Breaking
news!: Kevin Annett has received a death threat on live radio! This happened two
days ago on the Wolf's Den Show on BlogTalk Radio, the same host as CMR. The son
of somebody called Lydia White Calf called for Kevin's murder and also the murder
of any Indians supporting him in Canada .
This was later followed up by a threat on a Facebook page. All the details will be posted on the ITCCS website soon. It's important to
realize that Kevin encounters a lot of opposition from within the native community as well as among white people. There's
a huge disinformation campaign against him using paid stooges among tribal leaders.
I spoke to Kevin within the last few hours before writing this article and he was
safe and well. He is taking necessary precautions for his safety and his court
case is proceeding according to schedule. See here for background: http://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/programme-2-podcast.html
Monday, 5 November 2012
Friday, 2 November 2012
Derren Brown- Apocalypse
Part 1 of Apocalypse can be watched here: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xunfvv_derren-brown-apocalypse-part-1_shortfilms#.Ua-7MEDVCSo
Part 2 can be watched here: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xvb2s0_derren-brown-apocalypse-episode2_shortfilms#.Ua-8QkDVCSo
Derren Brown is famous media illusionist and hypnotist, and I’ve written and spoken about him before , eg: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/bust-spooky-college.html I also recently read his book Tricks of the Mind, see: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1905026269?tag=rmjscouk-21&link_code=as3&creativeASIN=1905026269&creative=9298&camp=2506 Brown is a curious individual who along with his mentalist skills is also something of a hero in the Skeptisphere because he exposes… allegedly… psychics and Spiritualists as fakes. I dispute that psychics and Spiritualists are all fakes for the reasons I state in the linked article above and also here: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/richard-wiseman-skeptocrat.html and: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/worst-tv-documentary-ever.html Brown is one of those whom I would nominate as a latent Skeptocrat; he is somebody who would probably support a political move to outlaw psychics by force and possibly lock them in jail if they disobeyed. The politics of the Paranormal is a neglected field of study which I intend to redeem, but that’s a story for another time. Derren Brown is well known for designing very sophisticated psychological and hypnotic experiments which involve placing ordinary people in very unusual situations using his hypnotic powers and cleverly designed stagecraft. These experiments have been made into very popular stage shows and televsision programmes like The Heist, see: http://vimeo.com/1677179 and Messiah, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLbesxxKzcM In 2010 he was investigated by Ofcom for a stunt carried out in one of his shows, see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11319747 I’ve a feeling Ofcom will be after him again soon because his most recent programme is the most extreme and ambitious yet, Apocalypse. Here’s the official trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUnvhQH9LvU
Apocalypse is a strange blend of The Truman Show, a George Romero film and Jeremy Kyle. All Brown’s shows attempt to hook onto the slipstream of Reality TV, but this one goes way further than any other. It is so excessive that it may well turn out to become a seminal programme that gives birth to a new generic style. In this programme Brown attempts to convince a man that the world has ended in a scenario common to many dystopian horror films: a giant meteorite hits the Earth and does widespread damage. Most of the survivors are struck down by a virus that turns them into zombies resulting in the collapse of human civilization. To select his…er… “contestant”, Brown held an audition of volunteers, however the winner was chosen secretly and all the hopefuls were told that they’d failed. Brown then enlisted the help of the family and friends of the chosen one, a young man called Steve Brosnan from Buckinghamshire. Over a two month period all the people in Brosnan’s life agreed to collaborate in a conspiracy to lay the background for what was to come. They fed him fake news stories by hacking into his TV set and mobile phone, planted actors who struck up conversations about “an approaching meteor shower” and even had celebrity experts like Professor Brian Cox and Danny Wallace make false Tweets and radio broadcasts. The reason Brown selected Brosnan for the programme was because he felt that he was the right psychological “type”; and also that he was living a thoughtless existence without caring for the people around him. Brown also described him as a very unambitious, dispassionate, slothful and immature person, an “overgrown teenager” who didn’t clean up his room and made his mother do all his washing and cooking for him. He had trouble keeping a job and spent all his free time down the pub. Brown hoped that by losing everything he took for granted Brosnan would discover a new lease of life and develop courage, compassion and decisiveness. Brown hoped that by the end of his experience Seven Brosnan would be a man changed for the better.
