Princess Diana is sending message to Naomi Watts (and other delsions)

In the latest news to emerge from the world of “Hollywood”, formerly sensible across Naomi Watts claims she has had messages from the late Princess to confirm that it’s alright for her to play the part of Diana in the upcoming film about her life.

 

Apparently Ms Watts has confirmed that she "felt Diana's presence during the film. I asked her if I could carry on - and she gave me permission”.

 

What absolute tosh.

 

That actors are somewhat deluded will not come as much of a surprise to most people. That they are now also able to liaise with the dead is a more unexpected development. However, before we snigger up our sleeves, let’s recognise the commercial possibilities here, for they are endless.

 

How long now before some lucky author is contacted by Michael Jackson to ghost write his Bio – perhaps we will finally really know what happened? But why stop there? Perhaps Bach has a few more Brandenburg Concerto’s up his sleeve that he has spent the last few centuries working up. I wonder which lucky composer he might be thinking of approaching with his works.  Will Genghis Khan feel it’s about time to explain his invasion of medieval Europe to a ghost writer (no pun intended), or perhaps Cicero will tell us more about the politics of the Roman Empire. My guess is he might contact Silvio Berlusconi, a modern day emperor if there ever was one, to help him.

 

Joking aside though, the dead do not send us messages. That’s because they are dead.  Anyone who believes that they do is deluding themselves. And although Watts’s revelations are of themselves as harmless as they are silly, its unsettling that there are people who believes they are hearing messages in their heads or have some other form of supernatural guidance, telling them what to do or what to say or, most seriously of all, how to treat other people .

 

Terrible wrongs are perpetrated by those convinced of the rightness of their ways. Often grounded in delusional assumptions and beliefs, many of the world’s current problems and conflicts can be traced back to these rigidly and fanatically held views.

 

It seems there is no end in sight to the influence of these delusional views either, seemingly stretching from Watt's harmless trivialities to the killing fields of the Middle East….

 

 

PUTIN IN NEW DIVING BELL ADVENTURE

In the on-going series of exciting adventures, earlier this week our superhero, Vladimir Putin, descended to the very bottom of the dark, cruel sea (50m in the Gulf of Finland) to explore an ancient shipwreck. Once again, at great personal risk to his person, and wearing smart white trainers (as worn by other superheroes like Justin Bieber), Vlad went down to the ocean bed, looked through the 6-inch glass of his little porthole, and then went back up to the surface a few minutes later to declare another heroic triumph for ...err…himself.

This latest triumph comes hot on the heels of his other aquatic exploits in which he found an old wine bottle on the bottom of the Black Sea and shot a whale with a bow and arrow.  In other adventures, we have seen the fearless Vlad darting a tame....apologies....a wild and dangerous tiger, riding a pony whilst not wearing a shirt (which everyone knows is very daring) and courageously locking up 3 pop stars from punk outfit Pussy Riot, for singing very rude ditties in church.

Vlad will therefore have been very dismayed to learn, upon surfacing from his deep sea adventure and climbing out of his diving bell, that Pussy Riot have once again been up to all sorts of mischief whilst he was on the ocean floor, releasing a video parodying Vlad as a Russian Ayatollah, and accusing him of spreading the country's wealth amongst his political and business mates.

The latest stunt is another attempt to bolster his waning popularity as increasing numbers of  urban Russians tire of his rule and its patronages and corruption. Like so many politicians, he is unable to move with the shifting times and attitudes of those he once represented, but from whom now he only elicits scorn and derision. And with each new stunt, that level of scorn will only increase.

What a tragedy for Russia he is though. With its declining birth rates, low mortality and unreformed, economy, there is a sense that it is in long term decline. It cries out for clear farsighted leadership. It faces formidable challenges. Its educated youth are leaving. On its far south eastern borders the huge, heaving dynamo of north eastern China rises like a great, all engulfing tidal wave of progress and people that one day, given the mathematical inevitabilities of a fixed land area and a swelling population, may spill over into sparsely populated Russia on the other side of the fence (already over 1 million Chinese live over the border).

