However the de-humanizing aspect does not just affect soldiers on the battlefield. Throughout history it has also affected severely entirely innocent civilians, including children. This can be seen by studying ancient history, not least The Bible and what that old bastard Moses is supposed to have instructed the Israelites to do after a battle with the Midianites (from the New English Bible):

Numbers, chapter 31, verses 15-18:  ‘Have you spared all the women?’ he said…… ‘Now kill every male dependant, and kill every woman who has had intercourse with a man, but spare for yourselves every woman among them who has not had intercourse.’

The Midianite men had already been murdered, but this evil bastard Moses, supposedly a man of God who passed down the Commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’, then instructed all the little boys and women who were not virgins to be murdered,  but women and little girls who were still virgins could be raped or forced to be sex-slaves. All the Commandments forgotten by that genocidal monster Moses and his followers in the climate of war. And all this murder and hatred is in a book which should clearly be banned or confined to museums, the so-called ‘Holy’ Bible! No wonder the Crusades and Inquisition in the early Christian era thought they were able to justify their own torture and killing of innocent people. The Bible, like other ancient religious books, was written by men with a hidden agenda,  intent on political power and control of the population. These books are clearly not the word of some divine being, though parts of them are Spiritually inspired and could be preserved for public consumption, such as the sayings of Jesus for instance, clearly a pacifist.

It has been the same throughout the ages, not least in the 20th and 21st centuries. All normal rules and codes of behavior break down in war, so we have men hailed as heroes for committing the mass murder of innocent men, women and children in the bombing raids carried out by both sides. We have women in munitions factories making bombs and shells to kill innocent civilians like themselves and their families, and to kill the fathers of children just because they were conscripted into the armed forces of their country.

The men actually fighting are the most de-humanized by the military machine, appealing to the very basest qualities in people. Some men are very aggressive and enjoy a fight, they also enjoy destroying things and people. This is why video war games are so popular.

I heard a horrific story today from someone who was a child in the War. He was walking down a street, and some other children were walking on the other side. Suddenly a German plane dived down and machine-gunned the children on the other side of the street. How can human beings do this sort of thing? Attacking a bomber which is on a mission to bomb innocent civilians is one thing, but machine-gunning innocent civilians for no reason whatsoever, and children at that? There can only be one explanation, the guys in the airplane didn’t see them as children or human beings, but as ‘targets’. They no doubt enjoyed the thrill of what they regarded as a game. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that Allied British and American airmen did similar things in the War. They were bombing civilians, so they probably would have no qualms about machine-gunning them either. It is extra horrific because they could actually see who they were killing. I was absolutely appalled, but I’ve heard such stories before and attribute them to the War mentality which depicts all citizens in the ‘enemy’ countries as legitimate, inhuman ‘targets’.

The military de-humanize the other side, the so-called ‘enemy’, so they are seen as not people at all. A simple example on the Allied side is when German soldiers in the Second World War were, and still are, referred to as ‘Nazis’. By and large they were NOT Nazis, just conscripts of a Nazi government. Such labels serve to de-humanize the enemy, as in the Commies for instance in the Cold War. Just because they got landed with a Nazi or Communist dictatorship does not make all the citizens Nazis or Communists. Hitler won the popular vote in 1933 largely because large areas of Germany were stolen by the Allies of World War I; so all they wanted to do was reclaim their lost territories. Hitler, of course, had a much wider agenda which later became clear.

The de-humanizing  of the ‘enemy’ is meant to justify and gain acceptance for wholesale genocide. Such as the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki when Japan was already suing for peace. The bombs, incidentally did not end the war with  Japan who only signed a peace treaty once the Americans capitulated and allowed Emperor Hirohito to remain on the Throne and escape a war crimes tribunal. The Allies of World War Two also escaped war crimes tribunals, though they committed many atroctities, many in their completely illegal bombing raids on German and other cities.

Is it any wonder in this atmosphere when all normal codes of behavior had broken down, when innocent men, women and children were being burnt alive and blown to pieces by Allied bombs (or drowned in the Dambusters raid), and when their soldiers where dying on two fronts, that it was possible for the Nazis to carry out the Final Solution in the concentration camps? Who was going to worry about what was happening to Jews, Communists, homosexuals, gipsies, the physically and mentally disabled when everyone in the Third Reich was facing death every day during the War? Similarly in Britain and America nobody worried what might be happening to foreigners and traitors in their own internment camps, they were too concerned with what was happening to their families and homes in the bombing raids, and what was happening to their male relatives fighting the War.

After the War we’ve had many smaller ones in which civilians and conscript soldiers have been killed, but we also have had nuclear weapons constantly targeting completely innocent civilians, able to kill millions instantly and millions more, including future generations, from the long-lasting radiation effects.

This concept of nuclear weapons ever at the ready takes us into the era of continuous war, or at least, continuous readiness to commit genocide should certain circumstances arise to cause a war situation.

The ridiculous nature of this de-humanizing of the enemy can easily be seen as since the Second World War and the breakdown of Communism in 1989-1991 the Germans, Austrians and all those in the former Communist countries who were targeted by Allied bombers and nuclear weapons are now seen as ordinary people like ourselves. They in turn see us as ordinary people like themselves.

There has to be found an alternative to war. An alternative which settles international disputes by negotiation if possible, and if this breaks down then an international security force needs to be able to step in to prevent atrocities by targeting only those directly involved, either by giving the orders or by being prepared to carry them out.

This may be difficult to organize, but it has to be done. Just as police forces had to be set up in the United Kingdom once the warring armies of the various countries and kingdoms on these islands had been disbanded, and the Union established.

