And Now For A World Government
I have never believed that
there is a secret United Nations plot to take over the US. I have never
seen black helicopters hovering in the sky above Montana. But, for the
first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world
government is plausible.
A “world government” would involve much more than co-operation between nations. It would be an entity with state-like characteristics, backed by a body of laws. The European Union has already set up a continental government for 27 countries, which could be a model. The EU has a supreme court, a currency, thousands of pages of law, a large civil service and the ability to deploy military force.
So could the European model go global? There are three reasons for thinking that it might.
First, it is increasingly clear that the most difficult issues facing national governments are international in nature: there is global warming, a global financial crisis and a “global war on terror”.
Second, it could be done. The transport and communications revolutions have shrunk the world so that, as Geoffrey Blainey, an eminent Australian historian, has written: “For the first time in human history, world government of some sort is now possible.” Mr Blainey foresees an attempt to form a world government at some point in the next two centuries, which is an unusually long time horizon for the average newspaper column.
But – the third point – a change in the political atmosphere suggests that “global governance” could come much sooner than that. The financial crisis and climate change are pushing national governments towards global solutions, even in countries such as China and the US that are traditionally fierce guardians of national sovereignty.
Barack Obama, America’s president-in-waiting, does not share the Bush administration’s disdain for international agreements and treaties. In his book, The Audacity of Hope, he argued that: “When the world’s sole superpower willingly restrains its power and abides by internationally agreed-upon standards of conduct, it sends a message that these are rules worth following.” The importance that Mr Obama attaches to the UN is shown by the fact that he has appointed Susan Rice, one of his closest aides, as America’s ambassador to the UN, and given her a seat in the cabinet.
A taste of the ideas doing the rounds in Obama circles is offered by a recent report from the Managing Global Insecurity project, whose small US advisory group includes John Podesta, the man heading Mr Obama’s transition team and Strobe Talbott, the president of the Brookings Institution, from which Ms Rice has just emerged.
The MGI report argues for the creation of a UN high commissioner for counter-terrorist activity, a legally binding climate-change agreement negotiated under the auspices of the UN and the creation of a 50,000-strong UN peacekeeping force. Once countries had pledged troops to this reserve army, the UN would have first call upon them.
These are the kind of ideas that get people reaching for their rifles in America’s talk-radio heartland. Aware of the political sensitivity of its ideas, the MGI report opts for soothing language. It emphasises the need for American leadership and uses the term, “responsible sovereignty” – when calling for international co-operation – rather than the more radical-sounding phrase favoured in Europe, “shared sovereignty”. It also talks about “global governance” rather than world government.
But some European thinkers think that they recognise what is going on. Jacques Attali, an adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, argues that: “Global governance is just a euphemism for global government.” As far as he is concerned, some form of global government cannot come too soon. Mr Attali believes that the “core of the international financial crisis is that we have global financial markets and no global rule of law”.
So, it seems, everything is in place. For the first time since homo sapiens began to doodle on cave walls, there is an argument, an opportunity and a means to make serious steps towards a world government.
But let us not get carried away. While it seems feasible that some sort of world government might emerge over the next century, any push for “global governance” in the here and now will be a painful, slow process.
There are good and bad reasons for this. The bad reason is a lack of will and determination on the part of national, political leaders who – while they might like to talk about “a planet in peril” – are ultimately still much more focused on their next election, at home.
But this “problem” also hints at a more welcome reason why making progress on global governance will be slow sledding. Even in the EU – the heartland of law-based international government – the idea remains unpopular. The EU has suffered a series of humiliating defeats in referendums, when plans for “ever closer union” have been referred to the voters. In general, the Union has progressed fastest when far-reaching deals have been agreed by technocrats and politicians – and then pushed through without direct reference to the voters. International governance tends to be effective, only when it is anti-democratic.
The world’s most pressing political problems may indeed be international in nature, but the average citizen’s political identity remains stubbornly local. Until somebody cracks this problem, that plan for world government may have to stay locked away in a safe at the UN.
Source: Financial Times/Gideon Rachman
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7a03e5b6-c541-11dd-b516-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1
A “world government” would involve much more than co-operation between nations. It would be an entity with state-like characteristics, backed by a body of laws. The European Union has already set up a continental government for 27 countries, which could be a model. The EU has a supreme court, a currency, thousands of pages of law, a large civil service and the ability to deploy military force.
So could the European model go global? There are three reasons for thinking that it might.
