HPANWO

The Obscurati Chronicles- Part 12

2012-01-27T23:36:00.003Z

Part 12 of my new novel-draft The Obscurati Chronicles is up on Ben’s Bookcase now, see: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2012/01/obscurati-chronicles-part-12.html Sorry it’s been so long since I last wrote anything on the book. I intend to publish the draft as I write it, at least to begin with; I’m not sure if I’ll put it all up online, seeing as I do want to eventually sell some books too!

I found writing this part of the novel very harrowing and poignant because it addresses some very upsetting subjects: school bullying and the emotional, physical and sexual abuse of children. Some of what you’ll read in there is directly based on my own personal experiences.

Latest HPANWO Voice articles: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2012/01/life-on-venus.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2012/01/ufo-down-on-baltic-seabed.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2012/01/tavistock-institute-invade-occupy.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2012/01/sopa-put-on-hold.html

Latest HPANWO TV films: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2012/01/ms-belchys-breadstick-challenge.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2012/01/ditchley-park.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2012/01/read-rockall.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2012/01/ben-civilian.html

Rockall on Amazon Kindle

2012-01-21T11:16:00.004Z

My novel Rockall is now available on Amazon Kindle, see: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rockall-ebook/dp/B006ZZO8DY/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1327141478&sr=1-2 The ISBN is 978-0-9542229-2-5 and this will shortly be listed on Nielsen-Bookdata.

Rockall is my second novel that was published as a book by The Aldyth Press in 2004. My first novel Evan’s Land came out from the same publisher in 2002; for a couple of years, sales of these books provided for me the equivalent of a reasonable part-time income. Both books are now out of print, but Evan’s Land is currently available as a free audio book, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2010/11/evans-land-audio-book.html I consider Rockall a vastly superior novel in every way, but the most important way I think is that by the time I wrote it I had become conspiratorially-aware and the book has powerful conspiracy and paranormal themes. It’s about a group of people who set out to explore an unknown island and everything that happens to them; the blurb goes:
Rockall- the last undiscovered place on Earth!
Since the dawn of time the island of Rockall has defied the ambitions of the human race. It's small, remote, constantly ravaged by Atlantic gales and encircled by 700-foot cliffs. Inaccessible and so forgotten by history... UNTIL NOW! Four intrepid friends set out on a mission to finally land on Rockall and survey it. But Rockall refuses to give up her secrets without a fight! And when that fight is finally lost every human eye turns towards Rockall with gapes of astonishment. This tiny, insignificant island has held a secret that could change the future of mankind... or destroy it.
This is the third edition of the novel, newly edited and updated from the two previous editions. I know that no author is ever completely satisfied with anything they write, but I’m tempted to think this edition is as good as the book will ever be!

I personally don’t have an Amazon Kindle and never read ebooks at all if I can help it. The reason for this is simply that because of the threat of the New World Order and its desire to censor information, relying on an electronic database for literature is putting all our eggs in a very shaky basket and then handing it over to the lion to take care of in his den. On my Kindle account there’s a single-button option that I’m given to delete Rockall, and if I press it the entire book just disappears! If I can do that so can the Government! Ian R Crane mentions in one of his lectures that Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four one day just vanished off his Kindle reader. He also pointed out something else interesting and sinister: what does the word “kindle” mean?: Firewood! Could this be a reference to the burning of books? But of course with Kindle there’s no need for any bonfires in the streets fuelled by flaming copies of Einstein’s Relativity; you just press a button and the offending material just evaporates into the electronic ether forever. If you are at all concerned by freedom-of-information then you have to understand that good old-fashioned paper book publishing is essential. Once a book has been published and has sold a certain number of copies over a wide enough area it becomes virtually indestructible. No matter how hard a censor tries he can never be sure that he’s located and destroyed every single copy of the banned title, and so far he has never succeeded. In fact in oppressive regimes like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union this became very apparent when those tyrannies fell. People came out all over the place proudly holding the formerly outlawed books saying: “Oh yeah, I had a copy in my attic all along.” However I know not everybody shares my concern; or many of you may agree with me, but have a Kindle anyway just for convenience. In which case I will provide what the customer demands.

Since I was discharged from the Hospital Portering Service, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2012/01/trystan-swales-article-blogging-costs.html , many of you have suggested that I set up a donations fund, like plenty of other anti-New World Order researchers and activists have done. Some of you thought I should do that even before my suspension and dismissal. I might well take those people’s advice, no longer out of choice but necessity; I hope this won’t be unavoidable, but I must be realistic and consider the possibility that I might have to rely on that as my sole income. On the other hand, if possible, I’d like to give donors something in return for their generosity, and this is why if any HPANWO-readers want to help me out financially then please buy a copy of Rockall on Amazon Kindle. In this way you don’t only assist me in my continuing mission, as well as keeping a roof over my head, but you will be able to read what I hope you will enjoy as a great example of quality conspiracy fiction. This novel contains many of the themes that I write about on HPANWO in the non-fiction world, so if you enjoy my articles and HPANWO TV films, then I can almost guarantee that Rockall will work for you too. Write us a review as well if you can. Thank you.

Latest HPANWO Voice articles: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2012/01/david-icke-discussion-group-lecture.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2012/01/wikipedia-protests.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2012/01/wittgensteins-poker.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2012/01/scottish-independence.html

Latest HPANWO TV films: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2012/01/ben-civilian.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/12/its-now-2012.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/12/its-christmas-day.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/12/christmas-lights.html

Trystan Swale's Article: Blogging Costs Jobs

2012-01-11T12:50:00.008Z

See here for background: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2010/10/tam-london-2010.html
And: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/07/skeptical-renaissance.html
And: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/11/london-skeptics-in-pub-141111.html

As regular HPANWO-readers will know, I’m different from many of my fellow Conspiracy and Paranormal researchers in that that I often attend Skeptic events. With the rise of Conspiratorial awareness and interest in the Supernatural, the Skeptic Movement has similarly burgeoned and organized itself as a reaction, and has become an antithesis of our own world; with conferences, groups, websites, Internet forums writers, researchers and speakers all with a surprisingly similar structure (See the background links at the top of the article). I’ve come to know a few of the people involved in this community, like Jack of Kent, see the Links column. One person who keeps dropping in at all of these conferences and events is Trystan Swale.

I first met Trystan in 2010 at the Weird 10 Conference in Warminster, see here for my report (Sorry it’s so brief): http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2010/08/weird-10.html He is an Internet radio host and had a stall for his old Righteous Indignation podcast, see: http://www.ripodcast.co.uk/ This appears to be now defunct and Trystan is between shows at the moment. Rather like a mirror of myself, Trystan the Skeptic often delves in to the “wacky” world of the “Woo-osphere”. Although I’ve not yet seen him yet at Probe or AV (qv) he does attend the Fortean, “demi-monde”-type conferences like Weird and ASSAP. I always take time out to chat with him and we get on well despite our ideological differences... then again if I disliked everybody who disagreed with me I’d be a pretty lonely person! Also throughout history we’ve often seen many examples of relationships that appear to be bonded not in spite of, but because of differing opinions. A classic example is Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2009/05/houdini-code.html . I always remember that there was a boy at my school who was involved in a die-hard Marxist group called the Workers’ Socialist League and he spent most of his time hanging out with the leader of the school’s Young Conservative club (Well, he was the Young Conservative club to be honest; nobody else ever joined!) When I saw that Trystan has written an article about my recent expulsion from the Hospital Portering Service (See: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-i-became-ex-hospital-porter.html) I was worried for a moment that I was about to get a Skepti-bashing, but actually he has let me off quite lightly. He’s avoided judgmental statements and treated the incident as a misfortune. He also believes as strongly as I do in Free Speech; believe me I’d kick up like hell if I heard that a Skeptic was about to lose their job for their beliefs, which is why I supported Simon Singh in his legal case.

Here’s his article: http://www.bio.parafort.com/blog/?p=42 Trystan has not used my best photo to illustrate his post, and I hope nobody thinks I always look like that. In fact the picture comes from this article: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/10/aahh-theres-reptilian-under-my-bed.html Trystan makes an attempt to see both sides of the story, being sympathetic my own cause, yet putting himself in the shoes of the Management, as he sees it. I suppose I have to accept that in a way my own literary and cinematic style backfired on me. My lack of tact and inhibition, along with my disdain for Political Correctness, has always meant that I am vulnerable to actions like these. However this was not an oversight on my part, but a deliberate policy; I’ve always admired satirical comedy. Some of my favourite sit-coms were the serials starring the character Alf Garnett, played by Warren Mitchell. These programmes have been totally disowned by their producer, the BBC, yet I think they’re a brilliant indictment on racism and general social ignorance, and I must admit that Alf did inspire my character Butt U Doonuthin in the Microchip a Muslim Day video. I’ve always treated my viewers as intelligent intellectuals capable of more than just one-dimensional literal thinking, and the mostly positive feedback I’ve received from them seems to vindicate that. However the problem with satire is that it can always be misinterpreted, either by accident or deliberately: in other words, an attack by false misinterpretation, feigned naivete, “twisting things”. This did actually go through my head when I first published Microchip in September 2010. I wondered to myself: What if somebody gets the wrong idea? Have I made it clear through the dialogue, style and costume etc that this is a satire? I hope this won’t make people at work think I’m a racist... and so on. A couple of weeks went past and I got lots of positive comments, and no more rude ones than I normally get from the troll element. Also, I knew that within a fortnight or so all my viewers at work would probably have seen it, including many of my bosses, so if there was anything they regarded as a bit dodgy they’d probably have had a quiet word with me and asked me nicely to remove it, or at least make changes to it. My bosses and I generally got on well and if they had any criticism of me it was usually carried out in an informal and cooperative manner. I think if that had happened I’d have probably agreed to their request, either by producing it again in a toned-down remake or putting up a disclaimer of some kind. However after a week or two more I relaxed in the knowledge that my fears were unfounded. Everybody who saw the video understood that the satire was as plain and blatant as I tried to make it.

Trystan has guessed correctly that my film David Icke’s New Book is a parody of the cover of one of that author’s previous titles, I am Me- I am Free. Also, as I explained, it is not indecent really and if it were YouTube would have removed it and possibly banned my account on the site. The same goes for I’m Thinking about Sex, in which you see nothing of me below my chest. It is there to make a serious point and, as I say, I like to do this in my own way and have no concern for potential oversensitive viewers who take things too literally. Actually if we pursue this line of analysis then almost anything could be seen as offensive when presented in that way. The Big Issue recently published an article about how some Americans are complaining about British childrens’ TV shows, they are supposed to be indoctrinating their youth with subversive radical liberal themes. Teletubbies is said to contain anarcho-syndicalist undertones because Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, Laa-laa and Po live in a state of communal economic and social equilibrium inspired by the conclusion of Marx and Engels’ The Communist Manifesto. Noddy and Big Ears are clearly a homosexual couple because they live in the same house and every time they meet Mr Plod there are hints in the dialogue that they would like a civil partnership. To apply that to HPANWO TV: My Che Gue-Veitch films insult both the Scots and French people because I talk with a fake Scottish accent and wear a beret (See: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/10/see-hello-its-charlie-che-guevara.html) Also Charles doing the Washing-Up is male chauvinistic and is encoded with extreme anti-feminist propaganda, because it attacks housewives (See: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/03/charles-doing-washing-up.html) You see where this mindset could lead? If I comply with it I will spend my whole life tip-toeing around with my shoulders hunched and my arms pressed to my sides, vetting every move I make and word I say just in case one of the billions of people who use the Internet decides to complain about it. I will never do that!

Trystan tried to see it from the Management’s point of view, and I think in my report linked above I made an attempt to relate their case to the reader too; you’ll notice that I quote them several times when they explained their position to me at the hearing. Actually in the above cases the only reason I didn’t cooperate with them was not so much the accusation itself, but the suspicious way that it suddenly arose and the violence with which Management reacted agianst me. I explain in my report, that is not how they normally operate and it’s a huge coincidence that this complaint arose at that moment in time and in the form that it did. If I had hurled racial abuse at somebody while on duty then I would have been suspended on the spot in that fashion, and would have richly deserved it! All accusations of gross misconduct are acted upon in that way; so, as I said in my report, I have ask myself if my suspension had another motive.

Being instantly suspended in that way was effectively a declaration of war, as was the most serious and hurtful allegation made against me, and also the most outrageous and grotesque, which Trystan does not address in his article: The accusation that I bullied another member of staff. The idea that I would ever do such a thing strikes right at the heart of my persona and self-esteem... and perhaps it’s meant to. It becomes yet more curious when you understand that the “complaint" against me must have been fast-tracked. The Trust receives far more complaints and adverse incident reports than you might think; in fact a figure quoted to me by my union was 30,000 a month. That’s a thousand a day! I can well believe it because I’ve received training in Health and Safety. I was a manual-handling officer and trainer for many years and I’ve had to submit quite a few of these reports myself. I found that the average processing time is about two to three months and this seems to be acceptable. Priority is given to cases of severe clinical hazards that pose severe danger to the wellbeing of patients and personnel. However this complaint against me was dealt with in eight days, maybe sooner because there was a weekend and one day of my leave in between. So my situation was regarded as being of the highest possible importance to Management and it was processed and acted on immediately.

The other night I called a friend in the Truth Movement to tell them what had happened, somebody who used to present an online TV show. They had already found out about my dismissal, but said very forthrightly that they thought there was nothing suspicious about it; they dismissed my concerns and thought that I'd made a mistake. I was dismayed at their attitude, but I didn't get angry with them. I have to accept that not everybody is going to believe me. I can sympathize in a way, especially if one is not familiar with hospitals and how they work. And it is true that I have no direct evidence at all, only overwhelming circumstantial evidence. I still think I did the right thing. I was put on the spot and had to make a decision on what my line of defence would be and I choose that one. I could have ignored all the suspicious coincidences and breaches of normal practice and fought the case on Management's turf, but I chose not to. Whatever the rights and wrongs, it’s over now, for better or worse.

Latest HPANWO Voice articles: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2012/01/wittgensteins-poker.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2012/01/scottish-independence.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2012/01/porter-no-more.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2012/01/leicester-secular-society.html

Latest HPANWO TV films: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2012/01/ben-civilian.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/12/its-now-2012.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/12/its-christmas-day.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/12/christmas-lights.html

How I became an ex-Hospital Porter

2012-01-07T12:32:00.012Z

Important background article: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2012/01/my-interview-on-critical-mass-show.html Since this radio show was recorded I’ve received confirmation that the case against me was centred around my appearance in the national newsprint media, as I always suspected; this was clearly published in the Management’s case dossier. The only thing revealed to me about the “complaint” against me was an email that was like no other I’ve ever seen from a member of the public. I was told that it was anonymous and it simply read: I have reason to believe that Ben Emlyn-Jones, one of your hospital porters is behaving in an unprofessional manner on the internet. I would not like to visit your hospital with this person as a porter in my care, or one of my family. I thought I would bring this to your attention. Thank you. And it contains a brief list of some of my videos that this “person” feels “concerned” by. However in pride of place at the top of the list is a link to the online edition of my interview in the Wales on Sunday. I’ve seen letters of complaint from members of the public before. They're usually long and rambling and tend to be self-referring, like: "I'm not somebody who often makes complaints, but..." or “This badly affected my experience of being X-rayed...” etc. This email is totally different in style: it’s short, factual and uses terminology more commonly used by political and senior administrative officers than outsiders. This very thin paper trail was to be the backbone of my defence case, and unfortunately it was too thin. Yesterday I was discharged from the Hospital Portering Service. I am now a civilian. I was so mentally exhausted last night when I came home that I only had it in me to write a brief notice on the Voice, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2012/01/porter-no-more.html

I met with my shop steward on Thursday evening to make a plan of action and we totally disagreed on what should be done. Lately he has been coming round to seeing things my way. To begin with he was very sceptical of my suspicions and denied that the newspapers had anything to do with what’s happened to me, but since the dossier came out and my prediction was confirmed he's changed his mind. However he still wanted me not to use that to defend myself and instead try to counter the specifics of the allegations; I, on the other hand, thought it best to refuse to discuss the specific allegations and instead focus on why I thought they were a complete charade to disguise the real reason I was in trouble. I don’t blame my shop steward at all; he advised me and I went against him. However if I’d gone along with his course of action I doubt if the results would have been any different. As I said in the radio interview linked above, I know how NHS management works and I recognize the symptoms of bloodlust when I see them. They wanted me out, and they were determined to get me out! They have a number of methods for doing this and many of them were deployed against me at yesterday’s hearing.

The hearing was due to start at 1.30pm and I felt strangely calm and relaxed as I walked the few miles from my home to the hospital yesterday lunchtime. This was odd because the afternoon before I had been very anxious, dreading what was to come the next day like a dentists appointment. I strolled at a leisurely pace and walked through the parkland and wooded areas on my journey, avoiding the quicker and more direct route along the main roads. For some reason that I couldn’t fathom at the time, I kept humming to myself the song Feed the Birds from the musical Mary Poppins, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABc1-6o9cF0 The hearing was held in one of the conference rooms and was presided over by a squad of six officers from the Trust’s central administration Management. It’s important to realize that this “complaint” had originated from outside the hospital; there's a rumour going round that an MP is involved. Therefore neither the Head Porter nor any of her deputies from my own department, my immediate bosses, were allowed anything to do with it. I was charged under the category of “conduct outside work”, in other words they had no problem at all with the quality of my job or anything else that went on while I was on duty; it was instead alleged that what I was saying and doing in my personal life off-duty had a direct and major impact on the Trust’s reputation and ability to perform its designated purpose. This is a highly unusual situation; most disciplinary cases are very straightforward, for instance: a member of staff turns up for work drunk or steals money from a cashbox etc. When I was first suspended I was given a copy of the NHS’ Disciplinary Action Procedure handbook and under the category of “conduct outside work” it only covers suspected criminal activity. For example, if a member of staff were accused of abusing a child that operative would be suspended to protect the children who were patients, which is fair enough. My case was totally different; it was “conduct outside work” but involved no criminal allegation, and so has no precedent in the published policy.

As I took my place at the table I had a definite strategy at hand. Firstly and throughout the meeting, I kept my gaze fixed on the tabletop in front of me and avoided all eye-contact with the presiding officers. I also kept my hands clasped in front of me and sat straight up in my chair. Many officials in Government operations of all kinds are trained in interrogation techniques, such as reading body-language and subliminally influencing the minds of other people. Organizations like Common Purpose are said run courses in it, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2009/06/alternative-view-ii-part-5.html and even TV celebrities like Derren Brown demonstrate it, see: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/derren-brown-mind-control/4od I was concerned that the people in that meeting room with me might be some of them. From the very start I knew that Management had anticipated my defence from reading my submitted statement, and perhaps also by listening to my radio show or watching HPANWO TV, because the chairman said in his introduction: “It may be necessary for me to remind us all to stay focused on the allegations themselves and not deviate onto supposedly related matters”. The Management’s advocate opened their case by repeating what was written in the dossier. The Wales on Sunday article was mentioned only when the “complaint” letter was dictated and not referred to again. The Management advocate’s whole testimony was based on the notion that some of my HPANWO material was "offensive", most notably my films Microchip a Muslim Day, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2010/09/microchip-muslim-day.html , David Icke’s New Book, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2010/05/david-ickes-new-book.html and I'm Thinking about Sex, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/04/im-thinking-about-sex.html There’s no doubt that Management have gone to a lot of expense and effort to build this case against me. They must have set up an entire office for weeks on end to create this file; regular HPANWO-readers will know how many articles and films I’ve made! Despite the 20 billion pounds cut from this year’s NHS budget and staffing levels at an all-time low, the Trust's Management felt that getting rid of me was money and time well spent. How flattering! I remember that this was what happened to Kevin Annett, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/03/kevin-annett-liverpool-lecture-12311.html . This also brings me back to the question of why I was suspended straight away, without any discussion first. For an employer, suspending somebody is very awkward; it generates a lot of paperwork, takes time and costs a lot of money. It’s something you normally would only do when you have to, if for instance one of your staff has committed an act of gross misconduct, like getting drunk on duty, as I said above. I hadn’t done that, so why didn’t they just ask me nicely first to remove the objectionable material? This is not how they normally operate, and this adds to my suspicion. However, my suspension does make sense if you suppose that their motivation was to break me down psychologically. When I was suspended I was told next to nothing about what I’d done wrong and was left for an entire week at home before they contacted me, to lie awake at night and bite my nails. This is a standard technique used by torturers and interrogators. They always lock their victim up alone in a cell for a while first, to let them “stew in their own juice”. So before the interrogation even begins, the victim is thinking: “What have I done!? What are they going to ask me!? What are they going to do to me!?” and so when they finally come for you you’re “softened up”. I suspect Management hoped that when I walked into the investigation meeting a week later I’d be a nicely-compliant nervous wreck. Well I wasn't! It didn’t work! I was offered a deal: To remove the “offensive” material and they'd reconsider my suspension, which I refused. Firstly I had already guessed that this incident was generated by my appearance in the media and so experience says I was doomed anyway; secondly, they were a bit vague about exactly what they wanted removed. It started with just the Butt vid, but then they said they were concerned that I had my uniform on in a few vids. They could have eventually decided everything I’ve ever done was for the chop; and thirdly I know people, like Kevin Annett whom I mentioned above, who have made a stand against the Man when they’ve had far more to lose financially than I do. I’m in a lower-paid job with no mortgage or anything; I’ve even got a very sympathetic landlord who’s going to let me carry on living where I am for “a few months” without paying rent, so what excuse do I have? How could I look Kevin Annett or Tony Farrell in the face and tell them I was too scared to stand up to all this when they weren’t!?

According to Management my film Microchip a Muslim Day is racist which is complete nonsense! It is, I think, a very obvious anti-racist satire; this is what I intended it to be and this is how I think it comes across. My character is smoking a fake cigarette and wearing pink sunglasses! In that entire series Butt is presented a figure of contempt. The theme of the film is to warn people not to be goaded into feeling hostility for Muslims, or other creeds and colours, which is what our media and political leaders seem to want us to do as a standard divide-and-rule tactic. However when I tried to make this point the Management appeared to feign an attitude of forced obtuseness. The chairman said: “What? It’s a comedy, yet it makes a serious political statement? That’s a contradiction.” I then had to explain, not that the film was a satire, but what satire was! I asked the chairman if he’d ever seen the politically satirical film Dr Strangelove and he replied: “that’s not relevant”. This is a phrase that they would repeat again and again; a tactic to confuse my points and twist facts. In fact using these tactics it’s possible to persuade somebody that almost anything anywhere is offensive! Skeptics are trained in the same methods, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/11/london-skeptics-in-pub-141111.html . The other films were supposedly considered unsuitable presumably because I’m unclothed in them, but this is equally ridiculous. I’m not any more unclothed than anybody you’d see in any public swimming pool or on the beach. If I had posted HPANWO TV films of myself naked then YouTube would quickly have removed them and given me a stern warning. There are some online video sites that don’t mind members posting videos of themselves naked, indeed some keenly encourage you to do so! But YouTube is definitely not one of them. At any rate, I refused to say this in the meeting. Apart from my discussion over the Butt film, my policy was not to address the allegations; this was the basis of my defence which I had my chance to present next.

There was one point that my shop steward managed to get struck from the record and that was the most hurtful and insulting allegation of all: That I had bullied another member of staff. What had really happened was that I and another member of staff decided to make a comedy video together for our own mutual amusement and post it on HPANWO TV. This person was a very close friend of mine at work (Still is I hope!) and I’d never dream of doing anything to harm him. This person is a grown man in the same age group as myself; however because he suffers from a comparatively minor learning difficulty and is registered as a vulnerable adult my accusers have reduced this completely harmless, enjoyable and innocent project to some kind of “happy-slapping” attack on my part. Anyway, a member of this person’s family contacted me privately and asked me to remove the video in the first week of my suspension, one of the many peculiar coincidences that have struck in the last couple of months.

My shop steward remained in the room although he didn’t speak at all for this session other than to confirm that I was presenting a case that he did not approve of. I said that I was not going to address the allegations directly because there was a fundamental difference between the Management’s view of matter and my own. I didn’t think it would do any good for my case to “play along” with Management, but instead take a step back and base my defence on the bigger picture. As I said above, my shop steward advised me to cooperate with Management by directly addressing the allegations made. If I did this, he said, I would apparently have stood a good chance of being allowed back to normal duty. After that things would probably return to normal and there’d be no reason to suppose that any further complaints would be made against me. I doubt that very much because what has happened to me has happened to several other people; and the outcome of their own disciplinary procedures has been very different. What I strongly suspect would have happened would be that more complaints would soon be made against me, Management would inevitably make more and more demands of me, want more material removed, and have me jump through more hoops generally. The pressure against me would increase until I either couldn’t face it anymore and resigned of my own accord, or got sacked for some other reason. During the investigation meeting back in October I mentioned that I was suspicious that this “complaint” had been received so soon after I had been featured in the national newsprint media and the investigating officer did not reply. Why was this not revealed to me in the investigation meeting? Why were there no references to it in the report other than the pictures? We have an “elephant in the room” situation here. The only real reason I was in trouble was because of me being in the newspapers. As you can see if you take a look, I’ve been running HPANWO for over 5 years and the HPANWO TV channel for nearly as long. I make no secret of this and have many viewers and readers among the hospital’s staff, including managerial grades, yet nobody has ever complained about me before; not once! Nobody has even approached me privately, in a friendly manner, to warn me that I am breaching regulations with my content. Yet now, less than a month after appearing in the newspapers, complaints are flooding in. Am I supposed to believe that this is some kind of bizarre coincidence? Is it also a coincidence that Kevin Annett and some other people I know of have also been harassed when they start speaking out publically in the media about certain subjects, not just given a reprimand or warning, but threatened with losing their career and livelihood!? It seems that there is a hidden policy in place to destroy the careers of people who talk about certain things openly.

The letter of complaint was very strange in tone, as I’ve said above. I can’t help but wonder if this is a genuine letter of complaint from a member of the public or something contrived and fabricated. I realize now I should have seen this coming because I speak out about the same subjects that the other people I refer to do, and they’ve all either been sacked and dragged through the courts or threatened with being sacked and dragged through the courts. These secretly-taboo subjects are, among other things:
1. That children are being abused, and even sometimes murdered, on an institutional level by the state, corporations and Churches.
2. That the attacks on the United States of America on September the 11th 2001 were a false flag military operation carried out by the government itself, rather than the crimes of foreign terrorists.
3. That the Unidentified Flying Objects that are becoming more and more common in the skies above our heads are actually the artefacts of an extraterrestrial civilization, or one that might be “otherworldly” in a different way.
(In my statement underneath all that I wrote: “This list is not exhaustive”. It was a bit of a micky-take and confidence booster because this is a catchphrase Management always likes to use in its documents!)
I added that if the notions on the list above are all “wacko”, “conspiracy theories”, the work of “nut-jobs” etc, then why are our leaders so defensive about them? What I was being accused of here is a Thoughtcrime. I think I’m being persecuted for my beliefs. For example, did the “letter of complaint” include a link to my film Butt’s Winter Wonderland because of Butt’s foul mouth or because the film is a satire against the prevailing theory of man-made climate change? Everything about this case indicated that this is what was happening to me. What is happening here is that people are expected not to express certain viewpoints about certain subjects when off-duty. This is a Thoughtcrime by every definition of the word. I have a completely clean work record and am respected by many of my colleagues, both Portering and civilian. I’ve been running the HPANWO franchise for over 5 years so the question that you should be asking, and any behavioural psychologist will back me up on this, is not: “Does it call into question his ability to perform his duties in the future?” but: “Has it done in the past?” And the answer is an undeniable and resounding “no”. In Devon there’s an MP called Dr Sarah Wollaston who is not only a Member of Parliament with very outspoken anti-establishment views, and who is very critical of current Government NHS policy, but she’s also a practicing GP. I might also add the example of one of the John Radcliffe’s favourite sons and a well-known local character, Dr Evan Harris, until recently another MP and still a man with staunch political views. So you see, if these two people are allowed to be part of an NHS profession and hold political views outside their working hours then so can I. I was always professional and respectful to the patients and other staff. I didn’t preach the subjects I talk about on HPANWO to them when I was on duty. I have never given any cause for complaint in what I do when I’m off-duty before so there’s no reason to think I will do so in the future. The evidence provided in the dossier looks suspiciously like a fabrication and the timing of this incident is beyond what any reasonable person would dismiss as coincidence. For this reason I categorically and emphatically rejected all the allegations made against me.

The chairman listened carefully to me and then replied: “So you don’t want to offer any defence against these allegations?” I answered that this was my defence. He responded: “No, this is not a defence, this is just a reason why you don’t want to make a defence.” I disputed that and the argument went round in circles. Eventually I managed to get Management to respond to my points, but their response was to state that it was not their concern and so not relevent. On the nature of the email they said: “Our job is to investigate complaints made by clients and members of the public. It’s not our place to speculate on whether the letter was written in a particular tone or how long it was or what words it used. All that concerns us is that the complaint was made.” They also dismissed my concerns over the coincidental timing of the “complaint”: “It’s not a part of our duty to ask questions like that. Our duty is to investigate complaints and a complaint has been made. It doesn’t matter when, where or how. It doesn’t matter how it relates to the timing of other events in your personal life.” And so this went on like a stuck record. I suddenly realized that I believed them! These are not the people who want me out of the Hosptial Portering Service; these are the people who were automatically enforcing the will of whoever it was above them who had demanded my removal from the Hospital Portering Service. I doubt if they know any more about the email of “complaint” than I do. They’ve just been told that their superiors want something done and so they do it, with the obedience of soldiers on a parade ground. It is these long, exponentially-increasing networks of administrators and jobsworths that allow a very small number of Elite individuals to impose their will on a vast population. It’s also why this system reacts so brutally against anyone in that chain who doesn’t play their assigned role of obedience; like Kevin, Tony Farrell and me. We are literally fatal to its function.

After this session we took a half-hour break while the panel considered, and then I was called in and the meeting reconvened for the decision. The tone became very formal, like a Crown courtroom with the chairman like a judge. I amused myself by imagining that he had a black cap over his head sentencing me to be hanged. He said that he had given me every attempt available to submit a defence and I had not done so; this is untrue, but, as I said, they refused to accept my defence as a relevant testimony. “You clearly believe that you are the victim of some kind of conspiracy.” He said (“Ha ha!” everybody else thought!). “But we’re not here to listen to a defence based on your beliefs; we are here to consider these allegations based on agreed facts and nothing else; therefore you have not defended yourself at all against these allegations. So therefore my decision is that you are to be deseconded from the company and dismissed from the Oxford University and Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust.” I then realized that what had happened was something I knew all along would happen. All I could do at that point was to make sure that I was discharged with as much dignity as I’d always tried to serve. They asked me if there were any personal belongings in my locker and I told them that I had a brew-kit consisting of some teabags, coffee, powdered milk and sugar; and that I’d like to donate those to the other Porters. When I was asked if there was anything else I'd like to say I replied: “I’d just like to say that if anybody in this room is unhappy with what has taken place here today, and you have any information you think I should know, then please contact me privately in the strictest of confidence.” It was by now almost 5PM, and I was then solemnly escorted to the site entrance from where I walked home.

I don’t feel as sad I thought I would. I think that this experience has taught me that a lot of what I’ve loved about being in Portering has already been lost, and lost a long time before I was called into the Head Porter's office that night last October and suspended. It’s withered slowly over the last few years. A lot of the camaraderie and fun has gone out of the job, and this goes for nursing, medicine and many other NHS professions too. Low pay, more difficult management systems and increasing workload have taken most of the enjoyment out of being in the Health Service. Nowadays people don’t have the time or energy to play; they have to “meet targets” and “deliver services” and “maintain budgets”, and that’s those who are lucky enough to have contracts and are not just seconded from some poxy casual agency. It’s very synchronous that a week or so after I was suspended I heard that the hospital’s Social Club is going to close down in March (See: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/05/st-theos-day-party-2011.html) Estates are withdrawing the lease. I’m frankly surprised that it has lasted this long with the lack of interest in it from the staff. I’ve known people who’ve been at the JR for years and when I mention it they reply: “The Social Club? What’s that?” When I joined the JR the location of the Social Club was an essential part of your basic orientation! Apparently the JRSSC is one of the last social clubs in any NHS hospital in the country. 20 years ago all of Oxford’s four major hospitals along with the JR: the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, the Churchill and the Radcliffe Infirmary had social clubs. This is a very poignant and revealing symptom of the breakdown of community spirit at hospitals. They’ve lost their soul. This is not by accident, it is by deliberate design, but none of it would be possible without the obedient and robotic rubber-stampers like the ones who have just taken Portering away from me. And this is why I have no regrets about what I did.

This is despite the fact that I also face major financial challenges now as my income stops. I have to find a new one, build a new monetary life for myself. But as I said above, my financial problems are minor compared to other people who have stood up against the hideous machine that society has been made into, so I have to follow in their footsteps. I’ve always said on HPANWO that words are no good unless they inspire action. I’ve done an awful lot of waffling on HPANWO these last 5 years! But waffle is all it is unless I’m willing to do something, to model my own life on my knowledge and principles at a practical level. I feel satisfaction for having done that. In fact if I wasn’t willing to do that then everything I’ve ever written or filmed is worthless and I might as well throw it all away. I should try to remain positive about the future; fortune favours the bold, as they say. When I posted my HPANWO Voice notice on Facebook last night somebody replied: “Maybe this is a time to start writing, Ben”, and maybe that’s true. Perhaps I should see this as an opportunity, an adventure. This experience may liberate tremendous creative forces in my life. In a few years time I might look back and think: “I’m glad that happened!”