So we need to move towards a world confederation under the auspices of the UN General Assembly, which should be democratized and therefore elected. I see the European Union, the United States, the former Soviet Union, the former Yugoslav federation and similar international ventures (but not military alliances such as NATO) as a step towards this international confederation to prevent future wars.

It is very relevant that as soon as the Soviet and Yugoslav federations broke up, terrible wars and genocides broke out once again in these places where peace had reigned for many decades.

Of course war is very profitable for the arms industry, and this in turn keeps the extremely unstable capitalist system going. Human beings are just the cannon fodder of the arms manufacturers. It is high time we said ‘no’ to war and found other means to settle our problems. The alternative is probably the eventual destruction of the planet as war becomes ever more barbaric, and nuclear weapons spread completely out of control to more and more nations.

You can’t get away from the fact that marriage was originally a religious formality for a monogamous relationship between a man and a woman, mainly for the propagation of children but also to contain sex within this exclusive relationship.

Now some gays are pressing for gay marriage, arguing that civil partnerships are a second rate option and don’t offer equality. They also say civil partnerships should be available to heterosexual couples. I’m quite happy with that last idea, and have no objection to gay marriage as such, but can see certain religious organizations would have strong objections.

If a gay couple wish to commit themselves to a monogamous relationship, then soon they will be able to have a civil marriage in a registry office in the UK, or in a religious place of worship which allows gay marriages.

They can also now adopt children, so aping heterosexual marriage even further. What they cannot provide, within the relationship, are role models from both genders. This will obviously disadvantage the child, as with single parent families, unless a role model of the opposite gender to the same-sex adopted parents can be found and given regular access outside the couples’ relationship. It could, of course, be the biological father or mother if this person is not one of the gay couple.

Few of the gay couples I know are in or have been in a monogamous relationship, but they have been in loving, emotional relationships (often with no or very little sex between the partners) for decades. They have looked after each other in sickness and in health, till death parted them in most cases. This also applies to my own 21 year relationship. We shared an active social life, had a strong emotional attachment and love for each other, traveled the world together, shared a bed and cuddled a lot, but virtually no sex between us. This was quite common among our friends, though not all shared a bed, some had separate bedrooms. So do some heterosexual married couples.

I therefore would have opted for civil partnership rather than gay marriage had these options been available to us. We had no desire to adopt children, our pet cats were our ‘children’. We were not able to be monogamous since there was virtually no sex between us, we being sexually incompatible. However we did promise, and kept it, not to ever get emotionally involved with a sexual partner outside our relationship.

So I see civil partnerships as different from marriage. The former is to put the relationship on a legal footing so rights of inheritance, to visit the partner if hospitalized in intensive care, the right to the shared home if one partner dies, to register the death and organize or help organize the funeral are all protected.

Marriage, on the other hand, is a solemn promise to an exclusive, monogamous relationship for life usually with the intention of raising children in a nuclear family. None of my gay friends or couples would have wanted this or would have related to it, but some would have related to the civil partnership option. My partner and I certainly would have wanted one.

So I’ve no strong objection to gay marriage and wouldn’t oppose it, but neither will I campaign for it.

London local government is very complicated and has undergone several changes in the years since I was born. Back then there was the London County Council (LCC) which had wide powers in inner London. There were many more boroughs in London than there are now, and those in outer London outside the LCC area were in the various Home Counties. However to complicate things even further many of these had London postal districts, so Wood Green where I grew up, for instance, was in the county of Middlesex but the postal address was London N22.

In the mid 1960s London government was reorganized and the old boroughs were merged to form 32 new boroughs plus the ancient square mile of the City of London, which remained intact. Also the Greater London Council was established to replace the LCC but it covered a much greater area. Even the GLC area, however, did not cover the whole Urban Area of London, which is the continuous conurbation which now officially includes places like Watford, Hemel Hempstead, Hoddesdon, Dartford and Woking, all outside the Greater London administration area.

With this reorganization Middlesex was abolished as a county, and the other Home Counties lost large portions to the new Greater London administrative area. The Post Office refused to allocate London postal districts to all the areas now in Greater London, and this caused much confusion as it was then necessary on postal addresses to retain the old county names which no longer applied to many outer London areas. In the mid 1990s this requirement was dropped as the new postal codes came in, so now for any addresses in the UK it is not necessary to include county names. For reasons of snobbishness and nostalgia, however, many people still include these, and many in West and Northwest London, for instance, still pretend they live in the non-existant county of Middlesex, while those in other London suburbs like to pretend they are in the rural neighboring counties of Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent and Surrey.

The Greater London Council was abolished by Margaret Thatcher in 1986 and its powers transferred to the 33 London boroughs. This created much chaos and confusion, as London now no longer existed as a city – probably the only major city in the world without a unitary administrative body. London became 33 separate towns and cities with little attempt to coordinate planning across the capital.

In 2000 the Greater London Authority was established to give London a voice and an administrative center once again, but it did not retrieve all the powers of the old GLC now delegated to the 32 London boroughs and the City of London corporation. Therefore it is a much weaker body, but at the same time the office of Mayor of London was created, directly elected by the Supplementary Vote system. There is also a London Assembly of 25 members, 14 representing new constituencies each consisting of several London boroughs and 11 members elected by proportional representation. These 11 additional members are selected by the political parties, as the party name just appears on the ballot paper. The London Assembly scrutinizes the work, budget and decisions of the directly elected Mayor.

