Kim Jong Il returns to the Land of the Living

Miracles abound. The second Dear (departed) Leader of North Korea has returned to this mortal coil, embalmed in sweet smelling oils and other essential preservatives (of a more functional nature).  Pictures appear to show him dressed in the same sort of khaki jumpsuit he always wore (it could be a onesie of course but I’m not sure how fashionable they are in North Korea yet) He is lying there peacefully and apparently snoozing, covered in a nice bright red  blanket.

Given that Kim Jong Il has been afforded the status of a near immortal in North Korea, his reappearance so soon after his passing is presumably an event of some excitement. Perhaps his return to the land of the living is a reward for North Korea's military finally being able to launch a rocket without it falling back on top of them (see Mr Kim's expensive firework).  This same rocket also launched a satellite which was given his nickname, Kwangmyongsong, so he was probably very excited (apparently that passes for a term of endearment in North Korea, although it’s unlikely many impoverished and long suffering North Koreans feel much genuine endearment towards him).

He is also happily accepting visitors including members of the press, which is probably more than he did in life. This surely demonstrates the good, humanising effect that mortality has had on him. Well-wishers are able to spend some time in his hallowed company (not much mind you, he is a busy fellow these day). Reports are that he is not very talkative yet, and doesn't make even the most rudimentary of hand gestures.  Supplicants are expected to bow and scape at his feet before shuffling past him, as he lies there, looking slightly perma-tanned with a benevolent and wise expression on his face. He is encased in glass, a bit like a sort of horizontal pope mobile but without the wheels, and surrounded by nice flowers instead. Perhaps he doesn’t want all those well-wishers breathing all over him.

Yet, perhaps Kim's return does herald a change for North Korea. His son, and successor, Kim Jong-un (AKA Kim 3) may recognise he needs to do more to resuscitate the sclerotic North Korea economy. So, his first move was to have his father stuffed and then put on public display as some kind of macabre tourist attraction. Perhaps the next step is to charge foreign devils to gulp and gawp at the mortal remains of the repulsive old monster. Who said entrepreneurship was dead in North Korea....

Also see Three Kims for the price of one.

REAL AND VERY TERRIFYING VISITORS FROM OUTER SPACE

This is true. Ok, that’s enough to get people doubting for a start, but scientists, astronomers and NASA state quite unequivocally that next month (Feb 2013 for those still suffering mental disorientation from the last time the world ended) a very small asteroid referred to, with rather a lack of dramatic flourish, as 2012 DA14, will go whizzing past us on 15 February.

 

They are sure it will miss but it will be rather too close for comfort. At only 45m across and weighing in at 130,000 tonnes, it will still be so close that it will pass between us down here and our communication satellites up there - at a distance of just 14 000 miles above our homes, if you want to put it another way. This is closer than any other asteroid of its size in recorded history. This is so close it will be visible with binoculars, if you know where to look and are in the right place.

If it were to hit earth, it would do so with the impact of an atomic bomb.

The last significant asteroid strike was in 1908, in the middle of Siberia at a place called Tunguska. That asteroid, estimated to be about twice the size of  2012 DA14, exploded between 3 and 6 miles above the earth flattening 830 square miles of forest and about 80 million trees. It killed several thousand reindeer, but no people thanks only to the remoteness of the region. Still, it serves as a chilling warning and a remarkably lucky escape.

What would happen though, if an asteroid the size of 2012 DA14 didn’t explode in the atmosphere but struck the earth directly? What kind of impact would that mean?  The Barringer Crater in Arizona was made by a comparable asteroid of approximately 50 m diameter, and gives a good, and very chilling, example of what we could be facing. I happened to visit the impact site a couple of years ago and its a mighty impressive dent in the suface of the earth. However, in the context of 2012 DA14, its not a pleasant thought, given the size of the impact crater, to contemplate the consequences if something like that were to hit a modern city.

The last major asteroid impact, which is known as a meteorite if it gets to hit the earth, was probably about 3500 years ago. It landed in the Indian Ocean which is probably why there are so many legends of a great flood (Noah, Gilgamesh etc.) broadly contemporaneous with this event. It’s estimated that these rather large (1 mile across or more), terrifying and very real space visitors, infinitely more dangerous than UFOs and lesser-spotted aliens, arrive every 3000 years or so. Although this is of course a very crude measure, it does mean we are rather overdue another visit.