With the mental seeds planted over a two month period it was ready to trigger Armageddon! Brosnan takes a chartered coach with his friend, an accomplice in the conspiracy, to a rock concert and then explosions are set off, the people on board start screaming in fear; they are all actors with earpieces, taking instructions from the director’s gallery. Brown, up till then an incognito fellow passenger on the coach, puts Brosnan into a hypnotic trance. He’s then led to a huge studio made up to look like an abandoned military hospital. There Brosnan is left alone to wake up. He emerges into a devastated world. The country is under martial law, the infrastructure is shattered and flesh-eating cannibalistic zombies roam the streets. He meets a young girl in the hospital whom Brown hopes will appeal to his submerged protective and compassionate nature and together they fall in with a gang of survivors; like all Brosnan’s companions they are actors. Gradually the plot develops to test his leadership qualities, conscience and sense of responsibility.
Many critics are claiming that Derren Brown has gone too far this time. This stunt is sadistic, voyeuristic and highly unethical. There are also rumours that the entire event is simply drama and that Brosnan is a stooge along with all the others, see: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/10/29/derren-browns-apocalypse-steve-brosnan-zombies-actor_n_2037698.html Brown has countered this by claiming to be able to prove that Brosnan is a real person, see: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2225243/Derren-Brown-hits-fake-Apocalypse-rumours--posts-video-debunking-conspiracy-theories.html?ito=feeds-newsxml and that he had a doctor and psychologist constantly monitoring him and were willing to step in and abort the stunt if they thought his emotional or physical health was in danger. I still find this kind of television unpleasant, like I do all Reality TV. It’s getting to the point where our imaginations are so dumbed down that make-believe will no longer do. Breaching the boundaries of what was considered tasteful just a few short years ago is now routine and we shiver with opulent Schadenfreude at housemate evictions, walks-of-shame and bush-tucker challenges. Making a man think he’s in a haunted college or able to impersonate Elvis Presley is one thing; making him think his entire world is destroyed is a totally different matter. The justification for it stinks too. Brown is being very arrogant, as psychologists tend to be, in claiming that he is putting Brosnan though this horrifying ordeal “for his own good”. How does he know Brosnan will emerge a heroic intellectual giant after he comes out of the studio? What if the opposite occurs; what if he’s traumatized and incapacitated. What if he suffers a nervous breakdown? Is this thing really as safe as Brown reassures us? Although it’s true that facing adversity can be very character-building, in the long term and in retrospect; but the kind of adversity that would come from believing that the entire world as you know it has been annihilated forever could easily demolish one’s character; this could result in despair, destitution and depression. What if he kills himself on air? Has Brown thought about that? If somebody played this kind of trick on me I’d go straight to the police afterwards and report him for assault! Also it’s very judgmental to pour scorn on man just because he enjoys veging out with a tube in front of the TV and gets his mum to do a bit of his ironing. How the hell does Derren Brown know that he’s living a worthless life just because he ticks a few boxes on a bloody form!? How dare he be so presumptuous and condescending! This is once again typical pshrink megalomania. Having said all that, it could well be that Steven Brosnan is just a character played by an actor. It seems hard to believe that nobody in his life became doubtful about what they were manipulating him into. Didn’t his mother or father feel any guilt over knowing they were helping to convince their son that he was a lone survivor in a ruined world?
Another aspect of this programme disturbs me, and this is something that disturbs me about many Reality TV programmes: It presents using technology to put people under surveillance as acceptable, even glamourous! Apocalypse also introduces another element that we’ve not seen in previous programmes: gaslighting. This is a form of psychological abuse in which people whom you live with create an organized false scenario to undermine your self-confidence and to condition you into thinking and feeling, and therefore behaving, in a certain way, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hllgfPCooYE I’ve noticed that in the last few years the theme of global cataclysm and the destruction of society has strengthened in the arts of fiction and drama. Dystopian, post-apocalyptic films and books are being churned out by the score every year; old films in this genre have been remade. There is something in the air that is preparing us for the end of the world. This may be partly a natural morphic process that has developed from people’s fears about the economy, the environment and terrorism etc, but it could also be a deliberate agenda of subtle propaganda. One of the most popular ingredients in the scenarioes of these works is zombies, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/zombie-apocalypse-by-stephen-jones-et.html This trend has emerged, supposedly by coincidence, at the same time as news stories about government publications hinting at the presence of real zombies, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/real-zombies_23.html In this case we are talking about the seeding in our media of a zombie-like zeitgeist; it’s not just a natural trend. This is being done to us by somebody enjoying an influential position in the media, in the same way that Derren Brown and his team are doing it to Steven Brosnan. Why? One theory is that the Illuminati might stage a false apocalypse in order to wipe out existing societies so that they will have a blank slate for their New World Order. In which case our whole media is acting as a giant version of a Derren Brown simulation; however this simulation will fail if we rumble it. These things only work when we’re not aware that they’re a charade.