What this has meant, since the abolition of the GLC with its wide powers and the loss of County Hall opposite Westminster, is that despite the creation of the Greater London Authority in new headquarters upstream on the River Thames, the various London boroughs and the City of London have,in effect, retained their status as cities and towns in their own right, and so it is now common practice to see shopping centers in these boroughs described as ‘town centers’ and London suburbs described as towns in neighboring counties or in the long abolished county of Middlesex.

It has also led to local initiatives, such as the London Borough of Croydon (whose residents largely like to pretend that they live in a town called Croydon in Surrey) re-introducing a tramway system, which is excellent for people in that area, but does not cover the rest of London. Such piecemeal transport systems really don’t make much sense in a major metropolis.

However the GLA and Mayor now does have authority over Transport for London, which runs the Underground system, Overground, buses, river services, etc. It also has overall responsibility for the Tramlink in the Croydon area, and apparently there are plans for new tram systems if the money can be found. It also tries to coordinate the many regional rail companies which provide services into and around the capital.

Frankly the whole thing is a mess, and privatization hasn’t made things any easier. With many Underground lines, the bus companies, and rail companies all privatized coordination and unitary ticketing/fares are difficult to achieve. One proposal, not yet achieved, is to bring all London rail services within the Greater London Area under the direct control of Transport for London (excluding the main lines from London to other places in the UK and the Eurostar services to Continental Europe.) The only rail lines so far coming directly under Transport for London (apart from the Underground system) is the privately owned Overground system, created quite recently from largely existing rail lines inherited from the old British Rail.

In the May 3rd elections maverick Conservative Mayor, Boris Johnson, got elected for a further four years, narrowly defeating former Mayor and former GLC leader, the charismatic Ken Livingstone, the Labour candidate. Ken Livingstone has also been something of a maverick in the past, in 2000 standing and being elected as Mayor as an Independent against the Labour candidate (Ken was expelled from the Party, but later re-admitted.)

The election for London Mayor has, since its inception, been based on personalities rather than party labels. Whether this continues depends, I suppose, on how charismatic the candidates are for the office. Boris and Ken are both over-the-top individuals who encourage endearment and dislike in varying quantities. Considering he’s a Conservative and something of a buffoon, I actually quite like Boris though have never voted for him (I voted for Ken each time). He did, for instance, introduce the famed ‘Boris Bikes’, a very green measure to encourage cyclists (they are blue push bikes which can be hired from various centers around central London.) I can tolerate Boris for another four years, though am sorry Ken didn’t get re-elected to host the London Olympics. Ken has announced he will not stand again.

So London is a bit of a mess administratively, but has always been a mess. It was no better back in the 1950s when I grew up and the only elected authority for the capital only covered the inner London boroughs. The London postal district then, and now, bears no relation whatsoever to Greater London nor to the old LCC area. What I’d like to see is further coordination so all areas in the Greater London Authority area are allocated London addresses and postal districts, and all transport systems within Greater London are directly run and managed by Transport for London, thus reversing the privatization of recent decades.  Both these measures are unlikely to happen.

So London bumbles on in the old, rather disjointed way, at least helped by the fact it now has a London Mayor and a Greater London Authority and Assembly to try and coordinate things in this huge metropolis which still seems to think it is 33 separate towns and cities.

In this it is not alone. Los Angeles has been described as many suburbs in search of a city, and places like the conurbations centered on Manchester, the Yorkshire counties and the West Midlands have similar problems in identifying as unitary metropolitan cities with the separate areas fiercely defending their independence as separate towns and cities in their own right.

There can only be one explanation: total incompetence on behalf of the water companies. The River Thames isn’t short of water, why should the reservoirs be? They tell us we’ve had two dry years and one month of rain won’t make up for it.

What a load of crap! There are places much drier than the UK who manage their water better. For heaven’s sake, apart from all our rivers, lakes and ponds which never dry up (unlike in some hot countries), we are an island surrounded by water.

Have they never heard of desalination plants? Come to that, regarding renewable energy sources, forget wind power, we have tidal rivers all round our coastline which could be used to generate power. The Thames Barrier sits there doing nothing most of the time when it could be adapted to generate power, and there are loads of other tidal rivers they could use. Also wave power from the seas around the British Isles.

Seems to me if there’s water shortage they are wasting it somehow, probably thru leaking pipes. I assure you there’s no water shortage where I live – 5 minutes walk from the Thames which last year was literally overflowing with water just near here.

We’re awash with bloody water.

I give some examples here, past and present.

Take official country names for instance. There was the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and there still exists the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea). Though far from democratic, the coded message is that Socialism is inheriently more democratic than capitalism, or indeed is synonymous with true democracy. Also that anybody who opposes Socialism is against democracy, or to be more specific, they are against the only kind of democracy that is felt relevant – people’s or Socialist democracy. This was to be exercised directly by the masses through the one-Party led coalition or one-Party State, and democratic centralism operated inside these organizations. If you weren’t a member your democratic rights were limited to opting out of voting for the official list of candidates, and this would endanger your career prospects and keep you under the eye of the secret police, because ballots weren’t secret. Even as a Party member democratic rights were restricted, but it has to be said the same is true of the Labour Party in Britain and many other Western political parties. Annual Conferences and Congresses, supposed to formulate Party policy, are strictly controlled.

Taking my own country, official title the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, there are all sorts of coded messages there. First, it is obviously a kingdom rather than a republic, then there is a reminder of our colonialist past when a small island nevertheless considers itself  ‘great’ because of its former empire, and also Northern Ireland (before partition it was just ‘Ireland’) is tacked on to the end. This last bit makes the claim by Loyalists to British nationality that of ex-pats or British colonial subjects. Clearly Northern Ireland  is not, and never has been, part of Britain or the name of the country would just be the United Kingdom of Great Britain.

