British Humanist Association Conspiracy Theory Conference

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.
(Edit: This event has been filmed eg: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Yx3E1G9IMc )

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

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!

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/b0128mlk 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!

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

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

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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

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

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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!

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 Savile
Service: Broadmoor Hospital and the Leeds General Infirmary 1950-1960
Jimmy Savile 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.
(Important addendum 10/11/13: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/jimmy-savile-correction.html.)

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
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