In cosmic terms 2012 DA14 is not just a near miss, it’s like a bullet taking a skin-thin wrist watch off your arm but leaving you unharmed. For all intents and purposes, you could just about reach out and scribble your name on it as it goes past. They don’t get much closer….and sooner or later, one won’t miss.

BAD PRESS

After returning from a 2 week holiday in Thailand, I couldn't understand why I felt so good. Ok, you always feel pretty relaxed after a good holiday, and no, before anyone asks, it's wasn't the calming and relaxing after effects of any massages.

Well, the good weather played a part, and the food was fantastic, but, it was something more than that, that strangely Zen-like feeling of being at peace with the world. Was it the lingering after effects of visiting too many temples and contemplating all those reclining Buddhas?

No, it was none of the above. I discovered what it was when I walked into the first News Agent the very day we got back.  There they were, all lined up on the news rack....the British papers. The therapeutic effects of being largely separated from these vile publications had been immeasurably positive.

Shattering all my inner calm were those headlines, randomly screaming, choking, fuming and fulminating about everything and anything. Winter was too wet...winter wasn't cold enough….but Arctic freezes were being predicted (the worst for years).  Elsewhere they were ranting about Government austerity. Savage cuts to the welfare state, inhuman and cruel ministers deliberately targeting the poor and unemployed, fumed a couple of red tops. At the same time another rag raged and wept about welfare cheats being paid too much benefit and the Government's totally pathetic attempts to cut the deficit by insisting on paying excessive money to these lay abouts. Balanced, sensible reporting? Forget it.

Others choked and fumed about Europe.  “Too much of it” howled some. “Not enough of it” shrieked another, with such anger I could almost imagine the foam flecked and rabid editor hammering at his or her keyboards with their clenched fists. A couple made furious and indignant demands for a referendum so we could all leave the Eurozone for some imaginary red-tapeless free-market nirvana. In response others made loud and dire, horror-filled warnings about what would happen if we did and that economic Armageddon waited where we should surely abandon all hope.

Almost every story, subject matter regardless, it seems is reviewed through the most twisted, miserable of prisms; facts are used as selectively as possible so as to mislead, confuse and depress the reader. Everything is subject to maximum distortion, skewed through the politically myopic lens of the publication regardless of which end of the political spectrum it finds itself. And the irony of it all, is that every day they are served up for us, as regular as breakfast, their captured and well cultivated readership-fodder, who in our near bovine-like state, cough up the pennies or pounds required to buy or download then read their despairing and twisted content.

Yes, I know the price of a free press is having to put up with all the bile and nonsense they churn out incessantly. But, for a New Year resolution, I thought I would try to avoid these wretched and poison spreading feasts of misery for a bit. I'll stick to the sports section (as long as it’s not Arsenal winning) and read Private Eye instead. Anything to extend that lingering, post holiday calm for a bit.....
 

When people start to do really bad things....

On 14 December 2012 a maniac, Adam Lanza, in Newtown Connecticut went on a shooting spree that left over 20 children and 6 teachers dead. At the same time a similarly incomprehensible event took place in China, where one Min Yongjun stabbed 23 children, including chopping one child’s ears off. Last year, in Norway, in an act of terrible violence, a smiling Behring Breivik went on a shooting spree killing 69 people at a Youth Camp; this after bombing a government building earlier in the day, where 8 died.

 

Violence committed against children is probably the easiest and least contentious to classify as horrific and of inexcusable evil. But what about other acts? What about suicide bombers? The victims are almost always random, and are as likely to include children as not. It seems we live in a world where we are not yet able to explain, scientifically/ medically, why these sorts of things happen.

 

Some, on the face of it, might appear easier to explain, if not justify. A suicide bomber has presumably been brainwashed into believing whole sale slaughter and sacrifice will lead to a positive outcome for him or her, both in terms of the cause they support and for them personally as individuals. In these cases, personal dysfunction has met collective dysfunction as morally and intellectually bankrupt ideologies confront the 21 century and are exposed by its immense challenges and realities. Classification of them as lunatics or fanatics is easy, truly understanding what turn individuals into these killers is not so simple, but it is becoming increasingly important that science is able to do so.