First, it is increasingly clear that the most difficult issues facing national governments are international in nature: there is global warming, a global financial crisis and a “global war on terror”.
Second, it could be done. The transport and communications revolutions have shrunk the world so that, as Geoffrey Blainey, an eminent Australian historian, has written: “For the first time in human history, world government of some sort is now possible.” Mr Blainey foresees an attempt to form a world government at some point in the next two centuries, which is an unusually long time horizon for the average newspaper column.
But – the third point – a change in the political atmosphere suggests that “global governance” could come much sooner than that. The financial crisis and climate change are pushing national governments towards global solutions, even in countries such as China and the US that are traditionally fierce guardians of national sovereignty.
Barack Obama, America’s president-in-waiting, does not share the Bush administration’s disdain for international agreements and treaties. In his book, The Audacity of Hope, he argued that: “When the world’s sole superpower willingly restrains its power and abides by internationally agreed-upon standards of conduct, it sends a message that these are rules worth following.” The importance that Mr Obama attaches to the UN is shown by the fact that he has appointed Susan Rice, one of his closest aides, as America’s ambassador to the UN, and given her a seat in the cabinet.
A taste of the ideas doing the rounds in Obama circles is offered by a recent report from the Managing Global Insecurity project, whose small US advisory group includes John Podesta, the man heading Mr Obama’s transition team and Strobe Talbott, the president of the Brookings Institution, from which Ms Rice has just emerged.
The MGI report argues for the creation of a UN high commissioner for counter-terrorist activity, a legally binding climate-change agreement negotiated under the auspices of the UN and the creation of a 50,000-strong UN peacekeeping force. Once countries had pledged troops to this reserve army, the UN would have first call upon them.
These are the kind of ideas that get people reaching for their rifles in America’s talk-radio heartland. Aware of the political sensitivity of its ideas, the MGI report opts for soothing language. It emphasises the need for American leadership and uses the term, “responsible sovereignty” – when calling for international co-operation – rather than the more radical-sounding phrase favoured in Europe, “shared sovereignty”. It also talks about “global governance” rather than world government.
But some European thinkers think that they recognise what is going on. Jacques Attali, an adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, argues that: “Global governance is just a euphemism for global government.” As far as he is concerned, some form of global government cannot come too soon. Mr Attali believes that the “core of the international financial crisis is that we have global financial markets and no global rule of law”.
So, it seems, everything is in place. For the first time since homo sapiens began to doodle on cave walls, there is an argument, an opportunity and a means to make serious steps towards a world government.
But let us not get carried away. While it seems feasible that some sort of world government might emerge over the next century, any push for “global governance” in the here and now will be a painful, slow process.
There are good and bad reasons for this. The bad reason is a lack of will and determination on the part of national, political leaders who – while they might like to talk about “a planet in peril” – are ultimately still much more focused on their next election, at home.
But this “problem” also hints at a more welcome reason why making progress on global governance will be slow sledding. Even in the EU – the heartland of law-based international government – the idea remains unpopular. The EU has suffered a series of humiliating defeats in referendums, when plans for “ever closer union” have been referred to the voters. In general, the Union has progressed fastest when far-reaching deals have been agreed by technocrats and politicians – and then pushed through without direct reference to the voters. International governance tends to be effective, only when it is anti-democratic.
The world’s most pressing political problems may indeed be international in nature, but the average citizen’s political identity remains stubbornly local. Until somebody cracks this problem, that plan for world government may have to stay locked away in a safe at the UN.
Source: Financial Times/Gideon Rachman
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7a03e5b6-c541-11dd-b516-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1
- OUR STRANGE WORLD DEPARTMENT -
Ghosts, Aliens and Us
What Puritan witch-hunter
Cotton Mather called the 'invisible world' is real to many Americans.
When my wife and I had our twin baby boys circumcised in our home last year, the Hasidic rabbi who performed the bris left us with a surprising parting gift: an amulet for protection against demons. It was a laminated card printed with Hebrew texts including imprecations against Lilith, a female demon of the night. Alluded to in the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud, she seduces men to sin and kills infants in their sleep. When I queried the rabbi about this, especially about some esoteric and incantation-like phrases on the card that I couldn't decipher, he gracefully dodged, referring me to unspecified kabbalistic secrets.
Though amused by the curious souvenir, I was also glad to have it. I hung the card above our babies' crib.