Going further afield we have the Falkland Islands, which have adopted a British-sounding name to emphasize they were colonized by ex-pat Brits. The other name for these islands off the coast of Argentina is, of course, the Malvinas. If you use the former you are pro-British, if you use the latter you ally yourself with the Argentinean claim to these islands.

Similarly with Derry/Londonderry in Northern Ireland. Republicans know the city is really Derry, but Loyalists insist on adding the word ‘London’ at the beginning.

The province of Northern Ireland is sometimes erroneously called ‘Ulster’. It is not Ulster, it is just six counties of the nine counties which make up the Irish province of Ulster. The other three weren’t included because then Northern Ireland would have had a Republican majority. Therefore Republicans usually refer to the British-occupied province as ‘the six counties’.

Moving on to other politically loaded phrases, on a Memphis riverboat the tannoy kept referring to ‘the war of Northern Aggression’, clearly a reference to the American Civil War, or ‘War Between the States’ as the more diplomatic Southerners refer to it.

In Cyprus, which had been divided since 1974, the Turkish Cypriots, Turks and those with pro-Turkish sympathies refer to the Northern part as the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus (TRNC/KKTC). The Greek-Cypriots, Greeks and their sympathizers just refer to it as the ‘occupied zone’. Much as, before recognition, the German Democratic Republic was referred to in the West as ‘the Soviet Zone of Germany’ or just ‘East Germany’.

East Berlin was always known by its official title of ‘Berlin, Capital of the GDR’ (‘Berlin, Hauptstadt der DDR’) in the East, or simply as just ‘Berlin’. West Berlin was shown as a blank space on East German maps in the middle of the GDR, with the initials WB or the word ‘Westberlin’.

The Wall was known officially by various names in the East: ‘The Wall of Peace’, ‘The Anti-Fascist Wall’, or simply as ‘the border installations’. Shooting people trying to escape across it was known as ‘heroically defending the inviolable frontiers of the capital of the German Democratic Republic’.

The Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia by the USSR and four other Warsaw Pact countries was officially referred to as the ‘fraternal assistance by five Socialist countries to defend Socialist Democracy in the CSSR’. Or simply as the ‘intervention to defeat the counter-revolutionary elements in the CSSR’. CSSR standing for the Czecho-Slovak Socialist Republic.

Maoist China and its tiny European ally, Enver Hoxha’s Albania, constantly denounced the ‘West German revanchists, Soviet revisionists, Western imperialists and all their running dogs’ using this or very similar terms which meant West Germany sought revenge for losing territory in two World Wars, the USSR and its allies had abandoned Socialism and Communism, and all the Western countries were colonialists. By implication Mao’s China and Hoxha’s Albania were perfect.

Moving away from politics, death is referred to in various ways by people with different belief systems. Born-again Christians and evangelists often refer to it as ‘going to the Gloryland’. Spiritualists refer to it as ‘transiting’ or ‘passing over to the Other Side’.

Back to politics, and the crimes of Stalin, his purges and show trials, his gulags and executions, were all summed up in the post-Stalin Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact countries as ‘violations of Socialist Democracy in the era of the cult of the personality’. This avoided mention of the name ‘Stalin’ and downgraded his crimes to mere ‘violations’ of democracy.

The horrors of the Nazi holocaust were only hinted at in the home-grown phrase ‘Final Solution’, while the name of the ruling party caused deliberate confusion by containing the word ‘Socialist’ for an extreme rightwing, racist Party: ‘The National Socialist Party of Germany’ or NSDAP.

‘The War on Terror’ disguises many things, including the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the incarceration without trial of many people in prison camps like the one in Guatanamo, the American-held base in Cuba.

Whether it is the West or the former Socialist East, invasions of foreign countries were/are always ‘justified’ by use of misleading and emotive phrases like this. In fact Saddam’s Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11. Afghanistan did accommodate and was ruled for a time by the Taliban, but many of these are now in Northern Pakistan, yet Pakistan is supposedly still an ally of Britain and the USA. Also many dictatorships are allies of or are supported by the West, including Saudi Arabia, and even Gaddaffi in Libya and Saddam Hussein in Iraq were at different times on friendly terms with Britain and the USA. Osama Bin Laden was a ‘freedom fighter’ when opposing the Soviet occupation and puppet regime in Afghanistan, supported and armed by the West, but became a terrorist when he opposed U.S. interests in his homeland of Saudi Arabia and the state of Israel which includes many settlers from Western countries on land seized from the Palestinians.

So political phrases and names in particular need to be regarded with great caution. Most of them contain hidden agendas and meanings, and using them reveals the political stance of whoever does so.

At the same time neutral words and phrases like ‘democracy’ have little meaning unless qualified: democracy for whom for instance?  Also how is it exercised? Tony Benn probably gave the best definition of true democracy when he said words to the effect that when any politician or leader is elected, people must make sure they know how to remove them from office. If this involves violent revolution or mass civil disobedience, then it is not a true democracy.

All these celebrate the renewal of life in some way or other. You don’t have to believe in the physical resurrection of a man crucified 2,000 years ago to celebrate the annual resurrection of plants/trees from the dead look of Winter, nor to celebrate the season when many animals start producing new life.

Also, in this modern day and age when medical science has progressed to the present level, it is becoming more and more common for people to be literally resurrected from the dead. Hearts stop, the patient is brain dead or flatlining on the monitors, yet a higher percentage of these are now revived than was previously thought possible.