One thing I have to do is not to give in to what Andy Thomas talks about when he says: “everything is designed to break our spirit”. I must maintain my identity and personal integrity at all costs. Whatever floods wash over me I must not be carried away with them. I must not be tempted into the seductive lair of Conformism. Maybe this was why that song Feed the Birds was going through my head as I walked to the hospital to attend my hearing. The song is about an old woman who sits on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral in London and sells birdseed to people for 2d a bag, hence the lyrics: “Feed the birds. Twopence a bag”. In the scene in the story, the two children whom Mary Poppins cares for are given twopence by their father and are then faced with a choice: Whether to buy a bag of the old lady’s birdseed or invest it in the bank. The following scene has song about investing money in the bank which is a brilliant satire of materialism, “Twopence, frugally invested in the bank...” see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wzTdW5_2vo This illustrates the choice given to the children in the story: follow the Conformist path to materialism or do something more spontaneous, more spiritual, more free-thinking, more compassionate and emotional, more human. I think I now have that choice too and that song popping into my head was my subconscious mind telling me so!

On a final note, I’d like to think all HPANWO-readers, all HPANWO TV-viewers, all HPANWO Forum-members who have supported and consoled me over these past couple of months. And of course I'd like to pay homage to all my Extremely Proud and Dignified Brother and Sister Hospital Porters. It was an honour to serve alongside you and I intend to stay in touch with you all. Nobody can take you away from me!

Latest HPANWO Voice articles: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2012/01/porter-no-more.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2012/01/leicester-secular-society.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-years-day-2012-race-to-line.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/12/how-come-woo-woos-never-see-santa-claus.html

Latest HPANWO TV films: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/12/its-now-2012.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/12/its-christmas-day.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/12/christmas-lights.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/12/happy-winter-solstice-2011.html

My Interview on the Critical Mass Show

2012-01-01T13:33:00.006Z

Happy 2012 to all HPANWO-readers!

For those of you who missed my live appearance on the Critical Mass show, part of Manchester Radio Online, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/12/my-interview-on-critical-mass-radio.html I was wrong when I said you could only hear it live! I’m glad to say that the show has now been podcasted.

Here’s a link to the podcast download page: http://truthhunters.co.uk/CMMRO-Shows/03%20The%20Critical%20Mass%20Show%20On%20MRO%20%2821%20Dec%202011%29.mp3

In this exclusive radio interview I discuss a subject that many of you have been asking me about: What’s going on with me at my hospital? By revealing what I do in this radio show I am breaching the regulations of my employer’s disciplinary procedure; that could well harm my case, but I choose to do so anyway for two reasons: Firstly, it’s a fait accomplis and I’ve got nothing really to lose; they want me out and they’re going to get me out, one way or another! Secondly, the way that Government Servicemen are being stripped of their careers and livelihoods for Thoughtcrimes needs to be exposed! Since this interview was broadcast I’ve received confirmation from the hospital that the cause of my suspension was indeed what I’ve always suspected: My appearance in the national newsprint media.
See: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/10/my-interview-in-wales-on-sunday.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/09/my-interview-in-sun.html

Here's the link to Paul Futurestar's website: http://www.awakenedpeople.org/

I was interviewed before on Paul's old radio station: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/02/my-interview-on-awakened-people-radio.html

(Update- 12/1/12: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-i-became-ex-hospital-porter.html)

Latest HPANWO Voice articles: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-years-day-2012-race-to-line.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/12/how-come-woo-woos-never-see-santa-claus.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/12/debunking-911-myths-in-blackwells.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/12/mens-moisturizing-cream.html

Latest HPANWO TV films: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/12/its-now-2012.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/12/its-christmas-day.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/12/christmas-lights.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/12/happy-winter-solstice-2011.html

The Exit of Dennis Potter

2011-12-23T13:54:00.005Z

Is the world a hologram? This question has become a rather pat truism within the latest alternative paradigm; certainly since the publication of books like Michael Talbot’s Holographic Universe and Tales from the Time Loop by David Icke, the latter of which draws heavily on the former. But is this, if not premature, at least presumptive? What does all that actually mean? Do the people who so often talk about it really know?

Descriptions of this fairly new idea have so far been described better in fictional allegory than scientific books, papers and documentary films. One very good example from cinema is Adrian Lyne’s 1990 chiller Jacob’s Ladder. I first watched this film after seeing it referred to in the excellent book The Spiritual Universe by Fred Alan Wolf. It follows the story of a troubled postman who is being haunted by demons as he makes his way though his everyday life. Mixed in with this are flashbacks to his former life as a soldier in the Vietnam War who is badly injured, and a father to a young boy who gets killed in an accident while riding his bike. As the film progresses it is revealed that the postman was actually killed in Vietnam and that the years of his life since have, it seems, all been a very long and protracted Near-Death-Experience in which his mental landscape formed his outer one. In a scene in which the postman’s friend refers to the 12th century mystical philosopher Meister Eckhart, he explained that the demons the postman perceived were really angels, but because he didn’t understand what they were he saw them as demons. Why is this? Why could one thing be another entirely different thing depending on our state of mind? This somehow struck a chord with me and I searched eagerly for any other information on the subject. Recently I’ve discovered another fictional allegory. It concerns both the work and the life of the writer Dennis Potter. I put the two words together because all of Potter’s best-known work was semi-autobiographical.

Dennis Potter was born in 1935 in Berry Hill, Gloucestershire into a mining family. He began writing in 1965, but never achieved major acclaim until 1986 when the BBC broadcast the serial (What the BBC still rather snobbishly calls a “play”) The Singing Detective. This serial was a huge hit and catapulted Potter into the league of household names. The series was based on the story of a middle aged man who entered hospital to be treated for a bad case of psoriasis, a painful and irritating skin condition that causes sore dermatitis and itchy lesions. The main character was played excellently by Michael Gambon. (The show also contains yet another very negative portrayal of a Hospital Porter which I forgot to mention in this article!: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/10/hospital-porters-in-media.html A young black man who dowdily shunts the main character around whole chewing gum and listening to headphones. See: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2007/12/dont-tell-em-were-porters.html) During the course of his stay in hospital the character explores the world of his memory, drifting back to his childhood in the Forest of Dean, and also a fantasy world he’s created for himself because he’s a writer. As the title suggests, his principle protagonist is a detective who is also a singer; he wears a trenchcoat and trilby hat making him a cliché Chandleresque private eye. The two mental landscapes are blended, with the effortlessly-apt and ingenious wit and style, with the real world of the character, that is Potter’s hallmark. At times, the different worlds become blurred, with characters in the real world acting out scenes from the main character’s fantasy or past. The narrative is accompanied by period popular music, another recurring feature of Potter's drama. His main character, as always, is somebody just like himself: a man of the same age, profession and with the same thoughts and feelings. Like his character, Potter originates from the Forest of Dean. In this way he is not dissimilar to my friend and fellow writer Jude Calvert-Toulmin, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2010/12/heroine-for-internet-age.html . We see this pattern continue in his subsequent serial Lipstick on Your Collar, which was broadcast in 1993. The story is set in England in 1956, on the verge of the Suez Crisis, and the main character in this series was a young man played by Ewan McGregor who is doing his national service as a Russian translator in a British military intelligence office. Again this matches with Potter’s own youthful experience as a Russian linguistic expert at around the same time; and the imagery of the series inspired me to envisage the “WL lab” in my own novel Evan’s Land: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2010/11/evans-land-online.html . This series also included some revolutionary computer-generated special effects. This was the last of Potter’s work that was produced during his lifetime.

In 1994 Dennis Potter died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 59. True to form, he managed to complete a screenplay before his death, his most brilliant in my view. This was produced after he died in a unique collaborative effort between the BBC and Channel 4. It was a two-part series; the first called Karaoke and its sequel Cold Lazarus. Like all Potter’s work his two last plays are typical of his house style: hardbitten, gothic, surreal and darkly humourous. Potter was described by Alan Bennett and his other peers are rather arrogant and incapable of self-criticism. That’s true! But I sometimes think that a certain amount of arrogance is a good thing in literature. It can drive us to achieve excellence, as we define excellence on our own personal terms and this adds colour, richness and variety to the World of Letters. There are many great artistic geniuses who were arrogant to the point of megalomania, but I bet their work wouldn’t have been half as good if they’d felt the need to pander to “Duh Cwitticks” (I have a lot to say on that subject! See: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2008/06/critics.html). If anything I’d say that most writers are not arrogant enough! They’re too eager to please the fickle readership and compromise their uniqueness to the mediocrats of cultural conformity. Another thing I like about Potter is that he refused to bow to Political Correctness; this brutal regime has blunted the literary and performing arts, especially comedy, for several decades now, and it has and bred a climate of fear that is virtually Orwellian in scale; and it’s about time dramatists stood up to it!

The main character in Karaoke and Cold Lazarus is once again the author personified into the story, a man in his late fifties, emotionally troubled and with many physical health problems, the worst of which is the pancreatic cancer that eventually kills him. Karaoke follows the fortunes of a writer, Daniel Feeld, who is working on a TV production of one of his screenplays and he’s played very well by Albert Finney. Feeld finds himself being surrounded by people, total strangers in pubs, passers-by on the street etc, whom he overhears reciting lines of his play in their ordinary conversation. Feeld is bemused and starts questioning his own sanity. He tries to explain what’s happening to his friends, but they don’t believe him; they say it’s a “coincidence” (That word so beloved of Skepperhood, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2010/08/its-just-coincidence.html) or that he’s imagining things. This element of the story is soon overtaken by Feeld’s quest to protect a young woman, who reminds him of his first love, from a brutal gangster who owns the sleazy bar in which she works. Potter’s typical blend between fantasy and reality means she also resembles Feeld’s character in the TV show he’s involved with. In the final scene, Feeld shoots the gangster dead and then returns to the hospital before the police can catch him. Karaoke ends with the mystery of Feeld’s strange experiences unsolved. It is only when you watch Cold Lazarus that you find out, and this is where Jacob’s Ladder and the Holographic Principle comes in. Cold Lazarus is a cyberpunk-ish dystopian sci-fi drama set in the 23rd Century. It turns out that when Daniel Feeld died all those hundreds of years earlier his friends had his head preserved via cryonics, a subject I wrote about on HPANWO long ago: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2007/08/cryonics.html A group of scientists led by a character played very enigmatically by Frances de la Tour have achieved the technology to regenerate Feeld’s cryonically-preserved head and tap into the memories stored inside his brain. They watch episodes of Feeld’s life played out before them rather like a TV show. Some of these involve his childhood in the Forest of Dean in the 1930’s, again just like the author. Others are scenes from his adult life, including the time period covered by Karaoke. A couple of the memories are very harrowing, including an incident as a small child where he is sexually-abused by a tramp in the woods. Others are happy memories, like when he met Beth, a girl he falls in love with and who is played by the same actress, and therefore meant to resemble, Sandra, the girl Feeld shelters in Karaoke. Feeld’s memory of his own death involves a classic Near-Death Experience in which he has an Out-of-Body episode and then goes up a tunnel towards a bright light. Then you hear Feeld scream in distress and he is pulled back down the tunnel and soon the truth becomes clear: Feeld is aware of his situation and is attempting to communicate with the scientists; he is suffering extremely badly and he asks that he be allowed to die. “We’re not studying him, we’re torturing him!” is a good line from the serial. In the end the scientists agree and destroy the laboratory and Feeld’s head; this is just before a media mogul manages to get hold of it and broadcast the memories on his TV channel.

This is where the truth behind the enigma of Karaoke becomes clear and this is why it’s like Jacob’s Ladder. Daniel Feeld’s experiences in Karaoke are actually not real memories, but a world based on his memories, but constructed out of his imagination. The setting of Karaoke is not what it appears to be; it is actually taking place inside Feeld’s frozen head in the Lazarus laboratory in the 23rd Century. The way people keep reciting lines of his play is because they exist purely in Feeld’s imagination. This is exactly the same as the postman in Jacob’s Ladder. The reality of both the postman and Feeld in the two separate films is a mental construct, a very long Near-Death Experience. Both films end with the characters realizing their situation and finally dying for real... But when you examine the themes of these works you have to ask: What is real in the first place? The mind boggles! What if my experience now, sitting in front of a keyboard writing this article, is just taking place inside my mind. I might at this moment actually be a severed head on a laboratory bench in some distant future world. What if the scientists probing these memories I’m experiencing now are just the same, living a constructed life? And so on into infinite regression. This concept has elements that can be found in the very famous film The Matrix. As Morpheus says to Neo: “What is real? If you define “real” as what you can see hear, taste touch or smell then “real” is merely electrical signals from your nerves interpreted by the brain.” According to the physicist Frank Tipler we may well actually all be computer programmes living in a vastly complex virtual reality machine created by super-intelligent beings from the very distant future, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ialY2PgUIKI . The Holographic Principle is one that mainstream physics is only just beginning to come to terms with, but has been discussed by fringe researchers for some time: That everything that makes up reality has a structure that resembles an electronic construct. According to many writers, most recently Anthony Peake, see: http://www.anthonypeake.co.uk/index.php, this can explain phenomena like deja-vu and Synchronicity, something we're all familiar with and I've written about them myself many times. (EG: See my report on Brian Halliwell's speech here: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/10/uk-probe-conference-october-08.html) Recently, especially in the 1990’s, films were produced that explored this concept through fictional allegory, along with scientific books like Michael Talbot’s The Holographic Universe. Dennis Potter’s Karaoke and Cold Lazarus are two of these fictional allegories, less well known than The Matrix, but deserving of the same attention. Like George Orwell feverishly typing away at 1984 in his lonely Scottish island cottage, Potter left us a taunting and intriguing legacy before he left this Holographic Construct... or did he?

You’ll be glad to know that Karaoke/Cold Lazarus can be watched for free online at Channel 4’s YouTube account. Here’s Karaoke: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzW1CpIq468 and here’s Cold Lazarus: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS_BVeMEZJY . (Sorry about all the adverts; it’s the price you pay for free viewing.)

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The Ark of the Covenant

2011-12-11T00:07:00.010Z

Mythology is a frustrating thing. One of the main reasons it’s frustrating is because within the norms of Conformist culture it’s just like God: You either believe in it as a preestablished truth or you reject it 100% as nonsense; there is no Third Position; no in-between or middle way. You may either embrace literally a myth that is part of your chosen off-the-shelf package religion or you see it as an entertaining story that is completely imaginary. I’ve spoken before of how I see this as the reason we’ve never solved the mystery of Atlantis, (See EG: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/05/beyond-knowledge-conference-2008.html) but lately I’ve come across another historical conundrum that is similarly afflicted: The Ark of the Covenant.

The Ark of the Covenant is the most enigmatic historical artifact and religious relic in the world. It first appears in mythology in the Bible; the Book of Exodus. In one of the best-known stories ever told, Moses leads his fellow Israelites out of slavery in Egypt to Mount Sinai. He ascends the mountain to the summit, a place of pilgrimage in modern times, where God descended in a storm cloud flanked by two cherubim blowing ram's horn trumpets and gave Moses the Ten Commandments. God carved the text of the Ten Commandments onto a pair of stone slabs with his finger (Does God really have fingers!?) and Moses brought them down from the mountain after, in the best of Biblical tradition, forty days. God told Moses to build a wooden box to carry the stone tablets in. As He did with Noah, God gave a very precise design blueprint for the box. The box was to be oblong in shape, measuring 2.5 by 1.5 by 1.5 Royal cubits in dimension, that’s 3.75 x 2.25 x 2.25 feet. It was to be made of acacia-wood timber and covered all over with solid gold plating. Similar acacia-wood carrying-staves were inserted into four gold rings built into the side and the staves were never to be removed even when the box was standing on the ground. The box was to be covered with a golden lid with similarly golden figurines of the two cherubim that accompanied God set on top (God Himself, of course, was never portrayed in an image). This box was to be called the Ark of the Covenant. According to some myths other objects were placed in there too: a facsimile of the original tablets, also inscribed by God’s finger, after the originals were smashed by Canaanite idolaters, who took over while Moses went away for a while. Also it is said to contain Moses’ own first hand-written Torah, Aaron’s Rod and several other Israelite heirlooms. This was long before the building of the famous Temple of Jerusalem and the Israelites were a nomadic culture at that time so they carried the Ark with them wherever they went, which must have been quite a burden seeing as it was partly made of solid gold! Whenever they stopped and set up camp the Ark was placed inside a sacred mobile shrine called the Tabernacle which consisted of a special tent that only Moses and the Ark’s vanguard could enter; this tent was also set up to very specific dimensions dictated by God (Maybe this is why the Masons call God “the Great Architect”). The Ark was more than just a ceremonial antique though; it was also a very powerful weapon of war that was a channel of God’s power on Earth. In fact the Israelites defeated several enemies by using the Ark; most famously the Ark destroyed the fortified walls of Jericho after God told the army to march around it 7 times (7 is another recurring number in the Bible) brandishing the Ark. After 40 years (that number again!) of wandering in the wilderness the Israelites installed the Ark permanently in Solomon's great Temple of Jerusalem. The home of the Ark was in an inner sanctum known as the “Holiest of Holies” into which only the most senior high Levite Priests were permitted to enter. This Temple was destroyed and rebuilt several times and today all that remains of it is the Wailing Wall, but what happened to the Ark that lay inside it? After the final sacking of the Temple by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC the Ark is never mentioned again in the Old Testament. This is strange; you’d think that whether the Ark survived or was destroyed, the authors of the Bible would have something to say about its fate. This was the most prized national treasure that the Israelite people possessed, designed by God, built by the founder of their nation and containing a specimen of God’s own handwriting. This is the God revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. So what happened to it? According to the Book of Revelations the Ark ascended into Heaven and St John saw it when the Temple gates were opened in one of his visions. However usually these kinds of ascensions are very dramatically noted at the time they happen, as with Mary, but not this one. It’s as if God whipped the Ark out of the back door as Nebuchadnezzar’s armies were marching up the drive; that’s not God’s style.

As with the Holy Grail, since the Ark vanished from history and legend, several theories have arisen as to where it might be right now. These theories have spawned many fictional accounts, such as Stephen Spielberg’s celebrated film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first in the Indiana Jones series. In this film the Ark is hidden in Egypt. It’s also said to be located in Ireland, England, Jordan, France, South Africa and Italy. But by far the most likely story is that the Ark went to Ethiopia; how the Ark ended up there is a long and interesting story, but there’s also archaeological evidence that it is a true one. Ethiopia is an ancient and unique country, almost unknown to the outside world until it tragically shot into the global headlines the 1980’s, when a famine wiped out millions of its people and this inspired rock stars to come together in the first ever international concert to raise money to save them. In fact the country deserves notoriety for other more positive reasons. It is home to one of the most archaic and fascinating religious traditions on Earth. It has both an unusual orthodox Christian church and a very old Jewish tradition. There are two stories of how the Ark of the Covenant arrived in Ethiopia. One of them states that the Ark was not destroyed during the Babylonian conquest at all; not because God had managed to get it out of the way, but because the Ark had been removed before then, over 200 years before then in fact. The theory goes that the Ark was taken by Jewish refugees when a usurper-king called Manasseh came to power. Manasseh is portrayed in the Bible as a deeply wicked man who brought down the Kingdom of Israel with much brutality and then committed a gross blasphemy by installing a pagan idol in the Temple. The Jewish loyalists fled and it seems reasonable that they would save the Ark by taking it with them. But where would they flee to? This was a big question that’s not easy to answer. However we can suppose that wherever they went to there would be historical and archaeological evidence for their presence because such a high class of refugees would have a great impact on the surrounding area, its culture and traditions. In fact they’d enjoy a similar status as the Dalai Lama and his Tibetan Buddhist followers do today. It seems likely that they would desire to build a new temple, maybe not quite as grand as Solomon’s original one in Jerusalem, but still substantial. Does a record of any such presence exist?

Yes it does. If you travel up the river Nile into southern Egypt you come across a small and apparently insignificant island called Elephantine; this is right on the ancient trade routes between Africa and Palestine. On this island during the time of King Manasseh’s regime a large and powerful Jewish expatriate community emerged and the ruins of their buildings can be seen to this day on the island. Among them is a huge temple complex; at the time, this was the only Jewish Temple in the entire world to be built other than the main one in Jerusalem. It must have been a very special place for Jews during this early Diaspora, perhaps special enough to be the new home of the Ark of the Covenant? Unfortunately the relationship between the Elephantine Jews and their Egyptian asylum-granters was rather shaky. This was because the Jews still practiced animal sacrifice, especially prime rams, at a time when the local Egyptians were worshipping a ram-god called Khnum. The conflict came to a head in 410 BC and the result was that the Jews were evicted from Elephantine. The Egyptians then demolished the Temple. Where would the Jews go from there? Not north for sure because there lay Egypt and they would have surely have been under exile as a result of their eviction, and beyond Egypt lay their arch-enemy Manasseh. To the West was nothing but the endless Sahara Desert and to the east the Red Sea. So they could only have gone south. Upriver on the Nile lay some very green and pleasant lands like Kush, Ophir and Nubia, the region today called Ethiopia.

The second legend is a native Ethiopian one and is today the foundational doctrine of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. It concerns a well-known, but very tenuous and mysterious historical character: the Queen of Sheba. The story goes that the Queen of Sheba came from one of the countries in what is now Ethiopia and lived in the early 9th Century BC, just when the Temple in Jerusalem had been built. On a state visit to Jerusalem she had a fling with King Solomon through which she became pregnant. Her baby became King Menelik I. When he came of age the young king went back to Jerusalem to remind his estranged father of his responsibilities. A deal of some kind was struck which meant that Menelik was given the Ark of the Covenant to take to Ethiopia on condition that he imposed the Judaic faith and culture on his people. He did so and the Jewish tradition in that country endures into the modern era. I find this tale slightly dubious. Sure I know that paternity feuds can be very bitter and costly indeed to the paternal party, but there’s no way Solomon would hand over the Ark. It would be better if he handed over the rest of the entire nation and kept the Ark. Remember what this artifact meant to his people; it was literally a direct gift from God. Also if Menelik had taken the Ark it would mean that the Ark would have been removed from the Temple in Jerusalem just a few short years after the thing had been built! What a waste of effort! Whichever of these tales is the right one there is very strong evidence that the Ark ended up in Ethiopia. Its first sanctuary was Lake Tana. Archaeologists had to visit the extremely remote and isolated Monastery of Debre Damo to discover this secret. This mountain fortress was sealed off from the outside world for over 1500 years and can only be entered by shinnying up a leather rope to a doorway 60 feet up on a sheer cliff face. There, the location of where the Ark was held was revealed. I say was, not is; but bear with me.

Lake Tana is the source of the Blue Nile, the final destination that the Jewish exiles from Elephantine would have come to by following the river. The lake is huge and is covered by many islands, some of them isolated monasteries on which outsiders were forbidden. The area is held sacred by the Ethiopian people and has been used as a fortress to guard national treasures during the frequent occasions when the country has come under attack from an outside enemy or internal strife. The most inaccessible and exclusive of all these outposts is the island of Tana Kirkos. It is almost totally undiscussed; even most Ethiopians have never even heard of it. Here both local legends and archaeological evidence agree that something of enormous spiritual and historical value was kept here. In Part 3 of this TV show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOqLpT6HKzY we see the location where a new Tabernacle may have been erected. The socket holes in the rock match the very precise God-given measurements from tradition, ones that the Jewish priests would have very solemnly and reverently reproduced on the ground of this foreign land. In Part 4 you’ll see that nearby is a very regal grave, maybe the last resting place of the chief Levite Priest who led the expedition. Also in Part 4, you’ll see that the islanders of Tana Kirkos possess sacred objects that they say were brought by the Jewish refugees and show them to the camera. The Ark was kept on Tana Kirkos for 800 years and then, in the 4th Century AD when Ezana, the first Christians king of Ethiopia, sat on his throne, this most holy treasure was moved to the Royal city of Aksum.

For over 600 years Aksum was the centre of a prosperous Christian empire and the heart of its power lay in its sacred core, the Cathedral of St Mary of Zion, the place where the Ark of the Covenant has rested for the last 1600 years. Today the home of the Ark is a surprisingly modest building, a small chapel-like structure in the grounds of what is today a fairly average-sized newly-rebuilt cathedral. It is called The Church of the Tablet and was built in the 1950’s by Emperior Haile Selassie’s wife after the Ark began to cause damage to its original storage site in the old cathedral; I’ll explain how and why such damage might be done in a moment. However this sanctuary is a place of great veneration and on festival days thousands of people will gather in the streets of Aksum as a Tabot, an effigy of the Ark that is always used in Ethiopian church services, is paraded through the city with enormous reverence. As for the real Ark? That’s an entirely different matter. The real Ark never leaves the little chapel and nobody is allowed near it except the Keeper. The post of Keeper of the Ark of the Covenant has got to be the most exclusive and carefully-vetted job application that exists. He is a man who is the most trusted and dedicated of all the Ethiopian clergy selected in a way that makes the Papal Conclave look casual. He and he alone is permitted to enter the Church of the Tablet and look upon the Ark. He takes vows to tend the Ark and do nothing else ever again; he never leaves the small chapel compound and never leaves his job until the day he dies. Under no circumstances is anybody else allowed near the Ark. This is apparently more for their own protection than that of the Ark. The Ark, it seems, can easily take care of itself! More on that in a moment, but one thing is for certain: anybody who goes on a quest for the Ark will eventually end up in only one place: outside the high security railings surrounding the Church of the Tablet. The Ark will lie just a dozen feet away from them but for all the chance they’ll have of viewing it, it might as well be on Mars! Of course in a region as volatile and unstable as northern Ethiopia there’s always a risk that in a period of disorder somebody might try to force entry to the chapel and look at the Ark, or even try to steal or destroy it. If that happens then I’ve no doubt that it will be over the Keeper’s dead body… but maybe it will be over the perpetrator’s too.

As I said, it appears that the Ark is more than just a relic; it has an awareness and intelligence of its own and it seems quite capable of defending itself, often greatly to the detriment of its attacker. There are many stories of what happens to people who try to abuse the Ark, one of them is Biblical. The Ark was captured once by the Philistines after a battle in which they thrashed the Israelites so badly that the Tabernacle was overrun. The Ark was carried back to their homeland in triumph and placed in their own temple. The Israelites were devastated, thinking they’d lost their most priceless treasure forever. However 7 months later the Philistines came to the Israelites and offered to return the Ark unconditionally. This was because since the Ark had been in their possession their entire country had been beset by terrible misfortune, in particular the people had all fallen ill with plagues and tumours. The Ark was exceptionally choosy about whom it had around it. It brought great success and protection to the Israelites, but to anybody else it didn’t like, it brought disaster and death. This factor of the story was included into the climax of Stephen Spielberg’s film about the Ark. Apologies for the spoiler, but what happens is that it appears that all is lost. Indiana Jones and the heroine are tied up awaiting execution and the Nazis open up the Ark to test it. Immediately they’re struck down by fire and die in a very gruesome scene which gave me nightmares as a child. The Ark, so the stories go, has a willpower all of its own and will react very violently if you try to harness it to your own devices. But this is just a story isn’t it? Just ancient myths and a film script? Maybe not, because the Keepers of the Ark in Aksum say the exact same thing. They don’t only keep ordinary people away from the Ark as an act of respect for the Ark’s sacred status, but to protect them from the Ark!

You may be wondering why I’ve decided to write about this subject. Am I about to turn religious? Do I believe the literal truth of the Ark’s origins? Am I now going to try and persuade you that God really did come down to Moses and write on stone tablets with his own hand? No! Definitely not! I’m not going to suggest that the legends associated with the Ark of the Covenant are the absolute truth of its origins; but then again, as I said at the start of this article, I’m not sure that we can just dismiss the entire phenomenon of the Ark as make-believe. The Ark may well be a real object of enormous physical, energetic and/or spiritual power that was found by tribesmen in Palestine 3000 or so years ago, and the Bible stories and Ethiopian fables were legends that grew up around factual accounts and experiences of it over the ages. Graham Hancock (see HPANWO Links column) has speculated that it might be some form of high technology; I think it may be part of a Roswell-style “flying disk”. There’s no way to be sure, but in 2008 the History Channel said in one of its programmes that the Keepers of the Ark usually don’t live very long; they are quickly struck down by maladies like cataracts and other conditions associated with exposure to excessive radiation. It might be some kind of interdimensional object, portal or energy field; or even something else altogether that we can’t even imagine. Whatever it is, it is without a doubt the most incredible relic in the entire world. It has seized the imagination of the people who’ve come into contact with it for over 3000 years… and sometimes their lives too. We will probably never know, unless for some hitherto unimaginable reason the Ethiopian priesthood decides to bring the Ark out and put it on public display, but that is so unlikely that it hardly deserves a second thought. However on the 25th of June 2009 the patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church said that he would unveil the Ark the following day; when the following day arrived he said he’d changed his mind!
(Sources: Raider of the Lost Ark, Hational Geographic and Grahamhancock.net)

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Who is Wilbert Smith?

2011-11-25T16:18:00.007Z

Do you recognize the man in the above photo? I thought I did. I’ve seen this photograph so many times, but always thought it were a portrait of the famous UFO contactee George Adamski, or maybe George King, the founder of the Aetherius Society. It is a photo of a UFO contactee, but one I’d never heard of before. His name is Wilbert Smith and I first heard his tale at the Birmingham UFO Group meeting of the 24th of November 2011. He may well be one of UFOlogy’s greatest unsung heroes. Here’s the BUFOG website: http://bufog.blogspot.com/

My journey to the BUFOG meeting was full of friction and obstacles, usually a good omen that I’m about to have an interesting time, I think. All the trains between Oxford and Birmingham were delayed due to the wrong sort of leaves on the track or something similar and I had to change trains unexpectedly and wait for a long time at Dorridge. I’m ashamed to say that I’m not a man without prejudices and the name “Dorridge” has unfortunately always conjured up images in my head of some chuck of West Midlands suburban sprawl with crumbling red-brick factories and ugly, grey, oblong postwar office blocks. In fact Dorridge is a very clean and neat rural town and its railway station is one of the most charming I’ve ever seen; so I didn’t mind being delayed there a while before completing my journey into Birmingham, and I apologize to anyone offended by my now-eliminated misconception. The meeting ended too late for a journey home so I stayed overnight at the Travelodge in Oldbury. I settled into my room after I arrived and then headed for the venue, negotiating the treacherous roads and flicking through my A to Z at every street corner.

The BUFOG meetings are held at an elegant snooker club in a large and comfortable function room. The speaker was Andrew Johnson (See HPANWO Links), a man all regular HPANWO-readers will be familiar with, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/10/dr-judy-wood-in-brighton.html and: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2010/12/andrew-johnson-newspaper-ad.html . He often speaks at Exopolitics events, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/08/exopolitics-leeds-2011.html . Today he was speaking on a subject I’ve never heard him discuss before, but one of the other audience members assured me that Andrew has delivered this speech before elsewhere: Wilbert Smith. Wilbert Smith was born in 1910 in a place called Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. He worked for the Canadian Government as a superintendent of radio regulations. Unlike that other Canadian UFO buff, and also politician, the Rt Hon. Paul Hellyer MP, Smith doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page! He was however an extremely prolific and successful researcher and there are many alternative media sources dedicated him, including even an online edition of one of his books: http://www.rexresearch.com/smith/newsci~1.htm . He was director of something called Project Magnet in the 1950’s. This was an operation set up by the Canadian Government to detect the presence of UFO by searching the sky for electromagnetic anomalies. The aim was to try to work out how these objects were powered and propelled. It’s interesting that the project was set up under the premise that UFO’s were in reality products of an extraterrestrial civilization; before even the Hyneks and Klasses of this world were arguing over whether they even existed! Strangely enough in 1964 the Canadian Government issued a statement that, although Project Magnet had existed as one of their outfits, it was a henceforth going to be merely a private project administered personally by Wilbert Smith and no longer an official government operation at all! According to Andrew this is an act of "offical denial" that came about due to the amazing discoveries made by Smith and his team: confirming the presence of UFO's as real alien artifacts. Despite the project no longer being under their management, the Government allowed Smith access to the facilities to continue his work in his own time and out of his own pocket.

Wilbert Smith’s work didn’t only concern the UFO’s that appear in the sky, he also got involved in research into contactee reports and eventually had direct contact experiences himself. He worked with a woman called Frances Swan who lived very close to Betty and Barney Hill, the famous couple who are wrongly called “The first alien abductees”. Smith had a long-term and significant interaction with an extraterrestrial being whom he called “Tyla”. What was so interesting about this contact was that Tyla instructed Smith in the engineering of unknown esoteric Free Energy and antigravity propulsion systems. He discovered that spinning a disk-shaped object at high speed can induce an antigravity effect. This has been discovered since independently by Mary Bennett and David Percy, authors of the book Dark Moon, see: http://www.aulis.com/nasa3.htm . Also Evgeny Podkletnov of the University of Tampere in Finland did a similar experiment that produced a limited antigravity effect using a spinning ring: http://www.holoscience.com/news/antigravity.html Tyla described himself as a “dustman”, here to clean up the poisons produced by nuclear weapons testing on Earth and he also showed Smith a machine called the “Caduceus Coil” that could tap usable electrical power from the Earth’s magnetic field, just like Nikola Tesla did, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/05/nikola-tesla-as-close-as-it-gets.html . Smith also worked on something he called “The Binding Force”, the details of which can be found in his book, see the link above. According to his son Jim, Wilbert Smith was not entirely discarded by all the forces of Government. Some shadow elements kept in touch with him and often employed him in their covert UFO-based endevours; this included several “Roswells” (See: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/03/roswells-galore.html) and Jim, in the same way as Jesse Marcel Jr, once handled a part of the wreckage of a crashed UFO, the “Ottawa Piece”. Smith also dealt with the bodies of aliens from the crashes too.