It was a reminder that, as much as we think of our age as cynical and literally disenchanted, supernatural belief has hardly been erased. In fact, it may be on the rise. A CBS poll in October reported that 48% of Americans believe in ghosts (and 22% claim to have seen one). Among those younger than 45, 54% believe, as opposed to 41% over that age. Belief in other forms of paranormal and occult phenomena is on the rise too: In the 1980s, 25% of Americans accepted the idea of alien abductions, for instance, but 40% say they do now, according to Newsweek.
CBS poll in October What individual surveys don't capture is the impressive diversity within what psychologist William James called "the reality of the unseen," or Puritan witch-hunter Cotton Mather called the "invisible world." Polls ask mostly about well-known experiences -- Have you used a Ouija board? -- but neglect wilder phenomena.
A few weeks ago, I found myself seated on an airplane next to a lively, curly haired woman in her 50s. She introduced herself as a career and spiritual counselor and regaled me with accounts of reincarnation she has elicited from clients and from her own recovered memories. When I told this to a Jewish-born colleague, a cerebral guy who occupies a prominent media perch, he launched into a narrative of his supernatural encounters with spirit beings, mediated by a syncretist Brazilian church, Santo Daime, and aided by drinking a foul-tasting concoction mixed from psychotropic jungle vines and leaves.
A popular nightly radio program, “Coast to Coast AM” with George Noory, draws 3 million listeners nationwide and is devoted to sharing all types of experiences outside the mainstream. The show comes on at 9 p.m. in Seattle, where I live, and my ritual is to listen to Noory as I bustle around the kitchen, making dinner and drinking wine.
Listeners call up, one after another, with personal narratives of what Jewish mysticism would describe as the "other side" of existence. Sure, I'm skeptical about crop circles, conspiracy theories and cryptozoology. However, I'm also sympathetic to the late conservative philosopher and ghost-story writer Russell Kirk, who valued the paranormal for its suggestion that reality consists of more than mundane material processes. I get the persistent sense that something profound is affirmed by the eerie accounts on Noory's show.
The latest scientific theory holds that particular brain functions evolved for purposes suited to the survival of the species, but then got "hijacked" by religious and other supernatural beliefs. Maybe that's right, but explanations like that partake of a certain pat, naive quality reminiscent of a Rudyard Kipling “Just So Story” ("How the Leopard Got His Spots" ... "How the Human Got His Belief in Demons"). They are also suspiciously unfalsifiable. If people had over the centuries completely abandoned the supernatural, evolutionary psychologists could spin out an equally plausible tale to explain that.
Another possibility is that the human need to believe in the unseen world itself points to, while not proving, the reality of hidden dimensions. It could be that materialism -- the philosophical assumption that reality is nothing but physical stuff -- is a prejudice rather than a fact. Perhaps an unseen reality does exist, revealed in flashes that can be confusing or misleading, to which we sometimes give flaky designations. Like "Bigfoot."
Religions used to confidently navigate this twilight realm. Some faiths still do, quietly. When Louisiana's Catholic governor, Bobby Jindal, was being considered as a running mate for John McCain, the fact that Jindal once participated in an exorcism became a briefly sensational media story. As for the rabbi who presided over our twins' bris, the evangelistic branch of Judaism to which he belongs, Chabad, stands out as bucking the trend elsewhere in Judaism toward a pallid rationalism.
The same trend is mirrored in other faiths, especially the shrinking mainline Protestant denominations. It may be that such pallidness helps explain why Americans turn to florid paranormal beliefs, as opposed to traditional supernatural ideas. Indeed, U.S. polling data from Gallup, reported by Baylor University researchers, shows that belief in the occult is more common among non- or infrequent churchgoers or those belonging to a liberal Protestant denomination than it is among frequent churchgoers and conservative evangelicals.
Religious leaders representing respectable faiths, intimidated by secular prejudice, may wish to take note as they scan the empty pews. The human hunger for a vigorous, unapologetic interface with the unknown can't be entirely repressed. As Sigmund Freud knew, the repressed has a way of returning.
Source: LA Times/David Klinghoffer
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-oe-klinghoffer8-
2008dec08,0,6410009.story
When my wife and I had our twin baby boys circumcised in our home last year, the Hasidic rabbi who performed the bris left us with a surprising parting gift: an amulet for protection against demons. It was a laminated card printed with Hebrew texts including imprecations against Lilith, a female demon of the night. Alluded to in the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud, she seduces men to sin and kills infants in their sleep. When I queried the rabbi about this, especially about some esoteric and incantation-like phrases on the card that I couldn't decipher, he gracefully dodged, referring me to unspecified kabbalistic secrets.
