Burma

For many commentators, revelations this week that the federal government is sweeping up records of communications and transactions between millions of Americans sounds uncomfortably like the vision of the British novelist and journalist George Orwell.

His novel Nineteen Eighty-Four portrayed a society in which the state constantly tracks the movements and thoughts of individuals. Its slogan is "Big Brother Is Watching You."

"Throwing out such a broad net of surveillance is exactly the kind of threat Orwell feared," says Michael Shelden, author of Orwell: The Authorized Biography.

A truly historical literary event took place last weekend in Southeast Asia that doesn’t seem to have enjoyed quite as much attention from the Western media as it probably should have, and so we figured we’d briefly mention it here: During the first three days of February, Myanmar—the country still known to much of the world as Burma—held it’s first-ever [...]

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