A sizeable percentage of these revived patients report Near Death Experiences or NDEs in which they experience being outside their body looking down, often reporting on what surgeons/nurses are doing and their conversations, even what relatives are doing nearby, they often then see a tunnel and/or a bright light, meet a being of light (sometimes interpreted as a religious figure) and often dead relatives, before being told they must go back, it is not their time.

It is impossible to dismiss all these reports of NDEs as mere hallucinations brought about by lack of oxygen to the brain or drugs administered in the hospital. This wouldn’t account for unconscious, brain-dead patients with no heartbeat accurately reporting on things they somehow saw and heard around them by some other means than their physical organs and senses. Patients blind from birth have accurately described scenes complete with colors they’d never seen before in their lives.

The big question is why all patients who are revived don’t report these NDEs. It is quite possible more experience them than are telling, fearing ridicule. However we also know, from communications with departed Spirits via mediums, that what happens immediately after we die depends to a large extent on our own frames of mind and what we believe.

For example, atheists who are convinced there is no afterlife but expect only oblivion will often experience just that. Their Spirits remain unconscious in a coma-like state for a very long time. Others walk the Earth as ghosts, puzzled as to why they can’t interact with living people and material objects, but convinced they must be still alive, yet not accepting they are in the afterlife but haven’t moved beyond the Earth plane.

Members of certain Christian sects are also likely to find, after death, that their Spirits go into an unconscious coma-like state for maybe thousands of years. Their belief that they must sleep until Gabriel blows his trumpet and all the dead are resurrected to face the Final Judgment causes them to go into a deep sleep for centuries.

Other religious believers with closed minds find themselves in Spiritual environments after death with people of similar beliefs, often with the founders and prophets of their religion.

There are many after-life states and many self-made environments in the Spirit world.

Since all environments and all matter universes are created by Thought or Mind, they can be shaped according to one’s expectations or beliefs.

It is therefore most important to have an open mind at least so you can be ready to accept what happens when the physical body dies. If you have studied NDEs and Spirit communications from many sources, you will have a good idea of the various possibilities, but if you haven’t an open mind will insure you do not become trapped on Earth, go into a deep coma-like state for eons, or end up, albeit temporarily, in a closed environment shut off from the greater reality.

Having said this, the evidence is that most people, whatever their beliefs be they Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, atheists, agnostics or whatever, go quickly to what has been termed the Third Level of Spiritual environments. This is an Earth-like environment where they will meet relatives and friends who have gone before, and have the opportunity to relax, study and progress to higher Spiritual levels.

Those who have led really bad lives and done a lot of harm to others will move to a lower Spiritual level because they gravitate towards other Spirits of a similar nature. Therefore these lower Spiritual levels are dark, unpleasant places largely because of the selfish and sadistic souls who inhabit them. However even these environments are only temporary ‘hells’ and there is the opportunity to progress to higher levels once the Spirits themselves call for help. Rescuers come from the higher levels to help them.

We all build up karma from our life on Earth. This is the eternal law of cause and effect. There can be no short-cuts, no ‘saviors’, no absolution by priests, no ‘last rites’, ‘mass’, ‘communion’ or blood sacrifices can save us from facing the consequences of our actions here on Earth. We face an instant life-review on crossing over, outside of time and space, in which we experience the effect of all our actions, and even our thoughts, on others. This, of course, includes the good things we’ve done and their effect on others as well as the negative things.

We then reap the rewards of our karmic credit or pay off our karmic debt, and this is the process by which we learn from our mistakes and progress Spiritually.

All this is based on thousands of after-death communications and NDEs from all over the world over many, many years.

So this Easter just past should be a celebration of the fact that all living creatures, all humans, plants and animals, survive the process we know as physical death because we are all basically Spirit, Energy or Thought, part of the Universal Consciousness which goes under various names but is the ultimate reality.

Physical death is just a transition from one dimension or reality to another. From one of the many Quantum realities scientists now say probably exist side-by-side to another. Also all these environments apparently based on some order of matter are really virtual realities (including this one in our own Universe) created by Mind or Thought. No matter, according to Quantum Physcis, can exist without a conscious observer. So it is hardly surprising, or shouldn’t be, that Consciousness or Mind is the ultimate reality, and that therefore our conscious mind and personality survives physical death because it cannot possibly originate in the physical brain. It must, therefore, be something non-material, whether you call it energy, Spirit or something else.

Wedding kiss, Jerry Lee and Judith, the 7th Mrs Lewis

He’s still very unlikely to match his sister Linda Gail who has married 8 times (but only to 7 husbands as she married one twice.) He’s now married the ex-sister-in-law of Myra, the second cousin who was only 13 when he married her back in 1957. That wasn’t unusual in Louisiana or in Jerry’s family – younger sister Linda Gail first married at 14 and older sister Frankie Jean married at the tender age of 12. Loretta Lynn, the Country singer, was also married at 13, and Elvis was dating Priscilla when she was only 14.

Now some people are confused because Judith Coghlan Brown who he married earlier this month is his and Myra’s daughter Phoebe’s aunt. Someone on one of the Lewis forums remarked: ‘What? He’s now married his sister?’ No, he’s married his cousin’s ex-wife. The cousin, Rusty Brown, is Myra’s brother, so he’s Phoebe’s uncle and Judith is her aunt by marriage, or was, now she’s also her step-mother I guess. Gets complicated doesn’t it?

Added to which cousin Jimmy Swaggart, the evangelist, is a double first cousin of Jerry’s. Keeping it in the family seems to be a trend in the extended Lewis family. The other famous first cousin is Country singer Mickey Gilley who launched the whole New Country thing with the John Travolta film ‘Urban Cowboy’ filmed at Gilley’s former niteclub in Pasadena, Houston, Texas, complete with the famous Gilley’s mechanical bull. Mickey appeared in the movie singing and playing, and has actually had more #1 Country hits than Jerry Lee himself, though The Killer, as he is known, has had quite a few himself.