Though amused by the curious souvenir, I was also glad to have it. I hung the card above our babies' crib.
It was a reminder that, as much as we think of our age as cynical and literally disenchanted, supernatural belief has hardly been erased. In fact, it may be on the rise. A CBS poll in October reported that 48% of Americans believe in ghosts (and 22% claim to have seen one). Among those younger than 45, 54% believe, as opposed to 41% over that age. Belief in other forms of paranormal and occult phenomena is on the rise too: In the 1980s, 25% of Americans accepted the idea of alien abductions, for instance, but 40% say they do now, according to Newsweek.
CBS poll in October What individual surveys don't capture is the impressive diversity within what psychologist William James called "the reality of the unseen," or Puritan witch-hunter Cotton Mather called the "invisible world." Polls ask mostly about well-known experiences -- Have you used a Ouija board? -- but neglect wilder phenomena.
A few weeks ago, I found myself seated on an airplane next to a lively, curly haired woman in her 50s. She introduced herself as a career and spiritual counselor and regaled me with accounts of reincarnation she has elicited from clients and from her own recovered memories. When I told this to a Jewish-born colleague, a cerebral guy who occupies a prominent media perch, he launched into a narrative of his supernatural encounters with spirit beings, mediated by a syncretist Brazilian church, Santo Daime, and aided by drinking a foul-tasting concoction mixed from psychotropic jungle vines and leaves.
A popular nightly radio program, “Coast to Coast AM” with George Noory, draws 3 million listeners nationwide and is devoted to sharing all types of experiences outside the mainstream. The show comes on at 9 p.m. in Seattle, where I live, and my ritual is to listen to Noory as I bustle around the kitchen, making dinner and drinking wine.
Listeners call up, one after another, with personal narratives of what Jewish mysticism would describe as the "other side" of existence. Sure, I'm skeptical about crop circles, conspiracy theories and cryptozoology. However, I'm also sympathetic to the late conservative philosopher and ghost-story writer Russell Kirk, who valued the paranormal for its suggestion that reality consists of more than mundane material processes. I get the persistent sense that something profound is affirmed by the eerie accounts on Noory's show.
The latest scientific theory holds that particular brain functions evolved for purposes suited to the survival of the species, but then got "hijacked" by religious and other supernatural beliefs. Maybe that's right, but explanations like that partake of a certain pat, naive quality reminiscent of a Rudyard Kipling “Just So Story” ("How the Leopard Got His Spots" ... "How the Human Got His Belief in Demons"). They are also suspiciously unfalsifiable. If people had over the centuries completely abandoned the supernatural, evolutionary psychologists could spin out an equally plausible tale to explain that.
Another possibility is that the human need to believe in the unseen world itself points to, while not proving, the reality of hidden dimensions. It could be that materialism -- the philosophical assumption that reality is nothing but physical stuff -- is a prejudice rather than a fact. Perhaps an unseen reality does exist, revealed in flashes that can be confusing or misleading, to which we sometimes give flaky designations. Like "Bigfoot."
Religions used to confidently navigate this twilight realm. Some faiths still do, quietly. When Louisiana's Catholic governor, Bobby Jindal, was being considered as a running mate for John McCain, the fact that Jindal once participated in an exorcism became a briefly sensational media story. As for the rabbi who presided over our twins' bris, the evangelistic branch of Judaism to which he belongs, Chabad, stands out as bucking the trend elsewhere in Judaism toward a pallid rationalism.
The same trend is mirrored in other faiths, especially the shrinking mainline Protestant denominations. It may be that such pallidness helps explain why Americans turn to florid paranormal beliefs, as opposed to traditional supernatural ideas. Indeed, U.S. polling data from Gallup, reported by Baylor University researchers, shows that belief in the occult is more common among non- or infrequent churchgoers or those belonging to a liberal Protestant denomination than it is among frequent churchgoers and conservative evangelicals.
Religious leaders representing respectable faiths, intimidated by secular prejudice, may wish to take note as they scan the empty pews. The human hunger for a vigorous, unapologetic interface with the unknown can't be entirely repressed. As Sigmund Freud knew, the repressed has a way of returning.
Source: LA Times/David Klinghoffer
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-oe-klinghoffer8-
2008dec08,0,6410009.story
- HISTORIES MYSTERIES DEPARTMENT -
The Great Sphinx of Giza May Have Had Lion's Face
The Sphinx in Egypt might have
originally had the face of a lion, it is claimed.