(Edit 5/6/13) I've spoken to somebody I know who's a solicitor and he says that Apocalypse is definitely staged. This is because the ordeal Brosnan was put through constitutes kidnapping and assault. No TV production company would risk doing that.
(Edit 5/6/13) I've spoken to somebody I know who's a solicitor and he says that Apocalypse is definitely staged. This is because the ordeal Brosnan was put through constitutes kidnapping and assault. No TV production company would risk doing that.
Vulnerable Truthers
With
great sadness I have to report that Paul Higson, a keen listener of HPANWO
Radio, has passed away. Paul wasn't somebody I knew very well and I never met
him, but I did speak to him in the CMR chatbox regularly and enjoyed his
conversations. He was very dedicated to the Truth Movement and wrote stories on
the subject, like I do; see Ben’s Bookcase in the links column. He loved
listening to HPANWO Radio and all the other CMR shows as well. He took his own
life on Saturday night after a battle with depression; he was aged thirty-five.
Deepest condolences to his lived ones. Lisa Shunkaha-Wanagi, of the Cry Freedom
Show, did a very moving tribute programme on Tuesday night, see: http://www.mixcloud.com/cmr/the-cry-freedom-show-with-lisa-phillips-dedicated-to-paul-higson/ .
It’s always sad when somebody dies, especially a young man like Paul, but when
that death is a suicide it’s doubly tragic. I can’t help wondering if we could
have prevented it. Maybe if we’d known how close to the edge he was we could
have talked him back. Did anything we say unknowingly make him worse? These thoughts
are unavoidable. Rest in peace, Paul. I hope we’ll meet again somewhere else
one day.
This
is not the first time somebody with an interest in Truth issues has fallen foul
in this way, either ending their own life or coming close to the brink of doing
so. The best known example of this is the tragedy of Rik Clay, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-mu-GcCvG8
Depression, drug and alcohol addiction, relationship difficulties, nervous
breakdown and similar troubles are also very common among the conspiratorially-aware;
and we need to be concerned about this. I myself suffered from problems like
this and I make no secret about the fact that I have been a psychiatric patient
in the past. The causes of my illness were different and my discoveries about
conspiratorial matters actually aided me in my recovery, because the Truth revelations
can be as uplifting and fulfilling as they can be depressing and demoralizing. However
there is no doubt that, as Andy Thomas says, everything in society is designed
to break our spirit. For Truthers this counts exceptionally because we are the
biggest threat to the Illuminati-occupied world. When one first becomes
conspiratorially-aware the first reaction is often fear. The revelation that,
for instance, 9/11 was done by the Government, the moon landings were faked or
that the person most likely to kill or main you is your doctor is… scary! Especially if you’ve never
considered these possibilities before. Very very scary! It is therefore vital
that we in the Truth Movement who have contact with new arrivals maintain an
atmosphere of optimism and hope. We should encourage newcomers to study
researchers who paint a bright picture of the future and give practical advice
on what action people can take to progress positively. The spiritual element to
the Truth milieu must be emphasized at all times. Another vitally important
aspect to a conspiratorial education is to give yourself time out. Everybody
needs opportunities to simply turn away for a while; to watch a football match
or go to the pub with your friends, or take a trip to the seaside or cinema and
do something that allows your mind to rest, to think about other things,
ordinary things. If you don’t do this you might run the risk of burning
yourself out; I made this mistake myself once. A burnt out mind becomes
vulnerable to miscalculation, delusion and, yes, eventually dejection. I’ve
always said that people drawn instinctively to the Truth Movement are natural nonConformists,
but nonConformism comes with a price; and that price is difficulties with social
interaction. Truthers often find it extremely difficult to relate to
non-Truthers, and vice versa. This can lead to isolation, rejection and
loneliness; and we must keep in touch with each other and support each other to
prevent that. Taking time out can ease that obstacle, as I explain above, but
so can developing general social skills, such as knowing when is the right time
to say what things to which people. It’s not always appropriate to express your
views with certain individuals in certain situations. Let nobody make you feel
guilty for “not trying to wake people up!”, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/but-you-do-nothing-posers.html
Often conspiratorial-awareness means we have to reassess all these factors in
our relationships with family and friends.
