Rob Brotherton and the Psychology of Conspiracy

“Oh my stars and garters!” is an expression of astonishment that I’ve noticed is commonly used by forum Skeptics. Therefore it seemed apt and synchronous that the Greenwich Skeptics in the Pub group’s pub is called The Star and Garter. The meeting I went to attend was this one: http://greenwich.skepticsinthepub.org/Event.aspx/1706/The-Psychology-of-Conspiracy-Theories. Several times in the days leading up to the event I almost gave up on the idea. The weather forecast was atrocious, predicting very heavy rain and high winds; this has been the norm for this entire “winter”, whether that’s just a natural freak occurrence or evidence of geoengineering is a separate subject. At the same time the Underground was on strike and the Tube service was down to a bare minimum. Greenwich is in east London, a long way from Victoria where the coach from Oxford stops. I got off the coach wondering whether I’d be able to reach the venue on time and, more importantly, whether I’d be able to get home again afterwards. As it happened I did both easily, and in doing so made a delightful new discovery. I travelled to Greenwich by boat. There is no nicer way to see London than from the river; away from all the noise, confinement and traffic in the fresh open air of the Thames its architectural landscape is spectacular. The riverboat services run from the Embankment regularly to numerous destinations through the whole of the docklands and also as far upriver as Kew. I’ll definitely use it again as often as is convenient. The Star and Garter is in an old backstreet tucked behind the Maritime Museum and is almost exactly on the Meridian. It was dark by the time I stepped inside and the sound of raucous laughter assailed my ears. A woman holding a wineglass rather precariously walked past; she grinned flirtatiously at me and staggered away. She wasn’t the only one who’d clearly been drinking heavily; almost everybody in the bar looked as if they had been on a bender. I then noticed that they were all dressed formally in black suits and dresses, although these were stained and crumpled in most cases. I found out from the barmaid that a wake was in progress; I wonder if people will celebrate my own demise in the same way when it comes. I also wondered what effect this would have on the evening to come.

 

I decided to attend the event incognito because the speaker knows me and has exhibited little affection as a result. In fact we had an online argument a few months ago, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/the-bilderberg-delusion.html. I had ended up apologizing to him, but I still wasn’t sure how he’d react to me being there. The last thing I wanted was to be refused entry to the event after travelling so far. My disguise was fiendish; I shall omit details of it in case I need to use it again, but I’d challenge my best friends to recognize me that evening. The speaker was Rob Brotherton, here’s his blogsite where he writes along with three of his friends: http://conspiracypsychology.com/. He’s a psychology lecturer at Goldsmiths College in London and if that name sounds familiar to you it’s because I’ve mentioned it before; it’s where Prof. Chris French is based at the Department of Anomalistic Psychology, in fact Brotherton is one of his postgraduate students. I encountered both Brotherton and Frenchie before a couple of years ago at this highly successful event: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/british-humanist-association-conspiracy.html. I think my decision to go in undercover was also inspired by the fear many Skeptics feel towards conspiracy theorists. This is perfectly justified in some cases; the conduct of some people in the Truth movement has been shameful, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/charlie-veitch-911-u-turn.html. But I’ve always spoken out against such behaviour and would never dream of being disruptive or hostile at a Skeptic meeting. In fact at the BHA conference in the link Dr Stephen Law said that he was worried when he heard that “some conspiracy theorists were attending!”, when in fact his misgivings were proven unfounded. Everybody got along just fine and the controversy between us made for fun not fury. However, as Brotherton related, some of the conspiracy theorists there did not like Ian R Crane and later related to him their suspicions that Ian is secretly working for the other side!

