to be programmed to seek the safest and that is the one with the lowest likelihood of springing surprises. We minimise the number of situations where we may have to adapt in unexpected ways.

It’s why our ancestors formed tribes, worshipped gods, built castles, made laws, formed treaties, developed medicines and generally tried to insure themselves against all manner of eventualities. It’s why we are suckers for an infinite number of promised lands where punters supposedly live in a state of bliss and perfect safety.

The sinister link with totalitarian government is obvious. Totalitarian madness  is what we get when ruling castes rigorously root out potential surprises as a key element of their political schema and their own survival. That’s the problem, when our leaders and their senior functionaries aim to minimise surprises – all surprises - everywhere.

Doesn’t work forever of course. With totalitarian government we lose the ability to adapt and surprises become more dangerous to the rigid structures built to keep them out. Eventually a fatal combination of surprises leads to collapse, we have to adapt all over again and in so doing we pave the way for another bout of totalitarian control.

If so, then the most interesting question is where are we in the eternal totalitarian cycle? Pretty obvious I’d say.

We are on the that part of the cycle where totalitarian plans, schemes and laws are spewing all over us until we don’t know if we can get through a whole day without breaking some law. It may be a long climb to the peak though. That pesky adaptability keeps us going for a long time.

The key point seems to be that we can do nothing about it, nothing whatsoever. The ebb and flow of totalitarian rule is a feature of our mental biochemistry. We may have big brains with amazing capabilities, but the inexorable logic of personal safety always seems to screw us up.

It appears that we are unable to choose a path which is likely to lead us to more surprises than the alternative. Our biochemistry just doesn’t allow it. How could it? This is the totalitarian within us and until we untangle it, understand it and learn how to veto its imperatives, until we learn not to seek safety at any cost then the cycle is bound to continue.

In short, we sample the world to ensure our predictions become a self-fulfilling prophecy and surprises are avoided. In this view, perception is enslaved by action to provide veridical predictions (more formally, to make the freeenergy a tight bound on surprise) that guides active sampling of the sensorium. 
Karl Friston

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The natural indifference of men

Most men — and certainly I could not always claim to be one of the exceptions — have a natural indifference, if not an absolutely hostile feeling, towards those whom disease, or weakness, or calamity of any kind causes to falter and faint amid the rude jostle of our selfish existence.

Except in love, or the attachments of kindred, or other very long and habitual affection, we really have no tenderness.

Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Blithedale Romance (1852)

Was Hawthorne right? His was a much harsher world than ours, one where those who couldn’t hack it were faced with the most miserable destitution and even starvation. Somehow we have drifted into another world where a grey official version Hawthorne's tenderness may be offered to strangers on our behalf via social institutions. We may or may not approve - the institutions are indifferent.

It is as if the concept of ‘stranger’ has become much more tenuous in our connected world. As if the horrors and tragedies of the twentieth century have squeezed out much of what Hawthorne calls the natural indifference of men by downplaying our notions of 'stranger'.

Ironically the notion 'stranger' changes into the strange one who lives within but does not conform, does not emit the right signals. The internal stranger who deserves no sympathy, support or friendship, who may be abused with impunity.    

Indifference though – it feels natural to me. An aspect of survival perhaps? A natural suspicion of strangers, indifference to their needs or their fate. It seems to go hand in hand with assessing the outsider without any confounding assumption of emotional ties, no attachment to their claims, their stories or their demands. It seems to remind us that people we don’t know are indeed strangers, that strangers still exist in this joined up world of ours.

Our world may be kinder in this respect, but also more superficial, bound up with social approval and the role of the state in setting personal standards to which we must conform. We have become enmeshed in a network of norms to which we are expected to subscribe. Or we don’t subscribe, emit the wrong signals, attract disapproval.

If we don’t subscribe then perhaps Hawthorne’s natural indifference hides itself behind a common enough type of conformity which is visibly reluctant, which conforms only outwardly and makes it obvious that this is so. None of which can be healthy.

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Assange update

http://www.executedtoday.com/2014/09/06/1771-matthias-klostermayr-the-bavarian-hiasl/

Following our London visit and walkpast of the Ecuadorian Embassy last month, where perhaps the most famous victim of the abuse-inviting European Arrest Warrant is besieged by the British Government, and where the (sole) Met police guard slipped furtively round the corner when we spotted him, it has been decided:

(a) to remove the guard, after spending 10+ millions of pounds allegedly securing this fugitive from dodgy justice - and I'd really like to see the accounts for that thoroughly audited;

(b) to deny Assange his right to medical assessment - with potentially lethal consequences.

How does this look to fair-minded people? Perhaps HMG is unselfconscious - or is it simply thundering arrogance?

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion.

 

- Robert Burns (1786)

 

"History has taught me, that RULERS are much the same in all ages & under all forms of government: they are as bad as they dare to be."

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in a letter to his brother George (c. 10 March 1798)

It's odd, but in various ways - e.g. reflections on national constitutions and the abuse of State power -both sides of the Atlantic seem to be revisiting the late eighteenth century.


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