Something
else has recently occurred that has caused me a lot of distress: a close friend
of mine in the Truth community has very suddenly turned against me. This is
somebody I was very fond of and felt very close to. I’m actually confused as to
why she has done this; she has given me no coherent reason. One day everything
was normal and the next she was hurling abuse at me on the Internet and telling
everybody she knows that I am a “disinformer” and a “Freemason” and that I have
been attacking her with “psychic warfare”. This is all utter nonsense of
course; and why she has got these ideas into her head, I have no idea. But I
think my erstwhile friend may be experiencing some of the problems that I
mentioned above, and this has caused her to become delusional. In the past, she
has actually made similar accusations against other people in an equally
illogical and fanatical way. I can only hope that this is a phase that she will
get over eventually. If she does I will advise her to take on board all the
points I have raised in this article. This way we can absorb the impact that conspiratorial
awakening can sometimes have on our lives. I bear her no ill will, but cannot
tolerate her behaviour towards me and will break contact with her completely and permanently if
it continues. Only time will tell whether our friendship is ruined beyond
repair, but I myself have my own emotional health to consider too. We all do.
Sunday, 28 October 2012
David Icke- from Wogan to Wembley
In 1990 the BBC sports correspondent David Icke arranged a public lecture at Devises Town Hall in Wiltshire. Twelve people turned up and David put away the chairs himself at the end, poorer afterwards than before. His response to this disheartening outcome? To keep going! On Saturday the 27th of October 2012, twenty two years later, he hosted an all-day lecture at the Wembley Arena, one of Britain’s largest and most prestigious venues, in front of over five thousand people and many many more on a live, international Internet stream. I was one of those who had the privilege of attending.
The weather was very different to David’s previous UK events which tend to take place in the spring or summer. This late October day was unseasonably cold and my hands were numb as I staggered along the windswept road through the modern Wembley complex. Ustane walked next to me her hands plunged deep into the pockets of her overcoat. I realized that I should have brought my gloves and woolly hat. At the end of the road the huge steel-framed bulk of Wembley Stadium came into view; its classic twin-towered, stuccoed entrance replaced by a huge arch support in its recent renovation, towering hundreds of feet over the stadium like a metal rainbow. It struck me that when he was a footballer David must have dreamed about playing there one day. It was not to be because of the way his career was brutally cut short by arthritis in 1972; yet at the time did he ever suspect that forty years later he’d be speaking at the neighbouring Arena about the issues he does today? I doubt it. I tried to make some HPANWO TV videos on my mobile phone camera because I thought my usual Sony camcorder would be confiscated at reception, as was the case with a few people at David’s previous shows in the Brixton Academy, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/see-here-for-my-report-on-previous-live.html ; but as I said, my hands were numb so I had trouble operating the phone-cam. Also the quality would have been very poor so in the end I gave up and decided to do this written report instead. As we entered the Arena and had our tickets checked we were also subjected to a body search; not to the intimate extent a drugs-smuggler might receive at customs, but we still got a pat-down. I was afraid that they might have the X-ray body scanners airports have… Shhh! Mustn’t give them ideas! That would be very ironic at one of David’s talks, even more so than the photo he showed of the plaque on a house saying “George Orwell lived here” right next to a CCTV camera. However it was happily not that bad; and I’ve also checked the map and was pleased to see that there are no suspicious-looking street plans around Wembley like there is in Brixton, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2008/05/brixton-pyramid.html .