And it could be much older than previously thought, investigations led by a British geologist suggest.
Egyptologists have long argued the monument outside Cairo, which has the head of a pharaoh and the body of a lion, was built soon after the first pyramid - around 4,500 years ago. But geologist Colin Reader found that rain erosion on the Sphinx's enclosure suggests it was built many years before.
A sunken palace on the Giza plateau provides further evidence that there was activity in the area before the building of the pyramids, Mr Reader said.
Its style implies that it is older than the other tombs at the site. Mr Reader said the tomb would have been adapted and embellished by later inhabitants of the area.
Visual effects experts used the research data to recreate the monument as it might have looked. Researchers also discovered that the Sphinx’s body and head were disproportionate, suggesting it was not originally a pharaoh.
Historical architect Dr Jonathan Foyle, who worked with Mr Reader on the project, said the head and body were massively out of proportion.
He said the reason for this could be that the Sphinx originally had an entirely different head - that of a lion.
According to this theory, the statue was later re-carved to be modelled on Khufu. To early Egyptians the lion was a much more potent symbol of power than the human face.
Given that the monument already has the body of a lion it makes sense to the experts that it also originally had the face of a lion. During Egypt’s early history lions inhabited the wilds of Giza and surrounding areas. The Great Sphinx is thought by most Egyptologists to represent the likeness of King Khafra.
It is also belived by others that Djadefre, the elder brother of Khafra, built the Sphinx to honour his father Khufu. This would place the time of construction somewhere between 2550 BC and 2450 BC.
However the limited evidence linking the Sphinx to Khafra is circumstantial and somewhat ambiguous. Geologist Robert Schoch concluded that the Sphinx must be much older than currently believed after an investigation in the 1990s.
Schoch has argued that the particular weathering found on the body of the Sphinx and surrounding 'ditch' the monument was carved from, displays features that can only be caused from prolonged water erosion.
Egypt’s last time period where there was a significant amount of rainfall ended during the late 4th to early 3rd millennium BC.
Schoch claims the amount of water erosion the Sphinx has experienced indicates a construction date no later than the 6th millennium BC or 5th millennium BC, at least two thousand years before the widely accepted construction date and 1,500 years prior to the accepted date for the beginning of Egyptian civilisation.
Mr Reader concludes that the Sphinx is only several hundred years older than the traditionally accepted date believing the Sphinx to be a product of the Early Dynastic period.
Independently, geologist David Coxill has also come forward to confirm in principle Schoch’s findings, but like Reader has taken a more conservative approach to the dating of the Sphinx.
Both Schoch and Reader base their conclusions not only on the Sphinx and surrounding enclosure, but have also taken into account other weathering features found on the Giza plateau from monuments such as the Sphinx Temple which are known to be consistent with the time period the Sphinx was constructed.
Because these conclusions require a re-dating of the Sphinx to an earlier time before the construction of large monuments, this theory has not been accepted by mainstream Egyptologists.
Source: The Daily Mail (UK)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1092827/The-Great-Sphinx-
Giza-reborn-lion-desert.html
And it could be much older than previously thought, investigations led by a British geologist suggest.
Egyptologists have long argued the monument outside Cairo, which has the head of a pharaoh and the body of a lion, was built soon after the first pyramid - around 4,500 years ago. But geologist Colin Reader found that rain erosion on the Sphinx's enclosure suggests it was built many years before.
A sunken palace on the Giza plateau provides further evidence that there was activity in the area before the building of the pyramids, Mr Reader said.
Its style implies that it is older than the other tombs at the site. Mr Reader said the tomb would have been adapted and embellished by later inhabitants of the area.
Visual effects experts used the research data to recreate the monument as it might have looked. Researchers also discovered that the Sphinx’s body and head were disproportionate, suggesting it was not originally a pharaoh.
Historical architect Dr Jonathan Foyle, who worked with Mr Reader on the project, said the head and body were massively out of proportion.
He said the reason for this could be that the Sphinx originally had an entirely different head - that of a lion.
According to this theory, the statue was later re-carved to be modelled on Khufu. To early Egyptians the lion was a much more potent symbol of power than the human face.
Given that the monument already has the body of a lion it makes sense to the experts that it also originally had the face of a lion. During Egypt’s early history lions inhabited the wilds of Giza and surrounding areas. The Great Sphinx is thought by most Egyptologists to represent the likeness of King Khafra.
