The great Elizabeth Taylor has cited her friend Michael Jackson as having been a sort of “prophet”; an idea that may sound absurd at first, but which was probably a notion not too far from Michael Jackson’s psyche in his own lifetime, and certainly not far from the minds of his most devoted followers (or fans, if you will). Prophets of old may have wandered the deserts in sandals and robes and preached to fairly small audiences, but in the twenty-first century, with mass markets and global audiences, any would-be ‘prophet’ would have to go for global stardom, rather than dithering away in small communities, preaching to small cliques of vulernable, emotionally unsteady or psychologically damaged people.

If we think about it for just a moment, we might find that Michael Jackson has all the classic prophet-like archetypes. He was followed by multitudes, some of that following being fanatically zealous. He entirely consciously preached a series of moral and social messages extremely passionately (things like Heal the World, We Are The World, and Earth Song, representing the most uninhibited examples). He passionately preached ‘love’. He was (perceived to have been) persecuted by the mainstream for his strangeness, and even abused and put on trial for crimes that were (perceived to have been) never committed. He had a slightly inflated sense of himself, a degree of self-aggrandizement, and some messianic tendencies (giant statues of himself on album covers or in videos, turning into a god-like figure in the movie ‘Moonwalker’, etc). And his death was met with a global wave of mass mourning and grief.

Whether Liz Taylor was speaking in metaphor or not (it isn’t clear from her statement), it couldn’t have escaped everyone’s attention that there’d probably be a fair amount of people who’d have elevated him to a prophet-like status already. (even his memorial service was punctuated by motifs along those lines; such as the choice of gospel music that opened the ceremony – “Hallelujah, we’re going to see the King…”).

If Michael Jackson had been a prophet-like figure in a more direct sense – as in undisguised preaching and sermonising – he would’ve been the most powerful such figure of all time. He was already the most famous man in the world (a thousand times more famous than figures such as Jesus and Mohammad or Moses were in their own lifetimes), and would’ve had a platform and an audience on a kind of scale that a guru or preacher would’ve killed for. Whether that’s a wistful thought or scary one will be a matter of opinion; but it’s worth bearing in mind, for example, that Jesus of Nazareth had only a tiny following in his own lifetime, and in fact Christianity didn’t even begin to hold any sway until at least three centuries after his death.

Further indicators of Michael’s Jackson’s prophet potentials (no, wait – I mean profit potentials) will be demonstrated this week with the release of the documentary movie, ‘This Is It’, expected to be the highest grossing cinema release of all time. A film that is likely to be a mixture of strange and bittersweet…

That long-reigning superstar dictator (and certainly not a prophet, though he might aspire to be), Colonel Gadaffi sparks not the first controversial debate of his career by suggesting that Israel should be disarmed of its nuclear arsenal; or else the Palestinians, as well as nuclear-aspiring Iran, should be allowed to have nuclear weapons too. While the statement is no doubt intended to be antagonistic, there is undeniably a certain logic to his sentiment. Not that anyone in their right minds would want a government as questionable as Iran having such an arsenal, or indeed think it would be a good idea for a culture as angry, resentful and zealous as the Palestinians to have that kind of firepower either; but there is surely a case to be made that Israel’s leadership doesn’t have a solid track record of restraint either. The Israeli government, and its military, could be cited as being almost as zealous as the Palestinians.

This also opens up the wider question of exactly who should be ‘allowed’ to develop nuclear power and/or weapons. After all, Pakistan and India have nuclear arsenals, and Pakistan, like Israel, can hardly be called a stable country by any measure. North Korea has defied international opposition to its nuclear programmes and continued unabated. Who is it that should have the ultimate and objective right to dictate which nations should be trusted with nuclear technology and which nations shouldn’t? After all, it is all surely a matter of perspective. We, in the secular West, can easily cite a dozen reasons why Iran, for example, should not be permitted to develop those capabilities; but that’s from a specific point of view. Iranians might not agree. In fact, if Gadaffi’s comments are something to go by, there may be a number of other countries who’d have no opposition to Iran developing such capacities and might have plenty of objection to America or Britain such powers. Many, in numerous countries, for that matter, would call America ‘zealous’ and ‘extreme’. They might be incorrect in saying that; but, again, that’s a matter of perspective.