Rob Brotherton is leaving these shores soon for a teaching position in New York; his speciality has been the psychology of conspiracy theories, a field of study that he believes has been neglected. But he thinks the subject matters because conspiracy theories are everywhere and that they can do harm. One might make decision that could be a detriment to the lives of oneself or others if one believed in a conspiracy theory regarding HIV not causing AIDS or climate change being a hoax, or vaccines being dangerous. Of course this concern is built on the assumption that none of the above are true, and that is the underlying premise of Brotherton’s lecture; he assumes conspiracy theories are a delusion and therefore asks why people believe in them despite that. As regular HPANWO-readers will have guessed, this is my fundamental disagreement with him. Brotherton also worries that conspiratorial delusions could lead to radicalization involving racism, anti-Semitism and the far right; of course Adolf Hitler believed in a Jewish conspiracy, as did Timothy McVeigh, the man supposedly behind the Oklahoma bombing (although he was not in my view, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xi4VBA_gW5U). I’d like to be able to tell you that there are no racists in the Truth movement; unfortunately there are, but not as many as some would have you believe. I’ve written criticisms of their ideas and always debate with them, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/its-jooooozzz.html. “Conspiracy Theory” is not an easy word to define, almost as difficult as “Skeptic”. In this aticle I shall use the term "conspiracy theory" purely for convenience, although I know it has the connotations of a dysphemism and is very much a loaded word. Brotherton does not accept that the official story of 9/11, a conspiracy of Muslim hijackers, should be equated with the notion that it was an inside job. He goes along with David Aaronovitch’s definition, that a conspiracy theory is an idea that is used to explain something in place of a better explanation. I disagree, I’d call that just being wrong. Again, we come back to the issue of whether conspiracy theories are actually true or not, a question that lies outside the domain of that evening’s discussion; and in fact Rob reinforced the remit when he said that conspiracy theories are always unsubstantiated and incomplete allegations without evidence; they pick bitty holes in the narrative and drive upstream against the consensus of experts. The imperative of believing a consensus of experts appears superficially reasonable. After all, I’m not an architect; how can I possibly state that the hundreds of architects and engineers who all agree that the Twin Towers fell to the ground because of the impact from two jet aircraft and the fires that followed are all incorrect? Well, firstly that verdict is not unanimous; there are many people in the building trade who don’t go along with that; there’s even an organization representing them, see: http://www.ae911truth.org/, although I’m personally very suspicious of the individuals running it and think that they may well really be “working for the other side!”. A highly detailed and comprehensive analysis of the destruction of the World Trade Centre has been written by Dr Judy Wood, see: http://www.drjudywood.co.uk/. Also I’ve closely studied the way our minds are manipulated, as individuals, a culture and a society. I can see how quickly false and pathological ideas become so quickly established among the majority of people. Our world is run by those who employ experts in psychological warfare, see: http://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/programme-20-podcast-neil-sanders.html. All the manipulators have to do is make a notion “normal” and a sizeable majority of the population will uphold it without any reason to at all, in fact even in the face of reasons not to. I’ve seen the results of this in my own hospital and will be writing a lot more on that subject in the future.

 

Another feature of conspiracy theories, according to Rob, is that they only ever pertain to significant events. For example, the assassination of John F Kennedy has bred more conspiracy theory than any other incident in history, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/the-kennedy-assassination-50-years-on.html, yet the attempted and unsuccessful assassination of President Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley Jr. is hardly questioned. Was this because it failed? I don’t think that’s a very good gauge to judge the validity of conspiracy theories because it’s only natural to expect that events with more impact will inevitably lead to more attention, more research and more revelation. Conversely there are many world-shaking events that take place which are not conspiracies. I don’t think the Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster was a conspiracy; it looks as if the spacecraft was simply struck by lightning. Also, and I disagree here with many of my peers, I doubt the Titanic sinking was anything more than a tragic accident, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/was-titanic-scuttled.html. Conspiracy theories are also supposedly always done by hypercompetent individuals with unusually malign intent, as with the atrocity of 9/11. Well, I don’t think it’s unusually malign at all for governments to murder a few thousand people in pursuit of a political goal. History has shown that they will slaughter many times that toll quite openly and without a qualm; do you really need me to give you an example? As for hypercompetent, they are definitely not that, in fact they make some terrible gaffs at times and I’ve directed readers’ attention towards some of them, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/chemtrail-planes-captured.html and: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/some-of-them-are-on-our-side.html. I suspect that the perpetrators of 9/11 have underestimated the level of awareness that resulted from their attack and are now engaged in damage control. Rob also claims that conspiracy theories are self-insulting against change and unfalsifiable; again this is unfair, see: http://911crashtest.org/.