Wembley Arena was originally built as an Olympic swimming pool in 1934 but has since been converted into a concert and sports hall. There was a far larger and better equipped foyer area here than there was at Brixton. Ustane quickly bought a copy of David’s new book, Remember Who You Are at one of the merchandise stalls, see: http://www.davidicke.com/headlines/72826-david-ickes-new-book-remember-who-you-are-is-now-available-as-an-e-book-for-immediate-download This was also the title of the event. The auditorium of the Wembley Arena is the biggest room I’ve ever been in. It was only when I looked across at the people on the opposite side that I understood how massive it was; it makes even the West Wing atrium at the John Radcliffe look small. It’s hard to believe a space so huge could be enclosed. One of our friends who was there, a lady who runs a child abuse action group, told me: “The day will come when David will pack out Wembley Stadium!” I do hope so. The thousands of audience-members slowly congregated in their seats. I was told by several people that for large proportion of them this was their first ever David Icke live event, which is great news. Ustane and I had two seats next to each other on the left hand side terrace, near the back; not the best ones in the house, but good enough for us to see David clearly on the stage. Unfortunately we were also very close to the entrance staircase to our block so for the first hour or so late-comers constantly crowded past us, blinking in the dark and searching for their seats with confused expressions. Luckily ushers with torches were on hand to help them, but it was still irritating. My seat was comfortable enough, but I had to swivel round to face the stage so started to suffer from pins and needles in my bottom after a while. It was chilly in the auditorium and so most people kept their jackets on, as if we were outdoors. However difficult this was you can bet David was finding it more difficult. But he carried on without complaining so what excuse did we have?
I was familiar with some of the information David was presenting, having been to… how many is it now… seven of his live shows before? However this talk differed from all the previous ones David has given in several ways. Firstly it was far longer; it was divided up into four segments, with intervals in between, instead of the usual three. All in all David spoke for about ten hours and we were there for about twelve. Secondly it featured some live music. The segments all began with songs played live by Gareth Icke, David’s son, who is a singer-songwriter. I’ve heard him play twice before, at a pub in Harrow in London and at AV3 in Bristol, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/alternative-view-3-part-1.html . On those occasions he’d played solo and unplugged, but this time he was accompanied by a full rock quartet which filled the Arena with energy. He began with his appropriately-titled song Remember Who You Are, and later on played another, What’s Love without Meaning, which is available as a single, and which was actually launched on Programme 6 of HPANWO Radio, see: http://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/programme-6-podcast-ellis-taylor.html Musical interludes were also provided by a troupe of very individualized and mixed dancers who moved independently to scintillating spiritual music. Ustane remarked how similar this style was to bellydance, which is always performed either by a solo dancer or by a troupe moving without formation. This is very symbolic to me of nonConformism in general; the need to metaphorically dance to the beat of your own drums. It was very effective and the audience began clapping along to the music.
The first segment of David’s talk was about the holographic nature of reality; something I’ve heard David discuss before, but never in this much detail. As always he brings his lines of research up to date with all his latest discoveries and conclusions, so there’s always new material to learn about. For instance David has started reading Wal Thornhill, of whom Ustane and I are fans too, and his theory of the electric universe, see: http://www.holoscience.com/wp/ At the beginning of the second segment David told us how a reporter from The Independent newspaper had turned up and wanted to do an article on the Wembley event, but had only just arrived. Too late to hear the opening segment which David regards as essential for understanding everything that comes next. David was openly angry about this; and that’s understandable after his experience with The Guardian a few years ago where a journalist again arrived late, hardly paid any attention to what David said and then went away and wrote an article calling him a “New Age Nazi” which was illustrated by a photo montage of David dressed like Adolf Hitler! During the second and third segments he spoke about the history of Planet Earth from a conspiratorial perspective. David and I have both understood the true nature of the phrase “The Fall of Man” which is independently repeated in myths around the world in culture after culture. It seems that in the past we lived in a paradisiacal state symbolized by the Garden of Eden, Atlantis etc, but then something went badly wrong. Neither I nor David are suggesting that it literally involved a snake and somebody eating an apple etc; but these stories are very important to study as allegories for what actually took place. The event which changed everything David calls “The Schism”. It appears to be when intelligences of some kind from beyond this universe, outside the 3D-linear time umwelt that we can perceive, the three dimensions, invaded this one to steal its spiritual energy. David likens this to a scientist working in a sealed glass tank with those gloves that poke through holes in the walls. The gloves in this case are the Illuminati bloodlines, which again appear in legends all over the world, even from cultures that apparently had no contact. This is the cause of the New World Order and psychically-sensitive people can see these individuals taking the form of the Reptilian humanoids. This sounds crazy, but if you saw the first part where David talks about “decoding” the nature of reality it all fits. Hence, David’s annoyance that the reporter from The Independent missed that important first segment. This is key to understanding the whole subject and therefore the reporter is probably typing out an article about how: “He reckons they’re all lizards! Ha Ha!” as we speak.
