BBC Moon Landing

On July 20, 1969 over 600 million people around the world watched Apollo 11 landing on the moon. 10:56 p.m. EDT. I was not one of them. I was laying on my girlfriend's couch on the South Shore of Boston. Her divorcee mother was out with her Chilean pianist byfriend. Her younger brother was asleep upstairs. The TV was off and the fan was on. The outside temperature was in the mid-80s. Sweat swelled on our young bodies. WBCN was the hippie FM radio station. Playing the Velvet Underground's ROCK AND ROLL. Both of us trying to achieve satisfaction by dry humping ie fanatic rubbing of the lower reaches of the human sexual organs. Janet was a cheerleader at the town high school and I attended Xaverian, an all boys Catholic high school. She was very religious and planned of saving her virginity until her wedding night. I so wanted her and she so wanted me. We almost went all the way. No pentration. A little before 11pm I left and Janet turned on the TV. smelling of teenage lust. The hour before midnight. Hot with a light rain. I smelled my fingers. Janet. Teenage lust. The road was devoid of cars. It was late and everyone had watched the moon landing. Not me. I was walking into the rain.

Janet and I broke up the following spring. I had read Heinrich Boll's BILLIARDS AT HALF PAST NINE in which a young man after getting his first architecture job sees his future. All of it. Janet asked me to her senior prom. At that moment I saw my life. All of it, if I said yes. I said no and I have never landed on the moon, but I believe we were there.

The Unmagic of the BBC

Varanasi on the Ganges River is one of the oldest cities in the world and considered by many to be the spiritual center of India. Archaeologists date its origin to over three thousand years ago and Siddhartha formulated the tenets of Buddhism upstream at Sarnath in a sermon entitled 'Turning the Wheel of Law' in 528BC. Mark Twain visited the storied city in 1897 and famously said, "Varanasi is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together."

In 1995 my youngest brother died of AIDS. I traveled to the holiest sites on Earth. My last stop was the ghats at Varanazi.

The fiery funerary rituals offered a spectacle unknown to the West, but occidentals can not accept the beauty of the Orient without seeing fakirs behind the miracles.

Today a BBC reporter wrote that the sunset tradition of sadhus standing on plinths was enchanting, but added that he later learned that the supposed ancient rites were the invention of a hotel owner to spice up the evening on the Ganges.

According to his article he stated that 'a couple of days later I was sitting in the BBC studio in Delhi with a young Indian journalist who had come in to comment on the election campaign. He heard my report in his headphones.

"You were in Varanasi?" he asked the BBC reporter.

"Yes."

"And you recorded something at the cremation ceremony on the river bank there."

"That's right."

"In a boat?"

"Yes. It was wonderful."

"You know the whole thing was invented by the manager of a luxury hotel in Varanasi about 20 years ago. He was trying to drum up the number of tourists coming to town."

"I see. Right."

Journalists get lied to so often that they generally end up fairly cynical, or perhaps to put it more kindly, skeptical. And let me say straightaway that I am not accepting the journalist's account without question.

Even if I went back to Varanasi and investigated the matter I have no doubt that most people would insist the ceremony has been going on for centuries.

That's the way with these things. But still it was a bit of a shocker. Perhaps you can never quite go far enough in questioning why things are happening - what purpose they really serve.

I emailed my boss.

"About that ceremony," I said. "You might well have been right."

I told him what the journalist in the studio had said.

"Ah yes," he replied. "The invention of tradition. Happens everywhere."

The article ended there, but not all magic in life has to have an origin.

On my travels throughout Asia in the 90s I carried a world band radio. At night I would listen to the BBC broadcast from London on the other side of the world. The World Service was a century old tradition for expatriates living abroad and now the Cameron government has been neutering the radio shows.

They will not be able to demystify Varanasi.

It is as old as dust itself.

Same as radio waves traveling to the stars.

Repentance Of Guilt

Repenting for the sins of others is a crime against the innocent. - James Steele Yesterday the Middle East Media Research Institute or MEMRI released a three year-old video of Mohammed Morsi, then-Muslim Brotherhood leader and the present Egyptian President pitching defiant Anti-Zionist talking points on several unidentified TV broadcasts. Under siege by the GOP for appointing a purported anti-semitic Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense the White House was quick to issue a statement harshly criticizing the 'unacceptable rhetoric'. "We believe that President Morsi should make clear that he respects people of all faiths and that this type of rhetoric is unacceptable in a democratic Egypt," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters at a White House briefing. In the speech Morsi categorically rejected the two-state solution and called the USA and Zionists 'bloodsuckers who attack Palestinians' as well as describing Zionists as "the descendants of apes and pigs." Zionist leaders have not been kind in their words judging from the following quotes, which are online, but in redacted form to reform their meaning. "We must expel Arabs and take their places." -- David Ben Gurion 1937 The actual quote according to Wikipedia reads as follows; "We do not wish, we do not need to expel the Arabs and take their place. All our aspirations are built upon the assumption — proven throughout all our activity in the Land — that there is enough room in the country for ourselves and the Arabs." Ben Gurion did say, "Why should the Arabs make peace? If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been antisemitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one or two generations' time, but for the moment there is no chance. So, it's simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a powerful army. Our whole policy is there. Otherwise the Arabs will wipe us out." Sound reasoning, but words are words and sometimes they can be more deadly as a lie than the truth. "[The Palestinians] are beasts walking on two legs." - Menachem Begin 1982 supposedly in reference to the PLO and not the Palestinian people. "(The Palestinians) would be crushed like grasshoppers ... heads smashed against the boulders and walls." - Yitzhak Shamir 1988 This statement allegedly was derived from these two statements as reported by Andrew Sullivan. Mr. Shamir, standing atop an ancient West Bank castle, told reporters: "Anybody who wants to damage this fortress and other fortresses we are establishing will have his head smashed against the boulders and walls." Then in remarks aimed at Arab rioters, the Prime Minister said: "We say to them from the heights of this mountain and from the perspective of thousands of years of history that they are like grasshoppers compared to us." And then there was Einstein - “It would be my greatest sadness to see Zionists (Jews) do to Palestinian Arabs much of what Nazis did to Jews.” This is also reputed to be false, then again not once in the speeches was the Arabic word for Jew 'yahud' mentioned by Morsi. Neither is there a single mention in the BBC, Huffington Post, or New York Times that the ex-IDF colonel of the counter-terrorism brach Yigal Carmon and the current-director of MEMRI said of torture in 1995, "Pain is not taking life. Pain comes and goes. Pain disappears. You know, everyone experiences that. Unwillingly, of course." No mention of their connection to hardline Likud Party, but that is expected in the light of shoddy jingoism of the western media as well as According to the Huffington Post a group of senators, including Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I. and Christopher Coons, D-Del., are currently in Cairo and a pro-Israel White House spokesperson said she expected they would make their views known to Egypt's leadership. Expect these hot dogs to have plenty to say on TV. They love the limelight. The AP reported that the Muslim Brotherhood refused to comment on Washington's reaction to Morsi's remarks. $3 billion dollars in US aid is coming their way this year and while $3 billion might not be what it once was it ain't a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, so saying nothing is almost as good as never having said nothing. This rehashing of old news to re-ignite the interests of the ignorant has a purpose even beyond what is written between the lines. We the people can only watch and wonder what 'they' are saying to each other and we will never know who they are. Dank Himmel. ps no one is ever innocent. Just talk to the NYPD. They know best. Everyone is guilty of something.