It is also belived by others that Djadefre, the elder brother of Khafra, built the Sphinx to honour his father Khufu. This would place the time of construction somewhere between 2550 BC and 2450 BC.
However the limited evidence linking the Sphinx to Khafra is circumstantial and somewhat ambiguous. Geologist Robert Schoch concluded that the Sphinx must be much older than currently believed after an investigation in the 1990s.
Schoch has argued that the particular weathering found on the body of the Sphinx and surrounding 'ditch' the monument was carved from, displays features that can only be caused from prolonged water erosion.
Egypt’s last time period where there was a significant amount of rainfall ended during the late 4th to early 3rd millennium BC.
Schoch claims the amount of water erosion the Sphinx has experienced indicates a construction date no later than the 6th millennium BC or 5th millennium BC, at least two thousand years before the widely accepted construction date and 1,500 years prior to the accepted date for the beginning of Egyptian civilisation.
Mr Reader concludes that the Sphinx is only several hundred years older than the traditionally accepted date believing the Sphinx to be a product of the Early Dynastic period.
Independently, geologist David Coxill has also come forward to confirm in principle Schoch’s findings, but like Reader has taken a more conservative approach to the dating of the Sphinx.
Both Schoch and Reader base their conclusions not only on the Sphinx and surrounding enclosure, but have also taken into account other weathering features found on the Giza plateau from monuments such as the Sphinx Temple which are known to be consistent with the time period the Sphinx was constructed.
Because these conclusions require a re-dating of the Sphinx to an earlier time before the construction of large monuments, this theory has not been accepted by mainstream Egyptologists.
Source: The Daily Mail (UK)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1092827/The-Great-Sphinx-
Giza-reborn-lion-desert.html
-
THE BEAR WENT OVER LONDON BRIDGE DEPARTMENT -
Phantom Or Flesh: Bears in London
Phantom Or Flesh: Bears in London
Over the last few weeks a few strange whispers have emerged from the woods of Wanstead concerning the possible sighting of a bear-like creature. The animal was first sighted during early November 2008 by 18-year-old angler Michael Kent who was fishing with his brother and father in the Hollow Ponds area of Epping Forest, on the border of Wanstead and Leytonstone.
The teenager claimed that whilst walking towards his brother’s swim, he heard a rustling in the bushes and saw the back of a dark, hairy animal around four-foot in height, that scampered off into the woods.
Local press heard about the story and for some strange reason asked whether Bigfoot was on the loose, giving the story a comical tale. However, a woman from the Love Lane area of Woodford Bridge, claimed she’d been left shaken after seeing a similar hairy beast in broad daylight which she described as having large feet, and standing around four-feet in height. The creature then leapt over a wall. Unfortunately, details of the sighting were rather vague and so such an incident will no doubt be relegated to the realms of folklore.
Despite local wildlife officials stating it was not possible for bears to be on the loose locally, we only have to look back to 1981 and Hackney Marshes for a very similar story. On December 27, as a white quilt of snow lay heavy over the fields, a 13-year-old Tommy Murray and friends were fleeing from what they described as, ‘…a giant great growling hairy thing’, which left strange tracks on the virgin snow.
More than fifty policemen with dogs, accompanied by marksmen, and a helicopter fluttering overhead, scoured the open spaces. Experts concluded that the tracks found were indeed made by a bear but no such animal was flushed out. The chief inspector at the time commented, ‘Although I didn’t see the boys myself, I’m reliably informed that they were very frightened by what they saw. They were not hoaxers, although, of course, they may have been hoaxed…I saw three sets of prints that to me were strange. One of the prints was on an island which had a perimeter fence and a locked gate. All three were on virgin snow and could not have been made by a hoaxer because no other prints were near them or led to or from them.’
The small scare echoed reports from the previous year when two bear corpses were discovered on the River Lea at hackney. The animals had been decapitated and skinned but no-one knows just where they came from.
Is it possible such elusive forms were phantom bears, ghosts from areas that once participated in bear baiting? At Chelsea’s Cheyne Walk, several bears of varying colour are said to haunt, whilst in the Tower of London a spectral bear was said to prowl and in 1817 to have frightened to death a sentry of the Jewel Room, whose bayonet passed right through the creature without effect. The guard was able to give his account before dying of shock shortly after.
Source: The London Word
http://www.thelondonword.com/2008/12/phantom-or-flesh-bears-in-london/
