Brain scanner could herald a new Big Brother era envisaged in Minority Report

The telepathic abilities that feature in the film X2 are a step closer to reality

It could herald a new Big Brother era, similar to that envisaged in the Hollywood film Minority Report, in which an individual’s private thoughts can be readily accessed by the authorities.

Psychic computer shows your thoughts on screen

London Times | Nov 1, 2009

by Chris Gourlay

Scientists have discovered how to “read” minds by scanning brain activity and reproducing images of what people are seeing — or even remembering.

Researchers have been able to convert into crude video footage the brain activity stimulated by what a person is watching or recalling.

The breakthrough raises the prospect of significant benefits, such as allowing people who are unable to move or speak to communicate via visualisation of their thoughts; recording people’s dreams; or allowing police to identify criminals by recalling the memories of a witness.

However, it could also herald a new Big Brother era, similar to that envisaged in the Hollywood film Minority Report, in which an individual’s private thoughts can be readily accessed by the authorities.

Jack Gallant and Shinji Nishimoto, two neurologists from the University of California, Berkeley, last year managed to correlate activity in the brain’s visual cortex with static images seen by the person. Last week they went one step further by revealing that it is possible to “decode” signals generated in the brain by moving scenes.

In an experiment which has yet to be peer reviewed, Gallant and Nishimoto, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology, scanned the brains of two patients as they watched videos.

A computer programme was used to search for links between the configuration of shapes, colours and movements in the videos, and patterns of activity in the patients’ visual cortex.

It was later fed more than 200 days’ worth of YouTube internet clips and asked to predict which areas of the brain the clips would stimulate if people were watching them.

Finally, the software was used to monitor the two patients’ brains as they watched a new film and to reproduce what they were seeing based on their neural activity alone.

Remarkably, the computer programme was able to display continuous footage of the films they were watching — albeit with blurred images.

In one scene which featured the actor Steve Martin wearing a white shirt, the software recreated his rough shape and white torso but missed other details, such as his facial features.

Another scene, showing a plane flying towards the camera against a city skyline, was less successfully reproduced. The computer recreated the image of the skyline but omitted the plane altogether.

“Some scenes decode better than others,” said Gallant. “We can decode talking heads really well. But a camera panning quickly across a scene confuses the algorithm.

“You can use a device like this to do some pretty cool things. At the moment when you see something and want to describe it to someone you have to use words or draw it and it doesn’t work very well.

“You could use this technology to transmit the image to someone. It might be useful for artists or to allow you to recover an eyewitness’s memory of a crime.”

Such technology may not be confined to the here and now. Scientists at University College London have conducted separate tests that detect, with an accuracy of about 50%, memories recalled by patients.

The discoveries come amid a flurry of developments in the field of brain science. Researchers have also used scanning technology to measure academic ability, detect early signs of Alzheimer’s and other degenerative conditions, and even predict the decision a person is about to make before they are conscious of making it.

Such developments may have controversial ramifications. In Britain, fMRI scanning technology has been sold to multinational companies, such as Unilever and McDonald’s, enabling them to see how we subconsciously react to brands.

In America, security agencies are researching the use of brain scanners for interrogating prisoners, and Lockheed Martin, the US defence contractor, is reported to have studied the possibility of scanning brains at a distance.

This would allow an individual’s thoughts and anxieties to be examined without their knowledge in sensitive locations such as airports.

Russell Foster, a neuroscientist at Oxford University, said rapid advances in the field were throwing up ethical dilemmas.

“It’s absolutely critical for scientists to inform the public about what we are doing so they can engage in the debate about how this knowledge should be used,” he said.

“It’s the age-old problem: knowledge is power and it can be used for both good and evil.”

Artificial drinks ‘damage kidneys’

Too many artificially sweetened soft drinks may damage the kidneys, a study suggests.

UKPA | Nov 1, 2009

Researchers looked at the effect of soda drinks on more than 3,000 women taking part in the Nurses’ Health Study, a major lifestyle and health investigation in the US.

They compared drinks that were sweetened with sugar and artificially sweetened.

The results showed that two or more artificially sweetened drinks a day doubled the risk of a faster-than-average decline in kidney function.

No-such association was found with sugar-sweetened drinks.

The link persisted after taking account of other risk factors including age, high blood pressure, diabetes, smoking, and heart disease.

More work was needed to uncover the mechanism behind the trend, said the scientists from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.

The findings were presented at the American Society of Nephrology’s annual meeting in San Diego, California.