The third segment was all about the conspiracies that are currently plaguing the human race as the Illuminati attempt to goad us into the New World Order: 9/11, 7/7, the financial crash, vaccines, chemtrails and so much else. But the ending was very uplifting and this was where the music was used again. Gareth came on and played and David also showed a song about how we all need to “choose love”. It sums up very much the whole theme of David’s lecture, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHpy_k_kMTU This was when I think the loving energy David planned to release into the world to counter that being injected by the Illuminati at Satanic rituals really burst out. It was one of those tearful-and-smiley moments that are so joyful and so precious. Then the dancers entered the stage again and we all came together in a pantomime of positivity! We all jumped into the aisles and joined in with David’s “Non-Comply-Dance” David himself danced and sang along as well… and he did a good job too, despite telling us earlier he was a crap singer
Ustane and I left the Wembley Arena to catch our train back to where we were staying full of light and inspiration. I’m so glad I went and want to give a big thank you to David for hosting this event, and also to everybody else involved who made David Icke-Remember Who You Are happen.
Wednesday, 24 October 2012
Way Upstream
Way Upstream
is a stage play written by Alan Aykebourn in 1981 and performed several times
at theatres in Scarborough
and London ,
usually with himself doubling up as director. In 1987 it was made into a film
by the BBC which is currently free online:
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyOxN1fQ_hY.
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcPWiU1D6TQ.
Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRCP9U8Ymss.
Part 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gydq68nBPD0.
Part 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrXsXruTZi0.
Part 6: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7585eCptU0.
Part 7: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wyrNafxXcc.
Part 8: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBVj3h2Yksk.
(I advise downloading it because it has never been released onto DVD.) It is about two couples who go on boating holiday together aboard a cabin cruiser on an English river. During its shows a real cabin cruiser was used as a central prop and during one performance a huge pool of water was installed on stage for it to float in, for added realism. The play is supposed to be an allegory of the political situation inBritain
at the time it was written, with some of the characters representing the Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher and others being a metaphor for the Labour Party and
Liberal Democrat opposition and socialist movements; but I can see a far more
sophisticated theme in it than that.
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyOxN1fQ_hY.
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcPWiU1D6TQ.
Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRCP9U8Ymss.
Part 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gydq68nBPD0.
Part 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrXsXruTZi0.
Part 6: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7585eCptU0.
Part 7: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wyrNafxXcc.
Part 8: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBVj3h2Yksk.
(I advise downloading it because it has never been released onto DVD.) It is about two couples who go on boating holiday together aboard a cabin cruiser on an English river. During its shows a real cabin cruiser was used as a central prop and during one performance a huge pool of water was installed on stage for it to float in, for added realism. The play is supposed to be an allegory of the political situation in
There
are four main characters: Keith, Alistair, Emma and June. Keith is a very
conventional "Essex
man", the director of a manufacturing company. He's the dominant
personality of the quartet. The moment they step aboard the boat he declares
himself to be the skipper, jumps into the pilot's seat and begins giving orders
to the others. He does so though in a jocular manner. His authoritarianism is
very light-hearted; he is not malicious, merely foolish and ingenuous. He wears
a nautical captain's hat and acts pretentiously as if he knows a lot about
boats and waterway life, when in fact he doesn't know very much more than the
others do; and this is a source of a lot of humour in the first part of the
play. He is also something of a workaholic; despite leaving his factory under
the control of a junior manager and claiming that he's going to wash his hands
of the place for the duration of his holiday, he has his secretary, Mrs
Hatfield, report in to him daily... in person! Mrs Hatfield presumably has to
track the boat's progress up the river every day and drive to meet it via the
nearest road. June is Keith's wife. She is pessimistic and bad tempered, and
she constantly complains about the accommodation facilities on board the boat
and anything else she can find. It turns out fairly soon that she and Keith
have a very unhappy marriage, in fact they despise each other. Their matrimonial
strife comes to a head when June puts on a costume and performs a dance on the
upper decks of the boat while it's moored beside the beer garden of a packed
riverside pub, and Keith scornfully criticizes her for "making a complete
and utter bloody idiot of herself!" This results in them splitting up for
the remainder of the play. Emma is a quieter and more easygoing woman than
June, and she is by far the most intelligent and aware person on board. She
distrusts both Keith and June and also appears to express a sense of
subconscious foreboding about the situation they're in; this is illustrated by
her insistence on wearing a life jacket despite the reassurances of the other
three that they're all "perfectly safe". Alistair is Emma's husband
and also Keith's equal business partner in the company; but despite them being
officially fifty-fifty Keith is clearly the de
facto boss and orders Alistair around as if he were a junior employee.