 

Take Youngjun above, a severe epileptic. Local Chinese Government reports say he had been “strongly psychologically affected” by the wave of ridiculous speculation and hype about the end of the world on 21 December. If this somehow triggered his horrifying attacks, then in retrospect, could this ever have been predicted? At the very least, his and the others acts should focus our attention on the science of mental instability, and specifically, what genetic, environmental or sensory triggers, internal or external, can suddenly compel people to behave like this.

 

This is becoming increasingly important, because the world is becoming an ever more challenging environment in which to exist, both for individuals and collectively. Our ways of life are changing faster than at any previous time in the history of the human race. And it is these changes, which as they speed up and multiply, it will prove ever more difficult for dysfunctional individuals, communities and the more conservative sectors of society to adjust in future.

 

As individuals, we are facing pressures and challenges that simply did not exist just a few generations ago and for which perhaps our current state of evolution is going to leave us increasingly unprepared. As technology arcs at increasing speed up a curve of progress tending towards the vertical, it draws lifestyles, social behaviours, economies and all sorts of issues which influence us along in its slipstream. It seems highly likely that the speed of this transformation will mean that increasing numbers of us, individually and collectively are destined to be left stumbling in its wake as it accelerates away from us.

 

For instance, in the east, the move from an agrarian society to an urbanised one has taken place in a generation; it took place at a much slower more measured pace in Europe (although still quickly). In East Asia and China a generation is emerging from universities with degrees in computer science that will have grandparents, if not even parents, who worked in an agrarian economy. Although this illustrates just one particular aspect of this huge process of global change, clearly just from this we can see how the scale of economic and social transformation is simply breath-taking.

 

Change on this scale and at this pace can only have major implications for the societies experience them, and indirectly, on all of us regardless. How as individuals we respond is going to be increasingly difficult to predict. The impact upon established norms of behaviour will become increasingly powerful (and disruptive), and how those mentally "less able to cope" respond (and I don't mean those who we might currently classify as suffering from any mental condition) may seem to be increasing dysfunctional.

 

The same will apply to societies and social groups who find sacred and cherished beliefs and perspectives challenged, even overwhelmed. The manner of their reaction cannot always be known or predicted yet, in one small and chilling illustration of this risk, the recent attack by the Taliban on a Pakistani teenage girl for promoting the right of girls to attend school, demonstrates how ridged and backward ideologies react to perceived changes to their status quo.

 

I am not for a moment suggesting in any way that the terrible killings or acts mentioned above, can simply be blamed on poorly managed lunatics' inability to cope with accelerating technology or medieval mind-sets confronting reality.

 

It may be though, and this is the somewhat obscure point to the blog I guess, in the years ahead an inability to adapt smoothly to what will become a technological, social, economic and political tsunami that gets faster and faster, may see increasingly frequent acts of dysfunctional and often tragic behaviour. This will be from the swelling numbers of individuals, groups and communities whose coping mechanisms have become redundant in a world that is overwhelming all that they understand and whose speed of endless transformation means their previously manageable and understood ways of life are vanishing before their eyes. 

Also see "Future Shock"

Does Russian Prime Minister Medvedev believe in UFOs and the end of the World?

When asked during a very recent interview (08 December) on Russian Television, the Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev advised his incredulous audience that “the president of the country is given a special 'top secret' folder. This folder in its entirety contains information about aliens who visited our planet."

No doubt this caused more than a frisson of excitement to go rippling through the already over-excited ranks of those eagerly and morbidly preparing for the world to end on 21 December 2012. On that day all sort of terrible things are due to happen as we have been informed with more than a touch of sadistic glee by those somehow in the know. The Mayan calendar is ending (shocked gasps all round) and a rogue planet called, somewhat unimaginatively, “X”, and peopled by zombies…sorry,…alien reptiles (note to self…get facts right!) is just going to miss us (which I thought would be cause for relief but evidently not).

Now it seems a volcano in Yellowstone is also going to join the fun and erupt (which is most annoying as we were planning to go on holiday there next year). I hear reports of other terrible, yet unconfirmed happenings too, including Arsenal moving closer to winning the FA Cup and the Pope supporting gay marriage (ok, the last one is the most unlikely of the lot) converging on this day. No wonder there is global panic.

