Psychic Predictions: 2010

On Mount Sinai, Moses heard disembodied commandments while on Mount Hira, Muhammad spoke to the Archangel and in his front room, Craig Hamilton-Parker of the Psychics & Mediums Network has been hearing voices telling him of what will unfold in 2010.
As Mr Hamilton-Parker and his wife, Jane, have appeared on numerous television programmes, have written 15 books on the subject and charge £1.50 per minute (credit cards accepted) per telephone call to contact your dead relatives, they also describe themselves as 'the most accurate and sincere mediums working in Britain today' so we should expect good things from their 2010 predictions.

So after staring into the swirling mists of the next twelve months, the Hamilton-Parker team offer us these predictions:

1. Bin Laden dies.
2. MP caught in indecent act in public toilet.
3. Secret human cloning experiment attempts to clone famous person.
4. X factor (UK) in 2010 will be won by a group of friends who were choir boys together.
5. Iran gives up its quest for a nuclear bomb.
6. Celebrity is kidnapped and a ransom demand made.
7. Barack Obama expresses an interest in holistic healing and ‘world healing’ becomes a dominant theme and key phrase to his 2010 speeches.
8. Higher than normal tremors on San Andreas fault line.
9. The last Big Brother series (UK) ends with tragedy as someone on set is seriously hurt.
10.Japanese bullet train terrorist attack attempt is foiled.

So avoid the Bullet train, South California and any public toilets if a Member of Parliament is in there. I shall return later in the year to see how many the Hamilton-Parkers have got right.

Psychic Predictions 2009: The Review

Almost the end of the year so time to look back and see how the mediums of One World Psychics got on with their predictions for 2009.

1. There will be an assassination attempt on Barack Obama. Nope
2. Gordon Brown will be forced out of office and an early election will be called. Wrong again, the big lump is still there.
3. A dam will burst in the Far East – maybe China. Not as far as i know
4. Victoria Beckham will become pregnant with a daughter. The only baby she was seen with this year was her husband David.
5. There will be a knife attack on a top celebrity. Didn't hear of one.
6. Tsunami in Asia or perhaps an earthquake possibly in Malaysia. No big wave or houses shaken in either places.
7. Funerals for Bill Cosby and Robbie Williams and a close call for Nicole Kidman. Bill is still not being funny, Robbie is still making naff songs and the only call Nicole got was from the Church of Scientology asking for their books back.
8. A serious terrorist attack in the UK and less serious attacks in Germany. Although there are plenty of people wanting to blow us and the Germans up, none did it this year.
9. Obama's first year overshadowed by a scandal involving his wife's financial dealings. Overshadowed by not actually changing anything, but not by his wife's money dealings.

10. A large number of C of E bishops convert to Catholicism simultaneously. Close, the Pope made an offer to C of E members to cross over to Catholicism but no mass conversion as yet.

11. Kate Winslett to win an Oscar for best actress. She did. Well done.

One and a half out of 11 which is still a bit rubbish seeing as they are supposed to have a direct link to the future but better than the last few years when they bottomed out completely. Still rubbish though.

The Noughties: Palestine & Israel

After the initial hope during the Camp David talks in 2000, Israelis and Palestinians descended yet again into murderous waves of violence with the suicide bombings of the second intifada following Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Mount Temple at the start of the decade to the horrific aerial bombardment of Gaza at the end.
Yasser Arafat died amidst many conspiracy theories of Israeli involvement while his nemesis, Ariel Sharon, fell into a coma and is now locked into a vegetative state.
Hamas democratically came to power and were instantly ostracised while Israel continued their settlements expansion on Palestinian land, conducted military incursions and assassinations inside Palestine and constructed a wall to pen the Palestinians, and the suicide bombers, inside.
While support for Israel stayed strong in America, its already poor reputation elsewhere plummeted following the Lebanon conflict and then the devastating bombing of Gaza in 2009 which was officially in response to the Hamas rockets landing in Israel but was widely believed to concern the then upcoming Israeli election which returned Benjamin Netanyahu to power.
The Goldstone report for the UN labelled both the Palestinian and Israel leadership guilty of war crimes and heavily criticised Israel for its violations of international law and crimes against humanity in its policies towards the Palestinian people before and during the conflict.
At the end of 2009 we don't seem any closer to a lasting peace then we did in 2000 despite the intervention of Barack Obama and Israels Ally America, to oversee a peace deal. Palestinians and Israelis are still dying, truces come and go and any criticism of Israel is still shouted down with cries of anti-semitism although the sting has been neutered by over use in trivial cases.
What has changed is that Israel is increasingly seen as the country with billions of aid given to it by the world largest military power bullying, bombing and shooting at the poverty stricken desert people barely able to feed themselves.
The noughties saw Israel trying hard, and failing, to justify the continuation of its policies of the past 60 years towards Palestine to the rest of an increasingly sceptical world.