A separate study by the team involving the same group of women also found a link between sodium intake and kidney damage.

Dr Julie Lin, who co-led the research, said: “There are currently limited data on the role of diet in kidney disease.”

Inside the shadowy (and very lucrative) world of Blair Inc

Inside the shadowy (and very lucrative) world of Blair Inc: How the ex-PM has become a one-man multinational money-making machine.

Daily Mail | Oct 31, 2009

By Edward Heathcoat-amory

So, as the job of European President apparently recedes from Tony Blair’s grasp, should we feel sorry for our former prime minister, sitting at home watching his dreams of returning to the world stage turn to ashes?

Perhaps not. In fact, there is every reason to believe that Mr Blair might be rather relieved if he doesn’t have to go to Brussels, because taking the job would have meant renouncing his current role as a one-man multinational money-making machine.

If you were to take Mr Blair’s activities at his own evaluation, you would believe he divides his time between trying to save the world in the Middle East as the representative to that troubled region from the UN, the U.S., Europe and Russia; running his own faith and sports foundations in London; and organising various other charitable endeavours.

But the truth is a lot more complicated – and vastly more lucrative – than that.

At a conservative estimate, he has made £15million from his commercial activities since stepping down as prime minister in 2007, and there is every sign that his earning capacity is increasing.

He remains in demand as a £100,000-a-time international speaker, he has contracts to provide advice with several banking institutions, he is writing his memoirs, and he has established Tony Blair Associates (TBA) to provide advice to foreign governments for money.

There is nothing wrong with all this – except that he is pursuing his commercial interests so closely in tandem with his charitable work and job as an envoy to the Middle East that it is hard to see where the not-for-profit element ends and his own personal bank account begins.

As a friend told the Financial Times, ‘if Mr Blair emerged from a meeting with an Arab emir having won a donation to the Palestinians, a donation to the Tony Blair faith foundation, and a consultancy fee, that would be a “good trip”.’

And so far this year, he’s been to more than 20 countries.

All of this activity is masterminded by an astonishing 80 staff, all working from a splendid suite in Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, conveniently located near to the American embassy.

This seems appropriate because it is Mr Blair’s close connection with America, stemming from his support for them in invading Iraq and Afghanistan, that underpins much of his earning ability, not only as a lucrative speechmaker in the U.S., but because he is known to have the ear of those who run the world’s most powerful nation.

At the heart of his web of overlapping and conflicting interests is Tony Blair Associates, a consultancy, modelled on a foundation set up by Henry Kissinger, the former U.S. Secretary of State, which has made Kissinger very wealthy.

A friend told a Sunday newspaper recently: ‘TBA has been set up to make money from foreign governments and companies. There’s a focus on the Middle East, because that is where the money is.’

And Mr Blair is in the Middle East regularly, in his peace envoy role, with all expenses picked up by taxpayers around the world and instant access to any foreign potentate he cares to see. Which is, as it turns out, very helpful for his business interests.

On January 17 this year, he went to hold talks with King Adbullah of Saudi Arabia on the situation in the Gaza strip. With him on the trip was his old chief of staff from No 10, Jonathan Powell, who has no formal role in connection with his official activities, but just happens to have joined the staff of Tony Blair Associates.

And after meeting the king, Powell and his boss both went to see Prince Alwaleed, the richest businessman in the Middle East, worth at least £15billion. The prince is also chairman of the Kingdom Holding Company.

While there is no sign that Blair and Powell have so far been able to secure a consultancy contract with the Saudis, they were certainly more successful when, shortly afterwards, they visited Kuwait.

On January 26 they met the emir, Sheik al-Sabah, with Blair in his peace envoy role, and Powell in attendance. A few weeks later it was announced that TBA had been signed up to advise Kuwait on ‘good governance’ for a seven-figure sum.

It’s a similar story in Abu Dhabi, where Mr Blair has been numerous times since quitting as PM. Sheik Mohammed, the ruler, has signed up TBA to advise his state investment fund, Mubadala, as it goes round the world buying up assets.

Mr Blair’s advisers vigorously reject suggestions of any conflict of interest in these situations, but it’s hard to see how their master’s roles can be disentangled.

In addition to his TBA work, he is an adviser to U.S. investment bank JP Morgan, and Zurich Financial Services, on annual fees reported to be £2.5million. Incidentally, Jonathan Powell works for rival investment bank Morgan Stanley. No doubt they can compare notes.