The legacy of Wilbert Smith continued long after his death in 1962, in fact scientific investigation based on his ideas endures to the present day. One of the biggest and most powerful Military-Industrial Complex aerospace businesses, McDonnell-Douglas, at one point decided to interview UFO experiencers; properly, that it. They planned not only drop by and ask to have a chat with them over a cuppa, but to pay them good money for their time and in exchange for information. The Defence journalist and antigravity agnostic Nick Cook, relates this in his interesting, but sometimes dubious, documentary UFO's- The Secret Evidence, see: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-834605691449249469# (Here's another documentary by Nick Cook, equally slippery in it's accuracy I think, The Billion Dollar Secret: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3975546396136405829#) . Another hint at what’s really going on can be found in the strange behaviour of the Apollo astronauts since the missions which history tells us landed them on the moon. I doubt that this is true, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2009/01/i-went-to-godamn-moon.html , but whether you believe they really did go to the moon or not, this subject is still relevant. I doubt if any of these men will ever confess openly, but they might do quietly and partially. For instance, Neil Armstrong has made some intriguing and incriminating comments. He’s a shy and private man who has little contact with the public, but if you read between the lines of his limited public speeches you might notice something strange, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1vFEwAJZQY “Truth’s protective layers”!? What’s he talking about? I doubt very much if this is what his speech-writer told him to say. Buzz Aldrin has also said some very nebulous things on TV; here he is with Larry King: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDIXvpjnRws . The Apollo 11 crew have revealed that they did see a UFO in space when they were (apprantly) on their way to the moon. Most suspicious of all is the Apollo astronaut whom we in the UFOlogical community have come to admire and trust the most: Dr Edgar Mitchell. Mitchell was a major figure in the late Counterculture period, establishing the Institute for Noetic Sciences near Big Sur, California, the American equivalent of Glastonbury. He’s also a native of Roswell, New Mexico and professes to believe in UFO’s, supporting and agreeing with Roswell researchers who think that a UFO actually did crash there in July 1947. He’s a supporter of the Exopolitics and UFO Disclosure movements and has spoken at their famous press conferences. However Andrew is worried that he may be a shill, a government agent. Apparently the Free Energy inventor Bruce De Palma asked Mitchell’s organization to assist him develop his invention and Mitchell demanded that de Palma sell him the rights. This was not just the development lease contract which de Palma was hoping for, but basically de Palma handing over everything he’d created to Mitchell’s group and never being able to have any say in what happens to it again! De Palma wisely told him “no” at which Mitchell replied with a veiled threat. This is textbook tactics for controlled opposition; it’s happened to many Free Energy inventors sadly; even Nikola Tesla fell foul of this ruse when he got involved with JP Morgan and the Astors. The USA has a great tradition in backyard inventors, part-time amateurs who create marvels on a shoestring budget in their garden sheds, like the Wright Brothers and Thomas Edison. What can happen is that a rich financier from the world of Big Business often approaches these people and offers a “partnership” that involves the inventor selling the rights for a substantial payment. These inventors are usually very short of money and eagerly snap it up. This is most often the first step towards suppression and secrecy. As soon as the contracts are signed the “business partner” takes all the papers and prototypes with the promise to “leave it all in my capable hands. This is going to be a great success!” and that’s the last the world ever hears of it. The most interesting piece of evidence regarding Edgar Mitchell’s secret life comes from a source I don’t normally champion. I find Bart Sibrel’s methods extremely unprofessional and counterproductive, but when he ambushed Mitchell he picked up something unintentionally which many people have understood is extremely significant even if Sibrel himself is too stupid to. Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTUaZl6Nyho At the end Mitchell’s son says: “Do you want to call the CIA and have them waxed?” What he means by “waxed” I’m not sure; Sibrel predictably makes a joke out of it as the end of his Astronauts Gone Wild! Film, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=487zC8qzRvA But whatever was meant by “waxed” why on Earth would Ed Mitchell be calling the CIA? Bart Sibrel’s business collapsed soon after this film came out and today he works as a lowly cabbie. Maybe that’s because he was “waxed”… then again it could be just because he’s a numpty.

Andrew is extremely suspicious of some of the leading figures in the UFO and Disclosure community, particularly Dr Steven Greer, and I share his suspicions. See: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2010/01/year-ago-dr-stephen-greer-of-disclosure.html I’ve changed my mind a bit since I made this film and have become, if anything, even more cynical of Greer than I was then. He’s done something similar to Ed Mitchell; he has attempted to legally seize the copyright of the UFO photos and footage people capture on his organized skywatches, his so-called “CE5" outings. Andrew takes heart from the fact that he sees Disclosure as something with two streams. The first is the conventional one that the Exopolitics movement is concerned with: campaigning to force governments to declassify their secret information about UFO’s. Both Andrew and I believe that this is probably impossible for reasons I’ve discussed lot recently, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/08/disclosure-is-here-president-admits.html However there’s a second stream of Disclosure, according to Andrew; this is the Disclosure initiated by the extraterrestrials themselves through their contact with ordinary people and their attempts to educate and reveal information to them. That’s good news because the second stream is one that the Shadow Government can do little to prevent!

The BUFOG meeting was a very good event and I’d like to thanks Dave Hodrien and the other organizers for it. And thanks to Andrew for a very interesting and entertaining lecture. After Andrew had finished speaking, Dave revealed some sad news: After much worry and speculation I can now confirm that UFO Matrix magazine has folded. I’ve bought a 2-year subscription and I don’t know if I’ll ever get it back, but really I don’t care. My main feeling of sadness comes from the fact that this was an excellent magazine that had brilliant potential, but it was launched very much against the economic tide. To add insult to injury it failed in its first year. Unfortunately Paranormal magazine has gone the same way, even though it had become quite mainstream and I saw it on sale in many railway station shops. One journal that seems omnipresent even through this Winter of Discontent is the ever-ready Fortean Times. It happens to be the publication that takes the most Skeptical line short of the openly-specialist Skeptic press, like Skeptic magazine, see: http://skeptic.org.uk/. After their disgusting coverage of the Hollie Greig scandal I’ve sworn never to read the Fortean Times again! There is an upbeat ending to this bit of bad news that Dave relayed at the meeting though: Another very informative magazine that has recently closed down UFO Data, is now available free online to download: http://www.ufo-data.co.uk/index1.htm There's plenty here to keep anybody with any interest in UFO's quiet for a while!

I slept well in my bed at the Travelodge and had a relaxing journey home in which all the trains ran on time! I’ll end this article with a speech by Wilbert Smith, in his own words: http://www.disclose.tv/viewvideo/26032/Wilbert_B_Smith___1958_Ottawa_Address

Latest HPANWO Voice articles: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/11/new-ufo-disclosure-petition.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/11/house-of-londs-debate-school.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/11/cctv-in-oxford-taxicabs.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/11/poppy-burners-are-shills.html

Latest HPANWO TV films: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/11/hate-mail.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/11/remembrance-sunday.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/11/ms-belchy.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/10/how-to-show-respect-to-victims-of-911.html

London Skeptics in the Pub 14/11/11

2011-11-15T11:06:00.029Z

London Skeptics in the Pub- Unnatural Predators: http://london.skepticsinthepub.org/Event.aspx/797/Unnatural-Predators

I’ve been back to Skeptics in the Pub, as part of my plan to maintain as much normality in my life as possible; anyway if I wasn’t suspended I’d be on nights right now and unable to attend, so I thought I might as well make the most out of my situation and go along. See here for a previous review of a SiTP evening: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/09/skeptic-in-pub-15908.html (There are many others, use Search)

The SiTP venue has moved from Penderels Oak in Holborn to The Monarch Bar in Camden Town, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2010/09/bathing-into-history-part-5.html Tonight’s speaker was a Skeptress called Deborah Hyde. She is a fellow-blogger and posts under the soubriquet “Jourdemayne”; here’s her blog: http://jourdemayne.blogspot.com/ . Her blogging-name probably comes from the famous Margery Jourdemayne, a woman executed in the 15th century for witchcraft. Deborah is also joint-editor of The Skeptic magazine, along with Prof. Chris French- MBA Gold (See: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2009/09/prof-chris-french-mba-gold.html) Deborah describes herself as “obsessed” with the malign Supernatural, that is horror movie subject-matter like vampires, zombies, ghosts and ghouls. She did look a bit like a witch herself actually. She’s a tall, slender woman and was wearing an ankle-length black dress with a silver belt. One might find this odd considering she’s a Skeptic and so doesn’t believe that the Supernatural is real, but I must say I’ve noticed this before at the ASSAP Seriously Strange Conference (See: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/09/assap-seriously-strange-conference.html) A lot of the speakers at the conference also looked very similar, dressed in dark clothes with dyed hair and Gothic make-up; even the very Skeptical ones, with similar viewpoints to Deborah. It seems that a passionate interest in the Supernatural is what inspires people to dress in Supernatural-like clothing, but an actual belief that the Supernatural is real is not essential. Deborah’s main job is creating special effects and make-up for the film industry, so she takes her love of all things that go "BUMP" in the night to work every day as well. In fact she displayed some of her horribly realistic zombie masks on the projector for us to see. Deborah then explained where her research on the malign Supernatural had led her. She uses a lot of her own terminology like “unnatural predators” to describe paranormal beings that do harm to humans, like vampires, werewolves etc. She doesn’t like to use the word "vampire" outside of its historical context, which is Eastern Europe. There are many vampire-like phenomena, or “myths” as she described them, reported all over the world; but it’s very misleading to say something like: “the Malaysian vampire” or “the Mexican vampire” because they are historically very different. The whole idea of vampires has been picked up and run with by literature and film, from the aristocratic darkness of Bram Stoker’s Dracula to R-Patz and his teenage romantic activities in the Twilight saga.

By now a lot of the SiTP patrons had ordered their meals and so I noticed a few of them drop their cutlery and turn a bit green during the next part of Deborah’s speech. Where do vampires come from? According to her, what used to happen was that ignorant and superstitious villagers used to blame their problems on the unquiet dead, usually a troublesome member of the community who’d recently passed away and so they would go to the graveyard and exhume his or her coffin. To their amazement they would often find that the corpse of the deceased had not corrupted, even after several months post-mortem, and that fresh blood would be oozing from their nose and mouth. In truth this was because the people didn’t understand that there are many factors in determining how quickly a dead body decomposes, like ambient temperature. Many reports of vampirism occurred in the winter when the soil might be very chilled or even frozen solid, so preserving the body until spring when it was warm enough for the bacteria and worms etc to get to work. The blood seen coming from the body was not blood but sludge caused by the body’s internal bacteria consuming the flesh and excreting the remains out of the orifices; it’s brown in colour, not red, but in the darkness of a cemetery the difference might not have been noticed. The villagers would often then pierce the body with a wooden stake and an audible groan might be heard. This has happened to me at the hospital, and as frightening and unearthly as it might seem it doesn’t mean that the person is still alive… or even undead, but that the gas created by the bacteria bursts out through the larynx making a sound. In the set and setting of a spooky graveyard you can imagine what effect that would have on the witnesses! I do question whether this really does explain the entire vampire phenomenon though, as Deborah claims it does. This is because of the widespread nature of “unnatural predators” of this kind all over the world. Earlier in her speech she warned us only to use the word “vampire” in its proper historical context, but is it really such a misnomer to talk about vampires from other climes? I’ve done some of my own thorough and in-depth research on the subject… in other words I Wiki’ed it… and I’ve found that although vampires were popularized in the 18th century the concept of violent, blood-drinking spirits goes back to prehistoric times. It’s also found the world over from Ancient Greece to Jewish lore, from India to Africa. Also, most curious of all, we have a direct modern incarnation of this archetype, from a non-literary source: the Chupacabra of Latin America. This is a beast that is often interpreted as an alien or cryptid, but it has the same attributes as the more familiar classic vampire. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmHmnfgON4A (Not that this video is definitely genuine!) Also not all societies dispose of their dead through burial, meaning that the situation of uncorrupt, bleeding bodies being dug up out of graveyards cannot be universal. In India the Hindus very famously cremate bodies on an open pyre. In parts of Africa it’s quite normal, and even considered respectful, to hold a massive party when somebody dies and cannibalize the body as the main course of the feast. (I wanted to bring this subject up in the Q and A, but a few people were still eating and I thought they’d been put off their food enough already!) So I think there’s a bigger case to answer here than the one Deborah laid out.

Another subject Deborah covered was sleep-paralysis. This is when you become half awake after sleeping; you might find yourself lying in bed, able to open your eyes and look around you, but frozen solid and unable to move. Along with your real surroundings you may see strange and ghastly Paranormal beings by your bedside. These beings may well attack you, causing you pain and terror. They might sit on top of you, like the beast in the painting Nightmare by Henry Fuseli at the top of this article, or they might even sexually abuse you! Deborah suffers from it herself a lot and has learned to cope with it. Richard Wiseman- MBA Bronze discusses this in his latest book Paranormality, which I’ve reviewed here: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/04/paranormality-by-prof-richard-wiseman.html . According to both he and Deborah, this is caused by a sleeping disorder that strikes most people on rare occasions. The mechanism that paralyses your skeletal muscles during sleep continues to operate longer than it should when you begin to wake from sleep, meaning that your dreams continue into the period when they ought not to. I’ve only once had sleep paralysis, but I’ve often had hypnopompic experiences. I made a short HPANWO TV film explaining about this, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/04/bedroom-ghost.html . At the interval I went up to Deborah and told her about my experience and she told me that I’m “quite normal” and that she’s been afflicted by this as well, only in her case she saw dancing mice! A neat solution, you might think, and it makes sense for much of reported experiences, however my own encounters with ghosts, or ghost-like phenomena to be exact, do not all fit in with Deborah’s model. Although I concede that the ghost in my bedroom could do, the same could not be said for the event in the park which is the subject of this film: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/04/ghosts-in-park.html The event in 2008 on a train also evades the Skeptical explanation, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2008/10/real-ghost-train.html , I swear I had definitely not seen the photo Ustane showed me beforehand. Also I’ve seen ghostlike phenomena when I’ve been wide awake, see my Ghosts in the Park film above. A key element to the park sighting was that I had an independent witness, Jenny. In fact I must be one of the few blokes who’s ever been dumped by his girlfriend because of a ghost! I guess I’ve got an axe to grind.

I’m glad I went to this SiTP and I’d like to thank Deborah and all the organizers for a grand evening out. I had some interesting conversations while I was there too. Although Frenchie- MBA Gold, Marmite-Lover, Syd, Dave Green (see Jack of Kent in the Links column) and many other people I know weren’t there I said hello to James O’ Malley of The Pod Delusion, see: http://poddelusion.co.uk/blog/ I sat next to a man called Dave who is new to the Skeptic Movement and didn’t know anybody there. I assured him that he needn’t be alone and probably won’t be for long; Skeptics are by nature a herding species and there’s a very tight-knit and active social life associated with Skepticism. I also was asked by a young couple at the bar before the SiTP began, while the organizers were setting up: “What’s going on here then?” I explained and the woman asked “What is a Skeptic exactly?” That Million Dollar Question again! One that I’ve been trying to answer for years. I decided to be honest with her: “I’m not exactly sure. They claim that they are people who use science and rationality to decide what’s right or wrong instead of religion, mysticism and intuition.” I’m glad I began with the “they claim” bit. I address the question in my review of TAM London, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2010/10/tam-london-2010.html . In fact this has been a conundrum that has obsessed me! At the British Humanist Association Conspiracy Theory Conference, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/09/british-humanist-association-conspiracy.html , I asked the speakers a sarcastic question about doing a study to find out the psychological profile of the Skeptic, but really it’s a serious matter. What is a Skeptic? What drives them? What makes them tick? The word is spelt “sceptic” in the dictionary, with a note that the word can also be spelt “skeptic”, and it merely means “one who doubts, who does not believe”. However my confusion over the definition is why I always spell the word with a K and also make the initial S uppercase. For me a sceptic is one thing, but a Skeptic means something entirely different. (Marsh from Righteous Indignation (qv) has a radio show of his own called Skeptics with a K, see: http://www.merseysideskeptics.org.uk/podcasts/) As I said when discussing TAM London, their own description of themselves: “A skeptic is one who… rigorously and openly applies the methods of science and reason to all empirical claims… A skeptic provisionally proportions acceptance of any claim to valid logic and a fair and thorough assessment of available evidence, and studies the pitfalls of human reason and the mechanisms of deception so as to avoid being deceived by others or themselves". This is not a description at all, this is a slogan. There are many people who use science and reason, including many highly qualified and experienced scientists, who would not be described as Skeptics; in fact they’re usually labeled “believers”. Then again there are people who know nothing about science and never use its methods who say things like: “Nah, I don’t believe in all that crap! There ain’t no such things as ghosts or UFO’s. It’s all in yer head innit?” Yet this person would be described as a Skeptic. So it’s impossible to avoid the fact that it is opinions and conclusions about certain subjects that separate people called “Skeptics” from those called “believers” or “non-Skeptics” and nothing else; not methods, not science, not education, not qualification.

As for what drives them? An equally good question. I wish I could get inside their heads! Maybe I could find some way to become a Skeptic for a day; better be careful though, I might end up liking it! One thing that I’m now convinced of is that MBA plays a major role in their society, whether they are aware of it or not. See here for more details: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/02/bbc-horizon-mba-city.html and: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/09/british-humanist-association-gets-its.html . To be an MBA Laureate does indeed mark one out as superior, both in one’s own mind and in the eyes of others. To a dedicated MBA-er, others are weak and unreasonable; they’re guilty of wishful-thinking. “But I can face it! I know I’m going to cease to exist when I die but I can face up to that! You inferior non-MBA-ers need this comfort-blanket myth of an Afterlife, but I have the strength, the courage, the manliness and general superiority to get through my day without that crutch!" It must be an extremely intoxicating feeling… Yes, it’s just as well that I can’t become a Skepper for a day!

There’s something else I’ve learnt from my study of the Skeptic Movement: That there’s a great deal of difference between proving somebody wrong and beating them in a debate. In fact the two activities are entirely separate and require a completely separate set of thoughts, mindsets, and skills. What a lot of non-Skeptics don’t understand is that this difference exists; they see debate between Skeps and non-Skeps in the same way as they do internal Woo debates, as a simple weighting up of information on a scale of evidence. It’s not. A Skeptical debate is far more like a verbal fencing match, one which requires training, expertise and natural ability. There are famous organizations where you can train, like the Oxford Union. There are also books which teach you the basics, some are very old ones like The Art of Being Right by the famous philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, see: http://coolhaus.de/art-of-controversy/ That is one very ironic title! (Maybe Schopenhauer intended it to be) It’s ironic because if you become well-versed in these skills you can win a debate when you’re completely wrong against somebody who is completely right. Of course quality of information is a factor in any debate, even with the most skilled disputant, but as this sport develops, quality of information is becoming more and more auxiliary; it's only a matter of time until it becomes superfluous. A good place to learn about this subject is to spend some time on the Skeptic forums, like JREF, see: http://forums.randi.org/forumindex.php It’s best to just lurk if you’re a newcomer because if you dive straight in you’ll get a bloody nose in no time! One Skepdebater (a word I invented) that I truly admire is “Dr B” from the UK Skeptics Forum, see: http://www.ukskeptics.com/forum/showthread.php/2074-More-near-death-nonsense (I think that this is Dr Jason Braithwaite, see: http://bham.academia.edu/JasonJBraithwaite) not that I agree with him; in fact I totally disagree with him, but I admire him as a world-champion, Gold Medal Skepdebater (He also holds the MBA Silver). I merely enjoy all this as a spectator sport, like a football or basketball fan. As you’ll see, Skepdebating is the lifeblood and cornerstone of the Skeptic community. I don’t know of many of my fellow Woo’s who can match the most elementary forum Skeptic in this art. A good research source is Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens is not a true Skeptic, but rather an “Atheo-Skeptic” (I’ll explain in a future article!) However he is a man who is a prime and extremely interesting example of what I mean when I talk about the art and sport of debating, so much so that he hardly needs an introduction. Here, watch the title-holder prizefighter at work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R-SjC3lTWk . There are hundreds more of him online. In his autobiography Hitch 22, he describes how he can’t bear to lose a debate. One thing’s for sure though, he’s always going to be tested; he's made certain of that! I must say I do question his sincerity. After reading two of his books and hearing hundreds of hours of his speeches I wonder how much of what he preaches he really believes. He's also stated some very contraditory sentiments about the Military. Hitchens is a man who lives for the debate. Debate is an art form to him, one of which he is the virtually invincible grandmaster; it’s not a means for him, but an ends in itself. His opinions seem tailor-made to ensure that he can get a wrangle out of anybody. He’s a Left-winger who supports the war and he’s an atheist who opposes abortion. All his positions are perfect to make him the universal contrarian. He may not be a pure Skepper, but he has a Skepper’s mind when it comes to the table.

Of course the debating skills that are so quintessential to the Skeptic Movement can be acquired by anybody who has the will to learn, including us Woo's. And I do often ponder over what would happen if the playing field were leveled a bit more. Maybe a time will come when that will happen. There’s actually a HPANWO Forum thread on this subject. I should apologize for the rudeness of some of it; I started it at a time when I was feeling very hard-done-by, and also engaged in a fairly vitriolic discussion with another forum-member. Some of the posts are just ironic and satirical jokes as well, but it gives you an idea of what I’m talking about. This thread is a work-in-progress and more points may be added on. Here's a link to the thread: http://hpanwoforum.freeforums.org/the-hpanwo-guide-to-being-a-forum-skep-dick-t912.html . And here's the list of the guidelines that are posted on the thread:

1. Demand evidence from your opponent for everything he says, but when he delivers demand more. And when he delivers more demand even more. Remember, your thirst for evidence must be unquenchable!

2. Use the word "onus" as many times as you possibly can.

3. Always accuse your opponent of failing to read your posts properly, even if he reads them correctly to the letter. Better still, write in a synthetically nebulous style to confuse him and them blame him for not reading it properly.

4. Say: "That old chestnut again!" whenever somebody gives you information you've never heard before.

5. If somebody provides any evidence that cannot be immediately verified on the spot with a form signed in triplicate, denounce it as a fake for lack of evidence. If the poster then provides the triplicate form, go to Rule 1.

6. Use Occam's Razor a lot. The problem-solving exercise which states that the simplest solution should always be tried first. When your opponent asks inconvenient questions like: "How do you know what is more likely than something else?" throw your rattle out of your crib in his direction like there's no tomorrow! And then end the post with "Hope that clears up your misunderstanding of Occams Razor"

7. Another good word is "proselytize". But only use it if you're Christopher Hitchens.

8. If somebody mentions the name of a respectable scientist who doesn't support a mainstream Skeptical opinion; EG: Peter Fenwick, Rupert Sheldrake, Leavengood, Rick Strassman. Then post the following:

"(Insert name here)'s work has been comprehensively discredited!"

You must say this whether it is true or not. Even say it if you've never heard of the person your opponent mentions! Never explain how it has been discredited or who did the imaginary discrediting. If you do you might give away your advantage!

9. Constantly and scathingly criticize your opponent on matters irrelevant to his argument like his spelling, his contribution levels, his use of smilies, capitalization, grammar, the length of his posts and italics, his use of enlarged text, coloured text, different fonts, ANYTHING! Accuse him of being abusive to other members if he so much as mentions anything that is not 100% subservient!

10. THE SKEPTICS WILL BE SAFE

Remember there's no referee on forums so pick up the ball and run with it! Make sure the moderators are all fellow Skeptics so that you have complete control of forum discipline. Skeptics must be judge, jury and executioner. This means that you allow the Skeptic members to treat the non-Skeptic members any way they please: be rude to them, criticize them and abuse them mercilessly. Twist every rule to suit yourself. Twist every word your opponent says to suit yourself. Gang up on them and make their life pure hell!

11. Be genuinely funny sometimes like Richard Wiseman.

12. Invent new words like "Paranormality" and write books with the word in the title.

13. Make sure that your favourite animal is the Pink Unicorn!

14. If you've won the Materialist Bravery Award then say so in your signature.

15. If any member suggests that Atlantis might be true, even if there's a remotest possibly, that it might be true; or that the Egyptian Pyramids were not built by people with bronze tools and no iron, wheels, pulleys or levers, then immediately denounce him as a latent Nazi, an AntiSemite, a Holocaust-denier, General Manager of Dachau and all associated labels.

16. If nothing else works, start to wonder about the subjects mental health and show that you're really worried and willing to help. Having such outlandish and unscientific views are a sure sign of mental illness. Preferably psychotic schizophrenia or some other severe mental dysfunction.

17. Practice "dissection quoting". This is where you split a quote into multiple segments and write a brief reply to each one. This causes your opponent more difficulty and effort in reading them; and it makes him feel more intimidated. It will make him think: "Oh no, this guy's going through everything I say with a fine-toothed comb! I can't get away with any sleight of speech at all! I'd better watch my step!"

Example: You're opponent writes: "I'm not saying for sure that ghosts are real, but I have seen them many times in my house and at work."
You reply like this:

I'm not
Yes, you are.
saying
This is a forum so you're writing, not saying.
for sure
How can you be sure?
that ghosts
You use the word "ghost" but this is misleading. You don't know that they are "ghosts", and anyway, please define the term "ghosts"
are real
Define real. Real in the mental sense or the physical?
, but
What do you mean by "but"? The word "but" implies an exception to the statement made before.
I
Don't use the first person; there may be more people involved.
have
"Have" or "are"? You appear to be taking part in this experience in the present so use the correct tense if you please.
seen
Not "seen"; you may have picked them up on your other senses
them
I thought you said there was just one!
many times
Many is not a number that a proper rational, empirical scientist can use to determine frequency and therefore generate statistics.
in my house
I hear so-called "ghosts" appear to the deluded more in caravans than houses. Anyway, bungalows are top of the list so how many floors has it got?
and at work.
Well the way you suffer from this delusion of yours is related to the kind of work you do. Go see a working doctor and kindly stop wasting our time!

18: Use Forced Overreaction. Undermine your opponent by pretending to be very angry or very hurt over everything he says. Twist any words he utters and make them out to be insults. For instance if he writes: "You must be kidding if you think the Roswell craft was a weather balloon!" Then whine and squeal like a hypersensitive prima donna! Accusing him of being a troll, flag the post and reply: "How DARE you accuse me of "kidding" Kidding implies that I am viciously and maliciously lying!" And remember Number 10 above? The Moderator will be a fellow Skeptic and back you up by reprimanding the member: "Do not accuse other forum users of viciously and maliciously lying unless you have evidence! Is that clear!? Do that again and you'll be BANNED!"

19. Try to drag any conversation round and round in circles. This is very easy on a forum where Skeptics are the majority and the Woo's are outnumbered. What you do is wait until a certain aspect of the discussion hasn't been mentioned for 20 or 30 posts and then suddenly bring it up again! It doesn't matter if you were proved wrong the last time it was made; your opponent will probably have forgotten. Keep doing this until your opponent simply grows weary and quits the thread. In this way it will conjour the illusion that you have won the debate, even if you've lost.

This JREF thread is a good example: http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=80628 See how the Skepti-heroic members harness the Woo member "Porterboy" to a loop of infinite repeating exchanges of points. This eventually breaks down and Porterboy finally extracts a surrender from one of them, the monosyllabic post "Yes", but by that time Porterboy has grown bored and exhausted and his victory is weak and disguised because of it. (By the way, "Porterboy" is me!)

20. Write in a way that illustrates tone of voice in dialogue. This is a very important skill when it comes to Skeptibaiting your opponent. Your opponent must feel as if you are speaking to him, in the same room, in his face so he can't turn away. An example is to turn written words into dialogue like "yes and "no" by writing "yup" and "nope" instead. If used in just the right place doing this is very effective.

21. "Diddying". This is related to number 20 in that it's a way of making written words sound like spoken, but this is by far the most powerful example. This dialogue-writing is one of somebody dancing around in a circle in a laughing, but very angry way, with tension. There's a element of gloating and contempt too which is all part of being a Forum Skepper.

The "Diddy" is best used in conjunction with the word "wrong" (More on this word itself later) You write "Wrong-diddy- wrong-wrong-wrong!" using bold type and smilies galore! This has the power to light the flame of irritation in almost all Woo Scum and I can almost guarantee you'll get a reaction from them which will give the Mod's the excuse they're looking for to move in.

22. Saying "Wrong." Just like that, not as part of a sentence or in conjunction with other words; just as it is on its own. Capital W, full stop! Don't say: "You're wrong" or even worse: "I think you're wrong." No! Just say "Wrong."

However, unlike other monosyllabics, "Wrong." cannot be used on its own in a single-word post. It must be followed by a sentence of explanation.

23. Dvarking. Dvarking is related to Diddying, in that it is a way of injecting verbal intonation into a written piece of text; however Dvarking crates a different tone. If used correctly it can enrage and intimidate your opponent more than anything else. But BEWARE! Dvarking, unlike Diddying, can be used by Woo scum against us too. Dvarking is most often employed by academics against each other, but can be used by anybody trained in the art.

The basis of Dvarking is to try to make your intonement sound like a mixture of Kenneth Williams and Donald Duck, but very angry; however the anger is controlled and rationed out in even amounts; are you getting the picture?

24. The Signature. A good sig is very important to be a good forum Skepolata. It should best be a quote from a famous Skep or a proverb. Either way it should say something both about yourself and an intimidating smack in the face to your opponent Here's a good example from JREF:
"I am a collection of water, calcium and organic molecules called Carl Sagan"
Carl Sagan

25. Another brilliant word: "Caveat". It's only recently emerged in the Forum Skeptisphere so use it quick before it becomes another cliché!

26. Whole-quote-applause-smiles. Quote-reply a very long Skeptical post that pours supreme scorn and abuse down on some outnumbered Woo . Quote it in its entirety and then post no reply except a single applause smilie; either that or a thumbs-up one or similar smilies of support and approval

27. A one-way sense of humour. Use humour continuously to ridicule Woo scum. Explore the limits and heights of wit and satire in competitions that grace threads of extraordinary length... But when it comes to being on the receiving end lose your sense of humour entirely! Become completely oblivious to all anti-Skeptic jokes and act like somebody who has trouble cottoning on to gags by Roy Chubby Brown! Also, act ultra-offended at the most innocuous jibes; see above, Number 18

28. Always claim that you have Woo friends. It's nothing personal after all! Like Tim Minchin talking about his Christian mate. Better still, say you have a friend who's a paranormal investigator whom you're fond of but you think is naive. (James Randi)

29. This is kind of an extension on Number 1. Practice "Committed Reductionism". This means that any evidence supplied must be weighed against a lack of it in counter-points and against contradictory evidence in other areas. Always promise your oponenent that if Committed Reductionism can be overcome you will accept that his claims are true. Here's a good example:

At Christmas 1980 in Rendlesham Forerst, Suffolk an old man was out walking his dog alone at night when a pyramidal-shaped UFO landed beside him. Also red lights were seen by him flying through the trees. This is obviously a stupid and pathetic attempt to persuade us that he saw something truly paranormal! He did not. Why was he the only witness? Surely we'd have had a dozen or so witnesses from the RAF Woodbridge airbase nearby! Why were the security police not sent out to investigate? You'd think that they'd have alerted the base's Deputy-Commander Lt. Co. Halt who was at a Christmas party at the time. Did they say: "Nah, let him get on pulling crackers and singing Jingle Bells!" If the security police were sent out to investigate, and Halt and a group of colleagues went into the woods and saw it, and recorded their experiences on a tape-recorder... then I'd believe it.

But this definitely did not... NOT happen so the Skeptic viewpoint prevails again!

30. Provocative repetition. If you wish to post a particularly well-known piece of Skepperistic "wisdom" then post it but afterwards say slowly and with much articulation. "I think that that is so important that I am going to say it again" and then do so. The articulation is very important; avoid abbreviations like: "I think that's so important I'm going to say it again".

Here's a good example with one of the Skeptic Movement's best known mantras: "The plural of anecdote is not data. I think that that is so important that I am going to say it again: The plural of anecdote is not data."

Latest HPANWO Voice articles: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/11/poppy-burners-are-shills.html
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The Next Roswell

2011-10-26T13:09:00.014+01:00

I’ve been going through a very difficult situation at work these last few days and so have found it hard to concentrate, however I think that it’s very therapeutic to maintain an element of normality in ones’ life during a rough patch; it prevents one from losing touch with objective reality or falling into self-pity and becoming self-absorbed or self-obsessed. Therefore I have aimed my intellect at the usual targets and got writing.

