The Thought Police are a reality, democracy is slipping further away.

Today in the news is the story of Dhiren Barot who has been sentanced to life imprisonment for plotting to carry out terrorist attacks on the UK and the US. He did not carry them out, and did not have any bomb making material. He did not possess any weapons, no organisation (terrorist or otherwise) backed his plans, but he did have a laptop computer with some electronic documents about aquiring and using terrorist items to cause chaos and mass damage.

Police have been unable to say if he was ever going to act on his plans, stating an attack "likely would have happened at some stage". This is not Guy fawkes being caught under the parliament building with a wheelbarrow full of explosives!

So in this Demonocracy of ours, where british citizens are being convicted of crime without any evidence and without having taken any action against the country, we are firmly in the territory of Thought Crime and our future as free individuals looks dim.

If you are not aware of the concept of thought criminals, it is an idea created by George Orwell and established in his novel 1984, then later expanded on in Philip K Dick's Minority Report. In the story an ordinary law abiding perosn can be convicted of a crime before it happens, the authorities taking the corruption of "normal" thoughts as direct evidence of future action. The morality of the thoughts change on a daily basis and become so petty that everyone lives in fear of thinking the wrong thing.

As in the novel it seems that for political reasons, certain individuals can now be removed from society just in case. If this is now the case, then a shit load of film makers need to be locked up for crimes against society, hundreds of musicians must be dragged from their recording studios to be put in front of a judge, authors guilty of anything slightly corrupting of the sociatal norm have to be sentanced, and I must be arrested for thinking that this is going on and publishing my thoughts on the internet.

This may or may not be a self fullfilling prophecy...

On the subject of the Plotters guilty state, he seems to have actively insighted hatred in the courtroom and is proud of his status as a terrorist wannabe. To me this suggests primarily the arrogance of youth, and maybe a delusional mind that should actually be refered for psychological treatment rather than being treated as a serious criminal. We need to know what his reasons are, we need to ask ourselves how he became this way, and we need to look at our society to see why this could have happened...