This May, in his role as peace envoy, Blair met the education minister of the United Arab Emirates. On the same day, he met that luminary’s cabinet colleague, the finance minister, but this time wearing his JP Morgan commercial hat.

Another middle eastern state which he has visited on behalf of JP Morgan is Libya, a country whose international rehabilitation was one of Mr Blair’s obsessions as PM.

Oliver Miles, a former ambassador to Libya, told the Financial Times that Mr Blair had visited the country ‘a number of times’ since departing Downing Street, and ‘he certainly has a relationship with both the leader (Gaddafi) and the leader’s son’.

Some of Mr Blair’s former political opponents are concerned about the nature of that relationship, as Libya remains a controversial and potentially dangerous country. Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski, who chairs the all-party Commons committee on Libya, calls it ‘highly inappropriate given his unique position as a former prime minister and the fact that we don’t know what that business is’.

But it’s not only Mr Blair’s commercial interests that are surprisingly complicated – his charitable endeavours are equally hard to disentangle.

His work in Africa – a project to help the presidents of Sierra Leone and Rwanda – has yet to be given official charitable status, and for the moment is being largely funded by substantial grants from Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, and Lord Sainsbury, former science minister in Mr Blair’s government, who have given £1.5million each through their charitable foundations.

This money, however, has – according to a Financial Times investigation – been channelled through one of a large number of profit-making partnerships and private companies established by Mr Blair; this one is called Windrush No3. The funding process is arcane, adding to the air of mystery and secrecy that surrounds all of Mr Blair’s current activities.

His office insists that its activities in Africa are ‘entirely not for profit’, although these charitable funds may help fund Mr Blair’s offices.

And that won’t be cheap, as he hired his Grosvenor Square HQ at the very top of the property market and the cost of the eight years remaining on the lease is believed to be £4.4million, not to mention the salaries of his huge staff.

The final part of this jigsaw of interests is Mr Blair’s memoirs and speeches. He received an advance of £4.6million for the book, and is believed to be making steady progress on it.

As for the speechmaking, he is understood to have received a £600,000 ‘signing-on fee’ from the Washington Speaker Bureau that organises his engagements, and each speech made for them generates another large fee.

His 36-hour, two-lecture tour of the Philippines this year netted him, according to the organiser, £240,000 plus expenses. And naturally, he met the Philippine president while he was there, and stayed with the British ambassador, mixing as always the different sides of his working life.

So why all this frenetic activity? Well, Mr Blair knows that his celebrity is a declining asset, so he needs to make as much money as quickly as possible.

And at home, his wife is busy spending the money, building up a £12million portfolio of properties, including large houses in London and the country and contributions towards smart homes for their sons, Nicky and Euan.

Of course, these homes have to be furnished; it was recently revealed that Cherie had spent £250,000 on Georgian and Regency furniture for their country residence.

He is making the money, and his wife is spending it. All of which would come to an abrupt end if he became President of Europe.

So despite the attractions of a job in which he would once more have had the ability to ‘stop traffic’ in foreign capitals, there are good grounds for believing that he might prefer to keep things just the way they are.

He’s official enough to keep his credibility and his contacts, and commercial enough to be making a fortune. It’s the new Blairite Third Way.

1972 WHO memos explain how to turn vaccines into a means of killing

fightbackh1n1.com | Oct 31, 2009

Two key memorandums from WHO, discovered by Patrick Jordan, prove WHO has intentionally created the three-shot killer vaccine that people in the USA and other countries could soon be forced to take.

1972 WHO Bulletin 47, No 2 Memordanda #1 and #2 Virus-associated immunopathology:

Animal models and implications for human disease * technically outline the ability to create biological weapons in the form of vaccines that:

1) First totally disable the Immune System.

2) Load every cell of the Victim’s body up with Infection.

3) Switch the Immune System on causing the host to kill themselves in a Cytokine Storm.

One, Two, Three, Dead.

These WHO Memorandas describe the three-stage impact of the three “shots” many people will be forced to take this fall to allegedly treat a virus that WHO also helped create and release.

This is a crucial piece of evidence of WHO’s long-term genocidal intentions that could stand in any court of law because these memorandums give the best and fullest explanation WHO’s and affiliated labs (such as the CDC) current activities, such as their patenting of the most lethal bird flu viruses, their sending that virus to Baxter’s subsidiary in Austria, which weaponised it and sent out 72 kilos to 16 labs in four countries almost triggering a global pandemic.

