Month: January 2020

Finally, today, on the Feast of Epiphany, we celebrate the story of The Magi visiting Jesus – whether it be history or myth, or a mixture of both. I love it.

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The Magi were not kings but Zoroastrian priests-astrologers – from Persia or today’s Iran.

IRAN! How timely.

IN 1950 IRAN HAD A democratically elected government and Prime Minster. In late 1951, Iran’s Parliament in a near unanimous vote approved the oil nationalization agreement. But the USA and UK were not happy with the existence of a national Iranian Oil Company.

Our UK government did everything it could to make things difficult for the Iranians, even using the Royal Navy to blockade Iranian oil exports. The Iranian revenues were greater, because the profits went to Iran’s national treasury rather than to private, foreign oil companies. The UK went as far as banning British companies from exporting key products to Iran, including sugar and steel, as well as freezing Iran currency accounts in British banks.

The UK embargo had the effect of causing Iran to spiral into bankruptcy. Tens of thousands had lost their jobs.

By 1953, economic tensions caused by the British embargo and political turmoil began to take a major toll on PM Mosaddegh’s popularity and political power.

In 1953 a coup d’etat planned by the USA and UK overthrew the democratically elected PM Mohammad Mosaddegh, in favour of the monarchical rule of another Mohammad, who became the Shah of Iran.

It was the first covert action of the United States to overthrow a democratically elected foreign government during peacetime.

This act ensured Western control of Iran’s petroleum resources and prevented the Soviet Union from competing for Iranian oil. Some Iranian clerics even cooperated with western spy agencies – especially the CIA – because, dissatisfied with Mosaddegh’s secular government, they favoured a more religious form of government for the future!

The Shah of Iran ruled for 26 years as an absolute monarch, a Persian king, with the support of the USA and UK.

How many monarchs, absolute rulers, presidents and PM’s. today pay genuine homage to the teaching of the Palestinian Jew called Yehoshua or Jesus, the only ABSOLUTE PRINCE OF PEACE in history.

The real Jesus, not the Christ of fiction!

Happy to share my soul but not sell it.

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For what does it profit us if we gain the whole world, and lose our own soul? Or what shall we give in exchange for our soul? Matthew 16: 26

In my efforts to transform the story of the Fugitive Stag into a film, I can no more betray my soul (psyche) than I can betray or shortchange my Muse. Somewhere ‘out there’ there is a top director , producer or actor who shares my sentiments.

Eros and Psyche

All minds don’t think alike …

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I HOPE THAT A FEW FILM DIRECTORS AND PRODUCERS BELIEVE THIS AND MIGHT HAVE READ THIS ARTICLE BY MATTHEW SYED

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-truth-is-that-great-minds-dont-think-alike-gwwtncsph

An ‘epiphany’ 2020 appeal to innovators in the film industry:

“This is why we need to make a conscious effort to break out of our echo chambers. Working with similar others might be fine on simple tasks … but we need to embrace diversity if we are going to crack codes and come up with new ideas. We need to work with people who can help us to see our own blind spots, and who we can help to see theirs.”

Plato and Aristotle understood the dangers of intellectual conformity

Parliamentary democracy in action …

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Iraqi MPs voted in favour of a resolution calling for an end the presence of foreign forces in the country, paving the way to remove about 5000 US troops deployed there and dealing a potentially serious blow to American influence in the region. 

The resolution is non-binding, but it is likely to be heeded by the government as caretaker Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi supports the measures.

“The kindness of Exalted Night …”

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What better words to journey into an unknown future, than these by the incomparable Friedrich Holderlin (d 1843) – from his ‘Bread & Wine’

The kindness of exalted Night is wonderful, and no one
  Knows where she comes from, or what will emerge from her.
Thus she moves the world, and the hopeful minds of humans:
  Not even a sage knows what she’s up to … although
  She herself exists totally free in spirit, forever.
But she must grant us oblivion and holy drunkenness,
  That in the hesitating interval, in the darkness,
There’ll be something for us to hold on to.
  She must grant us flowing words, sleepless
As lovers are, and a fuller cup, and bolder life, and
  Holy remembrance as well, to stay wakeful at night ...

We, masters and apprentices both, hide our hearts
  In vain, and repress our enthusiasm for no reason.
For who could stop it, or forbid us our pleasure?
  The fire of the gods drives us to set forth by day
And by night.  So come, let us look at what is apparent,
  And seek what is ours, as distant as it may be!

… the fire of the gods and goddesses