Alistair is a quiet and genteel man, but also very feeble and ineffectual. He
constantly voices agreement mindlessly with all the other characters,
especially Keith, and never even expresses, let alone enforces, any will of his
own. Emma is frustrated by his weakness but still cares for him. Alistair seems
to exhibit dithering indifference towards her as his wife, as he does
everything else, but later on in the story this changes.
The
four holiday-makers head upstream and for a few days they enjoy a fairly normal
outing. Then their incompetent navigation skills lead them to run their boat
aground and they are helped out by a very handsome, charming and virile man
called Vince who dives into the water and heroically pushes their boat by hand
until she refloats. The four main characters are very grateful and invite Vince
aboard as a guest. From the way Vince speaks it is very clear that he is extremely
knowledgeable about boating and worldly wise in general. June is instantly
besotted with him and when she and Keith finally separate she dives straight
into his arms... and his bed. But before all that happens: Vince remains aboard
and, little by little, works his way into their lives with consummate skill. If
you watch the movie version in the link above you'll see how he does it. It's
hard to describe in words, but in no time at all Vince has totally taken over
the boat and Alistair, Emma and especially June are eating out of his hand. Keith
is the one main character who refuses to submit to Vince's rule, however he has
to leave the boat after a strike breaks out at the factory. He returns as
quickly as he can, but Vince manipulates the others into abandoning him. After
his row with June she has completely rejected him in favour of Vince. It soon
becomes obvious that Vince's dashing, debonair and urbane persona is merely a
facade to hide his true nature: that of a violent, controlling and sadistic
psychopath. He exploits and brutalizes Alistair, June and Emma; and a new
character, a friend of his called Fleur. His madness culminates in him marooning
Alistair on an island and attempting to drown Emma. This outrage causes Alistair
finally to break out of his apathy and fragility. He escapes from the island to
rescue his wife from Vince's clutches; in doing so he ends up fighting with
Vince and killing him. The play ends in a surreal fantasy scene, with the boat
reaching the upper navigable limits of the river and entering an unidentified,
idyllic Eden .
Alistair and Emma then strip naked and swim like Adam and Eve which completes
the last act of the play.
I
have never forgotten watching this film although I was only a child when I saw
it. The reason it stuck in my mind was that it matched perfectly the experiences
of my own family, although I don't think I knew it consciously at the time. The
way the man I call "Centaur" worked his way into the lives of my
family and the way he succeeded in controlling and abusing them, me especially,
really rang a bell with me; see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/centaur.html
and: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2009/01/eyes-of-centaur.html
Way Upstream truly is a must-see because Aykebourn has identified and dramatized the way
a psychopath behaves with other people very perceptively indeed. I would find
it hard to believe that this was not his deliberate intention, despite the
claims that this play is merely a symbolic political satire. Vince is the closest
fictional portrayal of Centaur that I've ever seen. It's painful for me to
watch it because of my personal experiences, but this is a very educational
film for everybody else. Beware the psychopath!
Another
way of analyzing the play is to see it in conspiratorial terms: Vince
symbolizes the Illuminati, the parasitic and malevolent Reptilian
consciousness, preying on humanity which is represented by the other main
characters. Keith and June are the prison of conformism. Keith is the
consumerist and hedonist side of ourselves, hypnotized by excess materialism.
June is the embodiment of our insecure spirit and broken morale, psychologically
attacked and mesmerized by Vince, and made to feel inferior by Keith; and
dragged down into low self-esteem and self-loathing. Alistair signifies the New
Age; kind and tender, but detached and effete, incapable of action. Emma is the
newly emerging spirit of awakening; she has Alistair's tenderness, but more
drive and strength. From the very beginning she is intuitively aware that
something is wrong with the situation and looks for guidance from the others,
unsure of how to act until the end. The scenario becomes increasingly surreal as the story goes on and it reminds me very much of the book Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. If Way
Upstream is a metaphor for the real world then how the real world will play
out is currently undecided. Will Emma drown? Will Alistair be willing to intervene
on a practical level? Perhaps Keith will return to the story to help. Or could
June regain her spirit and fight back. Only time will tell, but remember: we
are not just actors reading a script; it is our
play to write and to direct.