Russia is also institutionalised with corruption, rotted with bribery, as the preparation for the winter Olympics in Sochi bears witness, being the most expensive Games of all time. Its become primarily a get rich scheme for cronies of the state, the pretence of sport merely serving as the enabler for this.  Putin’s posturing and blustering on the world stage cannot hide this and avoid the sense of national decline.

Against all this, Pussy Riot may not of course pose a threat to Putin. However, they do more than create a discordant objection to his rule. Despite State persecution of them, they are back in their brightly coloured outfits, angrily unbowed by the bullying of the law. Through public performance they are openly and brazenly mocking and challenging the Russian president and all he stands for with their brash outbursts about him and his corrupt cronies, all the while figuratively and literally thumbing their noses at his fading aura of authority. Such outrages would have been unthinkable in Soviet times; times after which Putin yearns.

Yet the Riot is, in a way, symbolic of a wider movement in Russia that is losing its fear of it's once mighty president. As the protests against him continue, and as his attempts to portray himself as a nationalistic, macho super hero in farcical adventure videos fail, so Putin risks becoming ever more bitter and dangerous. Personal ambition, arrogance and corruption will be mixed in with increasing public ridicule and protest. All risk coming to the boil eventually in the same political pot.

For us in the West, in our easy, human rights protected democracies and, by comparison, well cushioned welfare state societies (despite austerity), we have long since forgotten the courage it takes to face down genuine tyrants on our own streets and to live in truly oppressive states. But in Russia they know well the features of that bleak landscape and the courage needed to endure and challenge it. Its epitomised by a band of punks, and by hundreds of thousands of Russians who take that courage with them onto the streets in protest.

 Also see RUSSIA: EVERYTHING CHANGES AND EVERYTHING STAYS THE SAME… and PUTIN: NOT A PUNK ROCK FAN?

Shoot-out in Jackson on the 4th of July

I have been writing this for some time, wondering when I might ever use it. Its not a normal sort of blog. However, today presents the chance. We are in Jackson, Wyoming and today it is, of course, the 4th of July. We have just watched the Jackson Independence Day celebrations, which included their famous shoot out in the town square. Shoot-outs and gun fights have passed into Wild West folk lore now, played out countless times by children growing up who are, statistically at least, almost certain never to know the real thing. So, just what might it have been like, not just to be in real a shoot out, but to be on the losing end....

SHOOT OUT

He went careering backwards, reeling through the swinging doors of the Million Dollar Saloon and out into the sudden blasting brightness of the day. He was conscious of a huge pounding in his shattered shoulder, as if he had been punched with massive force by a giant fist of rock. Damp warm crimson was spreading across his shirt and his ears echoed and rang with the numbing thunder clap of a close range pistol shot. Disorientated and bewildered, he was giddily aware of the bright blue vault of the empty sky and the blinding focus of the sun swivelling wildly above his head. He felt his feet start to go.

For a moment he was weightless, almost floating, then he felt the crunch, the crash and the buckling of his legs as he collapsed in the dust of the street, then the great wave of agony as his bullet-shattered shoulder hit the hard compact red earth. Out of the corner of his eye he watched his hat roll slowly away from him in the rising dust before it too toppled over. Pain now washed over him in great pulsing waves.

 Dimly he was aware of shouting, of another emerging through the swinging doors, and of sudden menace once more standing tall and powerful before him. He felt his concentration, and awareness start to fragment and drift as his grip on lucidity loosened. He heard voices urging restraint. He heard the canter of hooves nearby, more shouting and a woman's voice somewhere in the crowd.

Then for a brief moment, he seemed to be somewhere else. Powerful memories pulled him away from the terrible present. For some reason he remembered his father from all those years ago, picking him up and putting him on a horse for the first time when he he had been no more than a small boy. The word "Pa" seemed to creep up from somewhere deep and far away inside him. His lips opened, as if to release it into the air, whilst his arm sought to stretch out for a fading memory of a time long before.