Jerry Lee’s personal life has tended to overshadow The Killer’s successful and very long musical career which started in the 1950s and continues today. Many people think he only had one or two hits in the 1950s, but in actual fact he’s had, by my reckoning based on research, no less than 70 Top Twenty singles and albums in one or more of the main charts, which include the British Pop charts, and American Billboard/Cashbox Pop, Rock, Country and Indie charts. This includes 14 which reached the #1 spot in at least one of these charts, and 10 Gold disks. The latest #1 and Gold disk was for the album ‘Last Man Standing’ recorded with guest artists and released in 2006 to become the biggest selling album of his career. Since then ‘Mean Old Man’, another album with guest artists, was released and shot straight to #10 in the Billboard Rock charts.

His touring has declined a lot in recent years, and the shows reverted to a standard length of about 45-50 minutes (in the 1950s/1960s he did mainly 30 minute shows). The only time he regularly did shows of over an hour, apart from specials like the Memphis birthday parties in the 1990s/early 00′s, was when he was having loads of Country hits in America and included a lot of slow Country songs in his live performances. Unfortunately many of the rockers in Europe didn’t appreciate the slower material, and heckled for more rock’n'roll.

Lewis, being the cantankerous person he his, tended to do Country to ‘wind-up’ his rock’n'roll audiences of Teddy boys and rockers, saying things like: ‘If you don’t like it you can learn to like it’, or alternatively, ‘If you don’t like it that door swings both ways’ pointing to the entrance/exit. He’d then appear at the Wembley Country Music Festivals and rile the Country fans by singing mainly uptempo rock’n'roll while they walked out in droves.

Always people have had to accept The Killer as he is. He was always uncontrollable, which is why he wrecked his career in 1958 by bringing his 13-year old bride to England and then making things even worse by saying he hadn’t married her bigamously because his bigamous marriage to his second wife, Jane, was never legal and he had long ago divorced his first wife, Dorothy. To the British press this meant Jerry Lee was a double bigamist who incestuously married his cousin who, being only 13, made him a pedophile as well. In actual fact marrying even first cousins is perfectly legal even in England (though discouraged), and whatever you think of the laws/customs of the Southern States at the time, marrying at 13 was not uncommon and was encouraged by the local fundamentalist churches to prevent fornication, i.e. any sexual relations outside of wedlock. An unmarried girl of 15 or 16 without a ‘beau’ in tow was regarded as a social outcast in these rural communities, definitely looked upon as a weirdo and probably a lesbian. Even having a boyfriend would be suspicious in case they were having sex outside of wedlock, so they were encouraged to get married. In short, every girl reaching puberty was expected to find a man and get married at the earliest opportunity, or risk going straight to Hell for either having straight sex out of wedlock or for being a lesbian. So in Jerry’s eyes he was making an honest woman of Myra and saving her from eternal fire and brimstone.

In Jerry’s eyes, using his strange logic, he was free as a bird to marry Myra since his second marriage was invalid. It was a ‘shotgun marriage’ forced on him by Jane Mitcham’s brothers, and he didn’t dare tell them he was still legally married to his first wife Dorothy. As his sister Frankie Jean once put it: ‘Jerry gets confused. He marries people but sometimes forgets to divorce them.’ In fact he did divorce them, but apparently got confused by the requirement to wait for the ‘decree absolute’ before getting hitched again.

Jerry has reportedly recorded quite a lot of material in recent years which has yet to be released. His stage shows have not only become more infrequent, and subject to last-minute cancelation due to health issues, but they’ve also become much less animated and also more predictable. At one time not so long ago Jerry’s stage-act was very wild, jumping up on pianos even in the late 1980s when he was in his 50s and perhaps should have known better than to stomp over beautful Steinways in his cowboy boots. He never worked to a set-list and every show was different. Now he tends to stick to the same repertoire with just a few variations.

It has to be said, however, that Jerry always did and still does stick mainly to singing and playing on stage, without any of the time-wasting antics used by some other performers like Little Richard and Chuck Berry. The latter have appeared on several ‘Legends of Rock’n'Roll’ shows with Jerry Lee in the past 20 years and have won over audiences who are under the false impression they were better than Jerry Lee and performed for much longer, doing an hour or hour and a half to Jerry’s 30 minutes or so. However what they did, in fact, was interact with the audience more and waste time. If you took a stopwatch and timed how long the three original 1950s stars actually sang and played their instruments while on stage I bet you wouldn’t find much difference between the three of them. Chuck Berry, who wastes a lot of time picking an out-of-tune guitar and who gets some of his self-penned lyrics wrong, once stood and recited poetry for 10 minutes so he was on stage for as long as Little Richard, who had spent much of the time encouraging the audience to sing instead of himself, doing a striptease act or telling people that religious tracts would be given to them as a gift from the singer on their way out. Jerry, however, all but ignores the audience and just sings and plays solidly for all the time he’s on stage.

The seventh marriage may have raised eyebrows and, as his sister Linda Gail remarked on stage at a Weekender last week, caused another scandal, but whatever other people may think about it Jerry Lee seems happy. The new wife, Judith, was his carer, and this seems to be her main function now, as well as his companion. This is more than many of us can hope for in our old age – a carer and companion, so good luck to Jerry and Judith, and let’s hope his health holds out so he can continue to perform and record.