For every crime, there needs to be motive, an indication that it was deliberate, planned. The WHO memorandums provide the evidence of just that deliberate, long-term planning to kill people by weakening their immune system by use of the first vaccine, injecting a live virus into their body by a second, and creating a cytokine storm using squalene in a third.

Full Story

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Experts: People will suddenly die after swine flu vaccine – but it’s just coincidence, nothing to worry about

People will die after swine flu vaccine – but it’s just coincidence

Six people in Britain can be expected to die suddenly after having the swine flu vaccine but it will just be coincidence, researchers have said.

Telegraph | Oct 31, 2009

By Rebecca Smith and Kate Devlin, Medical team

With millions of people being vaccinated against the virus there is a real risk that coincidental events will be seen as reactions to the jab, a paper in The Lancet said.

Experts at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital in America calculated the background rate of conditions that may be mistaken for vaccine reactions and warned that there is a risk people will shun the jab needlessly.

Only if these background rates are exceeded will it point to a potential problem with the vaccine.

Medical experts have been told to watch for any cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome during the flu pandemic as some research suggested there was a link between a flu vaccine used in America in 1976 and the condition, in which the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks part of the nervous system and can be fatal in rare cases.

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However flu itself it also linked to the condition and about one in every 100,000 people a year.

Dr Steven Black and colleagues calculated that if 10 million people in Britain were vaccinated there would be around 22 cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome and six cases of sudden death would be expected to occur within six weeks of vaccination as coincident background cases.

Just over nine million people in priority groups, such as pregnant women and those with long-term illnesses, and another two million front line health and social care workers will be offered the vaccine in Britain over the next two months.

Decisions will be taken soon over whether to offer the vaccine more widely.

The research also suggested that 397 per one million vaccinated pregnant women would be predicted to have a spontaneous abortion within one day of vaccination.

But this is the rate of spontaneous abortion that would occur on any given day out of a group of one million pregnant women during a vaccination campaign or not.

Dr Black wrote: “Misinterpretation of adverse health outcomes that are only temporally related to vaccination will not only threaten the success of the pandemic H1N1 influenza vaccine programme, but also potentially hinder the development of newer vaccines.

“Therefore, careful interpretation of vaccine safety signals is crucial to detect real reactions to vaccine and to ensure that temporally related events not caused by vaccination do not unjustly affect public opinion of the vaccine.

“Development and availability of data banks that can provide locally relevant background rates of disease incidence are important to aid assessment of vaccine safety concerns.”

The researchers said although scientists know that events connected only be time does not prove cause and effect, the cases ‘nonetheless raise public concern’.

Prof David Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk, University of Cambridge and Co-Director of Straight Statistics, said: “What a fine paper. If millions of people are vaccinated then just by chance we can expect bad things to happen to some of them, whether it’s a diagnosis of autism or a miscarriage.

“By being ready with the expected numbers of chance cases, perhaps we can avoid overreaction to sad, but coincidental, events. And why don’t we ever see a headline ‘Man wins lottery after flu jab’?”

Professor Robert Dingwall, University of Nottingham, said: “The difference between cause and coincidence is difficult enough for specialists to grasp, let alone the wider public.

“However, this paper is very important in spelling out the fact that just because two events happen at the same time, they are not necessarily related. There is a background rate of death, disease and accidents that happen all the time regardless of what medical interventions are going on.

“Confusing cause and coincidence may lead to serious policy mistakes that put people unnecessarily at risk.

“I am sure that some coincidences will emerge from a high-profile vaccination campaign and we must be careful not to be misled by them.”

Meanwhile the World Health Organisation said that pregnant women could be immunised with any of the vaccines licensed for use against swine flu.

Dr Marie-Paule Keiny, from the WHO, said: “ Sage (the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts) has concluded that the safety profiles are good and recommend that pregnant women can be immunised with any of the licensed vaccines.”

The WHO also recommended that one dose was sufficient to immunise children.

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‘India, China will create New World Order’

Former governor of Reserve Bank YV Reddy delivering the Justice Konda Madhava Reddy memorial lecture on `Global Financial Crisis & Asia’ in Hyderabad.

Express News Service | Oct 31, 2009

HYDERABAD: Indicating that the US will no longer be the leader of world economy, former Rerve Bank of India governor Y Venugopal Reddy has predicted that India and China will dominate the scene. Delivering the Justice Konda Madhava Reddy Memorial Lecture on `Global Financial Crisis and Asia’ at AV College here today, he said return to normalcy at the end of the recession need not mean return of the old world economic order.