 “Why do people believe in conspiracy theories?” Rob Brotherton asks, when there are so many reasons that we shouldn’t. Conspiracy theorists are also very demographically homogenous; an old person is as likely to believe in them as a young person, a black man as much as somebody white, rich and poor are equally drawn to accept them. Conspiracy theories tend to correlate into a single structural set of ideas, what Michael Barkun calls “the Cultic Milieu”. Somebody who thinks 9/11 was an inside job is far more likely to believe in UFO’s and that JFK was shot by a conspiracy. There’s also a huge crossover with belief in the paranormal. Of course readers will expect me to admit that I myself am a textbook specimen and I do. Conspiracy theorists also tend to be ruled by intuition and openness. We also apparently feel “powerless” over our own lives and project this onto the world, seeing intention where there is none as a reaction to that. This is what Michael Shermer calls “patternicity”, the way we make the mistake of seeing pattern and organization in random noise. The problem with this patternicity theory is that it’s a bit of a trump card. I can’t prove that the patterns of paint on the Sistine Chapel ceiling are not just random splatters. How do we know Michelangelo didn’t just kick a few tins of paint around for a while and decided he liked the result? This is a point I tried to make to Dr Paul Rogers at the Seriously Strange conference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOIHvso5ols. Luckily there were some good questions raised in the Q and A. One man differed with Rob’s dismissive definition of conspiracy theory; he rightly pointed out that the Watergate Affair was at one point a conspiracy theory, it fitted in with Rob’s statement about them, and yet it was proven true. And I’ve often thought this myself, so much of accepted history is conspiracy theory found to be real with hindsight; see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/hillsborough-cover-up.html. Another man, (a rather large bald man wearing sunglasses who looked a lot like me actually; I see a new conspiracy theory looming!) asked a very good question: a large proportion of the population actually believe in conspiracy theories, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/usa-conspiracy-theory-poll.html, however only a small minority of those people are at all outspoken about their beliefs. They’re the tip of a huge iceberg. What makes those people different from the majority of conspiracy theory-believers who are still in the closet? Rob said that more research needed to be done on that and quipped: “maybe those people have fewer distractions in their life.”

 

I’m glad I braved the elements and the industrial militants to attend this event. Thanks to Rob Brotherton and everybody who organizes Greenwich SiTP, as much as I disagree with their conclusions. I’ve always needed to hear both sides of every argument and this is not the first time I’ve been to Skeptics in the Pub. The more I do so the more sure I am that I’m taking the right line.

See here for my previous reports on SiTP: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2008/09/skeptic-in-pub-15908.html.

And: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2008/08/skeptics-in-pub-18808.html.

And: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2008/12/skeptic-in-pub-81208.html.

NASA sued over Mars Anomaly

Dr Rhawn Joseph is neurologist from California, but also a very open-minded and observant researcher into many esoteric subjects, see: http://cosmology.com/. He's a keen student of panspermia, the theory that life and organic material can travel through space by natural means; this has been researched in depth by Prof. Chandra Wickramasinghe, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/exopolitics-2013-astrobiology.html. Many times now spacecraft visiting other planets have spotted strange phenomena that could indicate the presence of life, or even of intelligent life on Mars in the distant past; the Face on Mars is the best example of this, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2007/08/face-on-mars.html. It was spotted by NASA's Viking spacecraft in 1976, but since then numerous other anomalies have been discovered. The most recent is what's become known as the "jelly doughnut", so called because of its shape, that it looks like a rough white bowl or torus with a red interior. It's an object that has been officially labelled a "rock" that was photographed lying on the ground by the Opportunity Rover on January the 8th; however a photograph of the same spot on December the 28th showed nothing there. Rhawn Joseph thinks the object resembles an Apothecia fungus which is a common species on Earth; could something similar have evolved on Mars? The Opportunity mission director Steve Squyres says that the object is probably from part of a nearby pile of stones that was dislodged by the vehicle's wheels. I wonder if they'll image that spot again in another few days to see if the "rock" is still there. Dr Joseph is not waiting for them; he believes that the answer given by NASA is so unsatisfactory that he's launched a lawsuit against the agency and its director Charles Bolden. He hopes to force NASA to reinvestigate this, the possibility of life on Mars; after all the professed purpose of these space missions, with all the taxpayer's money spent on them, is to "look for signs of life". Incidentally, I'm also intrigued by how the ground underneath the object resembles very old paving.