Then he was again  aware of that terrible shadowed figure before him, seemingly impossibly tall, raising its arm whilst the world seemed to stop. Overhead a solitary bird; motionless in the vastness of an empty sky.  Then,  another thunder clap like the world ending, and he knew no more....

Written between London and Jackson, Wyoming.

UFO desk closes and some deliciously silly rumours.....

 If you thought the Greek Government's recent  shutting down of its national broadcaster was a bit drastic, it has nothing on this shocking revelation.. For the UK Department of Defence announced last week that it had shut down its UFO desk (employees: 2)!  In 2009!  We have been defenceless for 4 years and civilisation has been on the brink, blind and unprotected from invading aliens and reptiles from Planet X (arrival delayed).

The Desk had apparently been in operation for 50 years. After half a century of investigation into UFO reports it has drawn the not terribly surprise conclusion that there is not in fact anything to investigate ( apart from a number of mistakenly identified Chinese lanterns in Yorkshire)

This will be a bitter disappointment to many and in response we should probably see a spike in UFO sittings as ufologists, not to mention slighted UFO pilots, angrily protest at their declared redundancy, no doubt smelling government cover-ups and all manner of suspicious behind the scenes manoeuvring. After all, this sinister announcement has come just after the meeting of the Bilderberg Group and the G8, well known for their intergalactic dabbling and hostility to aliens, especially the tax dodging variety these days.  It's also suspiciously contemporaneous with all those leaks from Mr Snowden about how the US has been spying on us and reading all our emails.

Now, I'd hate to be one to start any unfounded rumours, but could Mr Snowden be about to reveal some new new groundbreaking facts about Area 51, e mails from outer space and aliens running the British Department of Defence?

Remember, you read it here first.......

JULIAN ASSANGE REAPPEARS

Over the past few days, Mr Julian Assange has oozed his way back into the headlines, managing to find a small patch of unoccupied media space, not too blood stained, in which to tell the now largely uninterested world of his struggles for justice (or more correctly how to avoid it).

 

What has triggered his reappearance? Was it his excitement at Lady Gaga, that icon of liberty and free speech, popping in for tea? Perhaps he thinks the NSA whistle-blower, Edward Snowden might soon be joining him? Or perhaps it was his excitement at words of support from no lesser figure than John Pilger, that man of letters, beacon of moderation and giant of intellectual prowess, who has accused President Obama of “being at war with truth-tellers and the world”.  At war with the world?! I must have blinked and missed that. Perhaps the mighty Mr Pilger could tempt timid Barack into doing something about Syria in that case…..

But back to Julian Assange.  Between numbing reports of horrific slaughter in Syria that rank almost beyond comprehension and other tales of mass demonstrations and brutal police repression in Turkey and so on, a rather sallow, greasy looking Assange emerged from his figurative bolt hole from justice, also known as the London Ecuadorian Embassy. He declared he would stay where he was for a further 5 years if need be and refuse to face accusation of allegedly sexually assaulting two women (or in his rather fevered imagination, threats of extradition to the USA to face charges of leaking its secrets). But why now – has the bulb in his sun tan lamp blown, or perhaps his hosts are getting tired of his presence?

Ecuador, who have given asylum to Assange in a strange fit of preoccupation with the right to free speech (as long as it’s not exercised in Ecuador), declared, with rather cheerful desperation, that the noxious Assange might even stay so long in their embassy that he could die there.  They also asked if poor Julian might  be allowed outside into the sunshine for a bit without being arrested. Are they worried about his vitamin D depletion?  Anyway, since the sun has not been seen in London since about 2010 this seemed a rather optimistic request to say the least.

When one thinks of the scale of suffering in places like the aforementioned Syria, to have to listen to Mr Assange bleating on about his (self-imposed) living conditions in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, it's enough to make you feel like agreeing to his request. Let him go, put him on a plane and send him to Damascus.  