I’ve been thinking back to about last December when I visited Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk for the 30th anniversary of the famous UFO incident there; see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2010/12/rendlesham-forest-incident-30th.html I was talking on the HPANWO Forum (see Links column) with Footie McGrew, an Australian member who recently visited the site of a close encounter and mass-sighting of a UFO at Westall in Melbourne in 1966, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTqE805dhOE . He said in one of his posts: “The next time this happens, it’ll be Game Over” and that got me thinking. What happened with the world’s most famous UFO event, the Roswell Incident, was that there was a very long time period between the event itself and when research into it began; it was thirty years in fact! The moment Roswell entered the sphere of publicity can be traced very precisely: It was when Major Jesse Marcel Junior first contacted the UFOlogist Stanton Friedman to tell his story, in 1977. This was thirty years after that wreckage had come down on the Brazel Ranch and Glen Dennis had been to the airbase when those aliens were being stored there. It struck me that the time period between when a UFO had appeared in Rendlesham Forest and when I had attended that conference last year was also exactly thirty years, the same length of time. However the history of research into the two incidents couldn’t be more different. With Rendlesham Forest, a massive amount of hard evidence and contemporary eyewitness testimony was gathered which entered the public arena almost immediately. The Four Horsewomen of Rendlesham Forest: Jenny Randles, Brenda Butler, Dot Street and Georgina Bruni, were at the scene and on the scent from the start and it took just two years before the story appeared in the mainstream news headlines.

I imagined a scenario in which the same amount of released and discovered evidence with a similar timeline had occurred with Rendlesham Forest as did with Roswell: Firstly there would have been little mention of the event in the news at the time except a brief story in the local newspaper that would have been withdrawn the next day with a string of embarrassed mumblings about “weather balloons”. Then the whole event would have been almost completely forgotten and ignored until… well today! Suddenly, out of the blue, a middle-aged Boroughs, Penniston, Halt and Warren would approach the media with an amazing story to tell! They saw a UFO 30 years ago, way back in 1980! Unfortunately there’d be no evidence at all: No Halt Tape, no plastercasts of the landing sites, no Suffolk Police log, no Halt Memo, no Nick Pope talking about the incident on TV, nothing! You can imagine what the Skeptics would be saying; basically all the things they say about Roswell in the real world. There’d be no need for them to employ such obscure, abstract concepts as magic teleporting lighthouses and flying truckloads of manure. They could just say: “No evidence- end of!” It would help if the Government then suddenly declassified some top secret programme from those days, “Project Akbar” or something. A balloon to spy on the Russians and, apprently, that’s what those airmen really saw.

It makes you think doesn’t it? It’s therefore only a brief mental trip to imagine applying what happened in the real world at Rendlesham Forest to the Roswell Incident. Imagine that there’s been a Randles, Butler, Street and Bruni in Roswell New Mexico in July 1947!... I’ll leave the imaginary details to you, dear HPANWO-readers, but I think we’ll agree that the whole history of the Roswell UFO story, and indeed maybe even the history of the entire world since, would have been totally different to what it is now.

Just one more Roswell; that’ll be all it takes! Footie is right. Unlike with the Roswell Incident, and indeed Rendlesham Forest, nowadays there are hundreds of times more people who are aware of the UFO phenomenon and our governments’ suspected relationship to it. More and more people are watching the skies and more and more people will be on the lookout for anything related that occurs on the ground. When the next Roswell happens, we’ll be ready for it! Of course there’s no guarantee; the next Roswell could happen in a very remote area or under other circumstances in which the Government still succeeds in fastening the veil of secrecy in time, but the odds are stacked much, much less in their favour today. If anything remotely Roswellian takes place anywhere near Oxford I have a contingency plan in place with what I’m going to do; I advise all HPANWO-readers to form their own.

Latest HPANWO Voice articles: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/10/flu-fighter.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/10/big-b-rubber-is-watching-you.html
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Does God Exist?

2011-10-18T02:23:00.015+01:00

Does God Exist? How long have learned men gathered together to ask this question? It’s easier to count the time in millennia than centuries. In all those ages the question still remains unanswered for certain. One day there might actually be a final solution to this perennial conundrum; if and when that day comes I want to be there to see it! I want to be able to tell my great-grandchildren that I was there on the day that we finally knew!

For this reason I attended the Does God Exist? debate in London, one of two events that I’m going to on this subject. The debate was between two men: a famous Christian theologian from California called William Lane Craig and the in the Atheists’ corner, Oxford philosophy professor Stephen Law, whom HPANWO has encountered recently before, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/07/skeptical-renaissance.html and: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/09/british-humanist-association-conspiracy.html Here’s the website all about Craig’s tour of Britain, of which tonight's event was a part: http://www.bethinking.org/the-reasonable-faith-tour-2011/who-is-william-lane-craig.htm . The event was held at the Central Methodist Hall in London, a squat and intimidating building in the heart of Westminster, right in the shadow of Big Ben. The ornate grandeur of the interior made me feel small; it looked like a cross between Oxford Town Hall and the Taj Mahal. I’m not able to enjoy that kind of Neoclassical-stroke-Victorian architecture any more; like so much else in London it reduced me to a tiny little human ant, a sick and tired Winston Smith, gazing up in awe at the edifice of the Ministry of Truth. From what I gathered from eavesdropping on their conversations, nearly all the people attending were Christians, on Craig’s side. There were a few Humanist/Skeptic types; indeed they had a stall, but the home fans were definitely dominant. I felt a little strange occupying a neutral position; not just neutral in the way most Theists and Atheists perceive and understand neutral on the issue: ie an Agnostic, but neutral beyond even that. There was an attractive stall displaying all of Craig’s 30 plus-books with titles like Reasonable Faith and The Case for Christ. See here for his website: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/PageServer . There was a book which caught my eye called Why God won’t Go Away by Alister McGrath. This was because I’d read another book with that same title by the neurologist Andrew Newburg. McGrath is one of Richard Dawkins most stringent critics, or “fleas” as Dawkins calls them; see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/04/god-delusion-by-richard-dawkins.html . I settled into my seat under the stucco dome of the opulent conference hall and waited for the debate to begin. I sat next to a lady who was, almost paradoxically according to some, both a scientist and a Christian. We had a good long talk about religion and got along despite our differing viewpoints. Like many people who are firmly pro or con religion she seemed to find it hard to understand my own ideas. We nevertheless discussed the film The Robe very eagerly; it’s one of my favourites, one that I actually learned to enjoy when I was an Atheist myself, see: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046247/

Craig took the stage first. He is a genial American with a middle-aged Hollywood look, perfect for dealing with the public in a way that Americans are superlative at. “My case is based on the truth I have discovered: that there is far more reason to believe in God than to not believe in Him” he began. “There are fewer reasons against God’s existence than for His existence.” The debate was structured into three rounds of rebuttals and counter-rebuttals followed by an armchair discussion with audience questions. Craig said that there were four main areas of study which reveal this supposed good sense to believe in God: philosophical, historical, scientific and moral. He then went on to explain various infinity paradoxes and problems with mainstream cosmology, but when he turned to the moral section he launched the rocket that became the core structure of the debate and the one which Stephen Law spent most of his time trying to shoot down. Law leapt eagerly up to the podium and explained how his main argument against God’s existence was that cruelty and suffering were intrinsically woven into the fabric of the universe. Sure, a lot of suffering is man-made, but just as much is natural: earthquakes, hurricanes etc; but the best evidence is in biology. Law sites the case of a nasty beast called the Komodo Dragon, a huge land-dwelling reptile that resembles a living dinosaur with a massive bulk and sharp teeth. It’s a predator and its hunting technique is not to risk attacking a fit, strong animal that might fight back, but to give it a quick bite in order to poison it with the lethal bacteria that it deliberately cultivates in its mouth. Then it follows its prey until its victim falls foul of toxic shock and collapses; then the Dragon eats it alive. Law also pointed out that throughout the hundreds of thousands of years of human existence between a third and half of all children have died before their fifth birthday; causing an incalculable amount of grief to their parents. “God knew about this!” Law emphatically proclaimed “And He let it happen… for thousands and millions of years! Why? For reasons that He decided upon!” The churches have come up with a whole series of very convoluted and vague explanations to explain the presence of evil in our world. These explanations impress Law so little that he has come up with a parody of them: The Evil God Hypothesis. This reverses all the metaphysical equations and states that God is really evil; it’s just that there is still good in the world because He gave us free will etc etc etc. Craig was ready for this, being obviously familiar with Law’s views. He said that the presence of evil in the world is not used by Christians to question their faith (Really? I know a few for whom the existence of evil enormously undermines their faith.) We live not for today but for Heaven! The Great Hereafter! At this point I thought Law was going to say something that would win him his MBA (See: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/02/deathbed-mbas.html), but unfortunately he just went back to his Evil God Hypothesis, an argument that he would repeat throughout the evening a little too much I think. However Craig made a pretty big gaff when he said that the suffering of animals didn’t matter so much because all animals, with the exception of higher primates like humans, have no self-awareness, due to their lack of a prefrontal cortex in their brains. The subject of animal consciousness is extremely controversial and there is research which contradicts Craig’s assertion. There’s the “spot test” in which animals have a spot painted on their faces and are shown a mirror to see if they recognize themselves by being aware of the spot, in other words: self-awareness. I think over a hundred species passed the test; not just the great apes, but dogs, horses, elephants and many others. These animals have no prefrontal cortex, but still have self-awareness. This not only calls into question the ethics of current animal rights, but also debunks Craig’s theories about how God made these animals.

I should mention that the audience was in general very much behind Craig as I expected. They were very well-behaved, but a few people called out during the speakers’ sessions and Law got a few “boo’s” every time he took the floor. The debate became a bit entrenched and frustrating towards the second half of the evening as the two speakers repeated similar points over and over and little progress beyond them was made. Both the speakers accused the other of failing to respond to each other’s arguments. There were a few breakaway parties though, one or two adventures beyond the heartland. Law used the word “onus” three times, so fulfilling an important Skeptical obligation, see: http://hpanwoforum.freeforums.org/the-hpanwo-guide-to-being-a-forum-skep-dick-t912.html . There was also a moment when the debaters both explored the idea that God was neither good nor bad, but neutral. They also asked whether there might be more than one God behind the universe, in so doing they dabbled with Gnosticism, the idea of Lucifer or the Demiurge working alongside Yahweh, the Biblical God. Craig also pointed out the Atheist philosophers who have questioned Atheism like Frederick Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre and Bertrand Russell (I was a bit disappointed that they didn’t mention the greatest philosopher that the world has ever seen! Ludwig Wittgenstein!.. Oh alright, I’m biased of course, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/07/hospital-porters-who-changed-world.html) I spoke earlier of William Lane Craig’s gaff over animal suffering, but in fact the biggest clanger of the evening by far was dropped by Stephen Law. He related a story that he also mentions in his book about a UFO sighting over a nuclear power station in 1967 which was hyped up into a massive Close Encounter event. Policemen and other responsible witnesses described it as being an enormous saucer-shaped craft the size of a football field with little grey aliens inside etc, and then later it turned out to be just the planet Venus. Maybe Law was counting on there being no UFOlogists in the audience; in which case he counted wrong. I’ve not heard of this particular case, which is surprising if it was such a major UFO-related occurrence; but if it were true it was definitely not representative of the UFO phenomenon, the witnesses to it or the people involved in researching it. He does himself no favours by bringing this anecdote up.

So did we get a final answer, one to terminate the endless centuries of wrangling? No. It was a complete stalemate. As with Douglas Adams’ Deep Thought, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2010/11/meaning-of-life.html we were just left with our own “42!” The scope of the debate and the enterprise of the participants was slightly lacking and I came away feeling a bit disappointed. If anything I’d say that William Lane Craig may have slightly got the upper hand, but this doesn’t mean he proved Stephen Law wrong, nor does it mean I’m about to become a Christian from listening to him! Still, I’m going to see Craig live again at the Sheldonian Theatre here at home in Oxford next Tuesday where he’s supposed to be debating Richard Dawkins; if Dawkins turns up! In fact Craig’s supporters have satirized Dawkins indecisiveness and his unwillingness to step up to the table by putting adverts on Oxford’s buses saying: “THERE IS PROBABLY NO DAWKINS SO ENJOY A LECTURE INSTEAD”. This is a satire of the famous Atheist Bus Campaign of several years ago, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSrSwRpBdHk The good news is: you can decide for yourself over what went on this evening because the entire Craig-Law debate will soon be available on the Unbelievable podcast: http://www.premier.org.uk/unbelievable

One thing I’ve learned from this event and others like it is that there’s a great deal of difference between proving somebody wrong and winning a debate. Debating is a skill in itself regardless of the content of what’s being debated. In the beginning I found this revelation rather shocking and distasteful. It sounded to me like people were employing sophistry when persuasive reason failed them, but I’ve come to accept it and even admire those who excel in this verbal art-form. The grandmaster has to be the great Christopher Hitchens. Here he is at work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6P1NQ7PkG4 Hitchens has made a niche so deep for himself in this field that he is almost the founder of his own genre, never mind the grandmaster. This leads me to question his sincerity. Does he really believe in everything that he’s preaching? Or is he just like a very smart lawyer? His opinions seem to be very convenient, tailor-made in order for him to disagree with virtually everybody! He’s a Leftist who supports the War on Terror, he’s an Atheist who opposes abortion; he truly is the universal contrarian. He’s also made some very contradictory statements on the status of the Armed Forces. However this is not really a criticism; as I said, I just enjoy this wonderful new spectator sport. As Deep Thought said in the original radio and TV show on Douglas Adams’ Hitch-Hikers’ Guide to the Galaxy: “The Neutron-Wrangler could talk all four legs off an Altairian mega-donkey, but only I could persuade it to go for a walk again afterwards!”

Latest HPANWO Voice articles: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/10/big-b-rubber-is-watching-you.html
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UK Probe Conference October 2011

2011-10-03T18:44:00.008+01:00

Here’s my HPANWO TV reportage of the UK Probe Conference October 2011 which contains a lot more details as well as exclusive Probe footage. As always at the present time I've not done a full-length written report on this event: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/10/uk-probe-conference-2011.html

This October 2011 Probe Conference was unique in several ways. The conference is always held close to the Equinox and so tends to be in March and October. At that time of year the Lancashire coast tends to be either mildly sunny and warm or windy and wet. However this weekend the weather has been unprecedented for its heat and sunshine. Temperatures have risen up into the high 80’s all over southern Britain. It was as if Probe had been moved to the summer, and a very hot summer for that matter. I’ve never seen anything like it! Predictably the British public was quick to take advantage of the situation and the train from Preston to Blackpool was a cattle-truck. I was dismayed to see that the police had installed airport-style metal-detectors at the gates of Preston Station. If you look at my previous Probe report, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/03/uk-probe-conference-march-2011.html , you’ll see that Preston Station holds a special place in my heart. Luckily on the way home these scanners were gone, clearly a temporary attribute to remind the people that we shouldn’t get too comfortable and relaxed. Don’t we realize how much in danger we are from terrorists under our deckchairs?

This conference was also unique in that Ustane was not with me. She’s busy at work and so couldn’t take the time off to come along. She’s been accompanying me to Probe since 2008 and I missed her a lot. However I met up with a lot of my old friends and made some new ones. I’ve had an offer from somebody to attend a skywatch at their friend’s estate where apparently there’s a Close Encounter of the First and Second Kind almost every night! I also met up with a lovely family who have a sweet, little 2 or 3 year old girl who reminds me of my own daughter when she was that age; rather than the hostile, rebellious, hefty 16-year old that she is today. They are regulars at the Sauniere Society Conference. I’ve realized that this is one I’ve yet to attend and should do so really, see: http://sauniere-society.org/

I feel a major change has come over the way I see the Probe Conference; not that I’m going off it, not at all. However there’s one major element of the Conference I’m going to have to break away from to prevent the event from being stripped of a lot of its enjoyment, that’s the Carlton Hotel. Along with breaking away from something I broke towards something else! I became an official cameraman for the last session of the Conference, Dex Dobie’s speech, see: http://www.dexdobie.com/ . Dex asked me to film his speech and gave me this very heavy and elaborate recording rig which he strapped to my torso ceremoniously. It had two separate cameras on it and a boom microphone. Unfortunately when Dex began his speech I realized that one of the cameras had plenty of film and a battery that was nearly flat and for the other it was vice versa! The cameras were different makes and so the two were incompatible. I tried putting one of my own film chips into the one with a full battery, but it prompted me to format the chip and so would erase all the film I’d taken myself. In the end when both Dex’ cameras were spent I switched to my own Sony. I don’t know how I managed it, but I was able to record the entire speech, minus a few moments here and there for panicked battery and film fiddling. The end of Dex' address came with about 2 minutes of battery left! It was recorded on 3 different cameras, on two chips and one disk using three different batteries. Half of it is with Dex and half with me; so in short it’s an editor’s nightmare! Good luck with it, Dex!

By the time I left the conference on Monday morning the weather had changed back to its usual rainy and damp autumnal ways, but when I descended from the train in Oxford Station the heat hit me as if I’d just got off a plane at a tropical airport. The more southern and eastern parts of Britain have been granted an extra day of this Indian Summer. Make the most of it! I’ve had a great time at Probe; thanks to Sam and all the other organizers. Unfortunately Jean couldn’t join us this time because she’s not been well. I ask all HPANWO-readers to sends her their best wishes and healing energy. Pray that she’ll make a swift recovery and be back in the driving seat at Probe soon.

One thing that disappointed me deeply was that on Saturday morning a mysterious alien appeared in the Conference auditorium and walked around trying to communicate with the people there… but I overslept and turned up late so I missed it!

Latest HPANWO Voice article: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/09/advert-inspired-by-charlie-veitch.html
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British Humanist Association Conspiracy Theory Conference

2011-09-26T10:48:00.005+01:00

The British Humanist Association is rarely far from my thoughts, not since I awarded them a collective MBA very recently, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/09/british-humanist-association-gets-its.html The other day, at very short notice, it was announced that none other than Ian R Crane (See HPANWO Links column) would be addressing them. This was curious, I thought. It turns out that the BHA were holding a “Conspiracy Theory Day”; I looked in my diary and saw I was off-duty so bought a ticket without hesitation, see http://www.humanism.org.uk/meet-up/events/view/154 . I’m glad I did because what I enjoyed when I attended yesterday was one of the most unusual and entertaining conferences I’ve ever been to.

The one-day conference was held in a comfortable and elegant old venue, Conway Hall in London, see: http://www.conwayhall.org.uk/ . The delegates were very different from the ones I usually see at conferences. These were mostly Humanists; Humanism is a form of organized Secularism or Atheism. Rather like the term “Conspiracy Theory” that the first speakers said later on was so hard to define, so is Humanism. It’s one of these terms that gives everybody a very strong and definite feeling about what it means, but it’s very hard to put it into words. I wouldn’t call myself a Humanist and very few other people would too, but when I took their quiz, see: http://hpanwoforum.freeforums.org/british-humanist-association-t1744-15.html (13th post down) as you can see I got “mostly D’s” so technically I could be a member myself! However the authors of this quiz are perhaps being a little dishonest. It could really have consisted of only one question: Number 2: “Is there an Afterlife”. If you answer “Yes” you cannot be a Humanist, even if you choose D for every other answer. The non-existence of Life-After-Death is the lifeblood, cornerstone and raison d’etre of Humanism, not a lack of religion, or God not existing or believing in being kind to others yadda yadda yadda, it’s the absolute self-conviction that when you die that’s it! You cease to exist for all eternity. It is for this reason that I feel such pride and such elation in decorating the British Humanist Association with the MBA Bronze! It’s obvious for this reason that Humanism shares a lot of common grounds with the Skeptic Movement. Most Humanists are Skeptics and vice-versa.

I looked around the room for familiar faces and experienced a strange feeling as I saw both the conspiratorially-aware people I meet at AV, Probe and other conferences, together with the Skeptics I bump into at the various Skeptics in The Pub events I go to, see for example: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/09/skeptic-in-pub-15908.html . It was a very peculiar feeling to see these two aspects of my social life coming together when up till now they’ve always been in strictly separate compartments. I saw two friends I went to Exopol with, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/08/exopolitics-leeds-2011.html , and I also met up with Ian R Crane and Alex G of AV and Nick Pope; but at the same time I saw SiTP-members I knew and a few “Skeptilebrities” (A compound word I’ve invented that means a Skeptic celebrity), like James O’Malley of The Pod Delusion radio show, see: http://poddelusion.co.uk/blog/ . I looked down the row of stalls and felt the hooks of cognitive dissonance tear my mental flesh as I saw Ian R Crane’s stall right next to the ones selling books by Richard Dawkins and Richard Wiseman.

I felt myself almost melt with awe and humility at the sight of Prof. Chris French coming onto the stage as the first speaker. When I think back now I can still hardly believe that I was truly in the presence of one of only two MBA Gold Laureates in the world! See: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2009/09/prof-chris-french-mba-gold.html . When I finally collected my senses and recovered from the almost overwhelming emotion I was a bit disappointed to see that The Great Man was not alone on stage; he had to share it with a slim, gangly and very studious young man called Robert Brotherton. I was shocked to see that Brotherton did not kneel down and kiss the ground when addressing French, so breaking MBA protocol! It turns out that this is a colleague of Prof. French at the Anomalistic Psychology Unit at Goldsmith’s College. The two men did a double-act. At first they tried to define the term “Conspiracy Theory”. It’s one that is intuitively obvious, but hard to put into actual words. They took on the idea that David Ray Griffin always voices, that the official story of 9/11 is just another Conspiracy Theory, one in which Bin Laden conspired with Mohammed Atta et al to crash airliners into the World Trade Centre. They said that this was actually not a Conspiracy Theory because it made much more sense and had much more evidence supporting it. It didn’t rely on mantra of Conspiracy Theory, that 1: Everything is a lie, 2: Everything is intended, 3: Everything is significant. It was a "natrual collective consensus of opinion". However they, like the following speaker Karen Douglas, make the point that at the end of the day the whole issue does depend on evidence and rational inquiry. However French, Brotherton and Douglas all concentrated their speech around psychological profiling and indeed French stated in as many words: “I’m not going to debate the evidence for or against particular Conspiracy Theories; this is not the place for that.” So this event was about the psychological phenomenon of Conspiracy Theory, not any actual reason that it might exist. This was a very important admission on their part, but I don’t think they quite understood the significance of it. He repeated this rule again during his Q and A when members of the audience went up to angrily challenge him on his views. One of them was Belinda McKenzie who won lots of hearts, including my own, when she said indignantly : “I’m a conspiracy realist!", (see: http://www.wholetruthcoalition.org/author/belindamckenzie ) Ironically Chris French made the statement that afternoon that I most agreed with: “There’s a lot of pseudoscience in psychology you know.” He meant it as a criticism of something Ian R Crane said, but I think it could have applied to something entirely different!

Dr Karen Douglas (See: http://www.kent.ac.uk/psychology/people/douglask/ ) came onto stage next and spoke of her own psychological studies on Conspiracy Theorists. “Why is it that people believe in these things?” she asked. She said it had a lot to do with feeling powerless and full of despair. But she also said some strange things that made no sense to me. Firstly she told us that many Conspiracists hold two or more mutually contradictory beliefs, like Bin Laden being killed many years ago and also Bin Laden still being alive. I wonder who Dr Douglas was using as the subjects of her study. I’ve never met anybody who thinks that. I know a lot of people who believe Bin Laden is still alive, and many who think he died around 2001, including myself, but never the twain have met as far as I can see. During the Q and A I went up to ask a question: “Thank you for that very interesting profile into the psychology of Conspiracy Theorists. I want to make a suggestion for a new study; if my suggestion is taken up I’d be very interested in following its progress and results. It’s a study on the psychological profile of another group of people, one called by a name whose meaning is also very easy to understand intuitively, but hard to define in actual words. That name is: Skeptic!” (I then made a false exit and came back to the mic) “... with a K!” Unfortunatly Karen Douglas answered my question literally; my ironic sarcasm went right over her head! Just imagine though, hosting a conference and saying things like: “Why do people believe in the Skeptic Movement? What comfort to they derive from it? What kind of background do they have that leads them to follow Skeptical leaders? Etc.” Now that would be a good conference to attend!

The next two speakers were a pair of skinny young men with bushy hair and beards; they looked just like the 118-118 twins, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZw87CSV-o4 (My friend Richard Wright also noted their similarity in appearance to Mark Pilkington, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/09/assap-seriously-strange-conference.html . They have suffered a lot of abuse on the Internet for a scientific paper they wrote on Conspiracy Theorists. They work for DEMOS, an organization that has aroused much suspicion from people like Brian Gerrish for its links to Common Purpose and other “Fifth Column” organizations. Bartlett and Miller deny that DEMOS is anything sinister and is really a cuddly, friendly organization. I’m not convinced at all, but on the subject of abuse and hatred towards others who criticize us, I must agree. In fact I’m one of the voices that appealed for calm after the infamous U-turn by Charlie Veitch, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/07/charlie-veitch-911-u-turn.html .

Stephen Law, whom I met at Oxford SiTP, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/07/skeptical-renaissance.html came out to introduce the last speaker Ian R Crane. He said that he was concerned when he found out that some Conspiracy Theorists had bought tickets. He thought that there could have been disruption. I actually went up and spoke to Law at the end and said jokingly: “You see, we ‘Conspiracy Theorists’ are not all disruptive are we?” In fact everybody behaved impeccably the whole day, and there were a lot of friendly interactions, as well as conflict, between the two factions in the audience. In the end this was a public conference and if anybody was that bothered they could have made it a private BHA function with tickets sold to members only. Anyway, I digress; Ian R Crane was there because Law thought it would be a good idea to have a pro-Conspiracy Theory speaker as well as all the anti ones. He was worried that the conference might become boring as the speakers “preached to the converted”. He was correct there! Ian came onto the stage and made what was arguably one of the best speeches I’ve ever seen him do. He must have been a bit nervous as this was the enemy’s lair, so to speak. However, come to think of it, he did address the Women’s Institute! See: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2009/04/emergency-swine-flu-meeting-with-ian.html . Ian had obviously tailor-made his speech for this specific audience. I had a feeling he’d pull some spectacular stunt and he didn’t disappoint. In the middle of his address he invited Tony Farrell up onto the stage, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/09/tony-farrell.html . It was a very dramatic moment and we gave him a standing ovation as he walked up to the stage from the back of the hall. Karen Douglas had spoke of the “attraction” of holding belief in Conspiracy Theory, but what was the attraction for Tony? Losing his job? Losing his income? Losing his pension, his livelihood and reputation? If I didn’t know about the Skeptic mentality any better then I’d have thought that there’d be a few flushed cheeks and darting gazes, but no such luck. During the panel discussion at the end of the conference the Skeppers kept on rationalizing and reducing. However if Ian just made one member of the audience think again...

This was a superb conference and I’m very glad I went. Thanks to Stephen Law and all the other organizers. Also thanks to the speakers, especially Ian and Tony Farrell. This may well only be Part 1 of a two-part report because at the end of the day the challenge went out for a public debate on a specific Conspiracy Theoretical detail featuring Ian and one of the Skeps from the panel. Alex G has promised to televise it on EMTV, see: http://www.edgemediatv.com/about.html . I shall look forward to that very much!

A good postscript to this report is that I had a very pleasant conversation with Nick Pope and I’m pleased to relate that he bears me no ill will for my report into his Weird 11 speech, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/09/nick-pope-his-next-step.html If he had, however, I would not retract it.

Latest HPANWO Voice article: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/09/red-arrows-london-olympic-campaign.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/09/my-interview-in-sun.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/09/tony-farrell.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/09/4-trapped-miners.html

Latest HPANWO TV films: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/09/gateway-to-parallel-universe.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/09/weird-11-conference.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/09/assap-seriously-strange-conference.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/09/british-humanist-association-gets-its.html

Latest HPWA article: http://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2011/09/why-do-we-need-hpwa.html

Nick Pope- his Next Step

2011-09-19T17:02:00.019+01:00

My review of Nick Pope’s speech at the Weird 11 Conference Lizards and Lies- the Truth about Conspiracy Theories; Saturday the 17th of September 2011. This is a follow-up article to one I wrote several months ago entitled What Next for Nick Pope?, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/06/what-next-for-nick-pope.html

See here for my HPANWO TV reportage of the Weird 11 Conference: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/09/weird-11-conference.html

Nick knows that I’m planning to review his conference address. He seems to trust me to do a fair job, although he'll have guessed that I’m going to disagree with his conclusions. I hope I’ve honoured his trust; I try to respect all people and don’t like being hurtful to others. At the same time I have to be honest in my opinions. This world is full of fence-sitters and opportunistic scientific prostitutes; who was it who said: “a friend to all is a friend to none.”? That’s very true. Nick has taken a lot of stick over the years from his fellow researchers and I’m afraid it’s my duty to give him a little bit more. However I bear him no personal ill-will and I’d even go as far as to say that I like the man! I appreciate that he has done much to bring the subject of UFO’s into the public arena and, although he has not addressed the full scale of the subject, he’s been sincere in his beliefs. As I’ll explain below, I’m sure he’s not a “shill”. He’s also recently been a tower-of-strength for several UFO abductees and has acted as a conduit between them and Budd Hopkins, who was a very sympathetic researcher who took UFO contact extremely seriously (Hopkins passed away a few weeks ago RIP, Budd), see my report on the latest Leeds Exopolitics Conference, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/08/exopolitics-leeds-2011.html

This was a brand new speech for Nick on a subject he’s not yet delivered in a conference address. The title immediately gives it away that this is a Skeptical speech about Conspiracy Theories (I shall use the term “Conspiracy Theory” throughout this report with the same definition and meaning that Nick does, purely for my own convenience. I know that there are many issues regarding the use of this expression that I can’t really go into in this report; in other articles I do.), although Nick opened with a statement that he didn’t intend for his speech to be another “hatchet-job” and wanted it to be even-handed. He first told us why he thought he was especially qualified to talk about Conspiracy Theories. It came from his career at the Ministry of Defence and it is there that he first came up with the idea, and therefore I wonder why it’s taken him so long to speak openly about the subject. When he was head of AS-2, the MoD’s UFO Desk, he came to realize that Conspiracy Theories are the staple diet of many UFO-believers. Those who regularly reported seeing unknown phenomena in the sky also made claims about Government complicity and deception in the same statements. Another reason, and I suspect that this is the main one, is that Nick himself has been on the receiving end of many Conspiracy Theories and has been the target of the very accusations his witnesses made. According to some UFO-researchers Nick is a “shill”, a Government agent who seeds the UFOlogical community with false information and downplays genuine mysteries. I wonder if he has a bit of an axe to grind here! Who wouldn’t in his place? He also believes that his own experience of working in the heart of Government for so long means that he has a lot of knowledge and insight into how governments work and how politicians think; the kinds of things they say and do. He warns us that whenever we come across a Conspiracy Theory we should ask ourselves three key questions: Could they? Would they? And, does the science support it? He then told us his psychological views on Conspiracy Theorists. We are apparently ridden with unreasonable mistrust of Government; all Conspiracy Theories, with the exception of the Paul-is-Dead Theory (see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/11/is-paul-mccartney-dead.html) involve Government deceit and/or violence of some kind. Usually the media is complicit by covering up the truth in some way. Nick reckons that this is a false view of how media and the Government really work; he sites as his example the Claudy Bomb Conspiracy, a real conspiracy that took place in Northern Ireland in 1972. On the 31st of July an IRA bomb exploded and killed 9 people. A man named Father James Chesney was quickly arrested and charged with the murders, but curiously the case was closed before Chesney was prosecuted. What had happened? It later turned out that the police, the Home Secretary at the time, Willie Whitelaw, and the Church authorities secretly granted Chesney immunity in some shady deal. This was because having a Catholic priest being exposed as an IRA bomber was too embarrassing, politically and socially, to be allowed to pass. It was feared that this would deepen the Troubles and cause further warfare and bloodshed. Nick’s point was that the media fought tooth-and-nail to reveal the truth about the Claudy Conspiracy, at great embarrassment to the Government, so how can the media try to expose the truth against Government suppression one moment and the next be part of covering up the truth in collusion with the Government? Isn’t that a contradiction? I don’t think so. For one thing, the Claudy revelation might not be as earth-shattering as you might think when you consider that accusations of Government misdeeds during the Troubles in Northern Ireland have been flying around the place for the entire period and since, and have as a result become a bit passe. In fact it’s worth watching Peter Taylor’s TV series' Provoes, Loyalists and Brits for far more information about this kind of thing, see EG: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yDXbc9G1wk The British and Irish governments continuously carried out secret deals and negotiations with the paramilitary groups on both sides throughout the Troubles. Another problem with Nick’s assessment is that dallying around a few curves to quash a prosecution is hardly the crime of the century, although I’m sure it would seem that way for the loved-ones of the victims. It’s only the same sort of legal shut-down that was quite openly carried out more recently when IRA and Loyalist murderers were released early from prison as part of the Good Friday Agreement. For the media it’s not that much worse than Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky’s affair, surely! What if it was revealed, say, that the British Government was actually actively involved in the street-killings of the Troubles? What if they were actually running some of the IRA death-squads? Obviously the media would be onto that like a greyhound out of the trap... wouldn’t they? No. Why have they not followed up Paul Bruce’s accusations in his book The Nemesis File? In this book he accuses the Government of precisely that and what’s more confesses his own role therein, see: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nemesis-File-Story-Execution-Squad/dp/185782167X . Where are the roving mainstream journalists here? They’re ignoring it; why? Because it’s a step too far down the ladder of immorality, a place where they will not go. Government lying about weapons of mass destruction, tape recordings in the Oval Office, ministers sleeping with prostitutes, even covering up somebody else’s murder at Claudy. That’s bad, but not too bad, and the media will love it; but if it involves the Government actively committing murder, it crosses the line. Remind you of anything else? Read on!

