The Ark of the Covenant

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?

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

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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

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
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/11/jimmy-saville-dies.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/10/dr-judy-wood-in-brighton.html
And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2011/10/flu-fighter.html


Latest HPANWO TV films: 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
And: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2011/10/hell-fire-caves.html

The Next Roswell

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.

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Does God Exist?

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!”

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UK Probe Conference October 2011

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!


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