Ideally, of course, NO ONE would have nuclear weapons. An all-encompassing global disarmament would come into effect, with every nuclear plant or nuclear weapons component being disabled and dismantled. It won’t happen, however; because there’d always be a suspicion that someone might be cheating, in order to gain the upper hand over the rest of the world…

Official statistics gleened from extensive surveys and censuses (is that a word?) reveals that 1/4 of the world’s population is now practising Islam in some form or another. There are 1.57 billion Muslims spread across 232 countries, Islam being the second largest religious umbrella on earth, after Christianity, which has – again in various forms – 2.2 billion adherents. Some of the results have proven to be interesting, with large numbers of Muslims living in non-Muslim countries, in some cases even more so than in traditionally Islamic nations. For example, there are said to be more Muslims in Germany now than in Lebanon and some other Islamic societies.

Islam, of course, despite common misconceptions, is divided into various sects, just like Christianity, and the majority do not suscribe to extremist idealogies. Wahabism could be cited as the main culprit; but the majority denominations of Sunni and Shia Islam, despite having some extremist elements, generally practise a relatively easygoing, good-spirited tradition. Extremists in, for example, Pakistan, are a minority, and in places like Jordan are practically non-existent.

But Nick Griffin and the BNP needn’t worry anyway – only a miniscule percentage of those 1.57 billion live in the UK. With the Muslim communities of the UK consisting of only 2 percent of the total UK population, one imagines much of the BNP’s xenophobic scaremongering antics would fall flat; all the talk of a ‘Muslim takeover’ and the alleged minoritisation of the indigenous white population is revealed for the contrived and cynical propaganda that it is…

Incidentally, the only religion outnumbering both Islam and Christianity is the Jedi spiritual faith, which now numbers 2.7 billion worldwide, and follows the spiritual teachings of Master Yoda.

No, okay, that’s not true. But wouldn’t it be nice if it was? I personally can’t WAIT for the BNP and fascist propaganda of the future, in which we hear endless tirades about how ‘the Jedi are taking over, taking all our jobs, subverting our society, etc’.

We are, in fact, steadily growing in number; to the point that we now quite seriously have practising Jedi in the police force, in journalism, and even publicly abusing people on the London Underground. We are biding our time, as our numbers swell, waiting for the right moment. Mark my words – our time will come…

The great Martin Luther King might well look down from Heaven (where he’s presently in the middle of a chess game with Mahatma Gandhi, whilst Louis Armstrong and Kurt Cobain perform a jazz-punk duet on a stage a little to their right) and smile at the election of Barak Obama to the White House, but he might well be frowning when he looks to his own heirs and finds them feuding over the corporate rights to his legacy. There is something a little bit disenchanting about his children spending their time in legal wrangling over corporate interests; Bernice King and Martin Luther King III have apparently settled their conflict, however, with their brother Dexter, who has been guilty of trying to exclude them from profiting from their father’s estate.

Another feud of a dramatic nature has recently been raging between the Louvre and Egypt’s preeminent archaelogist, Mr Zahi Hawass, over ancient painted wall fragments, which the bosses of the French museum have been refusing to hand back to Egypt. The 3, 200 year-old tomb fragments are from the ancient temple city of Luxor. It’s not the only feud of its kind that I’ve heard of; which surely begs the question of why some universal law isn’t place to guarantee ownership of archaelogical relics to their country of origin? Except, perhaps, for countries where the insitutions and resources aren’t in place to ensure the preservation of such finds. But it’d be only fair, wouldn’t it? After all, no one would argue that the Egyptian archaelogists would have any rightful claim to relics found in France – so why vice-versa?

And, finally, with the likes of Cheyl Cole, Alexandra Burke, and Robbie Williams, dominating the charts, I think the final proof has come that the music industry as a platform for music as an art-form in any meaningful sense is entirely dead and buried, the industry now being purely a mass commercial enterprise…