The question is, if NASA has gone to so much effort to send spacecraft to other planets to look for evidence that Earth is not the only place in the universe with life on it, why would they be so swift to reject data that supports the presence of life on Mars? There could be several reasons, psychological, cultural and political. In 1960, at the dawn of the Space Age, the year before the first manned space flight was launched, the Brookings Institution, a "policy analysis" organization, published a report called Proposed Studies on the Implications of Peaceful Space Activities for Human Affairs. This effusively-titled document contains a chapter on the eventuality of human space missions discovering extraterrestrial life. All different kinds of hypothetical scenarioes are discussed, from discovering microbial life in meteors, something which has actually happened, to full-on encounters with advanced alien intelligences. The report did not openly recommend a cover-up, but it did say that the stability of human society might be threatened by such revelations and there were "certain circumstances" in which it might not be a good idea to shout the news from the rooftops, see: http://www.enterprisemission.com/brooking.html. If NASA's management is still governed by policy influenced by the Brookings report then this could explain the reticence and furtiveness that has so irked Dr Joseph. The depth and complexity of this issue goes beyond the Brookings report and into the realms of ET Disclosure. NASA, being the front line of the public's involvement with space, may well be under the directorship of those who are very well aware that there is an extraterrestrial intelligence out there in space... not only out there but down here on Earth with us! See: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/happy-disclosure-day.html. This secret is getting harder and harder to keep. One does not need to go as far as Mars to find such anomalies; they've been spotted hundreds of times closer, on the moon, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/mystery-object-spotted-on-moon.html. Dr Joseph has a major battle on his hands; he is trying to shift an immoveable object, but I hope he finds encouragement from the support we give him as well as the knowledge that the truth is an irresistible force.

The Oxford Pound

One of my favourite subjects is liberation economics and I've written about it many times before. Go to these links for essential background to this subject:

See: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2008/04/welsh-pound.html.

And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2008/09/archers-local-economy.html.

And: http://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/programme-27-podcast-economics.html.

I'm proud to say that Oxford, my own hometown, is now a pioneer in this department. We now have our own "complimentary currency", see: http://www.oxfordpound.org.uk/. Here's a news story about it: http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/10490331.Hoping_to_be_quids_in_with_an_Oxford_pound/?ref=rc. This is a system of economic exchange that is intended to be used within a small-scale local area, and it is run independently of the usual banks, governments and other monetary authorities. One needs to sit back for a moment and think carefully about the implications of that; the links above will give you an idea. Small independent currencies have saved lives! The Ithaca Hour of New York State, USA certainly did in the terrible aftermath of the 1929 stock market crash; and it's still in circulation today. Now Oxford has joined this noble quest, and this is wonderful news after the sad demise of The People's Supermarket on Cowley Road, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/new-tesco.html. The Oxford Pound is being coordinated by the Turl Street Kitchen, a charming little place in the University heartland of the city centre, see: http://www.turlstreetkitchen.co.uk/. It's going to be modelled on highly successful schemes that are already established in other areas, like the Bristol Pound and the Totnes Pound. In terms of the danger of economic oppression, nothing gives me more hope than news like this; we're looking at people in a local community proactively cooperating and taking control of their own lives, not sitting around waiting for their governments to save them, governments who are the very people who ruined them in the first place. To say that I wish the Oxford Pound luck would be a gross understatement; I hope to have a wallet full of them soon.

Fake Snow

An unsettling new phenomenon has emerged in the last week or two, one possibly related to geoengineering; it's been reported mostly in North America, but stories are coming in of it appearing in Germany and a few other locations. It is usually known as "fake snow" and there are many YouTube videos going round which show it, eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnTJTP-_uYw. It falls like ordinary snow, in cold weather and over large areas, but it doesn't behave like it. Firstly, it doesn't appear to melt when exposed to warmth, like when you bring a clump of it indoors. Even when exposed to a flame it remains solid. After a while, if you burn it fiercely, it evaporates into a pungent gas whose stench has been described as "like plastic". It also leaves behind a black residue. Explanations have been tabled that the snow is perfectly normal and that the smell and black deposit are caused by the fuel in the cigarette lighters people have been using to test it. Here's a video along those lines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US6LmLeGRHI. However, this video does not recreate the effect observed by the witnesses; you don't get the same blackness and he doesn't mention the smell. What's more this man admits that the snow specimen he uses is not pure and contains bits of twig from a tree in his garden. He describes the fuel in the lighter, butane, as a "burning dirty", however I've never seen butane produce soot before; and it's pretty odourless when burned. Only if you break the lighter and release the unburned gas do you get that strong petrochemical smell. Another explanation is that the snow "sublimes" before it melts, changes straight from a solid to a gaseous state, skipping the liquid intermediary. This is quite a bold assertion when you consider that the material has to leap from 0 to 100 degrees centigrade instantly.