Nick next talked a bit about what he calls Conspiracy Theory “Tropes”. This means terminology like “Sheeple”, “Shill” and “New World Order”. He finds the word “sheeple”, meaning a non-Conspiracy Theorist, extremely patronizing and I must say I agree with him; it’s insulting and using it is counter-productive. It’s a word you’ll never hear coming from my lips. Nick is not a “Shill”, as I’ve said before. I don't question that Nick is saying what he truly thinks is true. As I’ve said in my review of Andy Roberts’ book UFO Down, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/01/ufo-down-by-andy-roberts.html , shills who know they are shills are a liability. Managing people like Nick is far more effective than employing shills because Nick doesn’t have to be briefed in on the secret, so preventing the conspiracy from becoming top-heavy. The conspirators don't have to worry that he might develop a conscience and spill the beans. He can’t swap benches as Fife Symington did with the Phoenix lights; in fact he can promote complete falsehoods and be totally sincere about it. I suspect somebody may be using Nick without his knowledge. There are those I think are shills, and I’m willing to name them (like Anjem Choudary, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2010/01/muslim-clerics-are-they-shills.html ), but Nick is not among them. The “New World Order” is another of Nick’s tropes. This is a term I do use, but I only use it because I think it’s true. The New World Order is real and it’s happening! How do I know? Well, look at the rest of my articles and films. Nick then puts a situation to us: A person dies in a car crash because the driver is drunk and speeding; should we be suspicious? The instinctive answer is “No”. Such tragedies sadly happen virtually every day. So why then, asks Nick, do we think Princess Diana was assassinated? The answer is that what happened to Diana is totally different to any other car crash I’ve ever heard about, especially in terms of the shady background of the driver, the behaviour of the ambulance and hospital personnel who treated her, the way the scene was not preserved by accident investigators... the list goes on and on. Here’s a good website with all the details by a Probe Conference-regular Jon King: http://www.consciousape.com/discussion-topics/political-assassinations/ . There’s also the testimony of the former MI6 agent David Tomlinson, “The other David Shayler”. Tomlinson has spoken of a plan to assassinate the Serbian tyrant Slobodan Milosevic by staging a car crash. Just before the car drove into a tunnel the assassins would shine a special flash-gun into the face of the driver, one so powerful that it can blind a man for up to four minutes. After that special forces or secret service agents hiding nearby would run down into the tunnel, and if Milosevic had survived the crash they’d kill him by a poisoned injection. The only difference in Diana’s case was that the secret agents were probably one of the medical staff. I’m convinced Diana was assassinated and I think Nick is wrong to dismiss it as an accident. The same goes for Dr David Kelly. Nick sites confidently the Hutton Enquiry, one which even Tony Blair had to speak at, as proof that nobody in Government is hiding anything. “Why were there no fingerprints on the knife?” he asks. “Surely if Kelly were assassinated then his killers would have forced the knife into his dead grip and made sure his dabs were all over it”. This logic I find perplexing: The absence of evidence of a suicide is evidence supporting that it was a suicide? I must have seriously lost Nick’s drift at this point! I also direct readers to the testimony of Dave Bartlett, a man I’m personally acquainted with, who was the paramedic attending the scene. In his 30 years in the Ambulance Service Dave has had the unenviable duty of attending many suicides using the methods Kelly is supposed to have used, but Kelly’s is unique in that there was no blood. Kelly hardly bled at all so how could he have bled to death? His body might have bled slightly if his wrists had been cut by somebody after he was dead. The book The Strange Death of Dr David Kelly by the Rt. Hon. Norman Baker MP is worth reading: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Strange-Death-David-Kelly/dp/1842752170 (Don't let the unimaginitive title put you off!), the author was a speaker at the AV3 Conference, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2009/11/alternative-view-3-part-1.html .

Next Nick addresses some of the more “far out” Conspiracy Theories like Chemtrails. Nick remembers seeing high-flying aircraft leaving long, thick trails as a child and sees nothing different today. This is just water vapour, he says, and is completely harmless. I can’t say I share Nick’s memory of aircraft trails in my childhood that match today’s in any way. Modern trails can be hundreds of miles long and a dozen or more miles wide; just a handful of them can cover a completely blue and clear sky with an opaque, milky fog in just a few hours. They can last all day, whereas natural clouds and jet trails evaporate. And to crown it all, the normal jet condensation trails, exactly like the ones we used to see as kids, still exist today, sometimes being released from aircraft right next to Chemtrail planes. Another of Nick’s doubts about Chemtrails comes from the contradictory statements researchers make about them. Nobody seems to be sure what they are or why they’re being made and Nick sees this as a reason to dispute their existence. I don’t; I see them simply as Nick did in his initial point: We don’t know what they are. Maybe they’re some kind of climate modification technique, maybe they’re to fill the biosphere with some non-natural agent; I’ve not made up my mind yet. Another reason Nick is sceptical that Chemtrails are real is that the aircraft which leave them fly so much higher than crop-dusting aircraft. The latter usually skim very low over the fields, as opposed to Chemtrail planes which usually release their loads at altitudes of many thousands of feet. Again, this is not a valid point unless we already have an answer to the question of what Chemtrails are. There may be reason why they need to be deposited so high up. See here for more information: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2007/10/chemtrails-and-tomorrows-world.html

The authorities never used to bother answering Conspiracy Theorists like me and they’d just ignore us, with contemptuous giggles no doubt. However that’s changed and there are official government policies which denounce the fake Moon Landings, 9/11 Truth and Chemtrails. I take heart from this; it means our voices are now too loud to block out, however Nick just sees this as sociologically interesting, a response to the rise of the Internet and the proliferation of information from dubious, as Nick sees them, sources. There is even a webpage by mainstream astronomers addressing fears of 2012 and Comet Elenin, see: http://www.armaghplanet.com/blog/10-facts-you-need-to-know-about-comet-elenin.html .

Nick then goes on to the subject he's most renowned for after UFO’s: Debunking 9/11 Truth. “It’s a real no-planer!” he put on his display screen; I hear Civil Service-types enjoy puns like this. Unfortunately he didn’t give the conference many details of why he thinks 9/11 was not an inside job, but here he is in a debate with Annie Machon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD-9cDigUN4 . I’ve also eavesdropped when he was in a pub once debating 9/11 with a well-known 9/11 Truth campaigner. As far as I can see Nick addresses the same cliche debunkers that these two appalling TV shows do: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/09/911-conspiracy-road-trip.html and: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/08/bbc-conspiracy-piles.html These theories have been addressed many times by 9/11 Truth researchers and activists over the last few years; the material in these programmes is just repeats of the old hat wheeled out by Popular Mechanics and other journals. As with the attempts to dismiss Roswell, they suspend disbelief way beyond the tensile strength of WTC steel!

Nick then leapt off a precipice and descended into the Dark Side of Conspiracy Theory, as he sees it, "The Jewish Question"! He voices his concern that “so many” 9/11 Truthers believe stories about how Mossad phoned up all the Jews working in the World Trade Centre and warned them to stay off work on 9/11. “So many”? I’ve never met a single serious 9/11 Truth activist who believes that. It’s sadly true that there are some proponents of the Far Right in the Conspiratorial Community who buy into the “It’s the Jews” line, but they are a small minority. Likewise, to respond to another of Nick’s worries, when I and most others talk about a cartel of international bankers we mean that literally: They are... well... bankers! And bankers come in all shapes, sizes and colours. They are as likely to be gentile as Jew and if they happen to be Jewish I don’t consider that relevant to why I oppose them. Nick mentions the delegate at Exopol who spoke out during Robbie Graham’s speech claiming that the BBC was all run by Jews and Nick claims that many of the delegates nodded in agreement. Well, not all of them, Nick! Some of us vehemently contradicted her, like me for instance, see Part 10 here: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/08/leeds-exopolitics-expo-2011.html . There was something that bothered me greatly about Nick bringing up this subject: Even though I agree with him that we should be wary about pointing fingers at races, creeds and colours, and challenge those who do, the accusation of AntiSemitism is constantly used by anti-Conspiracy Skeptics, especially among the radical Liberal press and Far Left activists, to smear the character of completely innocent people. A classic case is how David Icke was treated in Canada, see: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2912878405399014351# (Jon Ronson went on to make a rather good documentary and book: The Men who Stare at Goats, but this earlier film series is very poor). For every Conspiratorially-minded person justly accused of AntiSemitism there are 10 who are falsely accused of it. The problem is that this accusation is so emotive that once the AntiSemitism label is stuck on you it is very difficult to wash off, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2010/07/how-anti-semitic-are-you.html . The way we are accused of it when we mention Israel’s horrific acts of imperialism is another piece of hypersensitive hysteria that our critics have exploited. How many more times do we have to restate that opposition to Israel does not equal hatred of Jews!? Zionism is not Judaism! There are many very noble and intelligent Jews who are dedicated anti-Zionists like Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein; there are also plenty of fanatically Zionistic gentiles, like... many US Presidents and British Prime Ministers. Nick ridicules the idea that the word “ZION” is encoded into the London Olympic logo and thinks that this is pareidolia, the perception of organized shapes where none exists, like seeing faces in clouds. He quipped that, for people whose minds work in a certain way, it also resembles Lisa Simpson performing fellatio! However when you look into the background of the Illuminati, especially their obsession with ritual and black magic, that encoding the Olympic symbol in this way would be perfectly normal behaviour, in fact we should expect it. The head of the London Olympic committee is the former athlete and politician Lord Coe, who is an outspoken defender of Israel; indeed when Matthew Delooze wrote to him voicing his concerns Coe did not reply, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/10/breaking-serpents-spell-matthew-delooze.html . Nick also pours scorn on the idea that the Powers-that-Be might try to stage a fake alien invasion at the Olympics; and on somebody whom he doesn’t name, but calls: “one of the major proponents of the theory”. I assume he means Ian R Crane. “Why do it during the Closing Ceremony?” demanded Nick “Who watches that? Wouldn’t it be better to do it at the Opening Ceremony? If it were me behind it I’d wait for the Men’s 100 Metres Finals and then bring on the aliens!” This misses the point that if this Fake Alien Invasion Theory is true then it will most likely be done at the Closing Ceremony for occult ritual reasons; the date is significant. Nick is thinking in purely utilitarian terms; he’s obviously not as obsessed with the occult as the Illuminati are! The Illuminati don’t think like that. If Nick’s going to prove our Conspiracy Theories wrong then he’s going to have to understand the data that we apply to them. Anyway I’m sure if aliens land at the Closing Ceremony of the London Olympics, fake or real, then the viewers will soon switch over; it will become the most watched Olympic Closing Ceremony in history!

Nick thinks that the biggest danger with Conspiracy Theories comes from distrust of the medical establishment. He cites the same cases that Ben Goldacre and others (See: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2009/03/bad-science-by-ben-goldacre_25.html ) constantly does that follow the basic plot: Child ill; parents are both “evil Woo-Woo’s” and so didn’t get child vaccinated/refuse valid medical treatment; child dies. Nick said that the Internet is not the place for getting medical advice; where is then? I wish that Nick had been given another hour on stage! Maybe he could have come back and replaced Robert Bauval for the spare hour; because I’d love to have heard why he thinks it’s wrong to distrust the medical establishment, given its track record. Think of this plot: Child ill; both parents have faith in the medical establishment and so give child vaccines/conventional medical treatment; child dies. With such a heart-rending and crucial subject we need a proper debate, not rhetoric! I hope that when Nick brings up this subject again it is during a proper discussion with somebody supporting the other side of the story. From what I can see, I’d never take any conventional medical treatment at all unless it was absolutely necessary, like I was having a heart attack etc.

“Despite their faults, the US and UK governments are not dictatorships” said Nick. “I’ve never seen in all my years in the Government anybody ever planning an assassination.” In fact Nick told us of how he’d spoken to an American Army General about what the Iraqi invasion was really for and the General replied: “Food, water and electric lights for the Iraqi people.” Nick believes that it’s correct to think critically of the authorities so long as we also subject Conspiracy Theories to an equal amount of scrutiny. We should, Nick says, remember that Conspiracy Theories can be flawed and involve deceit and delusion too; we should ask ourselves some of the very obvious questions that so many Conspiracy Theorists so often fail to ponder. It amazes me that Nick doesn’t ask himself just one very key question: If somebody were planning an assassination, would he necessarily know about it? Nick describes how he met the Saudi Royal Family last year when he attended a conference in Riyadh: “They don’t want to depopulate the world!” Nick asserted. “They want more people to buy more products! There’s no dark smoke-filled room where the Elite are plotting to wipe out three-quarters of humanity!” Really? Surely Nick doesn’t think that if such a room existed that the door would open as he was walking past and somebody would invite him in! “Come in, Nick. Shut the door behind you. Have a cigar! This is what’s really going on, but just don’t tell anyone eh?” Why should that General he spoke to be told that his job was actually to slaughter people so that the oil companies could make a billion dollar profit? Do I really have to explain compartmentalization and “Need-to-Know” to a former Civil Servant?

I’m not sure exactly why Nick has decided to make this change in his career; he was doing well with the UFO subject, in fact he’s got a popular column in UFO Matrix magazine and it seems he’s still an essential ingredient at any UFO conference. I’m not going to play amateur psychologist; that would insult both Nick and you, the reader. However if he has some agenda in mind, a goal that he wants to achieve, I can’t see that he’ll get very far with it. For one reason, as a fellow Weird 11 delegate I met said: “He’s preaching to the unconvertible!” Also he doesn’t go into detail about why he thinks that Conspiracy Theories are such nonsense. At the start of his speech he asked us to pose his three key questions: Could they? Would they? And, does the science support it? What I’ve found in many Conspiracy Theories, including all the ones Nick mentioned is that the answer is an unequivocal and resounding: “Yes!” “Yes!” and “Yes!”

(Addendum: The sound quality in the auditorium, especially on Saturday morning, was very poor. I spoke to some of the crew and they told me that they suspected that one of the audience was using a radio-jammer to block Nick Pope's wireless microphone. I hope not. As much as a differ with Nick he has a right to speak and to be heard.)

Latest HPANWO Voice article: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/09/4-trapped-miners.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/09/accident-at-french-nuclear-power.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/09/911-conspiracy-road-trip.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/09/another-climate-change-dineier.html

Latest HPANWO TV films: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/09/weird-11-conference.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/09/assap-seriously-strange-conference.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/09/british-humanist-association-gets-its.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/09/tavistock-institute.html

Knobs for Cox!

2011-09-13T12:48:00.006+01:00

I’m back from the ASSAP Seriously Strange Conference and as I said before in my one for Exopol, (See: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/08/exopolitics-leeds-2011.html) I’m not going to do a full-length written report. Instead I’ve done my usual HPANWO TV Reportage, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/09/assap-seriously-strange-conference.html The reportage is about more than just the conference and in some of the segments I branch off into other related or semi-related areas. For instance I discuss the 9/11 issue on Sunday because it was the 10th anniversary of this atrocity and it made Ustane and I wonder if we were in the right place. I was very glad to attend the conference and enjoyed it a lot, but perhaps we should have been at one of the many 9/11 Truth events that took place over the weekend. My concerns over Charlie Veitch were well-founded it seems! See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i73ohlcRjAo The lady confronting Charlie is my friend Belinda, a great researcher and freedom-fighter. I also returned to experience the very powerful and poignant spectacle of the Roman Baths, the central tourist attraction in the city. I never cease to be effected by the story behind it and its implications for the past, present and ultimately, future.

Anyway, onto the principle new direction I’m taking as a result of the information I picked up at the conference, and I’m not talking about Bigfoot this time. This concerns not a 7 foot tall hairy unknown primate living in some remote forest; but a slightly smaller and less hairy specimen of Homo Sapiens Sapiens with a cheesy Mancunian grin, living and working in the CERN laboratory in Switzerland: Professor Brian Cox. I’ve written about him before, like here: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/03/large-hadron-collider.html As Richard Wright says in the reportage, we need to do something about him. He was on a BBC (Them again!) Radio 4 show a few days ago with the Skeptic Robin Ince, see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00p29l8 He and Robin were having a good chuckle about people who believe in ghosts, like me, and were obviously putting us all down big time as Skeptopaths tend to do. But I’m glad to say that the BBC was flooded by complaints! Cox was completely unrepentant and refused to apologize to the listeners. He said that people who believe in ghosts are all “nobbers”; I’m assuming this is a derogatory word from his native Manchester which means a fool or dupe. Now a little while ago a reporter from The Washington Post made a similar remark about people who believe in UFO’s, like me, calling us “cookies”. As a result the offices of the paper were inundated with deliveries of biscuits, cakes and cookies in an organized campaign of ridicule put out by the Exopolitics Movement. It was called “Cookies for Kelly” http://www.afterdisclosure.com/2010/10/cookies-for-kelly.html Now Richard suggests that we do something similar for Brian Cox: “Knobs for Cox”. What we do is all send Coxy a loose doorknob (without any sharp screws or anything in it of course) with a satirical message in it like “You yourself are a…” If it takes off we can even start a campaign website www.knobsforcox.com! Let’s do it! Who’s with us!?

Here’s his address:
Prof. Brian Cox
School of Physics and Astronomy
University of Manchester
Manchester
M13-9PL

Latest HPANWO Voice article: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/09/911-conspiracy-road-trip.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/09/another-climate-change-dineier.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/09/have-i-got-morgellons.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/08/bbc-conspiracy-piles.html

Latest HPANWO TV films: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/09/assap-seriously-strange-conference.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/09/british-humanist-association-gets-its.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/09/tavistock-institute.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/09/david-ickes-books-full-set.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/08/lyall-watson.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/08/bereavement-fee.html

The Skeptocrats Attack!

2011-08-25T13:48:00.012+01:00

Background articles: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/04/god-delusion-by-richard-dawkins.html
And: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/04/paranormality-by-prof-richard-wiseman.html
And: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2010/10/tam-london-2010.html
And: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2010/07/at-least-you-can-trust-skeptics.html
(Apologies for yet another Skepticological article; hope you’re not getting bored of them, dear HPANWO-readers! I will have articles on other subjects coming soon.)

This is partly a follow-on article from one I wrote a couple of months ago called What if the Skeptics Had their Way? See: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/06/what-if-skeptics-had-their-way.html The themes I include therein have become more relevant because one of my favourite Youtube subscriptions, TreVelocita (http://www.youtube.com/user/TreVelocita?blend=2&ob=5) has thrown down the gauntlet! TreVelocita’s vids are mostly on Skepticistic, Atheistic and Humanistic issues. I occasionally comment of his or her videos, as I do on the JREF Forum, as I said in the What if The Skeptics… article. But now history has repeated itself! TreVelocita has posted this recording of the BBC’s Sunday Morning programme: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj_Wd2Dm6W4 . The question being asked is the same one that got me involved on the JREF Forum thread. I invented the words “SkeptiNazi” and “Skeptocrat” to describe the Philadelphia City Council in this case; and I also use them to describe the person in the programme who wants to ban paying mediums and everybody who has commented in support of her. I apologize not.

It wasn’t long ago that Jack of Kent (See Links column) took on the case of Simon Singh, the famous science correspondent, when he was sued by the British Chiropractors Association for libel. Jack is currently campaigning for a reform of the Libel Laws. As I’ve said in my review of Ben Goldacre’s book, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2009/03/bad-science-by-ben-goldacre_25.html , I support Jack and Simon Singh 100%. It’s very destructive to use legal tyranny to shut down criticism by Skeptics. However I’m sad to say that with some Skeppers the cries for Freedom of Speech, Human Rights and Civil Liberties swiftly go silent when they move to the prosecutor’s bench. As you can see from the comments box on Part 2 of the video, most of the Skeptic commenters have no problem at all with the authorities stepping in to prevent mediums from charging customers for their trade. I’ve shoved my oar right in as you can see; I’m “benthejrporter”! The argument used by the pro-ban commenters is that psychics are all frauds who are unable to prove what they do and so contravene Trading Standards legislation. The most vocal in the box, “briansbannister”, contradicts my suggestion that this issue is related to Freedom of Speech and Freedom to Worship. I must admit he’s literally correct, but however this is still related to individual economic and social freedom, as opposed to Nanny State imposition. Briansbannister gives the analogy of dodgy builders and other conmen. I don’t think this analogy is a fair one; as I say, the same laws which protect Mediums from persecution allow the Skeptics to challenge everything they say. It’s rather like a dodgy builder being followed around by a Trading Standards officer countering every claim he makes to every customer. Here’s a list of my comments. Brian’s are inbetween; they’re transcriptions, I won’t reproduce them verbatim for copyright reasons:

(benthejrporter- 2 days ago) OK, technically this is not "Freedom of Speech" as it says in the US Consistution's First Amendment, but this is still a major intervention into our civil liberties by the Skeptic Movement. It means that I, a free British adult of sound mind, would be unable to consult a professional medium and pay her with MY OWN money, which I EARNED. I disagree with your statement that mediums are charlatans conning the vulnerable and why should this kind of rhetoric be translated into law?

(briansbannister- 2 days ago) There’s nothing that’s related to civil liberties in this issue. It’s just asking mediums to prove they can do what they say they can so that they can charge a customer for their wares.

(benthejrporter- today) But I think some Mediums HAVE proved their skill. The idea that they are all charlatans is not an established fact; it's just a viewpoint with many naysayers. What's more I don't have a problem with Skeptics putting their side of the argument across and countering that. Sometimes the Skepti-pundits are not necessary because Spiritualists themselves quickly blacklist anybody caught cheating.

(benthejrporter- 6 days ago) CSportmaria is right. This is not about whether psychics can or cannot prove what they do (I think they CAN, but that's not the point) This is about Freedom-of-Speech and Freedom-to-Worship. these are laws that exist in every civilized country. If you want to breach them then we descend into a Atheo-Skeptocratic Tyranny! If you're concerned about people "getting conned" then take comfort from the fact that the very same Freedom-of-Speech rights that I champion in this case to PROTECT the psychic industry, you can also use to put your side of the story across: that psychics are dishonest and delusional. Who will win? The truth. But the truth doesn't need censorship, only lies do.

(briansbannister- 6 days ago) I’m not advocating censorship. It’s not about Freedom of Speech or religious rights, it’s about quality of commercial standards.

(benthejrporter- 6 days ago) I differ. Firstly the idea that mediums are all cold-reading con-artists is simply an opinion of some scientists who've studied it. Not all scientists are agreed on that. The majority are, I concede, but there is a small but credible minority who are not. "Scientific opinion" in this case has never been translated into Parliamentary legislation. However Spiriualism IS legally recognized as a religion, so this is far more than just an issue you can call Trading Standards about. (I later retracted the point that this issue was literally one about Free Speech, as I said above)

(briansbannister – 6 days ago) It’s not about religion it’s about proving what you’re selling is real. And who are the members of this “credible minority” of scientists who think Spiritualism is real?

(benthejrporter- 1 week ago) If you equate mediums with dodgy builders and bent double-glazing salesmen then this is a false analogy. A more accurate one would be a TV studio with Alister McGrath on one side and Christopher Hitchens on the other. Or a dodgy builder who MIGHT be bent going round with a trading standards officer constantly at his side countering every claim he makes to a potential customer. Remember this is the economic freedom of sane adults. Contrary to Skeptic propaganda, most people who seek the services of psychics are NOT recently bereaved. They are on the whole no more vulnerable than a regular attendee of Skeptics-in-the-Pub! As for naming scientists who disagree with the prevailing view of science regarding psychics: there's Rupert Sheldrake, Gary Schwatz, Peter Fenwick...the list goes on!

(benthejrporter- 1 week ago) Remember that the Skeptic Movement is NOT science. It is a socio-political tendency that often lobbies authorities claiming to speak for all science, or to be the ultimate expression in pure science. This is a slogan, not a description! It would be an act of tyranny for the views of the Skeptic Movement to be enforced into law. If mediums could not charge it would decimate the entire industry, and I'm sure many Skeppers are aware of that!

I’m sure that this conversation will go on and on. Brian may well fall back on the old tactics of Skep-Debating, see: http://hpanwoforum.freeforums.org/the-hpanwo-guide-to-being-a-forum-skep-dick-t912.html I hope we can remain civil to each other; I’ve got every intention of doing so and I bear him no personal ill will.

As I said in the What if the Skeptics Had their Way? article, just look at what the world would be like under a Skeptocratic Atheocracy. I’ve summed up my feelings in this stand-alone comment in the box:
I'm a "Woo-Woo" so can I ask a question to all those who want paying psychics banned? If this law is passed then you can also ban religion, paranormal investigation, UFOlogy and many other things, a "Skeptocracy" if you wish. In this New Utopian Scientific Skeptical Atheist Republic what rights will I have? Will I be allowed on busses? Will I have to wear an armband with a "W" on it? Seeing as I'm going to be one of the have-nots in this new Randi-istic Dawkinsian Idyll I'd like to know. Thanks.

One issue that I’ve not yet raised in the comments box is that the heart of this matter might lie with the political concerns related to the Paranormal. As Barry Gervaise, the character from my novel Rockall, (See: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2009/05/rockall-chapter-6-spanner-vs-works.html) says: "…there may be a deeper more fundamental reason. I’ve found, in my experience, that governments seem to have an almost knee-jerk aversion to all the things that you might describe as ‘paranormal’ or ‘out-of-the-ordinary.’ Things like ghosts or UFO’s, or events like this one, which rock the boat of conventional worldviews. They will attempt to deny, reject and suppress information on any phenomenon that could lead people to question the reality of the banal, three-up-two-down existence which we live in." I think Barry is oversimplifying the matter a bit (I should have made him shut up!), but this is the point: Why is it such a big deal politically whether we have an Afterlife or not? I asked this question in my review of Paranormality by Richard Wiseman (See links at the top) and I really need to address it in more detail. Conventional Illuminati-engineered society basically gives us The Two Choices: The conventional scientific view that when you die, that’s it! You’re nothing but an animated piece of meat and with death comes the end of that animation. The only alternative proposed to that is the conventional religious worldview that the universe has an external personal God who judges people and you have an Afterlife, yes, but it’s either in eternal Heaven or eternal Hell depending what kind of mood He’s in. Also it helps if you pay lots of cash to the priest and turn a blind eye when he rapes your children! It’s one or the other; you’re either for one and against the other, or vice versa. There is no inbetween, there is no Third Way. Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion (See links at the top) is almost completely focused on countering the second choice in favour of the first. It is incredibly important to the Illuminati that you subscribe to one of The Two Choices; it doesn’t matter which one it is so long as you do it! You must subscribe to your choice wholeheartedly at the exclusion of all and any alternatives. It's very revealling to see how these so called "opposites", conventional science and conventional religion, will not hesitate to stand side-by-side in condemantion of anybody who rebels against The Two Choices. The Loomies extend an enormous amount of effort on preserving this social structure. Many people, when asked what the biggest secret those behind the New World Order keep from us is, will say: “Aliens”, “9/11”, “Free Energy”, “The Reptilians”. I’d say that the reality of Life-After-Death is the absolute biggest secret of all. If it became accepted as real in mainstream culture it seems that it would be disastrous for the New World Order. It would be far, far worse than Barack Obama making his hypothetical Disclosure speech, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/08/disclosure-is-here-president-admits.html . We all know the level of deceit that the Illuminati-occupied governments have stooped to keep the truth about 9/11, UFO’s and the fake moon landings etc secret; are we to suppose for one second that they’d not take steps to ensure that the truth about Life-After-Death remains under wraps? The Loomies are well aware that Life-After-Death is real, but they just don’t want us to know! I’m still not sure why; that’s a subject for another article perhaps. I can speculate that this cover-up would include the flaming and debunking of Paranormal researchers, the destruction of the careers and the smearing of the characters of scientists who deviate from the official line. I can also imagine that those who take the Second Choice, religious believers who develop unorthodox viewpoints, would get the same treatment; like the former Bishop of Durham Dr David Jenkins did. I’m not accusing people like James Randi and Susan Blackmore of being part of this conspiracy; the chances are that they’re just “useful idiots” who think that they are being honest in their opinions. As I’ve said in my review of Andy Roberts’ book, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/01/ufo-down-by-andy-roberts.html, “useful idiots” are far more effective than knowing shills because they don’t have to be briefed into the secret, and so prevent the conspiracy from becoming too top-heavy. They can’t develop a conscience and swap benches at an inconvenient time, like Fyfe Symington did; they can talk complete bullshit and be 100% sincere! I’m wondering at the moment whether I should raise this point in my discussion with Brian. We'll see how it goes!

Latest HPANWO Voice article: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/08/street-cleaning-computer-game.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/08/bnp-youth-shop-window.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/08/bbc-reporter-sees-ufo.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/07/fake-muslim-posters.html

Latest HPANWO TV films: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/08/mr-dream-crop-circle-comes-true.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/08/disclosure-is-here-president-admits.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/08/rioters-beware.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/08/leeds-exopolitics-expo-2011.html

Exopolitics Leeds 2011

2011-08-15T09:39:00.005+01:00

Well, a week has gone by since the very successful Exopolitics Leeds 2011 conference and I’ve more of less adjusted to my normal life. Here’s my HPANWO TV reportage of the entire event: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/08/leeds-exopolitics-expo-2011.html . As I said in the film, I don’t have time to do a full written review of the conference in the way I have done in the past, see the HPANWO Index.

Media coverage of the event has been extensive but mostly poor. Thanks to Nick Pope a reporter from The Sun came along; sadly her coverage of the conference was a novelty story; see: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/3738573/At-UFO-conference-in-Leeds-its-claimed-Olympics-will-be-Independence-Day-style-bloodbath.html I know there’s an old saying that goes: “The only bad publicity is no publicity” and I take comfort from that, and I suppose we should thank Popey for arranging it; however the article is misleading and insulting. The last sentence suggests that the entire Exopolitics community is merely a money-making scam by Anthony Beckett. £99 is actually fairly reasonable for a three-day event and the accommodation at the University is very cheap. At the end of the day this hit-piece was hardly unpredictable; the article may have been bad, but it was not as bad as I was expecting it to be. My expectations of The Sun cannot be undercut! Nick’s own comments did not help I must say; the word “Militant” has a lot of negative baggage in Britain. For many Sun-readers it may well refer to the “Liverpool Revolution” in the 1980’s when the far-leftist Militant Tendency, named after their Militant newspaper, almost took over the Labour Party. I was not interviewed, but if I had been I’d have stated my definition for the word Exopolitics as “UFOlogists who’ve finally made up their mind”. Rather than continue with the scientific investigation over the question of whether UFO’s exist we’ve decided that the answer is undoubtedly “Yes” and now we want to do something about it.

This article actually pales into insignificance compared to what came next. This radio interview, about which I’ve complained to the BBC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpY0eO2Y0IM was the absolute nadir. Liz Green should feel ashamed of herself for this hatchet-job. What makes me more upset is that Liz did an interview with the UFOlogist Timothy Good a short while ago which she handled quite professionally and respectfully (The full interview is no longer available, but here’s a clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUIy8e1siPc ); why change now?

As with most of the conferences I attend there’s a lot of differing opinion and I welcome this because covering all the bases means we get a more informed view of reality. It also makes the conferences far more interesting! In the aftermath of Exopolitics Leeds 2011 there has been some controversy; particularly over how the UFO Disclosure issue fits in with the other machinations of government. Some delegates and speakers are dismayed at how many of us along with believing in UFO’s also believe that the 9/11 and 7/7 terrorist attacks were really inside jobs. The opponents of this seem to fall into two camps; some think that those terrorist attacks were not inside jobs and so it’s false to say so, others that linking the two together will repel the general public from getting involved in the Disclosure movement. This position is similar to Plato’s theory of the Noble Myth. I disagree with both. Firstly I think that 9/11 and 7/7 were indeed inside jobs and that to understand that these atrocities are part of the same agenda as the Truth Embargo over UFO’s is very healthy and progressive.

I’ve really enjoyed Exopol and want to go to as many events as I can on this subject. I find the whole concept of the possibility of UFO Disclosure intoxicating! But I wonder if it’s really possible, as I say in the film. I decided to make a satirical film of a Presidential Disclosure speech: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/08/disclosure-is-here-president-admits.html . This film illustrates the magnitude of the political explosion that Disclosure would cause. I’ve also taken the quite controversial step of wearing blackface make-up. However I despise political correctness! If I were impersonating Barry Manilow I’d wear a false noise; if I were impersonating Ronnie Corbett I’d sit on a low stool to make myself look shorter; if I were impersonating Esther Rantzen I’d wear fake teeth… so when I impersonate a black man why not wear blackface? The hypersensitive aversion some people have about this issue baffles me. The US President, at the time of writing, happens to be Barack Obama, this is the only reason I wore this make-up; what other colour was I supposed to be?

It was a great conference. Thanks to all the organizers, speakers and everybody else involved. I’ve made lots of friends and caught up with many of old ones. See you all next year!