SCIENTOLOGY - IT MIGHT SEEM STRANGE BY TODAY'S STANDARDS, BUT......

Why is it called Scientology? Presumably it means the science of science, but it’s not scientific in any commonly understood sense. In that way it's not so different to any other religion, but in other ways, it is very different.

For starters it's very new, which makes it interesting. We can look back over only 6 decades at the evolution from scratch of a brand new form of belief, one that unlike others, appears not to have a specific named deity at its core.

A very brief, lay summary of Scientology’s evolution goes something like this (I think). Scientology started off as a form of psychotherapy known as Dianetics in the 1950s, developed by a writer of science fiction called L Ron Hubbard. Very simply, Dianetics was a psychoanalytical process by which individuals were able to "audit" themselves to identify past traumas. Although widely derided by the medical mainstream as quackery, it was purely secular at this stage.

It's morphing from “psychology” into a belief-system was triggered (at least in part) by people, when going through the auditing process, claiming that some of the traumatic events they believed they had identified were from past lives. This is similar to what some people believe when under hypnosis and which is often used as evidence for reincarnation.  In the early 1950s L Ron (not to be confused with the elf out of Lord of the Rings) appears to have started adapting Dianetics by incorporating into it the element of reincarnation and past lives, some claim to take advantage of the tax concessions applicable to recognised religions.

A cosmological narrative?

A tale of truly mind-boggling sci-fi like proportions was then developed to explain its origins. Until it was leaked (evidently by an angry ex-member), this was supposed to have been top secret. Scientology claims that our past lives reach back for millions of years and that...(wait for it)….billions of our descendants were brought to earth 75 million years ago in spaceships resembling DC-8s from distant planets where there was an overpopulation problem. This was done by a figure called Xenu, a tyrannical ruler of a galactic confederacy who was aided by psychiatrists (I wasn’t expecting that twist either) who tricked the over-populated with some rues about their taxation. But, on to more serious matters. Xenu killed all these billions of people by first freezing and paralysing them before the space journey and then, once earth was reached, apparently stacking them around volcanoes and detonating hydrogen bombs inside the volcanos.

This genocide then released their thetans (souls in scientology speak), which were then all “captured” somehow, sent to places resembling vast cinemas and forced to watch a sort of 3D film for 36 days and “implanted with misleading data”.

Still with me? 

And so it goes on. Hubbard’s religion parallels the development of a sci-fi novel and events contemporaneous with the times of the 1950s: Cold wars, nuclear shadows, taxation and McDonnell Douglas aircraft.

Ok, very interesting, but what it the point of all this?

The evolution of a new religion

The actual finer details of Scientology are complex and hard to follow. It's also very different to the narratives of established religions. However that is because we are witnessing, in real time, the evolution of a religion from its first uncertain steps through to it rapidly developing a philosophy over the course of a few decades.

Scientology appears to have approximately 50 000 followers. In overall terms, this is miniscule and may not constitute a critical mass to sustain it in the long term or even the decades ahead. It has been required to aggressively defend its position and to fight to sustain its tax privileges. As a new and radically different system of beliefs it is of course challenging the orthodoxy. Unsurprisingly established religions strongly reject its deeply implausible ideas. Of course, they strongly reject each other’s ideas and beliefs too.

This may be similar to what has happened previously when new religions tried to take hold. When “modern” Christianity was taking its first steps around 2500 millennia ago, it was challenging the dominant and established religions of the ancient classical world, from Greece to Rome to Egypt. In the case of the latter, this was a belief system that had existed and evolved over a period of 3 millennia. Christianity was a monotheist religion, challenging the prevailing orthodoxies that subscribed to polytheism, each normally embracing a sufficient number of gods to populate a small town. It’s easy to imagine the audacity of those early Christians suggesting, “No, you’re wrong, there aren’t 50 gods, there is only 1”. It can’t have gone down to well.