I include some of my favorites below, not in any particular order. New York City (Manhattan), Moscow and Chicago probably come out on top for me, for the sheer abundance of great skyscrapers. Stalin based the design for seven Moscow skyscrapers, and one in Warsaw, on the New York gothic ones of the 1930s.

London has few pre-war skycrapers, but I include two here – Senate House and Shell Mex House. Also the Shell building from the post-war period. All these, I feel, capture the essence of good design.

I include the Kuala Lumpur skyline because of the innotive new designs, and also two Pyongyang skyscrapers from the North Korean capital which I believe have some merit. The pyramid shaped one I include because it does have some attempt at a slightly more interesting design than The Shard in London and other pyramid shaped skyscrapers around the world.

My idea of an ideal apartment would be on the 108th floor of a gothic-style skyscraper surrounded by similar buildings. A balcony would be a nice addition where I could have a mini-garden in the sky. The nearest I’ve got to this is the 18th/19th floor (depending on whether you count the ground floor) of a block in Battersea, London, but alas it had no balcony and looked over the Southwestern suburbs rather than east towards the city center, which would have been a much more interesting and dramatic view.

It is not the height of new buildings which concern me, but their overall design. Square glass boxes of two or three stories are just as boring as skyscrapers which look like a glass matchbox standing on end. Shards, gherkins and other unusual shapes (all designs for London skyscrapers) are all very well, but they are no substitute for more interesting architecture in my opinion.

Woolworth Building, New York City, USA

Empire State Building, New York City, USA

Flatiron Building, New York City, USA (one of the first skyscrapers)

Chrysler Building, New York City, USA

Kuala Lumpur skyscrapers (Malaysia)

Ukraine Hotel, Moscow, Russia

Moscow University, Moscow, Russia

Pyonyang skyscraper, Pyongyang, North Korea

Pyongyang skyscraper, Pyongyang, North Korea

Senate House, London University, London, England

Shell Building, South Bank, London, England

Shell Mex House, London, England

Palace of Culture, Warsaw, Poland

Chicago skyscrapers, Chicago, USA

Yet we are asked to support ‘Help for Heroes’ – in your fuckin’ dreams! Heroes? I never asked them to go over to Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. and murder people. They have no bloody business being there. And as for this latest atrocity (how many more have been covered up?), it is exactly what to expect when you train men to kill, put guns in their hands and tell them the ‘enemy’ is sub-human. Apparently the village where the massacre occurred is said to be a Taliban stronghold, yet these were innocent civilians, certainly the children. No doubt the crazed soldier saw them all as ‘potential’ Taliban. These sorts of atrocities occur all the time in war time, and rarely do we get to hear about them.

The troops, British and American and those of all other Western nations interfering in the Middle East, should be brought home immediately. They are not doing a useful job, just making everything so much worse. There is now bound to be a backlash and more revenge killings/bombings because of this latest American atrocity.

It really is appalling, and I can hardly believe how sadistic and horrible this crime was. But as I say, put guns into largely ignorent men’s hands and train them to kill an enemy they are told is ‘inhuman’ or ‘sub-human’, and this is the sort of thing that happens. Maybe some of the soldiers’ comrades had recently been killed in the war, but that does not excuse this kind of atrocity. The soldiers shouldn’t be there in the first place.

I suppose the only thing people have to  be thankful for is that thus crazed, drunken soldier didn’t have access to the strategic nuclear button or tactical nuclear weapons. Still, one wonders who does have this access, and if the so-called ‘safeguards’ would actually work or could be circumvented. And if world leaders say it’s fine to be prepared to kill millions of innocent men, women and children with nuclear weapons, then is it any wonder a soldier thinks it’s fine to kill a few personally? What’s the bloody difference?

This atrocity alone will recruit thousands, maybe millions, into the Taliban. War solves nothing!

Of course Christianity adopted pagan festivals as its own, the virgin birth of a deity on December 25th being but one of these pagan myths, and the Spring renewal of Easter and the resurrection being also borrowed from pagan myths. In the past century or so Spiritualism has done the same thing – adopted Christian myths, terminology and festivals in order to try to win converts from that religion.

First of all, Spiritualism is not a religion. It is a scientific movement which is based not on faith or ancient religious texts, but on empirical evidence and experimentation. We seek proof of an afterlife, not vague promises of ‘pie-in-the-sky when we die’.

While all religions may well have a basis of truth, none have the whole truth, and there are many distortions. For instance, taking Christianity as an example, Spiritualists and Survivalists do not believe there is any evidence of a Heaven or a Hell, of a Devil/Satan nor do we believe Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, physically resurrected from the dead, was the Son of God and died to redeem our ‘sins’. How, then, can Spiritualist centers call themselves ‘Christian Spiritualist’?

Spiritualists know that we are all responsible for our own actions, will have to face a life review on transition to Spirit, feel all the consequences of our actions (good and bad) on others, and that the law of cause and effect or karma applies. ‘No saviors from on high deliver’ says the atheistic Socialist anthem ‘The Internationale’, and this line could well be incorporated into songs sung at Spiritualist/Survivalist meetings and seances.

There are no short-cuts to Spiritual progression. We all have to take personal responsibility for our actions, learn from our mistakes, and through the karmic process gradually evolve to higher levels.

As to the various religions and their leaders, many have good points, but also many bad ones. The Bible, for instance, is full of intolerance and murders, genocides and mass rapes, all apparently sanctioned by ‘God’. Many Spiritualists and Survivalists don’t even believe in ‘God’ as such. We talk of the Great Spirit or Source, and there are many other terms, but the idea of an all-wise deity handing out justice and taking vengeance on ‘sinners’ is not backed up by the evidence of Spiritualism/Survivalism.