What the fake snow actually is, I don't know. It has not snowed at all this winter where I live, southern England, because of the crazy weather we've had so far in this so-called "winter". But the polar vortex which caused the extremely mild and wet weather we've had in Europe also generated a prolonged and intense cold snap in North America, where most of the fake snow reports are coming out. Could the fake snow actually be frozen chemtrails? If anybody finds some fake snow near them, could they keep hold of it, put it in an old jar or something, because it can be analyzed in a laboratory. Cliff Carnicom has been doing experiments on water related to chemtrails for years and would be very interested in snow too, see: http://www.carnicominstitute.org/. This is just the latest in a whole series of odd environmental conditions, like the "weird foam" coming from the sea; this has happened in so many places, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYi4Ckeb7gQ, and: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRft47r9NAY, and this one from Donegal, Ireland, just happened last night: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26005500. Could these events be linked? Quite possibly, and they may well be the product of geoengineering.

UFO under Temple in India

One of the most extraordinary and mysterious buildings ever constructed is the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Trivandrum on the far south coast of India opposite the island of Sri Lanka, in the state of Kerala. One of the wonders of the world, its origins lie hidden by the mists of time, yet its oldest shrines can be found in records dating back to the 9th century. It was dedicated to the Lord Vishnu and the centrepiece is a sublime statue of Vishnu reclining on the back of a snake with five heads called Adisesha, the Serpent of Contemplation. The inner temple, known as the "Sanctum Sanctorum", can only be entered by devout worshippers who follow a strict dress-code. The biggest enigmas of the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple are the famous underground vaults or kallaras which lie within the twenty foot thick stone foundations of the main shrine. There are six vaults, labelled A, B, C, D, E and F, and there are endless tales and legends associated with them, the presence of great treasures and ancient manuscripts. However vaults C to F are only ever entered by the Mantrikas, the high priests of the Temple, and they are bound by a strict code of silence regarding anything within them that they tend.

The Temple is run by a trust headed by the Royal family of Trivandrum. The incumbent King, or Maharaja, of Trivandrum has stated that the underground section of the Temple is a holy place, a bit like the Tabernacle in the Bible, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/ark-of-covenant.html. However in January of 2011 he lost a case in the Kerala High Court against a lawyer and devotee of the Temple, TP Sundara Rajan. Rajan has demanded that the vaults all be opened and inspected in accordance with government regulations. The King went to the Supreme Court of India to try to overturn the verdict, but he failed and in July of 2011 the doors to vaults C to F were opened in the presence of a seventeen member committee made up of government officials and a German travel journalist, Thomas Ritter. It turned out that the legends were true; the vaults contain a vast hoard of golden coins, silver jewellery, statues made of gold and studded with diamonds, rubies and emeralds. There were countless other items of phenomenal monetary and historical value. The newest items are French Napoleonic cash, but there are also Roman and other kinds of coinage dating back much earlier. A detailed inventory was collated of every object and then management of the vaults was handed straight back to the priests. But for the sake of security the Kerala government immediately deployed police commandos to guard the Temple twenty-four-seven. A few weeks after that, vault A was opened for the first time in several centuries, with some trepidation, it too contained priceless antiquities of heritage; the inventory of this vault is still in progress. However the inspection was not completed; vault B was not opened. Despite the Supreme Court order enabling them, Rajan's committee decided to postpone the opening of vault B, or the Mahabharata Konathu Kallara, as it is also known. This particular vault has never been opened in living memory and there are no records of it ever having been opened. It is sealed shut with a heavy solid cast iron door without a latch, so opening it would be extremely difficult. It would probably require the use of heavy industrial methods, like explosives or a blowtorch, to force the door, in doing so badly damage it. The Temple priesthood has advised against this and the court has temporarily withdrawn its consent. According to Temple lore, the door was originally shut and locked by the divine power of Lord Vishnu himself, wielded by the priests of long ago chanting special prayers called Naga Bandham and Naga Passam mantras. The only way to open the door is to chant what is known as the Garuda mantra. However there are said to be no priests in India today who are qualified to chant that prayer and so the door cannot be opened until there are. There is an emblem carved on the door of a cobra, the symbol of something sacred and forbidden. The priests' advice to the committee is not just because the interior of vault B is especially holy, although it undoubtedly is; it's that forcing their way into the vault could be extremely dangerous.