What is so interesting though is how Scientology has adopted the props of the 20th century around which to build its narrative. With space travel, nuclear annihilation, overpopulation, taxation and psychotherapy all playing a role, what we are seeing is a religion (or cult) being developed to reflect the modern world, and a cold war one at that, yet still relying upon an inevitable great cataclysm event in its foundation story. In this case, the great flood myth so common to ancient religions updated to be an ancient nuclear war.

Yet no religion can escape being a product of its time, thus its narrative cannot exceed the contemporaneous state of the world’s assumed “knowledge”. It cannot be what it does not know. Current dominant religions were developed when it was believed the earth was flat, that the sun revolved around it and that gods had magical powers over nature and the hevans. So people could come back from the dead, virgins gave birth, magic wands parted oceans and God’s servants only carried swords because, of course, guns hadn’t been invented.

Scientology 3000 AD

Suspend your disbelief (just for a second or two), imagine its 3000 AD and Scientology has grown from its current tiny following into a mainstream faith. After its first century, in which it has settled its narrative, it has endured without substantial further amendment, save only to respond to unavoidable new challenges, as  do the other long standing religions of today. It would have moved from "wild new cult" to established orthodoxy. Assuming all this, then we may find that Scientology's core beliefs will for so long have been ingrained into the mainstream that it might seem as plausible in 3000 AD as any of our current beliefs do in 2013.

Perhaps there is nothing that unusual about the trajectory of scientology's evolving story and development as a religion. It may only be following a similar course to countless religions developed before it over many millennia. The historically well documented persecution of the early Christian faith shows how hostile a reception no doubt awaited the relatively defenceless followers of all new religions and gods.  This intolerance of not just new, but sometimes only slightly differing beliefs, reaches its apogee in the bloodletting in the Middle East where competing religious ideologies settle their differing interpretations with bombs and blood (the irony of this is that they all espouse tolerance and a love of peace).

So, who is right?

Just because it’s one of the latest beliefs (at the moment), does that mean it is any less likely to be the “truth”, for every new religion or belief system must find itself in this sort of positionat the same stage in its journey.

What would the ancient Romans have thought of Christianity if they could have looked 2000 years ahead? If you were an ancient Egyptian alive today, might you wonder how for 3000 years, your countrymen believed something which by any modern standard, is such obvious, palpable nonsense.

Likewise, if you could look back 1000 years from now, what would the prevailing view be of today’s “ancient” beliefs?

Makes you think doesn’t it….

POPE EXORCISES A DEMON AND CASTS OUT COMMON SENSE

When first hearing about this, I thought he had expelled poor Silvio from Italy. But no, it was a real demon, apparently. I didn't know they still went in for that sort of thing anymore – hadn’t it been quietly phased out along with witch-burning and blood sucking leeches. But apparently not, for yesterday Pope Francis was seen to place his bare hands on the head of a disabled and troubled man in a wheelchair and perform what looked suspiciously like some kind of exorcism ritual. And it was in Saint Peter's Square too, which I thought was a bit of a cheek. Imagine that, some devil or demon daring to go into the Pontiffs front garden, so to speak, and inhabit a worshiper. Whatever next, are we safe nowhere?

 

Well, when it saw all the press reports, the Vatican clumsily sought to deny it was an exorcism and claimed the Pope had only intended to pray for the troubled man. Perhaps he had, perhaps he hadn't, who knows. Far more likely than demon possesion though is some kind of mental affliction for which prayer, exorcism and other assorted forms of medieval quackery are no substitute for proper medical attention. More troubling though is that in this day and age belief in demons still exists alongside neuroscience and nanotechnology.

 

On another point, quite bizarrely every Catholic diocese is supposed to possess (whoops... no pun intended) at least one exorcism expert. Strange then that these supposed experts at identifying the manifestations of the devil have been so singularly and spectacularly unsuccessful at rooting out those evil, child molesting colleagues in their midst, many of whom have it transpires been concealed by the Church itself......

Also see "Vatican Vacancy and "The Long Shadow Of The Dark Ages"