Latest HPANWO Voice article: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/08/bbc-reporter-sees-ufo.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/07/fake-muslim-posters.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/07/one-of-best-911-debates-ever.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/07/new-nation-freedom.html

Latest HPANWO TV films: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/08/disclosure-is-here-president-admits.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/08/rioters-beware.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/08/leeds-exopolitics-expo-2011.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/07/bill-gates-and-north-pole.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/07/destroying-my-passport.html

The Skeptic Renaissance

2011-07-19T00:20:00.015+01:00

Unlike most of my fellow believers in the Paranormal and researchers into, and rebels against, Government cover-ups and Conspiracies; I take a keen interest in all things Skeptical. I regularly attend Skeptic meetings and conferences; I have a few Skeptic friends and acquaintances. See: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2010/10/tam-london-2010.html and: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2010/05/dr-brian-deer-at-westminster-skeptics.html . I was chatting on the HPANWO Forum the other day (See links column) when I came across a post by one of the members, username “Reflex”, see: http://hpanwoforum.freeforums.org/good-article-on-the-web-about-belief-systems-t1789.html The post has developed into a very fertile thread and it gave me the idea to write this article; thanks, Reflex! The article he links to seems to combine two very disparate notions into one, two seemingly contradictory views; however both views are views common to people within what I shall call without apology The Skeptisphere. Here’s the article: http://www.alternet.org/story/151426/why_do_people_believe_stupid_stuff%2C_even_when_they%27re_confronted_with_the_truth . Can you spot the contradictory element?... Let’s come back to that later; I want to examine the details of it when I discuss another event that happened soon after I read it. For now I’m going to explore the theme of the article and how much of a revelation it has been to me. The article challenges the idea that if a person is confronted with evidence that calls into question one of their strongly-held beliefs that the person will alter those beliefs to take into account the new evidence. The article claims that in this situation the believer will come down with what it calls “the backfire effect”. This is a process through which the believer will actually use the evidence to make their belief stronger! As you can see the article gives some examples in the world of politics and media as well as science. The moral of the story is that it’s impossible to argue with a believer no matter how strong your evidence is that proves them wrong; you will only reinforce their opinions.

With that amazing synchronicity that Skeppers themselves deny and call “delusion” but I’m convinced is real (And as you’ve seen, you’ll never persuade me otherwise!), soon after reading the article Reflex posted I attended an Oxford Skeptics in the Pub event; see: http://oxford.skepticsinthepub.org/ . The speaker was the philosopher Stephen Law doing a speech about his new book with the very eye-catching title Believing Bullshit , see: http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/ (Incidentally I think it’s a crime against the English Language that Skeppies like Law, and Penn and Teller etc, have stripped the wonderful expletive “bullshit” of all its vulgar power!) He gave a speech, that was also an outline of his book, which complimented what I had just read in Reflex’ link perfectly. He claimed that some people get trapped in what he called an “IBH-Intellectual Black Hole”. IBH’s are very like black holes in outer space because they have interiors behind their event horizons which are entirely isolated from the rest of the intellectual universe. Behind that “Intellectual Schwartzschild Radius” a person can think in a way that seems very sensible to themselves and to others inside the IBS, but to those observing from outside the IBH they appear very obviously to be thinking nonsense. But, as with Reflex’ article, a person inside the IBH cannot be easily persuaded into changing their way of thinking into a form that allows them to escape from their IBH, in fact in most cases it’s impossible. He gave a list of how IBH’s are formed and the pitfalls to look out for to avoid falling into one.

It was a member of the Oxford SiTP audience gave me the greatest insight into what I was observing and help me put the pieces of the jigsaw together. He asked Law: “I’m worried that I might be trapped in an IBH.” he said and gave details. “Don’t worry” responded Law confidently. “If you’re able so much as to formulate that question in your mind then the answer is invariably ‘No!’.” So presumably Stephen Law himself, along with the author of Reflex’ article, don’t think that they are in an IBH. But I wonder if they are. The clue lies in the title of both the article and Law’s book: Why do People Believe Stupid Stuff even when they’re Confronted with the Truth? This sounds very similar to Michael Shermer’s crypto-masturbatory rant: Why do People Believe Weird Things? Law’s book is called Believing Bullshit. This means that there is an unspoken premise, a foundational assumption to the entire piece. This is why, as I explained to Reflex on the forum thread, they have internal contradictions in intellectual depth. What I mean by that is that their content involves some sophisticated philosophy, of the type I wrote about here: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2010/11/meaning-of-life.html . But when Law gave some examples of what he thought were IBH’s he replied in the tone of a Skepticistic bar-room blusterer: “Well obviously these include belief in ghost, fairies, UFO’s, unicorns. Religions and Conspiracy Theories like 9/11, aliens building the pyramids and faces on Mars!” So the unspoken basis of his viewpoint is: “Well, the Skeptics are always right of course!” In the same way the article assumes, from the very title, that what constitutes “Stupid Stuff” and what constitutes “Truth” has already been settled and is not open to further negotiation. As I explain in my review of his book, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/04/god-delusion-by-richard-dawkins.html , Richard Dawkins does exactly the same thing. The way Law uses the word “bullshit”, even in the very title of his book, (I wonder if he had a battle with the publishers over that!) shows the same self-decided premise. Socrates said: “He who seeks the truth must question everything.” Many modern heroes of the Skeptic Movement say: “He who seeks the truth must question everything... except things that other Skeptics say are true.” This leads me back to the thoughts I had when I went to TAM London, that the definitions Skeptics use to describe themselves are mere slogans, not descriptions, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2010/10/tam-london-2010.html . So does this mean that Stephen Law has fallen head-over-heels into one of his own Intellectual Black Holes? Maybe. I’ll have to read his book to be sure; I’ll review it on HPANWO probably. At the moment I’m reading a book called Randi’s Prize by Robert McLuhan, It has a fascinating and very heart-warming subtitle: What Skeptics say about the Paranormal, Why they’re Wrong and Why it Matters. See: http://www.skeptiko.com/randi-prize-exposed-in-new-book/ Books like this are important to read too because they remind you that there is another side to the story, the simplified story that Skeptics like to tell you about the world, the one which they claim has no other side. I’ll probably write an article on that as a companion to my review of Richard Wiseman’s Paranormality, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/04/paranormality-by-prof-richard-wiseman.html .

On the great HPANWO Forum thread about this subject I wrote a semi-satirical counterpoint to Reflex’ post, as a way to illustrate exactly what I meant by the foundational premise fallacy I identified in the article, and I expect to find in Stephen Law’s book; I hoped it would neutralize the fallacy on the thread and maybe it will here. I quote it in its entirety, slightly revised and edited:
Reading this makes a lot of pieces of the jigsaw fall into place. I've often wondered about the cause of the emergence of the Skeptic Movemnent that has taken place over the last few years. Skeptics in The Pub only began in 1999. The original one was in London and now there must be hundreds! There are five or six in Britain alone, including my local one in Oxford. There are Skeptic conferences galore, Skeptic celebrities making a blooming career etc. This has all emerged within the last decade or so. This parallels the New Atheist Movement which has made people like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett household names. Perhaps, using the clues in the article, we can trace the rise of the Atheo-Skeptic milieu to events in the area that these people criticize, namely the world of Paranormal research and Conspiracy Theory. 9/11 caused a revolution in Conspiratorial Awareness that has never been seen since the Kennedy Assassination! I actually suspect that the perpetrators now regret doing it and would not have done so if they'd known what would happen as a result. Also there have been breakthroughs in Paranormal Research with a series of explosive revelations in the area of UFO's especially, but also other fields. There has been an increase in more Gnostic religious beliefs that are harder to discredit than the conventional churches'. To adapt the opening lines of the article:
The misconception: The Skeptic Community would, having its beliefs challenged with facts, alter its opinions and incorporate the new information into its thinking.
The Truth: It's deepest convictions have been challenged by contradictory evidence so its beliefs get stronger. The "backfire effect" begins! The Skeptics become more and more certain that there are no Conspiracy Theories and that the Paranormal does not exist! They close ranks to concentrate their firepower, form organizations and support groups, they write books and the rest is history.

James Randi is actually the perfect product of the Skeptic "backfire effect" which is why he's today enjoying unprecedented fame and success. For people who don't know any better, you'd think Randi was the first and only Paranormal investigator on Earth! Oh, he very occasionally refers to other investigators, but he always portrays them as kind of wide-eyed flower-children, gliding around haunted houses like Tolkienian elves. It's Randi and Randi alone, who has ever done any real Paranormal research I can hardly express to you what a load of bullshit that is! But it fits in perfectly with the "backfire effect". Randi creates such a convincing delusion that it allows his disciples to live in a completely false world: "Come in." he invites you. "Come into my parlour and you need never be troubled by these worrisome thoughts again."
Could it be that the rise... nay Renaissance of the Skeptic Movement in virtually just the last decade could be “the backfire effect” against the successes and increasing profile people like me on the Woo-Woo side have had?

I know now that you’ll want me to answer a question that you’ve all got on your lips right now: “Ben, have you ever wondered if you are trapped in one of Stephen Law’s Intellectual Black Holes?” (Yes! Yes! yell the Skeppies) My answer is: No, absolutely not!... But then if I were trapped in an IBH I would say that, wouldn’t I?...

Latest HPANWO Voice article: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/07/one-of-best-911-debates-ever.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/07/new-nation-freedom.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/07/news-of-world-phone-hacking-scandal.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/07/charlie-veitch-911-u-turn.html

Latest HPANWO TV films: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/07/janet-flight-to-area-51.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/07/long-lost-ufo-photo-conclusion.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/07/long-lost-ufo-photo-reply-to-ibs.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/06/long-lost-ufo-photo-update.html

Hospital Porters who Changed the World!

2011-07-03T12:48:00.012+01:00

It’s not a commonly known fact, but Hospital Porters have help shape the world! In fact I reckon that the world would be an incredibly different place without us. I often think about the famous Christmas movie It’s a Wonderful Life (See: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038650/). In this film James Stewart’s character is deeply depressed and about to commit suicide when an angel visits him and shows him what the world would be like if he had never existed; it is such an awful place that Stewart’s character realizes that his life is wonderful, hence the title, and regains the will to carry on with it. I've often felt I’d like to do the same with Hospital Porters. What would the world be like without us? Well firstly there’d be no hospitals or medical care of any kind. Doctors and nurses would be completely impotent and ineffectual. Hundreds of millions of people would die of preventable illnesses and as a result of injuries. But there are other differences too. The world would have had to get by without one of its most famous philosophers from one of the world’s foremost universities. A charismatic singer and songwriter would never have graced the stages of the world, inspiring and delighting millions. And the most famous science fiction film of all time would have flopped because it was absent its most loveable character. So let’s examine the contribution that our Noble Portering Profession has given to all our lives in more detail:

Jimmy Saville
Service: Broadmoor Hospital and the Leeds General Infirmary 1950-1960
Jimmy Saville has enjoyed a long and a healthy retirement from when he decided to step down from the Hospital Portering Service. He became a full-time disc-jockey and TV presenter, best known for hosting Top of the Pops which he did on-and-off from 1964 until 2006. His other main TV appearance was in the famous title role of Jim’ll Fix It. Between 1975 and 1994 this programme made viewers’ dreams come true, mostly children. He also enjoyed a long radio career with Radio Luxembourg and the BBC. He’s a great philanthropist and charity fund-raiser, regularly taking part in sponsored events. He’s very fit and athletic and many of these events involved him running in marathons of up mountains, even into his old age.

Peter Mayhew
Service: Kings College Hospital London- 1963-1976
Peter Mayhew must have entered civilian life with some trepidation. As he hung up his gas-spanner and walked out of the gates of Kings for the last time I can only guess what was going through his head! He wanted to be an actor, but the show business profession is incredibly competitive and with a height of 7 feet 3 inches he knew that there were only a limited number of parts he could play. It’s a wonder Kings had a uniform his size! But as luck would have it he got a job playing a Minotaur in one of the Sinbad movies and then his definitive role: Chewbacca in Star Wars. George Lucas was looking for two very tall actors to play both Chewie and Darth Vader. He picked David Prowse, “The Green Cross Code Man” to play the Sith lord and Mayhew to play the gentle giant Wookie pilot of Han Solo’s spaceship. Mayhew won an MTV Movie Award for this, even though nobody saw his real face until the ceremony. Today he is a welcome celebrity at Star Wars fan conventions and spends most of time touring all over the world to visit these events.

Ludwig Wittgenstein. Service: First period: Austrian Army field hospital- 1914-1918. Second period: Guys Hospital London- 1939-1945
This particular Porter is different from the others in that he came into Portering comparatively late in life after a successful civilian career. He was born in 1889 in Vienna, Austria which makes him by far the oldest in our Portering Hall of Fame. He was from one of the city’s richest families, one of the last of the ill-fated Austrian aristocracy. After the traumatic death of all three of his brothers to a suicide pact, Wittgenstein studied philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge and ended up as professor of philosophy where he made great friends with other famous philosophers like Bertrand Russell and GE Moore. Like myself, he was interested in language and how it applied meaning to the world. He spent his career studying it, changing his mind quite starkly several times; but he never lost the admiration of his readers and students. For a subject in which most participants are renowned for the quantity of their literary output, Wittgenstein wrote very little. Unlike his fellow philosophers who tend to pour out an epic doorstep of a book every 6 months or so, he only published two books, one posthumously; and a bare handful of papers. Nevertheless his ideas circulated widely and were extremely influential on later philosophical schools. I’m interested in philosophy, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2010/11/meaning-of-life.html and I have a book about Wittgenstein: Culture and Value, see: http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=3SOjrAgrlx0C&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=culture+and+value+wittgenstein&ots=wBxxAdsSJF&sig=8Nf7jgLtxKFp_DS6aXw7j4uGyVc#v=onepage&q&f=false How can I not read it and find out what my Extremely Proud and Dignified Brother Porter Ludwig thought about the world!?

Mick Jagger
Service: Unknown (Source: http://www.bukisa.com/articles/220918_before-they-were-stars)
I was pretty disappointed to find that Mick Jagger’s Wikipedia bio doesn’t mention his time in the Hospital Portering Service and portrays him as a life-long civilian. I hope he hasn’t had thoughts of the most misplaced shame possible! See: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2007/12/dont-tell-em-were-porters.html Mick Jagger is one of the most famous rock stars and music celebrities of all time. His turbulent lifestyle was almost a self-caricature, filled with drugs, wild parties and sexual hedonism. He was born in Kent in 1943 and at school first met his lifelong friend Keith Richards. Along with Ronnie Wood, Bill Wyman and Brian Jones they set up the Rolling Stones, one of the most famous and definitive bands of the entire rock-‘n-roll era. Despite his reputation as the ultimate bon viveur Jagger is first and foremost a lyrical and musical genius and never lets his personal life get in the way of that. He has a rebel philosophy and was a hero of the 60’s counter-culture. His contribution to all human culture is a credit to the Hospital Portering Service; he truly is one of our favourite sons.

Latest HPANWO Voice articles: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/07/charlie-veitch-911-u-turn.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/06/diabetes-cure.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/06/milly-dowler-killer-should-he-be-hanged.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/06/crop-circles-ikea-and-dreams.html

Latest HPANWO TV films: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/06/long-lost-ufo-photo-update.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/06/quitting-my-statute-law-self.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/06/heres-to-small-local-shops.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/06/fake-alien-videos.html

New Blog- the HPWA

2011-06-30T17:19:00.005+01:00

I've started a new HPANWO blog! The Hospital Porters' Welfare Association blog. See: http://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/

This is a project that's been milling around inside my head for some time. It's something that is very noticably lacking in ther world of Hospital Portering, and it's very much needed indeed! Well, now that has been remedied!

The purpose of the HPWA is best described in the Mission Statement:
The Hospital Porters’ Welfare Association is a new charity and support community established to provide care and support for the approximately 9000 serving Hospital Porters in the UK and the even greater number of retired and former Hospital Porters. Today thousands of Hospital Porters and ex-Hospital Porters live under the pressure of poverty, isolation, indignity and social violence leading to suffering, a poor quality of life and increasing mental and physical health problems stemming from their sacrifice to the Hospital Portering Service, the National Health Service and private health practices; and the patients whom they play such a vital part in caring for. Our mission is to build a better present and future for Hospital Porters across Britain and eventually throughout the world by giving financial support, counseling and comradeship. In doing so we hope to also raise the public profile of Hospital Portering and increase awareness of this noble profession.

I've now got a basic plan for the organization; I now need to register it as an official charity and then come up with some rough ideas for action, fundraising and publicity. I might need to start another website as the HPWA becomes more complicated. I've got some thoughts already and I'll let you know as they take form. I'm going to tinker with the blog design a bit too. Pride and Dignity to you all!

Latest HPANWO Voice article: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/06/diabetes-cure.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/06/milly-dowler-killer-should-he-be-hanged.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/06/crop-circles-ikea-and-dreams.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/06/clarks-chemtrails.html

Latest HPANWO TV films: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/06/long-lost-ufo-photo-update.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/06/quitting-my-statute-law-self.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/06/heres-to-small-local-shops.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/06/fake-alien-videos.html

What Next for Nick Pope?

2011-06-26T15:52:00.004+01:00

Here’s the official website of Nick Pope: http://www.nickpope.net/ Also see the HPANWO Links column.

I was at a conference last year and the cheer went out: “WE WANT POPEY!... WE WANT POPEY!... WE WANT POPEY!” just before Nick Pope’s speech began. It struck me that this man has become an essential and elemental figure at any UFO-themed event, alternative or mainstream. He is one of the world’s best-known UFOlogists and is probably the most recurrent of speakers whom I encounter on the Conference Circuit. In a way, since the departure of J Allen Hynek, he’s probably the world’s only “official" UFOlogist. I’ve got to know him reasonably well and we usually have a good chat when we meet up. In his professional capacity he is very dapper and informative. Unlike many UFOlogists he wears a smart suit and has well-groomed hair; he looks and sounds every bit the Government agent that he was. With accusations of people being Government agents almost endemic and internecine in the Paranormal investigation community, Nick Pope is unique in actually being one, open and publicly. He spent 21 years in the Civil Service, including a stint during the Gulf War of 1990. His UFO work began in 1991 and ended in 1994, but these were three years which changed his life. He was initially a sceptic... even a Skeptic... when he took over the MoD UFO Desk, but after he had examined the evidence he changed his mind and concluded that UFO’s were indeed not man-made objects from this Earth. However he no longer works for the government. He has retired from the Ministry of Defence and now operates as a freelance journalist and media pundit. He gets called up by newspapers and TV stations across the globe to comment on anything UFO-related, on the rare occasions the media discusses UFO’s in anything other than a comedy/novelty story just before the weather forecast and traffic reports. His role in the media began while he was still in the Civil Service. Here’s an old speech he makes where he gives the audience the disclaimer that he is appearing at the conference, X-Con 2004, as a private individual and not in his official capacity: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3130636278818597541# He sometimes comments on the views of his colleagues at the Ministry; as I suspected many consider him something of a pariah! The MoD’s UFO investigation team has been running in one form or another since the 1940’s and tends to err away from the “believer” camp. Sadly in 2009 the UFO Desk, Secretariat AS-2a, was disbanded, much to Nick’s chagrin. In fact I only just got my own sighting report in time: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/12/my-ufo-sighting-281208.html Nick has told me to look out for it in the UFO files when they’re declassified. Nick takes a great interest in the ongoing project to declassify the confidential files collated by the UFO Desk over the 60 years it operated. This project is almost complete and you can download the declassified files from the National Archives by following the link on Nick’s site: http://www.nickpope.net/mod-ufo-files.htm . These files are massive PDF documents containing hundreds of thousands of reports. I recommend Nick’s highlights file because the vast majority contain little of interest; they take the stereotypical form of: “Man out walking dog at night on Cannock Chase, saw light in the sky” etc. Contrary to popular belief these are not “Top Secret” files, but merely confidential. They appear less closely guarded than the medical records at my hospital. If there are any Top Secret files out there then they won’t be included in the current UFO project. He’s also a fiction writer, like me, and has written a couple of novels inspired by his UFO research: http://www.nickpope.net/books.htm

For many years Nick Pope has become a household name, going under soubriquets like: “The Man from the Ministry” and “the Real (or Britain’s) Fox Mulder”. UFO experts usually achieve fame, of sorts, only within the limited social circles that people who are interested in UFO’s cruise. Names like Timothy Good, Stanton Friedman and Richard D Hall are ones many UFO-people I know are familiar with, but none of my Brother and Sister Porters have heard of them. However they all know the name Nick Pope! Some see this as ironic, and even suspicious. This is because Nick is renowned for being one of the most cautious UFOlogists in the business. He has gone out on a limb within Government circles by stating that UFO’s are not all weather balloons and marsh gas etc, but he totally rejects any notion that the Government knows more than it is saying. Roswell, Rendlesham Forest and Berwyn Mountains (See: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/01/ufo-down-by-andy-roberts.html ) are all incidents in which there is either a rational non-ET explanation, a mistake of some kind; or secrecy for other reasons, like weapons system details or the case being overlooked within declassification procedure etc. This has inevitably led to accusation of him being a disinformer, somebody still secretly working for the Government to quell public distrust or curiosity into their role in UFO incidents. I doubt very much that Nick is a knowing disinformer. He just doesn’t have the right personality; he’s not reserved enough, and he loves to party and let his hair down, like many Civil Service types are wont to do. When the cameras are off and the auditorium deserted, the suit and coiffure usually gets messed up as he props up the bar laughing, swearing and joking with the other speakers and delegates. There are individuals I do suspect of being paid shills, but they exhibit unusual behaviour in their private and social lives too. These individuals will remain nameless at this point, but I can confirm that Nick is not among them. However Nick’s sincere belief that the Government has been perhaps closed-minded and bureaucratic, but nevertheless open and honest about the information it has, that there is no “saucer in a hanger”, suits the agenda of those who might know that Britain does have a saucer in a hanger, or even aliens on ice at Porton Down. This could explain why he has become the media’s first port-of-call on occasions when UFO's cannot be kept off the front pages. If I were a man in Government who knew secret information about UFO’s and aliens then Nick Pope would be the last man on Earth I’d tell!

At the present time I’ve had an indication that Nick Pope’s career is about to take another new turn. This time he’s becoming interested in the very Conspiracy Theories that have so often been levelled at him. I’m a regular reader of the excellent journal UFO Matrix magazine, see: http://ufomatrix.com/ . Nick has a column in it and in the last issue he used it to give a report on the latest UFO Congress in Arizona (Sadly it’s moved from its traditional home in Laughlin, Nevada). In a comment related to Paul Hellyer’s speech he described how the speaker discussed “the banking system... There are many people in the Conspiracy Theory community who cover this subject... some are borderline racists who use the phrase ‘conspiracy of international bankers’ in an attempt to mask their anti-Semitism”. Oh dear! This is an old and very unoriginal line and I must say I’m disappointed to hear it come from Nick. I must concede that he is right in a few cases. There are Conspiracists who believe that what I call the Illuminati are Jews, and they’re hell-bent on exterminating white people, Neo-Nazis for example. But the problem with bringing up this subject is that it has a level of controversy that inevitably descends into hysteria and injustice. Anybody who talks about a global conspiracy, of any kind, is automatically branded anti-Semitic. If we protest our innocence then our accusers will claim that our denial is further proof of our guilt. We’ve seen this with Richard Warman and David Icke in Canada, see: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2912878405399014351# . If somebody accuses you of anti-Semitism then there is no defence; their case is unfalsifiable: In their eyes you are guilty no matter what you say, think or do. I cover this subject in more detail here: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2010/07/how-anti-semitic-are-you.html . Nick has also written about 9/11 and even debated 9/11 Truth Campaigners on TV, see: http://www.nickpope.net/911.htm . I’ve written to Nick to explain that I know that Jews are not the Illuminati "bad guys". But I do however worry about the way international finance behaves towards Planet Earth and the ordinary people who live here. As far as I'm concerned whether the bankers and Jews or Gentiles (And there are more of latter than the former in banking) is irrelevant. If anybody hears me talk about "International Bankers" they'll know that I mean it literally, not as code or a euphemism for "Jews". He’s acknowledged my email politely.

Nick’s interest in general Conspiracy Theories is increasing in pace; in September when he appears at the Weird 11 Conference, see: http://www.weirdwiltshire.co.uk/weird11_ufo_paranormal.htm . You can see that his talk is going to be entitled Lizards and Lies- the Truth about Conspiracy Theories. I’m going to that conference and I’ll be hearing that speech first hand, and I withhold judgment until I’ve seen it in its entirety; however the title Nick has given it, based on previous statements he’s made, makes me guess that it’s going to be a debunker. I’ll write another article afterwards assessing what Nick actually says, but if I disagree with him, which I suspect I will, I’ll do it politely and professionally.

Latest HPANWO Voice article: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/06/milly-dowler-killer-should-he-be-hanged.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/06/crop-circles-ikea-and-dreams.html
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What if the Skeptics Had their Way?

2011-06-08T12:29:00.008+01:00

The New Iron Curtain

2011-05-30T14:03:00.016+01:00

Important background articles: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2010/01/stop-immigration-world-government-now.html
And: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/11/british-national-party.html

The other day a friend sent me an email that really got me thinking. It went like this. I reproduce it as it appeared in the email, all in capitals:

IF YOU CROSS THE IRANIAN BORDER
ILLEGALLY YOU ARE DETAINED INDEFINITELY.

IF YOU CROSS THE AFGHAN BORDER
ILLEGALLY, YOU GET SHOT.

IF YOU CROSS THE SAUDI ARABIAN BORDER
ILLEGALLY YOU WILL BE JAILED.

IF YOU CROSS THE CHINESE BORDER
ILLEGALLY YOU MAY NEVER BE HEARD FROM AGAIN.

IF YOU CROSS THE VENEZUELAN BORDER
ILLEGALLY YOU WILL BE BRANDED A SPY AND
YOUR FATE WILL BE SEALED.

IF YOU CROSS THE CUBAN BORDER ILLEGALLY
YOU WILL BE THROWN INTO POLITICAL PRISON TO ROT.

IF YOU SAIL ILLEGALLY INTO BRITAIN YOU GET !!!
A JOB, A DRIVING LICENCE,
NATIONAL INSURANCE CARD, SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS,
CREDIT CARDS,
SUBSIDIZED RENT OR A MORTGAGE TO BUY A HOUSE,
FREE EDUCATION, FREE HEALTH CARE,
BILLIONS OF POUNDS WORTH OF PUBLIC DOCUMENTS PRINTED IN YOUR LANGUAGE

THE RIGHT TO CARRY YOUR COUNTRY'S FLAG WHILE YOU PROTEST THAT YOU DON'T GET ENOUGH RESPECT FROM THE BRITISH
AND, IN MANY INSTANCES, YOU CAN VOTE.

I JUST WANTED TO MAKE SURE I HAD A FIRM GRASP
ON THE SITUATION !!! PLEASE KEEP THIS GOING......
FORWARD TO ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS & FAMILY
IT'S TIME TO WAKE UP BRITAIN !!!!!!!!!!

It made me realize just what a hot topic Immigration is in the politics of the developed world, no more so than in Britain. We are seeing more and more people from the Third World flocking into the West looking for a better life. In some areas the native cultures are being displaced. There is now a large segment of society that is so concerned by Immigration that they are willing to do virtually anything and pay virtually any price if the government will just stop it. Anti-Immigration pressure groups and organizations like the BNP have achieved unprecedented success in recent years. The prevailing view is that the British Government is “weak” and “dithering” over the issue. They’ve been corrupted by “stupid liberals and evil Leftists”. Is that really what’s going on? What if the Government’s acceptance of mass-Immigration is not the result of passive, but of covert active policy?

In the background articles I link to above there’s one in which I review another email in which the author openly calls for a One-World Government to stop immigration, led by the former Australian Prime Minister Kevin “Chucky” Rudd. What form would that government take in order to achieve its aim? Well for a start you’d need tighter border controls. Independent border policies would be no good; there would have to be a single border between the West and the Third World, with perhaps a semi-permeable one between the post-war western and eastern European zones. At the end of World War II Winston Churchill coined the phrase “Iron Curtain” to describe the impenetrable border established between the two new Cold War power blocs. Today we’d need a new Iron Curtain, but a far bigger one; this New Iron Curtain would have to encircle the entire Earth! It would start with the existing US-Mexican border and cross the Atlantic to the Straits of Gibraltar. There it would follow the length of the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and North Africa and close off Turkey from Greece on its small land frontier and its extensive and intricate marine one in the Aegean Sea. From there it would run through southern Russia right across its vast continental expanse through eastern Europe and Asia to Vladivostok in the Far East. The Antipodean nations would need to be completely circumscribed, which may explain why Australia is already implementing some of the measures that I’m about to suggest. A smaller but otherwise identical boundary would also have to ring the archipelago of Hawaii before returning to its start between San Diego and the California Peninsula. There would need to be a separate enclave along the frontier of South Africa too. This border would have to consist of overland double barbed-wire fences manned by armed guards, with a limited number of tightly-controlled crossings-points for trade. Few, if any, people would be allowed visas to pass through. Where it crosses the sea the border will have to be a naval blockade, patrolled by heavily armed ships with guns, missiles, torpedoes and boarding parties.

Internally this fortress of the Western World will need laws to cope with the situation of both existing immigrants and illegal émigrés. Let’s see if we can beat any of the examples in that email!:

1. There would have to be a vast, single biometric ID network in which every citizen would be forced to enroll in. Nobody would be exempt. No social or economic activity would be possible without clearing the action against your entry on the Database. From applying for jobs, claiming benefits, to entering public buildings.

2. An international DNA database that would dictate all medical and reproductive activity. People would need to be assessed and categorized according to genetic nationality.

3. Licensed reproduction and sex. Permission would be needed from the Government to have children. These children would be limited in number and genotype. Termination of pregnancy should be enforced by law where necessary in the event of disobedience. Anybody without enough native DNA would be banned from having children and maybe even rendered medically incapable of bearing them through sterilization surgery or chemical libido-suppressants. Sexual relations between Westerners and non-westerners would be banned to prevent social, as well as biological, miscegenation of the native Western races.

4. Draconian law enforcement measures and punishment of criminals to prevent anarchic elements from resisting. These would include summary (maybe public!) execution for serious or even moderate offenses.

5. Further government intervention controlling transport, movement of people, employment choices, food distribution, where people live, education, healthcare choices and environmental protection.

(I’m sure there would possibly be a Number 6: Other laws to prevent troublesome Hospital Porters speaking out about the idea on blogs that this entire problem could be solved painlessly by ending Third World poverty; simply by declassifying Free Energy and advanced sustainable environmentally-friendly farming methods and water distribution!)

I dread to think what this system would mean for our children. It would mean that the Illuminati paedophile and Satanic outfits would be able to operate with total impunity and official sanction. There would be no need even for secrecy any more. Our young would become the farm animals of the Elite for sex, black magick and food.

As David Icke says: “Something must be done! This can’t go on! What are they going to do about it!?” Well, the above is the solution to the Immigration "problem”. I can’t see how this could be possibly achieved without implementing at least the majority of the polices above. We British would live in a country in which you'd need your biometric ID to open your front door, permission from the Government to take a boy or girl out of a date and a licence to get a new job or move house. I should point out that all these meaures have actually been suggested by various spokesmen for the anti-Immigration lobby over the years.

…But, look on the bright side! There would be no Immigration at all, so it would be much, much happier Britain!... Wouldn’t it?

(Related HPANWO TV film: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-to-stop-immigration.html)

Latest HPANWO Voice articles: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/05/stephen-hawkings-moment-of-glory.html
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Was the Titanic Scuttled?

2011-05-18T00:18:00.006+01:00

I’ve often been accused of being a “Conspiracy Nut”, somebody who will believe any crazy story that I hear. I certainly take seriously many stories that most other people I know would call “crazy”, but this is only because I think there’s good reason to consider them true. If I think there’s good reason to reject them I shall do. There are many so called Conspiracy Theories that I do not believe in, even though many of my peers do. A good example is the rumour that when Apollo 11 landed on the moon, mission control edited the reports that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin sent back to Earth because they found UFO’s and aliens living there on the lunar surface. I don’t think that this is true? Why? Because I don’t think Apollo 11 ever went to the moon; see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2009/01/i-went-to-godamn-moon.html . There’s a popular contemporary Conspiracy Theory circulating at the moment on the Internet about one of the most tragic and fateful incidents in history: The sinking of the RMS Titanic, the most famous shipwreck in the world. One of the pioneers of this theory is an author from Oxford, Robin Gardiner. He wrote a bestselling book entitled Titanic- The Ship that Never Sank, see: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Titanic-Ship-That-Never-Sank/dp/0711034869/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_2 .

At the time Titanic set sail on her maiden and final voyage she was the largest ship in the world. She was a purpose-built transatlantic liner of 882 feet in length, 92 feet in beam and with a draught of 35 feet. Her gross tonnage was 46,328. Despite historians raving about her size and splendor she was not a unique ship and was in fact the second of a class of 3 vessels of which she was not even the name-ship, the Olympic-class liners. Her sister ships, Olympic and Britannic were in drydock at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Northern Ireland at the time Titanic set sail and Olympic had already been launched and commissioned two years earlier in 1910; her visit to Belfast was for a refit. These ships were only slightly bigger than their main rivals, Cunard’s Lusitania-class ocean liners. (Lusitania became the victim of what I suspect to be a 9/11-style false-flag operation in 1915 which I may well write about in a future article.) What follows is one of the most renowned and poignant tales in maritime history. Titanic set sail from Southampton on the 10th of April 1912; within a few hundred yards of her dock she had a near-collision with another ship, ironically this would have probably not resulted in human danger, but would have scuppered the entire voyage and saved 1517 lives. She crossed the channel to Cherbourg in northern France and took on more passengers and then headed for Cobh on the south coast of Ireland, in those days called Queenstown, where a large gaggle of poor Irish immigrants embarked. Titanic then began her transatlantic crossing heading for New York. On the night of Sunday the 14th of April the weather was very calm but freezing cold. Titanic sailed along at 18 knots, above the speed limit for ships of her type at night. This was despite radio messages coming in from other vessels warning of icebergs in the area. The North Atlantic Ocean fills with icebergs in the spring when the polar icecaps melt after the winter. This is not a problem for modern ships which have radar, but in Titanic’s day there was no way to face the danger of icebergs except to post lookouts to try and spot them ahead. At 11.40PM the lookouts reported an iceberg dead ahead and recommended an emergency evasion course. The ship couldn’t turn quickly enough and struck the iceberg a glancing blow which ripped a long gash down the starboard (right hand) side. She began to take in water. Due to the extent of the damage it quickly became apparent that Titanic would definitely sink, albeit slowly, and the order was given to abandon ship. However because of a major loophole in the maritime health-and-safety codes the ship did not have enough lifeboats for all the passengers. This was arguably the entire cause of the resulting tragedy because the ship took almost 3 hours to go down, the weather was very clement and another ship was rushing to their aid and arrived just a couple of hours later. If there had been enough lifeboats it would have been very easy to save all the passengers’ lives. But sadly of the 2223 souls aboard 1517 were lost, that’s 68%. The survivors, mostly women and children, were left with nothing but their story; no photographs were taken. The story has been revisited in countless books and films, like A Night to Remember in 1958 and Titanic in 1997. In 1986 Dr Robert Ballard led a team of marine archaeologists to find the wreck of the Titanic and explore it using submarines and robot probes. Since then the wreck has been thoroughly explored and even paying passengers have dived down by submersible to see it, including some of the survivors.