The Noughties: Climate Change

Back in 2000, climate change was down the list of concerns for the new century. Outside of Green and Environmentalist circles, it was one of those subjects that people acknowledged but as green as they got was to fill up their cars with unleaded petrol.
Something happened between the start and the end of the decade because now it's ringing alarm bells at the top of the International agenda.
One man who must take a bow is Al Gore and his 'An Inconvenient Truth' film. He gave some gravitas to the catastrophe that environmentalists warned we had been sleep walking into for years.
Suddenly, it seemed that people began taking notice of the science and the warnings of the crisis the planet faced if we continued on the current path.
The worldwide floods, hurricanes, heatwaves, fires and droughts began to come into focus and the drip drip of scientific data struck a chord, especially when the European heatwave claimed 30,000 lives and brought it much closer to home.
More studies linked weather extremes to man-made emissions although cynics claimed warming was natural or linked to sunspots but still the science continued to hammer away at the consciousness with the Met office announcing that 11 of the last 13 years had been the warmest on record and the 2,000 UN climate scientists of the IPCC announcing that climate change was man-made.
China officially overtook the US as the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter in 2008 and the image of the polar bear on rapidly shrinking ice flows became the standard.
Recently we had Copenhagen where the Worlds biggest emitters came together to 'Save the Planet' before it was too late. Nothing came of it but at least it raised awareness of the problem even further.
The sceptics and those with an agenda continue to put out disinformation about the science behind climate change, some just flatly denying it is even happening, but the wheels are in motion and the momentum should see us limit the amount of damage we have wreaked upon our home.
It may not be enough and the force of nature will see more deaths and destruction as the planet reacts to our actions but we have made great strides in this past decade and at least we have the small comfort of knowing that it won't be as bad as it could have been although worse then it would have been if people had been paying attention a decade earlier.

The Noughties: Religion

Religion plays no part in my life or in the lives of the wide majority of Brits in general but God and his kin seemed to have a renaissance period during the 2000's.
It always seemed to hold sway with most of the Middle East and with large swathes of people in America but with the introduction of George W Bush to the Presidential seat in 2000, religion made a comeback.
To my ears it always sounds strange hearing a leader mentioning God in his addresses and Blair successfully managed to hide his faith from the public for a long time but when it was revealed, he was roundly mocked as a religious nutter.
The zenith seemed to be when George Bush told Mahmoud Abbas "God told me to strike at Al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East'.
With Al Qaida claiming the same God telling them to declare Holy War against the West, it became very confusing to work out whose team he was on as both claimed they were carrying out his wishes.
Islam was thrust into the spotlight after the World Trade Towers attack and the Koran was dissected by Westerners looking for proof of its evil intentions. Muslims, regardless of their beliefs, were all tarred with the same brush and widely vilified while attacks on Jews increased with Israels actions in Lebanon and Palestine throughout the decade.
Christians and Muslims seemed to be at loggerheads with both accusing the other of atrocities, the Iraq and Afghanistan war seen by the residents in those areas as a modern day crusade.
The idea of Intelligent Design was offered up as was Scientology with its idea that souls reincarnate and have lived on other planets before living on Earth.
Because of the brief resurgence of religion and the 150th Anniversary of Charles Darwin 'Origin of Species', high profile Atheists stepped up to proclaim the demise of God with increasing assertiveness. Best selling books from authors such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens stuck the boot in even harder as did the Atheist bus campaign that told us that there's probably no God now stop worrying and enjoy your life.
Religious intolerance from all sides raged throughout the 2000's and with fatal consequences in many cases which seems to keep it on the trajectory of religion being hijacked by fundamentalists and proving to be the problem and not the cure.

The Noughties: 9/11

It's not only the end of the year but as the year ends in a 9, it's also the end of the decade so we can expect to read lots of lists about the best and worst of things over the last 10 years.
The first thing that comes to mind when i look back at the decade just gone is the 2001 World Trade Centre attack. The fallout from that day shaped the rest of the decade in almost every conceivable way.
Such was it's impact that it wouldn't do it justice to include it in a post with other events from the last ten years. It defined and overwhelmed the decade entirely.
It spawned the 'War on Terror', distanced the United States under the administration of George W Bush from a large portion of the rest of the World, fatally wounded the premiership of Tony Blair and left so many people dead and dying that the number is counted in the hundreds of thousands.
Within less than a month of the atrocity, the bombs were falling on Afghanistan although the White House focus had always been on an even more controversial target, Saddam Hussein and Iraq.
With the Afghanistan War underway, Bush and Blair embarked upon on a massive effort using spin and deception to persuade the public that the trail of guilt for 9/11 somehow led to Baghdad, an argument that fractured long held global alliances.
Despite Bush standing beneath a banner declaring 'Mission Accomplished' in 2003, the continuation of the Iraq and Afghan wars cast a long shadow over the entire decade. Bush won a second term much to our surprise but the depth of feeling against the war in the UK, along with confirmation that Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction as warned, broke public trust in Blair and saw him bounced out of power by his own party with the lowest ever ratings for a Labour Prime Minister.
All the while, 9/11 instigator Osama Bin Laden remained, and remains, at large and terrorists have attacked and killed in Madrid, Bali, Mumbai and London.
American troops are still in Iraq whose citizens face suicide missions and truck bombs on an increasing scale while Afghanistan is a killing field and the decade of war there has achieved nothing and only transplanted the disease to Pakistan.
At the end of the decade, terrorism is more of a threat than ever, Iraqis are being massacred by an enemy that was not there prior to our intervention and as the western troops death count rises, we are making plans to cut and run from Afghanistan and leave it to it's horrendous fate as we did in Iraq.
Hopes were high that the new American President would bring some sense to proceedings but with his decision to expand the war in Afghanistan by sending in a further 30,000 troops, the events of 2001 look as though they will continue long into the next decade.