Sunday, 21 October 2012
Moon Landing Sites Protected
The
age of private space travel is upon us. At first it was just Russia
who managed to get into space, then America
quickly followed. Many years later China
and Japan
jumped in, then France ,
the UK ,
India ...
today there are a dozen or more nations with astronautical capability. But in
the past the huge cost and complexity of launching rockets and sending craft
across the heavens made it always the realm of governments; however nowadays
private companies are making serious plans to put rockets... and even people...
into space. To encourage them, Google has launched a competition: the Lunar X
Prize, for any privately-funded project that can launch rocket to the moon,
deploy a mobile lander onto the lunar surface, have it travel half a kilometre
and then send a radio signal back to Earth, see: http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/
One
of the contestant teams, founded by an American company called Astrobotic
Technology, announced its chosen landing site as being near Tranquility Base,
the supposed landing site of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module. It then planned to
send its mobile lander into the vicinity of Tranquility Base to take photoes
and video footage of the LM descent stage, the flag and all the other things
supposed to be there. NASA's reaction to this was to approach the Google X
Prize organizers and asked them to observe a set of exclusion zones around the
landing sites of at least two of the Apollo missions; probably the others will
follow. These zones will be between 75 and 225 metres across. This is in order,
so they say, to preserve the locations in their pristine condition and let them
remain untouched for future historians and scientists to study. The no-go area
will include a no-fly zone for ascending or descending rockets above the sites
so that even a rain of rocket exhaust vapour does not pollute the stasis
created there from 1969 to 1972. See: http://news.discovery.com/space/nasa-will-preserve-apollo-landing-sites-120528.html
There is a major political statement being made here; because it's a
far-reaching issue to say that a national space agency, or any other
terrestrial authority, can decide who has access to a location on the surface
of a heavenly body. The landing sites of the Apollo missions were not intended
to be beachheads for an empire or colony of any kind. This may constitute a breach of the 1967 Treaty on the Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use Outer Space, the Moon and other Celestial Bodies.
On
the one hand I can see that there's good sense in requesting such an action because there are, allegedly, very
delicate items of historical importance there: equipment used by the Apollo
astronaut's, the footprint of Neil Armstrong's "one small step",
which will not fade naturally on a world without wind or rain. It would be the
decent thing to do and I'd support that. In fact a professor at the University
of New Mexico, Prof. Beth O'Leary, wants the all spacecraft landing sites to be
declared national monuments: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x74Kj0v39aI
That brings us back to the question of whether the word "national"
can be used to include anything not only beyond the borders of a sovereign
state, but beyond the planet Earth! However wouldn't it make sense for NASA to
take advantage of the opportunity by negotiating and cooperating with the Lunar
X Prize organizers to maybe approaching the Apollo landing sites and studying
them from a distance whereby nothing within them would be disturbed? It would
be interesting from a historical and scientific perspective, as well as being a
money-spinner in terms of publicity! Perhaps NASA have another motive for not
wanting anybody to go near the Apollo landing sites: That they're simply not there! See here for more details: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2009/01/i-went-to-godamn-moon.html
Saturday, 20 October 2012
"Petrol produced from Air and Water"
I
saw this on the BBC earlier today: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20003704
Let's leave aside the pat climate change statements: is this any different to
the hydrogen-powered car sensation? "It sounds too good to be true"? This
is the same way the hydrogen-powered car was marketed. This new fuel sounds miraculous,
but it's important to understand that the ingredients for conventional fossil fuels
are present in things like air and water:
hydrogen, oxygen and carbon. This is not
free energy; don't get it confused with the water-powered car designed by Stanley
Meyer and others. All this does is extract the fuel elements of petrol from air
and water using conventional methods like electrolysis. This is schoolboy science
that can be done by anybody. Of course far more electrical energy is needed to make
the fuel than the fuel contains. Even this report admits that, like the hydrogen-powered
car, this is a method of fuel storage and not generation. I wouldn't be surprised
if this story has the ulterior motive of distraction and confusion. See here for more details: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vghjGwvmrqE
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