On the contrary, all the evidence suggests we are all part of the creative energy and universal consciousness which is necessary for the material universes to exist. The evidence suggests that everything is evolving, and we are all part of this process.

Religious figures like Jesus, the Buddha, Hare Krishna and also more contemporary people like Mahatma Gandhi, the atheist and humanist Sir Bertrand Russell and even Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels can all be regarded as either setting an example of how to live a good life, or giving directions and advice as to how to create a better world. That some of their writings, particularly Marxism, has been distorted does not invalidate it. Much of Christ’s teaching has been distorted over the centuries, and it is certain he would never have endorsed the Crusades, the Inquisition, the notion of the ‘just war’ or the possession, let alone the use, of weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear weapons.

Spiritualists and Survivalists (the latter being basically humanists/agnostics/atheists adopting a very scientific, empirical approach to the evidence for the afterlife) can take inspiration from atheists like Sir Bertrand Russell who said ‘remember your humanity and forget the rest’. Or from Karl Marx who showed how humanity could be freed from exploitation and progress through Socialism to the ultimate utopia of Communism proper, or something akin to heaven on Earth.

The Spiritualist movement is also suffering dwindling congregations in its churches. This is hardly surprising since Christianity and religion is having less and less relevance in countries like Britain. I rarely go to Spiritualist churches as I don’t want Christian hymns, prayers, etc. shoved down my throat. More people attend demonstrations of clairvoyance in huge theaters, or watch it on TV. They seek proof of survival, not pseudo-religious services in churches.

In this modern age science is actually backing up and confirming the evidence coming from the afterlife. Quantum physics suggests strongly that consciousness is non-material, and is the primary force which actually creates and organizes matter. Without consciousness, in fact, nothing can exist. Spiritualists and Survivalists welcome this scientific backing for the theory that our conscious beings are eternal and non-material, rather than a biological and chemical product of our brains which ceases on death. This is now far more than a theory, it is being proven by all the evidence that consciousness is filtered by our brains, but originates outside the worlds of matter altogether. In fact reality is pure consciousness, everything else, all matter, is an elaborate illusion or virtual reality created by consciousness. A vast and complex thought, if you like, or a creation of thought.

There are, it is true, texts which Spiritualists and Survivalists often quote, but these are passed on from Spirit guides like White Feather and Silver Birch. They do not claim to be infallible, or to be the word of ‘God’. Spirits communicate from various levels according to how much they have evolved, and they therefore have different areas and different levels of knowledge. Certainly guides like the above come from high Spiritual levels, but even they do not know everything and interpret things differently.

For instance, the question of reincarnation. This causes much debate in Spiritualist/Survivalist circles since even high Spirit guides appear to disagree. It seems the subject is extremely complex since our Higher Selves on the Spiritual planes have many different facets, and we also belong to soul groups. These different facets and also the soul groups all share experiences and evolve together. It seems it is extremely doubtful that individuals ever reincarnate but their personality continues to exist indefinitely, at least until such time as they are ready to merge into a greater entity as they evolve to higher levels. Indeed spirits on the Other Side have actually met past ‘incarnations’ of themselves so that would indicate these incarnations are indeed different facets. We have been told by high Spirit guides that the conscious being we are aware of here on Earth is but a tip of the iceberg, our Higher Spiritual self is much, much bigger and more complicated, but to enable our mission here on Earth knowledge of this greater self and our life-plan is blocked or filtered out. A computer is programmed to do a particular task or set of tasks, and we are similar during our time on Earth. Only when we transit to Spirit and are reunited with our Higher selves do we see the full picture.

So you can call Spirtualism a religion if you like, but it is one based on scientific experimentation and gathering empirical evidence using many different methods including clairvoyance, other forms of mental mediumship, physical mediumship including Direct Voice, Instrumental TransCommunication (ITC), automatic writing, analyzing out-of-the-body and near-death experiences, studying ghosts and apparitions, etc. It is the sum total of all this evidence from various sources and the lessons learnt from Spiritual guides and teachers communicating through mediums that has resulted in the evolving science of Spiritualism and Survivalism. All backed up by scientific string-theory, Quantum Physics and new scientific ideas like the Pearsonian Big Breed Theory.

Some would turn Spiritualism into a religion, and rather than Christianity, many are creating a sort of New Age religion including all sorts of mystical things like crystals, angels, astrology, Tarot cards, etc. I and many others take the much more scientific approach.  The evidence for survival endorsed by scientists, inventors and medical people like Dr Peter Fenwick, Ron Pearson, Edison, Marconi, John Logie-Baird, Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, Alfred Russell Wallace and many, many others.

Christian Spiritualist churches are on their way out. In their place will be universal knowledge of survival and the afterlife, and eventually ITC will be perfected so we can communicate regularly with the Spirit realms via inter-dimensional videophones, thus eliminating the need for the human medium which is always prone to suspicion of fraud, and liable to misinterpret the messages from Spirit.

I give here one example. A man died falling off a ladder. With his wife in the audience at a Spiritualist meeting he managed to convey the image of a ladder to the medium. She told the man’s wife that she saw a ladder indicating success or good fortune. She added that last bit, completely distorting the true message. Had she just passed on what she received, the image of a ladder, the wife would have immediately known why – because her late husband fell to his death off of one. The man did eventually find another way of proving to his wife it was him contacting her through the medium, with reference to a ring she was wearing, but it would all have been so much easier thru a videophone where the man’s messages were not distorted by the interpretations and ideas of a human medium.