Then, to add to all this awful worry and just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, Mr Medvedev confirms to the world that the aliens are already here – perhaps an advanced raiding and reconnaissance party? He didn’t clarify. I wonder what Mr Putin is going to do about it as Russian President – perhaps he has challenged them to a karate contest? Is there is a cover up?

Well, does Mr Medvedev knows more than he is letting on? More information is available, he dead panned, “from a well-known movie called 'Men In Black' ... I will not tell you how many of them are among us because it may cause panic".

Don’t say you weren’t warned….
also see Starmap-of-doom-aliens-asteroids and The long shadow of the dark ages

Motorhead: 100 things to do before you die

Last weekend I survived another Motörhead concert. I’ve been a fan of the band for more than 30 years, which amounts to a great deal of sonic abuse over the decades.

A Motörhead concert is a unique experience, perhaps worthy of inclusion in those lists of 101 things to do before you die. The volume is pulverising, and the crowd is a seething, heaving sea of people seemingly plugged into another wavelength. It is like no other concert, it is like no other place on earth, it is Motörhead live.

Formed in 1975 just before the birth of the UK punk movement, Motörhead were outsiders from the get-go and, in truth, nothing has changed after all the years. Band founder  Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister has passed during that period, from being a rock and roll joker through to a counter culture icon. Motörhead are called after a song of the same name penned by Lemmy. The song epitomised the band at the time, which epitomised a lifestyle and outlook that seemed almost impossibly excessive and over-the-top in every respect:

 

“Sunrise wrong side of another day
 Sky-high and six thousand miles away
 Don't know how long I've been awake”


Motörhead's music however is much misunderstood; casual observers (if that’s the right word to use when referring to those confronted with the band’s sonic blizzard) experience only a loud, if not shocking aural assault. But Lemmy traces his roots back to the music of the 1950s and 60s and the band’s music is based upon, an admittedly very heavy very fast form of, pure rock ‘n roll, infused with a dose of blues that might even have had Robert Johnson smiling:

 I seen 'em come, & I seen 'em go,
 I seen things & been people, that nobody knows
 I'm talking in pictures and I'm painting them black,
 I seen Satan coming honey in a big black Cadillac

The magic, or perhaps even the genius, of the band is something that is hard to define. The uncompromising, jagged sonic tsunami that is Motörhead combines a surprisingly accomplished range of lyrics that go careering across the exploding landscape of the music. Lemmy writes about those issues which preoccupy him most, from that trio of sacred cows: war, politics (he doesn’t like them) and religion, to his personal demons, and, of course, his memories. He writes as the outsider, as someone who has never been part of the normal world that you and I inhabit and when he rasps out the poetry of his philosophies, it is often a thing of dark tortured beauty, even sadness. It is all this which adds the unique, often hidden dimensions to the band’s music that simply cannot be appreciated by those who only hear a loud noise, from a strange looking man.

Death in the stars, rain on the wind,
 Came to the mission, couldn't get in,
 Came out of nowhere, guess I'll go back,
 All down to bad luck,

Fire in the sky, nowhere to run,
 Came to the desert, burned by the sun,
 Came out of somewhere, I ain't never been back,
 All down to bad luck

With Johnny Cash’s death nearly 10 years ago it is Lemmy who has now ascended to that strangley popular pedestal Cash occupied. Like Cash, it is Lemmy who has now become the iconic rebel, but somehow with an image softened by a public affection that transcends boundaries and generations. Lemmy is 67 (next month), now only four years behind Cash. For all that Lemmy seems near indestructible he seems to recognises the limits of time and age in his profession in his typically uncompromising way:

 

“Stay on the right track, you can't live a lie
Make sure you don't come back, look me in the eye
Know I ain't no angel, broken wings don't fly
I know the law, I know how to die”

 

Yet, towards the end of his career, it is now that he has gained the recognition, whether sought out on not, for what he has done, and not “sold his soul” to become. Motörhead and Lemmy have escaped the cloying gravity of fickle, transient media opinions, chart fashion and record label pressure. He is his own man; there is no need for shallow posturing, no one left to impress, no corporate schmoozing. His music remains brutal, un-tempered and honest, yet it is sometimes strangely fragile, sad and bittersweet, the reminiscing of a hard life on the road, of times, faces and places long gone.

This is music written to rupture the sweet dream we have been sold, where the only reward is obsolescence and a fading promise of an eternal life somewhere else when the shutters come down ….