So Here It Is, Merry Christmas

I have no problem wishing a Merry Christmas to anyone whether they are Christian, Atheist, Jehovah Witness or Muslim.

Never has anyone who doesn't celebrate Christmas said to me that they were offended or explained that they won't actually be celebrating it. Every time they have replied back in kind or said something about enjoying the break from work.

Not that i am being deliberately belligerent, just handing them a kind, warm sentiment because i do hope that regardless of what you believe, or don't believe, i hope you have an enjoyable time over the Christmas period so Merry Christmas to everyone, i hope you all have a great time.

Except for the bankers. I hope they have a rotten Christmas.

Everyone else, have a good one and see you the other side of Boxing Day.

Christmas Number 1

Welcome back to Christmas Hits of the past.
This next piece comes in 6 movements, 5 verses and 2 choruses and a middle 8 and its fascinating to note how the composer, Mr Zack de la Rocha, blends the electronic bass with the lyrics as they begin, 'Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me'.

Once again we have seen the power of the internet to stick two fingers up to the establishment, in this case Simon Cowell and his annual hijacking of the Christmas number one.
Rage Against the Machine would not be my first choice of song to stiff Cowell with at Christmas, personally i would have chosen something that at least had a few jingle bells in it or one of the classic guitar anthems like Teenage Kicks or Holiday in Cambodia if that was the direction i had to go.
This also has the added bonus of stopping the instantly dislikeable Miley Cyrus, whose song it was originally, from any reflected glory. Double bubble as the young people say.
Rage Against the Machine have pledged to give all profits of the single to the homelessness charity Shelter, and will perform a free victory gig in the UK to thank those who bought their single.
The defeated Joe McElderry is taking some time off to ponder his next move which is widely expected to include a South Shields job Employment Office.
Well done Britain, and that's the second time in a week i've said that. Where's my medication?

Climate No Change

After 2 weeks of climate change negotiations, we end with a deal where our leaders will look at doing something at some point in the future. What a crock.
Blame, as usual, has to be apportioned and as the USA is the second highest polluter, it is that particular country that is having fists waved at it in anger. The cult of Obama has suffered another blow.
I feel that the blame should be sprinkled liberally around because everyone seemed more concerned with looking after their own vested interests than actually achieving anything for the benefit of everyone but i point the finger primarily at China.
It is the number one polluter in the world and yet it wants to be treated as a 'developing' country and even demands the right to not have its promises monitored by an independent party.
All the major players at the conference waited nervously for each other to budge but when nobody did they were able to come away, shrug and say they tried and give the nod to their countrymen to carry on churning out the Carbon Dioxide and making some lovely money.
Regrettably, these guys will be safely in their graves when the results of their actions begin to hurt their children, and then devastate their grandchildren.
Now i guess it will be down to Mother Nature to take care of herself over the next few decades and that isn't going to be pretty and a lot more uglier if you are a resident in one of the many places on the globe prone to flooding or drought.

Another Headache Mary?

I always felt a bit sorry for Joseph. He was an older man with a teenage girlfriend who had just told him that while he was out, God had came down from heaven and impregnated her with man's Saviour.
Luckily for Mary, she was shacked up with probably the only man in the history of mankind who went "I'm okay with that' and then went about hiring a donkey to take his wife to Bethlehem. The donkey salesman probably told him it was a baby stallion. If he was around today he would probably be excitedly replying to emails from Nigerian Colonels requesting his bank details.
Now he is suffering again at the hands of the New Zealand church with the poster depicting him in bed with his wife Mary while his wife dreamily thinks back to her former lover.
Not one to have a sense of humour over these things, the Catholics are having a moan.
"Our Christian tradition of 2,000 years is that Mary remains a virgin and that Jesus is the son of God, not Joseph," she told the New Zealand Herald. Rub it in the poor blokes face why don't you.
It does make you wonder why God chose a teenage girl, unmarried, a virgin and in a relationship to aim his holy ejaculation at. There must have been plenty of other women he could of got in the family way and not caused a rumpus. Did he get her permission first?
God moves in mysterious ways and judging by that look in Josephs eyes, he knows that a half bottle of wine and the Roman soldiers uniform just wasn't going to cut it anymore.