Enter Robin Gardiner. A rather dour and pessimistic man who was a cleaner in the Theatres when I was a Porter there first told me about Robin Gardiner when we were discussing conspiracies. Gardiner was a friend of his who used to work with him before leaving to write full time. “Beats working for a living!” said my colleague with a hint of envy. I went on to explain to him that writing for a living is work, very hard work, but my pleas didn’t really register. I went online and discovered a plethora of capricious Conspiracy Theories spread over a number of websites regarding the sinking of the Titanic, but the basic premise was that the sinking had not been an accident; the ship had been secretly scuttled! Robin Gardiner is probably the world’s most famous proponents of this hypothesis. What’s more the ship that sank was not even the real Titanic, but Olympic! Their identity had been switched a few days earlier when the two vessels were shored up in neighbouring drydocks at Harland and Wolff in Belfast. Seeing as the two ships were almost identical this would have been fairly easy. All the conspirators had to do was exchange nameplates and colours. Olympic would then have put to sea with everybody thinking she were Titanic and then the ship would have been scuttled in mid-Atlantic. The scuttling procedure would have involved a carefully-faked near-collision with an unlit ship, later reported to be an iceberg, and the ship's ballast vents being jammed open to flood the hull. The crew and passengers could then be transferred to a third ship that came to the “rescue”. Gardiner’s evidence includes some eyewitnesses on deck who claimed to have seen the dark shape of an unlit ship nearby just before the iceberg hit. The motive for this fraud? An insurance scam. The decision to carry out this dupe was made by the White Star Line’s owner, the famous financier and power-broker, JP Morgan; it was motivated after Olympic was severely damaged in a collision with a Royal Navy cruiser. Morgan hoped to both get rid of his battered ship to save on repair bills, and claim insurance for the brand new Titanic at the same time. A very crafty plot that I’m sure somebody like JP Morgan would not have hesitated to carry out if he’d been able to, but Gardiner’s theory describes a model that could backfire in any number of ways with lethal consequences for those involved.

A member of the HPANWO Forum, Footie McGrew has suggested that to see if a Conspiracy Theory is feasible or not we need to “model it”; imagine how it could be done and see if it would really work. If we apply Footie’s Law to Robin Gardiner’s idea what do we get? To scuttle the ship at sea would have involved recruiting Captain Smith and at least an entire watch section of the navigation and engineering officers and men. The damage control teams would also have to be briefed in. This would be necessary to fake the collision and the subsequent staged flooding. This is a very top-heavy conspiracy; what’s more it must have been worrying for the conspirators; so much so that I can't imagine at least one of them not getting cold feet and blabbing. What if the faked collision at high speed went wrong and Titanic really collided head-on with the other ship? There’s no guarantee that a neat little hole would be made to conveniently allow the vessel to sink slowly enough to launch the lifeboats. Ships have sunk in seconds sometimes; an impact like that would probably make Titanic one of them. This conspiracy would have been a potential suicide mission for everybody on board! Murder too, because of all the passengers; and one ethic that lies at the heart of a merchant sailor is that of concern for the welfare of the passengers. Any one of those men would have been trained to have lain down his life for just one of those people! How could so many of them possibly have been involved in a connivance that might get all of them drowned? Also I’m not a money-hungry blackguard like JP Morgan, but I’ve already thought of a much better plan for carrying out the conspiracy: Why not stage a fire at the shipyard to destroy the fake Titanic? After the ships’ identities had been switched a very small group of conspirators could have sneaked aboard and planted explosive and incendiaries. It has all the advantages and none of the drawbacks that scuttling her at sea would have. Much fewer people involved, no risk to the conspirators or innocent bystanders etc. Gardiner has to be wrong. So you see I don’t just blindly believe every Conspiracxy Theory. I’m not a “conspiracy nut” at all.

In 1986 Robert Ballard, who had heard of the questions raised by Gardiner, took his submarine down to the Titanic’s dead hulk and examined the screws at the aft of the vessel. The screws of all of White Star’s ships was embossed with the vessel’s unique number and switching that in a single night in Belfast would have been impossible. The number embossed on the screw-blade of the wreck was indeed Titanic’s… Unless Ballard is in on the conspiracy too, 74 years later! What do you say, Robin?

Latest HPANWO Voice articles: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/05/day-in-court.html
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Nikola Tesla- as Close as it Gets!

2011-05-08T12:54:00.006+01:00

The other day I was browsing through the ORH News, my hospital's newspaper when I came across an article about the refurbishment of the Churchill Hospital’s MRI Centre. The centre was having a new magnet put in its MRI scanner. Magnetic Resonance Imaging is a fairly recent invention compared to X-ray; the first one was only installed at my hospital about 20 years ago. It can take pictures of the inside of the body in a similar way to X-rays only it shows up far more detail, especially of the soft tissues that X-ray pictures tend white out. MRI also doesn’t carry the risks from potentially dangerous exposure to ionizing radiation that X-ray does. The MRI magnets are some of the most powerful in the world; in fact when working in the MRI chamber we have to remove everything metal from our persons and if you have a cardiac pacemaker it can put you in danger. If you stand at the far end of my hospital, almost half a mile away, with a magnetic compass, the needle will move when the MRI scanner is operating. This extremely intense magnetic field when concentrated on a narrow cross-section of the body will cause the very nuclei in the atoms of our body to spin. The spin makes them give off their own magnetic signal which is strong enough to be picked up by the scanner’s detectors and converted into a graphic. It might make you feel dizzy to think of the very atoms of your body spinning, but in fact the patient should feel nothing at all, apart from a bit of claustrophobia from being inside the machine’s tunnel. MRI scanners are expensive; each one will set you back about £5 million, but many hospitals consider that money well spent.

As you can see the article describes the magnet as “3T”; how many of the ORH News’ readers know what this means? Well, the T stands for “tesla” which is the standard unit of magnetic inductance, in laymen’s terms: how strong the magnet is. The world record is currently 5T and clinical MRI scanners vary from 3 to 4.5T. A fridge magnet will only be couple of mT, militeslas. The unit is named after one of the most remarkable men in scientific history, and possibly its most underrated; its greatest unsung hero: Nikola Tesla. You’ll hear a lot about Tesla in the Conspiracy-Paranormal research community but in the mainstream scientific milieu he is all but forgotten. He was possibly the man for whom the term “mad scientist” was coined. He was born in 1856 in Serbia and became one of the pioneers of the Electric Revolution, developing technology that eventually led to the workings of your computer monitor that allows you to read these words. He devised alternating current which is used today in mains electrical supply the world over. AC is also the principle behind the electric motor, a device so fundamental that it is essential to almost every aspect of modern society. His career began in 1864 when he moved to the United States to work for Thomas Edison, but he fell out with Edison over a payment deal and quit the company to go into business himself. His own company quickly became a rival to Edison’s in an almost TV miniseries-like revenge ploy. He had already had the idea for AC-alternating mains current, but the prevailing view at that time was that DC-direct mains current, the same as that produced by modern batteries, was the right path to progress. Tesla would eventually be vindicated, but not until after a long struggle. This struggle was bitter and sometimes turned nasty. Edison carried out a public demonstration that would be unacceptable and an obscenity by modern standards: He electrocuted an elephant, see: (WARNING! Upsetting content!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr6xBz-h99U It makes me glad I live in the modern world and I feel somewhat scornful of the lament that today’s world is so cruel compared to “the Good Old Days”!) The world of mainstream science does halfheartedly applaud Nikola Tesla for his achievement with AC, but there’s a line in the sand between them for everything he did next. In 1899 Tesla travelled to Colorado and walked to the top of a mountain to set up an experiment involving a copper rod several hundred feet long erected vertically into the sky. The papers relating to this experiment are classified by the US Government and remain so today after 112 years! However the basic conclusion was recorded, that the rod became electrically charged, enough to produce a detectable current. The source of this charge was atmospheric electricity, the huge untapped reservoir of voltage above our heads that violently breaks loose during thunderstorms. Tesla was struck by the way electricity can travel through empty space without wires. It was accepted back then that electricity can be transmitted through the air in small amounts, after all this is the basis of wireless radio; but Tesla believed that this could be done with working electric currents with the power to drive motors and run donestic and industrial appliances. He decided to experiment and demonstrate it. Luckily no elephants were harmed this time and Tesla managed to put up wireless streetlights in Chicago. You can bet by now the existing interest he was attracting from the Government Intelligence services redoubled, and it was to double again many times. He built a structure at Wardenclyffe-on-Sound, New York that was to become the very icon of Tesla and his genius. It was a huge conical tower with a dome-shaped electrical transmitter on the top of it that Tesla hoped would demonstrate his effect. Unfortunately its operation was aborted because its investors pulled out. Tesla had funded the project by making a deal with JP Morgan and the Astor Empire, not a very wise thing to do. It is something that happens again and again with any scientific discovery that is deemed “socially and economically unsettling”. America has a great tradition in backyard inventors, part-time amateurs who create marvels on a shoestring budget in their garden sheds, like the Wright Brothers. What can happen is that a rich financier from the world of Big Business often approaches these people and offers a “partnership” that involves the inventor selling the rights. These inventors are usually very short of money and eagerly snap it up. Sometimes these takeovers can be completely innocent with the investor being genuinely interested and truly keen to develop it, but sometimes it can be the first step towards suppression and secrecy. As soon as the contracts are signed the “business partner” takes all the papers and prototypes with the promise to “leave it all in my capable hands. This is going to be a great success!” and that’s the last the world ever hears of it. I urge all inventors to be wary. In the case of Nikola Tesla he wasn’t wary enough. As soon as Morgan and Astor realized the implications of his discovery they pulled the plug, literally and metaphorically. You see Tesla’s ideas were getting dangerously close to verging on the territory of the dreaded F-word, Free Energy. I’ve made a film about this subject here: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2009/09/freikraft.html . His theories were about far more than just the mere transmission of electrical power, they concerned its availability. His belief was that electrical energy was present in the very body of planet Earth and could be extracted and used by anybody anywhere; safely, easily, in virtually unlimited quantities and without effort: Free Energy. This was bad news for the Illuminati rulers of the planet who don’t want us to have access to any energy source that they can’t stick a meter on and which can’t be rationed and doled out by their own institutions. This is for reasons I detail in my film Friekraft in the above link. Tesla was extremely eccentric and had an obsessive personality. He used to hallucinate and suffer nightmares, but his visions often aided him in his scientific ventures, like many other scientists. He was paranoid about cleanliness and refused even to shake hands with other people. He remained celibate his whole life through his own choice. As well as a scientist he was a student of oriental mysticism and was enthralled by the Hindu faith. Unlike many modern scientific media stars, Tesla did not see this as a contradiction. He spent the last few years of his life living in a New York hotel room and died in January 1943. The day he died the FBI ordered his room sealed off and all his papers were plundered and impounded by the US Government. They used the Alien Property Act to keep the papers under lock and key even though Tesla had been granted American citizenship when he was just 35 in 1891, more than 50 years before! To this day Tesla’s discoveries remain hidden from public access, although I suspect that they have been developed in secret. HAARP is probably based on a lot of what Tesla learned about the Earth’s atmosphere (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZOt29NR0FY) and directed energy weapons could have been used to demolish the World Trade Centre twin towers on 9/11, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_4NrRioRPU . The governments have accessed this information from sources other than Tesla's oeuvre. Other scientists have contributed and they've also salvaged the technology from the wreckage of crashed flying saucers, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/03/roswells-galore.html . Like most scientific inventions, Tesla's are morally neutral and have the power to be destructive as much as they have to be creative. They can therefore be used for either good or bad depending on who gets their hands on them. As I said above, Tesla is largely ignored by the history of science when in truth his name deserves to be right up there with the greats like Isaac Newton and Michael Faraday, not to mention his more renowned arch-rival, Thomas Edison.

It struck me with a force of great revelation that just one single letter printed in the ORH News contained more of interest and had more of a stroy to tell than the rest of the issue put together. I asked one of the radiographers, a man with a qualification in the subject, about what this meant, just to find out how much he knew. Although he knew that the T stood for tesla he didn’t know anything about the man after whom this unit of measurement was named. This is one day going to change. Nikola Tesla will be vindicated and will take his rightful place in history when the people of the world finally take possession of his legacy. This legacy will transform the world in a way no other has; ending poverty, environmental destruction and imprisonment for the indefinite future.

Latest HPANWO Voice articles: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-choules-dies.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/05/osama-bin-laden-is-dead-duh.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/04/popping-question.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/04/pharmawhores.html

Latest HPANWO TV films: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/05/sending-mba-medals-to-laureates.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/05/milton-keynes-henge.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/04/census-cowards-resistance.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/04/royal-wedding.html

Paranormality by Prof. Richard Wiseman

2011-04-26T22:02:00.024+01:00

A HPANWO book review of Paranormality by Professor Richard Wiseman.
Have you ever been in the frustrating position of knowing that something is true, but being unable to prove it to others who weren’t there? This is an almost endemic affliction for paranormal researchers of all kinds. Why? Why is it that if you want to invent a new light bulb or discover a new species of jellyfish all you have to do is get out there and do it; take the pictures, build the prototype, bring home the specimen and the breakthrough is made, yet when it comes to “weird stuff” something always gets in your way? We can speculate over the reason, but we cannot argue with the results: Inevitably the Skeptics will march out to tell us that what we experience and study simply does not exist. Professor Richard Wiseman is one of these people and in his new book Paranormality he tells us why.

I met Richard Wiseman very briefly at TAM London (See: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2010/10/tam-london-2010.html). He comes across as a likeable and approachable man. When he did his stage show he was genuinely funny with the abilities that many professional comedians have. In fact Wiseman has a background in show-business and, like many prominent Skeptics, originally trained as a stage magician. He became fascinated with how his own skills of illusionism worked on the human mind and so decided to enrol at University College London and do a psychology course. His path was set when he came across the work of Dr Susan Blackmore (MBA Gold), see: http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/index.htm . He saw her on TV one night on a programme about the Supernatural, something that she used to do all the time. Her line was that rather than look into whether the Supernatural was true, because as far as she was concerned it wasn’t, better to question why it was that people believe that it’s true. So, beginning with this premise, Wiseman embarked on that quest. It struck me as soon as I picked up the book that I have never awarded Wiseman the MBA (Background: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/02/deathbed-mbas.html and: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/02/bbc-horizon-mba-city.html . Perhaps I should. But not just like that; The MBA has to be earned! We’ll see how he does.

Here’s Richard Wiseman’s website: http://www.richardwiseman.com/ and here is the website of his most recent book Paranormality: http://www.paranormalitybook.com/ . Wiseman has written several books, as you can see from his website above, and has appeared on TV several times, eg: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7s6yklp80Q . There has been a huge increase in paranormal reports at the moment from all over the world and this has coincided with a far higher profile for the Paranormal in the media than it has enjoyed for many years; which is the cause or effect of the other is debateable, but I sense that Wiseman’s book is a rebuttal to that entire culture. The book is written in a lively and easy-going style and it’s packed full of games that the reader can play with themselves and others. In fact the book is so interactive that it’s almost a game in itself rather than a narrative, a bit like those role-playing multiple-choice adventure books that were popular in the 1980’s. At various places the reader is also given Internet links to videos and articles related to the content and the links also have QR tags. These are barcode-like graphics that can give you instant access to the correct page without typing on your keyboard if your mobile phone or computer is fitted with the QR scanner. I’m one of these fuddy-duddies who has somehow managed to get through his life with a phone that just makes calls, so that was out of the question for this particular reader. The author encourages us to try various experiments that are safe and cheap and can be done at home, and which demonstrate many of the ideas in the book. These are printed in grey boxes on the page to separate them from the main text. I was curious to have a go myself. I did, but I’ll come back to that later.

The book’s chapters each cover a particular segment of paranormal phenomena that Wiseman has worked with. The first deals with psychic mediums and as a regular attendee of a Spiritualist Church I was curious to hear his thoughts. As I said above, Wiseman starts with the spoken or unspoken premise that the Supernatural is unreal and so therefore mediums are not really communicating with dead people, but he did do an experiment with a British psychic called Patricia Putt who applied for James Randi’s Million Dollar Challenge (See here for background: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2010/10/tam-london-2010.html and: http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html) Randi got together wise Wiseman and Professor Chris French (MBA Gold) (See: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/01/chris-french-mba-gold.html) to test her. They did a double-blind experiment in which ten people unknown to Patricia would be brought into a laboratory dressed from head to toe in a black cowl and mask and made to sit in a chair with their back to her and keep completely motionless and silent while Patricia wrote out transcripts from “Spirit” for each one. Patricia agreed to the test conditions and the experiment began. The test subjects were then gathered together and asked which of the unnamed transcripts most matched themselves. If Patricia was really psychic then the subjects should have easily found their own transcript. They could not. Patricia cannot be a fraud, otherwise she’d never have agreed to do the test, but she might be what M Lamar Keene calls a “Shut Eye”, somebody who has fooled themselves into thinking they’re a genuine medium (See here for background: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/08/psychic-mafia-by-m-lamar-keene.html) The conclusion of the chapter goes: “For over a century researchers have tested the claims of mediums and psychics and found them wanting”. Is that so? Then my first question would be: Why did it take that long? Surely after a hundred years of failure they’d have given up. But they haven’t given up; nor does everybody agree that the results have all been a failure. What Wiseman didn’t mention in the book, and it’s quite possible that he doesn’t know, is that experiments like the one he did with Patricia Putt have been done before, sometimes under even more rigourous conditions. And that on some of these occasions different results have emerged. A good example comes from the work of Dr Gary Schwartz, see: http://www.drgaryschwartz.com/index.html . Here’s a radio interview with Gary: http://www.redicecreations.com/radio/2011/03/RIR-110324.php in which he describes why he thinks that some mediums etc are real. “Gullible Gary”, as James (“the Jerk”) Randi calls him, has investigated the same subjects as Richard Wiseman and has come to a radically different conclusion. This is why I stress again and again that when you read a Skeptical book like Paranormality do remember that what you’re reading might not be the whole story and to accept only that one book’s word for it is possibly a path to being misled. (The same goes for Gary Schwartz’ books of course.) It’s vitally important to look to as many different sources as you can.

Wiseman has been working for many years with an anonymous source that he calls “Mr D”. Mr D is a successful practicing medium for the north of England. He speaks at Spiritualist Churches, does sittings, Tarot card readings, crystal balls, the works… only he’s not really psychic. Mr D had confessed to Wiseman that he is a very proficient illusionist who uses stage conjuring tricks to convince his clients that he really does have paranormal abilities, and he knows it. However it is an activity that has generated a healthy living for himself and so he’s unwilling to give it up. The book then gives the reader the basics of Cold Reading, the mind-game in which you can persuade a person that you know far more about them than you do: Flatter them with pronouncements from “Spirit” that says how nice they are etc. Give them lots of contradictory statements to choose from like: “You’re sometimes very outgoing and chatty, but you also like peace and solitude”. Keep it vague! The human mind will easily make meaning out of meaningless and random comments, so sound confident when you talk about anything and let the sitter’s brain pick out the message. Fish for information from the sitter and build upon each correct guess in stages; if you get it wrong, don’t worry! “So if you say the name “John” and the sitter shakes their head, simply backtrack and go: “Oh no not John… it’s more like Jean” and carry on till you get it right. According to Wiseman, if you learn the details of these psychological techniques you will be able to pass yourself off as a medium and do anything that mediums do. But can you really? Some mediums are a lot more specific in what they say. If you go along to a Spiritualist Church to find true and genuine clairvoyance you may have to visit a few times, but it is there. What’s more, according to other scientists in the same field as Wiseman, they’ve been tested properly and passed. At the end of Chapter 1 I was a bit disappointed that Richard Wiseman had not yet said anything that qualified him for an MBA. So I read on.

Chapter 2 explored the world of Out-of-Body Experiences- OBE’s and its related phenomenon, the Near-Death Experience- the NDE. It was experiencing one of these OBE’s that led Susan Blackmore to her interest in the Paranormal. She is not the first to wonder at these kinds of experiences and seek to gain scientific evidence of the existence of the soul beyond the body. An American researcher in the 19th Century called RA Watters developed an extraordinary instrument that consisted of a chamber filled with water-vapour and a highly-sensitive camera. He postulated that Spirit could interact with the water molecules in the vapour and send a message through altering the molecules by Brownian Motion. According to Wiseman, the photographs Watters took of strange shapes in the steam are still available, but are not very convincing today. I wonder if this is true because Gary Schwartz describes a very similar-sounding experiment that he did in his radio interview linked above. The question I’m sure you’re asking, or I certainly hope you’re asking, by now is: “If psychical researchers who say that the Supernatural is real are correct then why are books like Wiseman’s still saying that it’s not? Wouldn’t the Supernatural being real be big news? Why aren’t there books on the Paranormal in every scientist’s laboratory?” The answer is long and complicated and I’ll go into this in detail later. Anyway on page 66 we get an attempted MBA from the author when he accuses RA Watters of “wishful-thinking”. Hmm… close, but he’s not there yet!
In 1977 a claim was made that proof of NDE’s were true and it was announced in the psychic research community. What happened was a young Mexican migrant named Maria had a cardiac arrest in hospital and when she came round she told her caseworker Kimberly Clark that while she was hovering close to death she floated up out of her body and visited the nurses’ home nearby. She saw that somebody had placed a well-worn a shoe, a trainer, on one of the window sills. The caseworker who was named after a toilet-paper manufacturer went to the place indicated by Maria and saw that the trainer was indeed there, exactly where Maria said it had been and it matched her description of it. This story has been repeated in numerous “New Age” (says the author with a contemptuous air!) and alternative science books and journals and hailed as proof that the soul can travel outside the body. However Wiseman claims that it’s been debunked. This is because in 1996 three Skeptics from Canada, including Dr Barry Beyerstein who gave Our Dave such a hard time when he did his show in Vancouver, see here at 34.09: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2912878405399014351# , travelled to the hospital involved and interviewed Clark. They then placed a trainer of their own on the window sill and found that the location was much more accessible than Clark had claimed. This means that you don’t have to be out-of-your-body to see it; in fact the shoe on the sill was visible both from inside the room and from the grounds outside the nurses’ home. They then concluded, although it would be more accurate to say speculated, that Maria had probably just overheard somebody talking about the trainer while she was unconscious and incorporated it into her “imaginary spirit flight”. That sounds highly unlikely to me. I often listen to doctors talking while they’re looking after unconscious patients and they discuss all kinds of things. I wonder why Maria’s NDE didn’t therefore also feature a visit to the Doctor’s Mess and a relaxing pint of lager after a hard day’s work, the breasts of an attractive nurse at the Renal Unit, a trip to Florida with the Postgraduates Union, or a new Mercedes Benz in the showroom down the road. You see where this speculation leads us? The Case of the Spiritual Sneaker was never a strong one to begin with, but there’s no point trying to debunk it with an equally shaky piece of “Skepulation”. Experiences like Maria’s have been done under laboratory conditions and proved positive. However we must once again turn to old books for the details; because I’ve written before about how you can often find information in older books that is omitted from newer ones. A good example is with Harry Houdini, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2009/05/houdini-code.html . A few years ago I ordered two books from Time-Life called Psychic Voyages and Search for the Soul and I was very surprised that Paranormality doesn’t mention the work of investigators like Robert Monroe, an American businessman who became an expert Astral traveller and could leave his body at will. He founded an entire scientific institute to study the phenomena and did extensive and rigourous tests with a very professional attitude. Why doesn’t this book mention them? Then again, why should it? Psychic Voyages and Search for the Soul were limited edition titles published in the early 1990’s. How many people have read them? And if they have, how many remember them? Wiseman says on page 93 (again edging slightly towards an MBA!) “For decades a small number of devoted scientists attempted to prove that the soul can leave the body… The enterprise failed because you are a product of your brain and cannot exist outside your skull.” But from what I can see this is not certain at all; and Paranormality doesn’t explore the alternative explanation: that OBE’s and NDE’s are actually voyages by some non-physical part of ourselves beyond the normal confines of our everyday physical experience.
Wiseman then describes the method behind a do-it-yourself OBE. First we have to become good at visualization in our minds. Close your eyes and imagine the place you are now, but not as you would see it through your eyes, but as how it would look if you were looking down from above yourself. Can you visualize what the top of your head looks like, the table you’re sitting at, the carpet under your feet? Then find a very comfortable armchair and relax into it. Make sure there are no other people around or noises and smells that might disturb you. Unwind and let go limp each part of your body at a time until you are totally still and all your muscles are lax. Now, remember your visualization; close your eyes and see yourself standing in the room you’re in a few feet in front of the armchair. Wiseman reckons that within 30 to 40 minutes it should be possible to flip your own sense of location into the imaginary person standing in front of the chair. If you get really good at it you should be able to fly around at will anywhere you like. If you get scared, don’t worry; just wiggle your finger and the effect will be broken. I tried this once and it didn’t work, but the author suggests several other easier tests of “identity illusion” including one I tried involving setting up a double mirror and looking at the back of your own head. I followed the instructions and it did give me a very creepy and vertiginous feeling of not knowing quite where I was. Wiseman put this section in the book because he says that OBE’s can be generated so easily because the whole concept of being inside our bodies in the first place is an illusion. We see the world through our senses and feel our own body move, and this is where our brain generates a location for us in space to see ourselves. Take that sensory input away and this sense of space and location is lost and up for grabs. One thing he does not suggest because he’d consider it a waste of time, but I would definitely try, is that if you manage to master the OBE armchair trick get a friend to write something on a piece of paper and stick it on the top shelf of the kitchen, making sure you don’t know what was written there. Now when you get out of your body, float to that shelf and have a look at what’s written there. If you can read it correctly then congratulations! You’ve just proven Wiseman and Blackmore wrong. Mind you, that’s already been done according to some sources, sources the author does not include in the book. Despite all this however, Wiseman ends Chapter 2 still falling short of MBA-hood.

Chapter 3 deals with a very closely studied phenomenon: telekinesis. This where a person is able to move material objects without touching them or using any force known to science. Like most Skeppies, Wiseman focuses his attention on some of the least impressive examples of anything he’s criticising. Favourites are Uri Geller and Sylvia Browne. Wiseman begins with James Hydrick. This young man fooled the world into thinking he could make the pages of books turn by the power of his mind when in fact he was secretly blowing on them, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sblPQWKHOY , until he was exposed by James Randi here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlfMsZwr8rc . Eventually Hydrick made a full confession, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7yDLRib5CQ . Another well-known fake psychic who is so renowned that he’s almost beyond even mentioning is Uri Geller. In a way Wiseman and his fellow Skeptics ate justified in their pursuit of the second-raters because it’s usually the second-raters who become the most celebrated and successful. I see better clairvoyance in any Spiritualist Church every service than the likes of Sylvia Browne and Doris Stokes. The same goes for Telekinesis; there is a lot of research done in controlled conditions that shows people moving objects without touching them, not on a stage or TV studio, but in a laboratory. Why is that? The answer is a big subject, but for some reason the media authorities bring these mediocre sideshow mountebanks out of the obscurity they belong in and give them vast amounts of money and publicity until they become household names. I’m particularly interested in the connection between many of these folk and the Intelligence Agencies; see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/03/findhorn.html . But that area of research is way beyond the scope of Wiseman’s book. However he does stoop to teaching the reader how to do Uri Geller’s spoon-bending trick. At odd times in the book I found what were probably just typoes, dates that were wrong, spelling mistakes etc. But then I remembered that Wiseman is a shrink! I couldn’t help wondering if these were not typoes at all, but put in their deliberately to do something to our minds! For instance in the section on OBE’s in the questionnaire to judge how good you were at visualization the author includes the question: “Do you believe that stoats work too hard?” Later on he said that he just put that in a joke. But was it? Perhaps I’m now being paranoid; maybe it was just a joke. I can’t help it though; I have a natural distrust of psychologists. I’ve had some bad experiences with them in the past and psychology has painful connotations for me.
I started reading Chapter 4 with great expectations; it was called Talking to the Dead and I thought: “We’ve got to get an MBA here. Come on, Richard!” And sure enough HE DID IT!... MBA!... MBA!... MBA!... I do hereby, on behalf of the MBA Committee, decorate Professor Richard Wiseman with the Materialist Bravery Award- Bronze! Congratulations, Richard!... Anyway, on with the book. This chapter focuses on Spiritualism. According to the author this was an invention of two teenage girls, Kate and Margareta Fox of New York, in 1848. The girls and their parents moved into a new house and the girls soon began to play tricks on their parents visitors by secretly creating loud noises in the structure of the building. Everybody thought that the house was haunted and the girls were very amused and decided to see how far their prank could go. Much further than they expected, it seems! The witnesses began attempting to talk to the fake ghosts and Kate and Margareta played along by using a knock-once-for-yes-twice-for-no code that became a cliché. Soon the girls were performing on theatre stages to fee-paying audiences and making a lucrative profit. The first mediums had arrived, apparently, and the term “Spiritualism” was coined. But the pressure of fame and fortune got to them and they wished they’d never begun their prank. They decided to pull out before they dug themselves in any deeper and in 1888 made a mass-public confession in front of a huge audience and press conference. But it was too late. Spiritualism had become too popular and to quote the author on page 144: "The vast majority of Spiritualists were eager to cling on to the comforting thought that they might survive bodily death." And it is this statement that has finally earned Richard Wiseman his MBA. Why did he wait till page 144? Spiritualism only began to decline in the early 1920’s when radio and cinema came along to distract the public and today Spiritualism is just a shell of its former self, the few remaining churches run by a handful of old loyalists. The author then goes on to explain some of the tricks fake psychics, all psychics by his definition, use: Spirit trumpets, ectoplasm and spinning tables etc. When he comes to Ouija Boards another contradiction emerges between his story and that of other sources. Wiseman claims that the Ouija Board is a European invention produced in the late 19th Century during the heyday of Spiritualism, by the board game designer Waddingtons, the people who also brought us Cluedo, Subbuteo and Monopoly. Its name is a compound of the French word “oui” and the German “ja”, both of which mean “yes”. But other researchers say that the board has its origins in North Africa and its name is a mispronunciation of the town of Oujda in Morocco where it was used by Muslim diviners to talk to Spirit (Everard 2007). And in this conundrum lies Wiseman’s mistake. The theme of the entire chapter is that Spiritualism is purely and totally a product of the Fox sisters’ deception; the author portrays it as a virtual non-event before 1848. I couldn’t agree less! The concept of the soul, its journeys after physical death and the art of communicating with it, go back as far as can be traced through history. Archaeological evidence and the surviving modern day Shamanic cultures indicate that it was very likely to have been practiced in prehistoric times. This is common knowledge in non-European countries. How we Europeans so often fall into the delusion of seeing the whole world as merely shadows cast by Europe’s light! If we can get over that delusion, planet Earth and human history look very different. The notion of the Ouija Board being a European plaything bought on shelves alongside chess and Backgammon sets is symptomatic of that fallacy. The reason Spiritualism seemed such a novelty is because Europe’s indigenous Shamanic tradition was all but wiped out over a 2000 year period by the Illuminati-controlled Roman Empire and Christian churches (See here for background: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2010/01/boudica-and-perennial-holocaust.html). In the Middle East soul communication had a somewhat easier ride. As I say in this film: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/04/river-ghost.html Islam has a much healthier attitude to the Paranormal than Christianity, especially in areas dominated by Sufism (What we call “extremist Islamic terrorism” today is a fairly new thing, less than 300 years old) The Sufis, these great Muslim Gnostics, were the people most likely to have been using this soul communication method at Oujda that inspired some wily visiting wheeler-dealer to “invent” the Ouija Board. Spiritualism is not just a product of a pair of bored teenage girls and today’s psychics are not just old folk waiting near the front of the queue for their own turn to enter Spirit. Lots of young people are interested in it. Many of the less-famous Mediums are excellent; in fact one called Helen Duncan was imprisoned during World War II because she was passing on official secrets from the spirits of dead servicemen!
Between Chapters 4 and 5 there is an interlude where Wiseman tells a story which makes me wonder exactly what point he’s trying to make. He announces the segment as a testimony to the “extremes of human gullibility”. It concerns a house on the Isle of Man that was haunted by a talking mongoose! The entities name was “Gef” and he was discovered in the early 1930’s by the house’s residents, James and Margaret Irving and their daughter Voirrey. Gef used to hide behind the walls and only show his claws through gaps in the panelling, but he had a high-pitched squeaky voice and he talked a lot, reciting all kinds of pronouncements in perfect English. He became a media sensation and visitors streamed the Isle of Man to try and visit the house. I’d never heard of this event before and I was waiting for Wiseman to finish the story with Voirrey’s confession and lurid and gloating descriptions of the blushed faces of all the Gef-believers, but it never happened. The author relates that Gef simply one day vanished and Voirrey swears he was real and continued to do so until she died in 2005. So why did Wiseman even mention it? How does a case that was never exposed as a hoax illustrate the extremes of human gullibility? Perhaps it’s just that a talking mongoose sounds so strange compared to what is generally accepted as possible that this is a reason to dismiss it. It’s like with David Icke and the Queen being a lizard; critics of the theory don’t usually study the details of the idea at all, but instead just automatically reject it on the grounds of its apparent insanity in comparison to the existing notions of normality. This doesn’t sound very scientific to me and if he takes this line then Richard Wise-man is not living up to his name.
After being regaled with meaningless tales of talking mongooses (or is it mongeese?) the author delves into the world of ghost-hunting. I didn’t realize this, but Wiseman has been involved in hands-on ghosthunting missions, including one at one of the world’s most famous haunted houses, Hampton Court. Needless to say he reports no definitive supernatural activity. For him, ghosts are yet another example of the flaws in human psychology. He reckons that most ghosts are only seen just before or just after going to sleep and that they are an effect of peculiar altered states of consciousness that the perception of weird entities surrounding us can occur. In other words ghosts are related to the apparitions produced by sleep-paralysis. This is a sometimes very disturbing experience when you start to wake from your sleep, but the mechanism in your brain that paralyses your skeletal muscles is still active and so you are aware of your surroundings, and may even be able to see, but can’t move or speak. In this state people often describe how strange figures appear at their bedside and sometimes even touch them. This interaction can be deeply upsetting with the apparitions violently attacking and even sexually abusing the sufferer. Wiseman says that this at last reveals “the remarkable truth behind these apparitions”, a very bold and cocky assertion! But is it justified?
I’ve written before about my own encounters with ghosts, in fact I’m now making a series of films about them, starting with this one: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/04/ghosts-in-park.html . My own encounters with ghosts, or ghost-like phenomena to be exact, do not fit in with Wiseman’s explanation. It is true, however that on two occasions my sightings have been linked with sleep; for instance, the boy in my bedroom, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/04/bedroom-ghost.html . This case in unprovable and may very well be a hypnopompic experience; I have no way to deny that for sure. However the event in 2008 on a train is different, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2008/10/real-ghost-train.html , I swear I had definitely not seen the photo Ustane showed me beforehand. Also I’ve seen ghostlike phenomena when I’ve been wide awake, see my Ghosts in the Park film above. Another key element was that I had an independent witness, Jenny. In fact I must be one of the few blokes who’s ever been dumped by his girlfriend because of a ghost!
The author then goes on to describe a couple of “Carlos” activities by Skeptical researchers. One did this dressing up as a ghost by draping his body in a white bedsheet and walking in circles around graveyards. What struck this researcher was that very few of the passers-by reacted to his presence, as if they had a cognitive dissonance that prevented them from seeing him. This gave him what he thought were amazing insights into the functions of the human cerebrum, although his study does not mention if any of these non-reactive members of the public burst into helpless laughter the moment they turned a corner, as I certainly would. The term “Carlos” relates to a famous hoax played by James Randi. He hired an actor, Jose Alvarez (Interestingly he’s the cousin of Willie Rodriguez of 9/11 Truth fame), to pretend to be a spiritual guru, see: http://www.skepdic.com/carlos.html the point being to prove how easy it is for a good actor and illusionist to hoodwink the public. However these plans can often backfire, as in the case of the “Avebury Carlos”. It showed that even the so-called “most gullible members of society” have turned out to be much better witnesses than Skeppers previously thought. A few years ago, some engineers built a fake UFO out of a model plane and flew it over Avebury, an ancient sacred site and a gathering place for mystics and pagans. The intention was to fool them and therefore show them up for being dupes in the same way Randi did with his own Carlos, but it didn’t work out quite as well as the hoaxers planned. The hippies at Avebury did indeed report seeing a UFO, but they reported pretty much what they saw, describing the craft accurately. There were none of the embellishments and exaggerations that the hoaxers were banking on.
I’m quite open to the idea that altered states of consciousness are involved in ghost sightings, but this does not automatically mean that they are just the figment of our imagination run wild. It interests me that people who “hallucinate” like this often hallucinate the same things, even if they’ve had no way of exchanging information. A good example is the twin alien abduction cases of Credo Mutwa and Antonio Villas Boas, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2009/08/alien-abduction-similarities.html . I’m getting very interested in research by people like Stanislav Grof, Rick Strassman and Graham Hancock, see: http://www.rickstrassman.com/ . Their hypothesis is revolutionary, that the brain’s perception of reality at any time is merely a “tuning” operation to a certain frequency, like the brain is a kind of radio receiver, “Channel Normal” as Graham Hancock calls it, and that ghostly and alien experiences are no less real than our everyday world, they’re just a “retuning” or “interference” on the signal. This is an extraordinary theory, but in the Shamanic cultures that I mentioned above this is not a surprise; in fact it’s the very thing they’ve been saying for thousands of years and tried desperately to tell us before the Inquisitor’s rack and the Conquistador’s sword cut them short.

