Premonitions of Bin Laden's capture

I visited John Hogue's website to see if he mentioned anything about Bin Laden. He did not. I don't, necessarily, count this as a strike against him, but I would have been truly impressed had he predicted it... because the event was largely unforeseeable. Most prognosticators (particularly the ones who haunt Coast To Coast) restrict themselves, for the most part, to dramatic but foreseeable future outcomes. Examples of this include, "I predict more stormy weather for 2011," or "There will be an earthquake in Asia." While not exactly a certainty, these predictions are largely foreseeable, and if you closely examine the predictions of prominent prognosticators, the bulk of their predictions fall into this category.

While there, however, I noticed that he made mention of problems relating to Pakistan's "failed state" status. The Pakistanis themselves might take some umbrage at this, for while the country has a lot of problems, it does have a feeble semblance of a democracy. I might have been more impressed if Hogue had said something like, "An event in 2011 will topple the Pakistani government, and the nation will fall into the hands of a terrorist organization bent on acquiring nuclear weapons." (While this might not have been foreseeable in 2010, it's foreseeable now.)

However, someone actually did mention three years ago that Bin Laden was holed up in a villa in Pakistan. Christiane Amanpour stated unequivocally on Real Time With Bill Maher that "somebody very knowledgeable" told her that Bin Laden is living "a nice comfortable villa in Pakistan." Either important people knew all about Bin Laden's hideaway in 2008 (Bush II was still President then), or something caused Ms. Amanpour to blurt this out. While this may not be a premonition, it's certainly intriguing.

My argument is that while precognition exists and is "real," the overwhelming majority of us can't turn it on and off at will; it originates in a part of our self that doesn't take orders from the conscious ego. So, most truly stunning and accurate predictions are made by people by sheer accident and without conscious intent. And I think it's by design; if we could truly tap into this ability at will, the world would indeed be a perilous place.