“Asian economy suffered less and is recovering faster than the rest of the world as both India and China managed to strike macro-economic balance.

India scored over other countries with efficient balancing between savings and investments due to its conservative nature,’’ he said and accused developed countries like the US for consuming more than they could save while other countries starved. “India can take measures to manage the crisis by defining the parameters of a new order through a process of rebalancing and withdrawl of certain extraordinary measures that can strike a financial balance. It is in a better position to wrest significant gains from globalisation than many other developing countries.’’ He suggested that India voice its concerns along with other developing countries to modify the international trading arrangements for the benefit of developing countries apart from identifying and strengthening itself.

Former Supreme Court judge Justice P Venkatrami Reddi, AP High Court Chief Justice Anil R Dave and AP State Human Rights Commission Chairman P Subhashan Reddy were among the dignitaries who attended the annual event organised by the Justice Konda Madhava Reddy Foundation.

Soros: China will emerge as winner in “New World Order”

 

“The new world order that will eventually emerge will not be dominated by the United States to the same extent as the old one. China may be able to take its place to some extent,” Soros said.

Soros: China will emerge as winner from current economic turmoil

Xinhua | Oct 30, 2009

by Mu Xuequan

Budapest, Oct. 30 (Xinhua) — Investor and philanthropist George Soros forecast in Budapest on Friday that China would emerge as the big winner of the global financial crisis.

Soros called on Chinese leaders to “rise to the occasion” and take an active role in the creation of a new multilateral financial order urgently required to reinvent the “broken international financial system.”

Soros also warned that “the worst financial crisis since WWII” may not be over. The Hungarian-born billionaire sounded a pessimistic note throughout the week and said that those who believe the global economy is stabilizing are wrong.

In the last of a week-long series of lectures on capitalism and the global financial crisis at the Central European University in the Hungarian capital, Soros spoke of disarray in the international financial system and confusion in the political arena.

Soros urged greater international cooperation and called for a reorganization of the world order to prevent a total breakdown. “The total freedom of financial capital to move around internationally has proved to be a source of instability and needs to be curbed. A new grand bargain is required,” he said, referring to the Bretton Woods conference at the end of WWII which led to the establishment of institutions such as the International Monetary Fund.

“Global markets need global regulations, but the regulations that are currently in force are rooted in the principle of national sovereignty. A new multilateral system needs to be invented that would serve the interests of both the United States and China and of course the rest of the world,” he said.

“Such an institution could then decide how to treat financial institutions that are too big to fail and would consider new rules to control capital movements,” Soros said.

The reorganization of the prevailing world order should also extend beyond the financial system and involve the United Nations, especially membership of the Security Council, Soros argues, if progress is to be made in resolving issues like global warming and nuclear proliferation.

“The process needs to be initiated by the United States but China and other developing countries ought to participate in it as equals. They are reluctant members of the Bretton Woods institutions which are dominated by countries that are no longer dominant. The rising powers need to be present at the creation of the new order to ensure that they will be active members of it. Hopefully the Chinese leadership will rise to the occasion. It is no exaggeration to say that the future of the world depends on it.”

Soros believes in the long-term the United States stands to lose the most from the recent turmoil and China is poised to emerge as the greatest winner.

“In the United States, the crisis was an internally-generated event leading to the collapse of the financial system, while China was largely insulated from the financial crisis although there was an external shock to exports. The new world order that will eventually emerge will not be dominated by the United States to the same extent as the old one. China may be able to take its place to some extent,” Soros said.

It is also in China’s interests, however, to submit to a new multilateral system, according to Soros. “In order to continue rising China must make itself more acceptable to the world, move towards a more open society, combining an increased measure of individual freedom with the rule of law.”

Sheridan Wyoming on track for the coldest October on record

Sheridan on track for record cold October

Associated Press | Oct 31, 2009

SHERIDAN, Wyo. (AP) – This month is on track to be the coldest October on record in Sheridan.

The National Weather Service says the average temperature in Sheridan so far this month has been 37.2 degrees. The previous coldest October in Sheridan was in 1969, when the average was 38.5 degrees.

Daytime high temperatures topped 60 degrees only three times this month, also a record.

Sheridan’s coldest temperature this month was a record low of 5 degrees on Oct. 9. The previous record for that date was 16 degrees, set in 1993.