…I have nothing but the world
 I have nothing to take its place
 I don't believe a word, I don't believe a word...

At nearly 67, Lemmy has joined a small unique group of musicians who have  escaped the straight-jacket categorization of their generation. It’s inevitable now that he looks back, not just on times good, but with the haunted memories of dark times too,

…..Out of the night comes a song that I know
 Twisted and ruined and black….

And the tragedy of the wasted lives of those now long passed on. The dark pain and poignancy uncurls itself in band’s the harsh guttural anthems:

….I can remember the people they were
 Nobody knows if they ever come back
 Lost in the ashes of time they still sing
 Echoes of romance gone bad
 I can remember them better than you
 I shared the darkness they had
 Dead and gone, dead and gone”

But the real thrill is of course seeing Motörhead live. Standing there, the very clothes you wear vibrating against the crushing volume, the giant reverb like a second heart beat beneath your skin, physically feeling that you can lean forward at 45 degrees into the sonic wall coming at you; shouting out the words to songs that vanish wordlessly into the hurricane of sound. And all the while, carried irresistibly along on the giant pulsing, overwhelming surge of the music, the heavy fast moving waves of primordial, crashing musical thunder rolling across the crowds, washed in strobe and blinding neon, and for a few precious moments, nothing matters any more.....

INNOCENT UNTIL FOUND GUILTY BY JOURNALISM

The current fits of guilt, fury and outrages swirling around the BBC are the latest symptom of the dilemma posed by and for traditional media in the early 21 century. There is an increasingly sinister confluence where objective news reporting seems to have been overwhelmed by the subjective, dark art of “news analysis” and the commercial imperative to “break the story first”. To this add the frenzy around the hunt for ratings and audience reach and the media’s seeming intoxication with its own sense of importance in the affairs of the world.

Following the recent scandal around the late Jimmy Saville, an allegedly notorious paedophile, last week the BBC’s (formerly) respected News Night programme found itself in very hot water(again) by “outing” a senior political figure in all but name, and accusing him of paedophilia. Incorrectly. Without any reliable evidence. Without checking their story properly. Without giving the target of their attack even the courtesy of a response before airing their fictions. In complete disregard for even the most basic tenants of fairness and proper journalism.
 

Only days ago ITV also pulled a similarly shameful stunt where a shoddy and dubious list of alleged paedophiles was compiled by one of their “allegedly serious” presenters quickly searching the Internet for a few minutes and then chucking his “list” at the UK prime minister in a live television interview. This stunt was no more than shameless media bandwagon jumping and political game playing where trying to embarrass politicians is now the emblem of the serious news reporter. In this instance it backfired spectacularly, although the wretched ITV presenter in question will probably exercise a little more care and humility in future, given the volume of opprobrium he has so deservedly brought down on his head.

However, what journalists and news reporters are managing to do is rather amazing. They are on the verge of making themselves even more reviled than politicians – no easy task. And that is surely not as it should be. Yes, much of the media is probably over-powerful, irresponsible, arrogant and on the evidence, even out of control in many cases. Yet, in so many countries, it is the media that is the first line in defence against governments and other powerful organisations that would otherwise abuse their power without fear. It is the media’s spotlight that corrupt officials fear most. It is the media that exposes wrongdoing, crime, waste and inefficiency, oppression and state violence. Just think of Syria and Libya. In oppressive states, it is journalists that often suffer threats and violence for seeking to expose wrongdoing and abuse.  In this sense its value is hard to over-state. Yet there is a nagging worry about the media's own immense power too, for surely power corrupts all its handlers equally and none are immune.

About the most unfashionable thing to point out at the moment is that Jimmy Saville would have been considered innocent until properly proven guilty. Saville would also have had the right to a fair trial in a sober court of law. He may have been the world’s most monstrous paedophile and found to be so – but once we make exceptions to that right we are on a slippery slope.  That a man like Saville would still have had that right is the best guarantee of all our rights to such a fair process.

There is a risk now that people, more than ever before, are being judged in the inferno of hysterical headlines and disgraceful journalistic posturing. The role of the media is pivotal to the proper functioning of civil society. However, it has no role whatsoever in the weighing of evidence and the passing of judgement  under the law and should be scrupulously careful not to undermine this, one of the most basic and fundamental right in a free society.