The following chapter is all about mind control and talks of hypnosis and religious cults. This is probably the chapter I agree with the most. Wiseman warns us of the dangers of people like Jim Jones, a man who convinced hundreds of people to commit suicide. I’ve had my own experience of these organizations, although I didn’t know it at the time, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2011/04/jesus-christians-disclaimer.html . The question that has arisen on the HPANWO Forum (see Links column) is that could there ever be a Skeptic cult? Seeing as Skeptical organizations don’t try to isolate their members from other points of view then I’d probably say no, but this should still be an interesting discussion! What the “no” answer in this case reveals is that David Icke can also not be described as a cult. David is not a Jim Jones! This is because David also doesn’t attempt to withhold alternative viewpoints from his audience. So LunarOrbit, the HPANWO Forum member who described David as a “cult leader”, is totally wrong. The only criticism I have with Wiseman over this chapter is that he both overestimates and underestimates mind control where it’s convenient for his worldview. The overestimation is where he describes the famous case of a performing horse from the turn of the last century called Clever Hans. He got his name because he could apparently read the minds of his audience by tapping with his hooves numbers written secretly on pieces of paper. A scientist noticed that Hans’ owner who was on stage with him knew what numbers were written down even though Hans didn’t and realized that this test was not blinded as a proper scientific experiment should be. So he persuaded the owner to not look at the paper either. Immediately Hans’ mind-reading abilities dropped from 98% accurate prediction to zero. The adjudicator concluded that Hans’ owner was unknowingly instructing Hans with subconscious clues. But can these subconscious clues really make the difference between 98% and zero, especially when you're dealing with the added complications of communicating with an animal, not a fellow human?
The underestimation is that Wiseman describes how advertisers as well as stage magicians use this subtle mind control on their unsuspecting victims, but he doesn’t consider the possibility that governments might want to take advantage of this science. The book never once mentions MK Ultra or any other government mind control programme, when really I think it’s impossible to take seriously any written work about the subject unless it considers this angle. So despite agreeing with this chapter more than the others I still think it considerably lacks scope.

The last subject chapter is about prophesising the future though your dreams. Wiseman thinks this is a case of tossing a javelin into an orchard and being amazed at your aim when it hits an apple. He says we have so many dreams that it’s inevitable that of all the several billion people sleeping at any one time somebody somewhere is bound dream about a plane crash or terrorist attack etc that accurately matches one that subsequently takes place. This does not explain however, people like my mother who repeatedly and personally experienced prophetic dreams. For example she had nightmares before her brother and other close relatives died. When TWA 800 was reported crashed in 1996 I remember my mum had a dream the night before where she saw an airliner with red livery explode in mid-air. It was only later that it came out TWA 800 had exploded in the air and fell into Long Island Sound in many pieces. There’s also the strange case of the “Man Who Paints the Future”, see: http://vimeo.com/2315112 This programme features Randi investigating him. The accuracy of his art, especially the 9/11 and Concorde crash, seems beyond the realms of reasonable belief in coincidence.

At the end of the book the author outlines the themes of it in a conclusion section. Again he reiterates the underlying premise of the volume: There is really no such thing as the Supernatural or Paranormal. They exist only in human fantasy. The purpose of the book has been to reveal why these facets exist in human minds and societies. As you can see I have read the whole book and I challenge the initial premise so, although Wiseman might be right about how our minds make mistakes and see the Paranormal when it is not there, I do not agree with him that this means that this is what the Paranormal is, on every occasion. I’ve given my reasons why and it’s up to you, dear HPANWO-reader to decide whether you agree with me or Prof. Richard.
The author ends the book by saying how people look very disappointed when he says that there’s no evidence for the Supernatural being real. Is this because they feel that a world devoid of the Supernatural is a less enjoyable and interesting world? Wiseman is perfectly content with the idea that there is no such thing as the Paranormal. He thinks the world is interesting and enjoyable enough as it is. This is where very often people like me are polarized by our critics; I share Richard’s enjoyment and interest in the natural physical world. As Douglas Adams once said, as part of his Hitch-Hikers’ Guide to the Galaxy comedy book: “Surely a garden can be beautiful without imagining that there are pixies living at the bottom of it.” I get quite irritated when people say such things to me. Yes, a garden doesn’t need pixies to be beautiful, but just because I believe that there might be pixies living in it, does that mean I don’t appreciate its physical beauty in the same way they do? Of course it doesn’t!
Reading Paranormality was very interesting for me and I’m glad I did it. To begin with, I’m interested in Skeptics and what they think even though I’m not one myself; I go into more details here: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/07/skeptic-in-pub-21808.html and here: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2010/10/tam-london-2010.html . I recommend the book to anybody, Skeptic or Woo, who’s interested in the philosophy of science.
One thing I’ve come to realize is that the status of the Paranormal in our society: as something people are aware of, but have not quite accepted, a kind of fringe black sheep of the universe, is partly deliberate. I’ve found that people and organizations in power seem to have an almost instinctive and hypersensitive aversion to the Paranormal, or to be more precise, they have an aversion to the general public being aware of it. Why? The reasons might vary for different elements of the Paranormal; for instance with UFO’s there’s the Free Energy issue, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2009/09/freikraft.html . But what harm could it do if we knew that ghosts are real? Or that when we die we carry on living in another universal realm? Would us having this awareness, an ending of denial about it, impinge on the power of the Illuminati-occupied world, so much so that they’d take steps to keep it secret from us? In a word- yes. Why and how are big questions and this is an ongoing area of study for me. A clue is in what it would mean for us in psychological, cultural and sociological terms. Skeptics always speak of the neutrality of science how “everything falls before it”. They claim that discoveries like Homeopathy working or aliens being real would lead to a Nobel Prize etc and that nothing could or would stand in the way of such progress. But then why do Governments have huge organizations employing thousands of top psychologists to gauge public reaction on every new invention, discovery, idea, piece of language etc, and find out how it effects our relationship with them! Remember the Brookings Report of 1960 warned NASA about the reaction of the mass of humanity if it was announced that extraterrestrial intelligences exist. Little Green Men from Mars are small potatoes compared to some of the other subjects Paranormnal researchers talk about! I’ll end with the very succinct words from a character in my novel Rockall, see: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2009/02/rockall-chapter-1.html : “I’ve found, in my experience, that governments seem to have an almost knee-jerk aversion to all the things that you might describe as ‘paranormal’ or ‘out-of-the-ordinary.’ Things like ghosts or UFO’s, or events like this one, which rock the boat of conventional worldviews. They will attempt to deny, reject and suppress information on any phenomenon that could lead people to question the reality of the banal, three-up-two-down existence which we live in. I think they need us to be quiet, subservient and bored in order to rule us.”
One thing to remember, “Paranormal” is actually a bad word, for the Paranormal is as normal as breathing and eating. It’s a part of your life and mine and it has been an element to the human experience since we first became human. Exactly as the scientific maxim goes: Just because we don’t understand it yet doesn’t mean we never will!

Latest HPANWO Voice articles: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/04/popping-question.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/04/pharmawhores.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/04/alternative-voting.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/04/ive-got-banned-book.html

Latest HPANWO TV films (All new material!): http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/04/bullying_26.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/04/river-ghost.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/04/could-you-be-awarded-mba.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/04/bedroom-ghost.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/04/ghosts-in-park.html

Jesus Christians Disclaimer

2011-04-21T23:14:00.004+01:00

Last year a film was released in which I appeared briefly called The Tyrant Within. It was a very well-made documentary about electronic implants and their dangers in a Big Brother State. See here for essential background: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2010/09/my-interview-with-smaller-fish-films.html . I ended up being interviewed when I met the producers at the AV3 Conference in Bristol. They attended the speech by Greg Nikolettos, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2009/11/alternative-view-3-part-3.html . I’d seen them hanging around with Greg and assumed that they were part of his entourage; as it turned out this was definitely not the case! A little while later, a man and a woman called Alf and Sue came round to my house and conducted an interview for about an hour. They were very pleasant and cooperative people and we got on well. I was very glad to help them; and as you can see in the link above, I was fairly impressed with the result. However last week I had a phonecall from a friend I know through the Truth media who told me that she had to contact me urgently because she was so alarmed to see me in that film. “Do you know who those people are!?” she asked. It turns out that Alf and Sue belong to a very orthodox and evangelical Christian sect called The Jesus Christians. Here’s their website: http://www.jesus-teachings.com/ . There are only about two dozen of these people in the world, but they’ve managed to have quite an impact and generate a lot of controversy, including alleged kidnappings, donating kidneys for transplantation to strangers and advocating corporal punishment. They’ve been called a “cult” by the media. The film The Tyrant Within is part of a double-box DVD set and the second DVD is this one, Beyond Justice See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R29tIKWP7xw . At 2.14 in Part 2 we see the very same man who interviewed me, Alf, being flagellated by proxy for the Chinese Government for their abuse of Falun Gong practitioners. This presumably emulates Jesus’ experience when he was crucified for “the redemption of sins”.

It’s not my intention to dictate to you, the HPANWO-reader, what to think. If you support or sympathize with the ideas of these people, then that’s fine with me. All I want to say is that at the time I was interviewed for The Tyrant Within I was not aware I was taking part in a Jesus Christians production and, much as I like the film, I don’t feel comfortable with that knowledge. I am certainly not anything to do with the Jesus Chrstians and will not be participating in any of their future activities, no matter how much I applaud the film’s specific subject-matter. I’ve written to some of the other cast members about this subject and two have written back to tell me that they weren’t informed either.

(For those of you awaiting my review of Paranormality by Richard Wiseman, it is in the pipeline; but bear with me! I’m having a very busy week.)

Latest HPANWO Voice articles: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/04/pharmawhores.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/04/alternative-voting.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/04/ive-got-banned-book.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/04/submarine-shooting.html

Latest HPANWO TV films: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/04/bedroom-ghost.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/04/ghosts-in-park.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/04/ben-silver-leggings.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/04/bha-mba.html

St Theo's Day is Announced

2011-04-10T17:19:00.007+01:00

(This photo is not an official publication of the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust nor any of its partners, clients or contractors)

St Theo time is here again! The party this year is, as always, on the closest Friday off I have to June the 1st, St Theo’s Day itself. I want to make this, the fourth St Theo’s Day event, the biggest ever. For this reason I’m going to advertise it more than before by printing more fliers and using HPANWO and Facebook. Here’s the basic text draft for this year’s flier:

St Theo 2011* “Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Eleanor Roosevelt

*St Theobald of Ruggerio was born in Piedmont in Italy in 1170 and became famous for carrying sick people into towns from the countryside for medical treatment. He is the Patron Saint of Hospital Porters and his feast day is June the 1st. Every year since 2008 the Porters at Oxford’s hospitals have met to celebrate St Theo and his legacy.

Come to the John Radcliffe Sports and Social Club, beside Arthur Sanctuary House, Friday May the 27th 7pm till late (Football match earlier from about 5pm) Free entertainment: All the way from Nottingham, a bellydance show by Ustane. EXCLUSIVE: Live Internet TV broadcast. Civilians welcome. For more information contact Ben in A&E.

Latest HPANWO Voice articles (All new material!): http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/04/ive-got-banned-book.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/04/submarine-shooting.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/04/expelled-no-intelligence-allowed.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/04/britcon-conference-stoke-on-trent.html

Latest HPANWO TV films: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/04/bha-mba.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/04/im-thinking-about-sex.html And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/04/get-job-you-lazy-scroungers.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/03/uk-probe-conference-march-2011.html

UK Probe Conference March 2011

2011-03-29T19:28:00.009+01:00

Dedicated to the loving memory of my Probe-Buddy Ian Wright. Rest in Peace, old friend.

I’ve returned from the UK Probe Conference March 2011. Ustane and I have had a wonderful time as always. It was wonderful to see all my Probe-Buddies again and I’ll look forward to seeing them again in October. As always many things were unchanged, but a lot of things were different. Many thanks to Jean and Sam, and all the speakers and delegates. Unfortunately I don’t have time to do a full-length written review of the conference, but I have done a HPANWO TV reportage again. I was wondering if I’d be able to do anything original. This my third Probe reportage and I didn’t want to repeat myself. As it happened I needn’t have worried! Here it is: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/03/uk-probe-conference-march-2011.html

Latest HPANWO Voice articles: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/03/1984-at-number-39.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/03/liz-taylor-and-jose-arguelles-die.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/03/janet-street-porter-against-census.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/03/uk-border-agency-not-just-borders.html

Latest HPANWO TV films: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/03/uk-probe-conference-march-2011.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/03/but-they-aint-normal.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/03/walt-disneys-underworld.html
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/03/kevin-annett-liverpool-lecture-12311.html

Hospital Ghosts

2011-03-24T14:53:00.003Z

See here for background: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2010/10/river-ghost.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2008/10/real-ghost-train.html

I’ve had another peculiar experience that might come under the category of ghostly, in the same sense as the two background articles above. This happened at work, the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. I was on a Friday late shift, February the 18th, and it was about 6.30PM. I was tired because it had been a busy spell in the Accident & Emergency department and I was also slightly drowsy from a disturbed sleep the previous night. I entered the inpatient X-Ray reception area, which was closed at this hour, and sat down in one of the waiting chairs to relax for a moment. Then I saw behind the reception desk a sudden bright explosion of light, like a camera flash bulb going off. This was accompanied by a hissing, cracking sound. I jumped up and moved over to the desk, which you can see in the photo above. It looked normal; there was nothing I could see that explained what I’d just perceived. The following Monday I asked one of the receptionists who regularly man that desk if they’d noticed anything unusual there and they said no.

There are a lot of myths about ghosts. One is that they only appear at night. Not at all, ghosts can appear 24/7 and there are some very significant daylight sightings reported, including a famous encounter in a lift with a full-body, solid, speaking, dead President of Finland! Another contradiction to popular belief is that ghosts are not always identifiable as deceased people. Ghosts of living people are sometimes seen, known as “Doppelgangers” (I’ve got an interesting story to tell you about that in a moment, bear with me!). They often appear in completely unrecognizable forms or as amorphous clouds of vapour or blobs. Another falsehood is that ghosts are best sought after in graveyards; not true. One can certainly go ghost-hunting is cemeteries if you want, but these places are not the most likely place to be haunted. Ghost sightings seem to occur mostly in places linked to human suffering, especially people who’ve died by violent and/or painful deaths. Murder scenes are often reported as haunted, or houses where a depressed person committed suicide. Battlefields are another common ghost location; but from what I can gather, the absolute number 1 place to find ghosts is in hospitals. This is fortunate for me because I spend 40 hours every week inside one.

I think before I go on any further I should make it clear by what I mean when I write down the word “ghost”. This term has been used to describe what I reckon could be a number of very different phenomena. Ghosts also appear in the traditions of all cultures across the world. So what is a ghost? The popular conception is that on occasions when a person dies some remnant of their presence remains behind in this world, like a shadow, imprint or afterglow which causes the ghost effect. This might well be what some ghosts are, but not all of them fit into this category by any means. Ghosts sometimes simply appear as “recordings” of past events. A witness might be walking down a modern street in London and see a column of Roman soldiers march past. These soldiers will be oblivious to the surroundings of the witness. Some of these kinds of apparitions are “insies” rather than “outsies”, in which the witness will see the troops marching and look around to suddenly find themselves on an old Roman street with the buildings and people transformed. As with the “outsie” sighting, the people in the vision will usually not react to the presence of the witness, indicating that they can't see them. This kind of ghost is something very different. It’s as if the witness' mind flips into a state of consciousness where it can perceive events long past in the area its senses are observing. This might be what I experienced when I saw phantom horses in a local park near my home. This happened in January 1989. I was sitting in the rec of the park at about 6AM waiting to meet my then-girlfriend Jenny who used to go jogging in the early morning (Believe me nothing else would get me up at that time to go jogging on a cold winter’s morning!). Then I saw 3 horses walking calmly nose-to-tail out from the darkness behind me. They looked strange, kind of transparent like chalk engravings. They walked out of the park gates and off down a road. Jenny was walking up the road at the time and saw them too, but she was much more disturbed than I was and refused to talk about the incident. A week later she terminated our relationship. Another kind of ghost sighting is when one sees something that does not fit in with any known individual or occurrence in this world at all. This could be because they’re related to events of which no living person has any knowledge, but I suspect there’s more to it than that. Another kind of ghost is when a recognizable person appears in the exact same form as they did when alive, with a solid-looking body and normal voice. This is what took place with the sighting of the President of Finland. In this case the apparition looked exactly as he had when alive. He was able to speak in his usual voice and was capable of touching things, like the lift buttons… and yet he had died previously! (Janet and Colin Bord Modern Mysteries of The World). So we’re dealing with an entire syndrome of phenomena that might have little or no relation to each other. Ghosts are not all “dead people”.

The problem with ghost-like phenomena is that if you want to study them in a proper manner then it’s extremely difficult. Very few universities take the subject seriously. It’s regarded as a “fringe science” or even a pseudoscience. There are only a small number of academic institutions in the world who have departments which will pay for you to investigate ghosts. Even parapsychology faculties like the Arthur Koestler Unit in Edinburgh, which studied my mother for her precognitive abilities (See: http://www.koestler-parapsychology.psy.ed.ac.uk/index.html), don’t really go there. A scientist may be unwilling to take on studies into ghosts because of the significant peer-pressure scientists live under. Mainstream scientists seem to have a very nasty streak in them towards other scientists who have unconventional ideas and interests. The late John Mack relates the emotional trauma he suffered when former friends and colleagues disowned him simply because he thought, and expressed the thought, that alien abductions were scientifically real. Therefore it’s privately-funded, amateur organizations and individuals who do most of the work in this field. In one sense those who reject ghost-hunting as a proper science have a point; this is because it’s so difficult to gather data from these phenomena. Most sightings are eyewitness testimony only. Occasionally, as in the case of my horses sighting, more than one person will see the same ghost, ruling out hallucination to most researchers. There are many films and photographs of ghostly activity but these are almost always denounced as fakes by academia; sadly in this day and age with Photoshop it’s hard to prove the academics wrong on that. One useful alternative is to record environmental changes with specialized instruments; you can purchase toolkits with these instruments from magazines like Paranormal, see: http://paranormalmagazine.co.uk/ , and any serious ghost-hunter would need one of these. (My friend Brian Allan, see the HPANWO Links column, now writes for this magazine) Sadly ghost investigation has been given a bad name recently by a number of very popular but highly sensationalistic TV shows that use stagecraft and fictionalization to produce bogus ghost phenomena. This has led to an explosion of “paranormal tourism” in which groups of young people visit haunted locations for entertainment purposes, often misleading the house’s residents into thinking that they are serious researchers, taking advantage of the lack of regulation in this practice. “Never be tempted to fake anything!” said another friend of mine, a well-known supernatural researcher, when I last spoke to him a few weeks ago. Some investigators do fake data, not because they never really experience genuine ghostly events, but in order to boost their profile after a run of unsuccessful studies. They justify it to themselves with platitudes like: “I’m only going to do it just this once. Just one little fake ghost to get my research grant; after that I’ll never fake anything again, I promise!” My friend said that we must never ever let ourselves fall into this trap; it’s simply not worth it. We must be totally honest in our conduct or else we’ll taint our own careers and ghost-investigation in general for years to come, with its existing rather shaky public image; researchers faking results is exactly what the debunkers love! Let’s not play into their hands. The frustration of this kind of research is what generates this dilemma because real evidence is so tenuous and exclusive. I also feel as if we’re being tantalized as well, because all the most striking events will inevitably occur when it’s not possible to prove them. I myself have seen, along with the horses, an image of Ustane’s father on a train, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2008/10/real-ghost-train.html . I’ve been in a car that was paced by a cloud of sand-like substance, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2007/11/my-trip-to-haunted-house.html , I’ve seen a “cut-out” apparition by the River Thames, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2010/10/river-ghost.html and several other incidents... But it was when there was no way I could prove them! If there had been a way to prove them then maybe they wouldn’t have occurred in the first place. The great South African paranormal researcher Lyall Watson, who died in 2008, came up with a theory which he christened “The Cosmic Nanny”. He believed that there is some kind of overseer to all supernatural phenomena that doesn’t want humanity to ever know, with absolute certainty, that they are scientifically real. In his books Watson relates his frustration that many times a decisive piece of evidence goes missing or instruments fail at crucial moments. He always recommends posting such data in Special Delivery mail so that at least when it gets lost, as it invariably will, you can make a bit of cash in compensation! It's as if the phenomena themselves don't want to be proved. The cryptozoologist Jonathan Downes (See the Centre for Fortean Zoologogy in the HPANWO Links column) also relates what he calls “The Psychic Backlash”. He found that when he investigated ghostly incidents he was struck down by a run of serious misfortune: ill health, the death of both of his cats, the breaking down of his car and other things. I think Watson’s and Downes’ experiences are related.

Anyway, back to hospitals. I once saw an intriguing interview with an American doctor called Mitchell Gibson. The interview is no longer available online but here’s another one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EvJs6VKPT8 . Dr Gibson, the black man in the photo above, was a doctor at a hospital in Philadelphia, but his psychic abilities allowed him to see the ghosts of patients who’d died wandering the corridors of the hospital. This led him into the field of the noetic sciences and spiritual research. Presumably if the patients’ ghosts were wandering the corridors of Gibson’s hospital then they must also wander the corridors of the John Radcliffe, only I usually can’t see them. Is there any way I could? Well to carry out an official ghost investigation I’d need permission from the hospital’s management and I doubt if they would entertain such an endeavour. The study would inevitably involve using the working areas of the hospital which are highly restricted. However there’s no reason why I can’t make efforts to discover ghostly goings on unofficially and privately during my periods on duty. I’ve written several times about electrosmog; mobile phone masts, HAARP etc. One of the theories connected to electrosmog is that it is designed by the Illuminati to suppress the increasing ability of humans to perceive things through the sixth sense as the energies of the world change as we approach December 2012. As I have said on many occasions, the Illuminati know that the Supernatural is real; they just don’t want us to know that. The theory is that the HAARP and mobile phone masts are how they maintain that secret. I’m not sure if I agree with that or not, but supposing it is true; how would we overcome this blindfolding of our spiritual eyes? It would be to go somewhere where there is no electrosmog. Unfortunately nowadays there is no place on the entire surface of the Earth which is not contaminated to some degree by electromagnetic poisoning; HAARP affects the entire world from its transmitters in the north polar regions of the planet. However, there are locations where electrosmog cannot reach. One is underground. It’s true that HAARP's ELF- Extremely Low Frequency, transmissions can penetrate a certain way into the ground and ocean, in fact one of its publically-acknowledged purposes is to communicate with submarines; however this is limited in the ocean to a few hundred feet and underground, which is many times denser, the range is probably much less. Underground is one possibility; in fact scientists searching for illusive subatomic particles have to set up laboratories down deep mines: to eliminate electronic noise, because nowhere else is radiologically pristine. The Homestake Experiment to detect neutrinos for the core of the sun was done in a deep gold mine for this reason. But a thought occurred to me just a few days ago that you don’t have to go underground to find somewhere where electrical noise can’t reach you. There are certain places that are “radio-shielded”; these are spaces surrounded by a layer of heavy metal, usually lead, to prevent radiation from passing through. Usually this is because the space contains a source of dangerous radiation that its users don’t want to get out, like a nuclear reactor or radiotherapy head, but when that source is switched off the interior of the space becomes a place where radiation from outside can’t get in, because the shielding is two-way. Luckily hospitals contain several such places: X-ray chambers. These have a thick layer of lead shielding built into the walls, ceiling and sometimes the floor in there are rooms beneath it. The doors are shielded too and I know because they’re extremely heavy to open and shut. I was trying to call one of my Brother or Sister Porters the other day in one of these chambers on the walkie-talkie radios we use to communicate and I couldn’t get a signal at all. I wonder if maybe I should keep an extra special eye out for incidents of high strangeness when I’m working in these areas. It’s a shame I can’t enter the radiotherapy chamber at the nearby Churchill Hospital as this has even thicker lead shielding because the radiation levels inside get much higher than those used in radiography. My hypothesis is that being in a radio-neutral environment will enhance a person’s psychic abilities. We’ll see what happens.

So far all the ghost stories at my hospital have occurred outside the X-ray rooms. There are several I’ve heard, but two in particular are very convincing. One took place in the A&E Department about two years ago. There’s a side ward to the department that’s called the EAU, Emergency Assessment Unit. This is where we keep patients who’ve been in A&E for long periods. One evening at about 7PM a nurse ran out of the area screaming with fear. She’d seen a ghostly apparition in there while looking after the patients. I came on duty at 10PM and a few people were still talking about it. The sighting had taken place at the same time that an attempted resuscitation was going on in the Resus room; could this be a Mitchell Gibson-type experience? The second significant incident occurred at night on a temporary corridor linking the main hospital the Trauma Unit. A nurse who serves in the West Wing Operating Theatres was walking along it when a humanoid phantom walked straight into the corridor through one wall and crossed perpendicularly out through the other wall. Understandably the witness fled the scene and reported her encounter to her colleagues. I’ve managed to track down the witness to the first event, but the second incident is still an ongoing study; I’ll keep you posted as much as possible.

I spoke above of how some people see ghosts of living people; well it has been reported that my own Doppelganger, a German word that literally means: “your walking double”, has been sighted. One of my Extremely Proud and Dignified Brother Porters told me that he saw a man in Oxford city centre who looked exactly like me, not just a slight resemblance; he actually looked just like me in every detail. There are a number of possibilities: maybe he actually saw the real me. No, I was definitely not in the area at the time this sighting took place. Also this person was dressed in a very smart suit and carrying a briefcase; anybody who knows me would never expect me to wear such a Conformist attire! It could of course be another person who looks just like me; they say everybody has a double, and indeed I’ve been compared in physiogmany to both William Hague and Al Murray- the Pub Landord. However my Brother Porter saw this person up close and swears that he was exactly like me; my Brother Porter almost went up and greeted the alleged Doppelganger. There are many disturbing urban legends associated with Doppelganger sightings, legends that inspire a plethora of horror films including the 1970 classic chiller The Man Who Haunted Himself, see: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066053/ . One of the legends associated with a Doppelganger is that its presence is a portent of the individual’s own death. This doesn’t scare me one bit, as such omens like this tend to be dramatic hearsay and meaningless in the course of real events. I’m in good health right now and not planning to do anything dangerous so I’ve every reason to hope that I’ll be around for many years to come! Don’t worry.

I had another experience in 1996 that was very influential in my views on what some ghosts are. It was the depths of the night, what Roald Dahl called “the Witching Hour”. I awoke suddenly from a shallow sleep to find that there was a small boy kneeling on my bedroom floor a few feet from my bed. He wasn’t solid, in fact he was translucent in appearance like those horses; I described him at the time as looking as if he were made of smoke, but smoke which kept its shape. He was about 4 feet tall, the size of a 5 or 6 year old. He was kneeling up, facing the bed with his hands clasped in front of his face as if saying his prayers. I stared at him for a number of seconds, then he slowly levitated into the air and drifted away. He began to fade away, but as he did so he turned and looked at me and our eyes met. Then he vanished completely. As I’ve said above this experience is impossible to prove; it could be a hypnopompic effect, this is where dreams continue for a short time after you wake up, but it’s something that I’ve never seen before or since; what if it was real? I’ve come to the conclusion that some ghostly phenomena are actually “bleed-overs” of events from parallel universes. I’ve written about parallel universes before and even serious scientists are taking the idea seriously with their “M-Theory”, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7SDrj4Tjvk . This idea is also the background to the excellent and worryingly feasible horror movie The Mist, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/11/mist.html and also one of my favourite books, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2008/02/northern-lights.html . What if two universes, with a similar physical makeup, ended up touching each other on their movement through the hyperspace medium? The result might be similar to those strange instances when your TV set (In the pre-digital era, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2007/12/digital-tv.html) goes out of tune and picks up two channels at the same time. You get an unearthly blend of two separate pictures and soundtracks on the same screen. Usually one is more distinct and the other is fuzzy and tenuous. Maybe this is what I saw in my bedroom in 1996. I wonder who the little boy was and what his world is like. Does it look very like ours or is it totally different? To me he appeared very and formless; made of smoke as I said, but perhaps that how I looked to him.

Finally, here’s an article and video about other hospital ghostly goings on. See: http://www.angelsghosts.com/hospital_ghost_stories
And: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMk3kh-URHQ

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