There are no English language news spots on this subject that I can find; here's one in the local vernacular of Kerala: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Mm7LyzfbIc. I only learnt about this from an article written by the above mentioned Thomas Ritter published in Nexus, see: https://www.nexusmagazine.com/products/nexus-magazines/volume-20/nexus-vol-20-no-3-apr-may-2013-detail. Speculation about what lies within vault B is rife, as are the consequences of any wrongful breaching of the door. It might contain a vial of toxic chemicals or deadly bacteria. Another possibility is that it is flooded; the vault is simply the end of a tunnel that is filled with seawater from the nearby Indian Ocean. If the door were forced, the water would burst forth and drown whoever did it. The priesthood is adamant that the result would be a catastrophe wreaked by Lord Vishnu on Kerala, India and even the entire world. Another theory is that the vault contains an extraterrestrial artefact. It's not unknown for items that fall down to Earth from space to be venerated by religious institutions. The sacred black Kaaba Stone in the heart of Mecca, and the focus of the entire faith of Islam, is probably a meteorite; and Credo Mutwa, the Zulu shaman, showed his necklace to David Icke and said that it contained "stones from another world", see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdZHCVvZbTY. Would artificial objects from out in space raise the same sacred instincts? Almost certainly. It's possible there might be something even stranger in there, like a stargate. The last unopened kallara might also contain a vimana, an object that the UFO community has heard a lot about in recent years. Vimanas are flying vehicles that are included in the Rigveda, India's oldest and most fundamental text and many subsequent Sanskrit epics. These aircraft are described in great detail, being piloted by both men and the gods. They are extremely powerful, able to fly right up into space, and are armed by weapons of terrible destructive potency. There are even instructions on their design and that the energy that propels them comes from pure mercury. This could be why a German U-boat was captured off the coast of Singapore just after the end of World War II carrying a cargo of mercury. Nobody knows where the submarine had come from or where it was heading, but the Nazi's were experimenting with esoteric anti-gravity power generators and levitation devices in the latter stages of the war, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skiOOKmB7GU. After the war we don't know what happened, but it's conceivable that the victorious Allies managed to obtain the results of this work via Project Paperclip and carry it on in secret in their own countries. If the mystifying and clandestine vault, deep below the great Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple in India, contains a vimana, or anything similar, whether built here on Earth or somewhere else, you can bet that the security in the compound will intensify considerably, and the opposite will happen to any news reports. Also visitors in dark suits from the USA or other countries might arrive on the scene. If this happens then it means that no catastrophe took place. We can at least take comfort from the fact that the door was opened properly without pissing off Lord Vishnu. 

Reply from a Robot

As regular HPANWO-readers will know, I've been involved in a minor issue regarding an unpaid mobile phone bill about which I recently posted an update, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/give-me-back-my-debt.html. I've received a reply from both O2 and also Lowell Portfolio I; strangely enough, even though there has been a delay of almost a month since I wrote to them, both letters arrived in the same post. This also happened last time they replied to me.

Here's O2's (with my comments in brackets):

Hello Benjamin, (Benjamin!? Nobody has called me that for years! My mother used to when she was angry with me.)

Telefonica O2 UK Ltd are registered under the FSA (Financial Services authority) and the deed of assignment will be in the terms and conditions that the customer agreed to where the contract was taken out. They were hold of personal copy of this themselves (sic) which was posted when the account was opened. If you'd like to review your copy please visit the O2 website.

02 are not bound by the CCA (Consumer Credit Association) like a bank or credit agreement and therefore do not have to issue a default notice or deed of assignment. This account has now been sold on to Lowell and we are unable to deal with your query.  Please contact Lowell directly in relation to this account.

Regards

O2 Debt Management Team.

So they're refusing to address the points I made in my original letter; they're simply hiding behind some clause of the FSA handbook which allows them to breach basic contract law and the fundamental rules of economics.

Let's have a look at the letter from Lowell:

Dear Mr Emlyn-Jones,

Thank you for taking time to contact us recently.

I confirm that your complaint has now been passed to the Customer Relations Department who will carry out a thorough investigation. We will investigate this as quickly as we can and we may need to contact you for further information to provide you with an update. If we can contact you by telephone, we will be able to discuss your concerns directly with you and hopefully agree a resolution with you verbally; this is the quickest and easiest way for us to resolve this for you. I would like to assure you that your account will be placed on hold, and we will stop all collections activity whilst dealing with your complaint. We enclose a copy of our internal complaints procedure for your information. Please take time to read this, as it explains following the steps we will follow in responding to your complaint.

In the meantime if you have any queries please do not hesitate to contact my team by calling the free telephone number which brings you directly through to the Customer Relations Department.

Yours sincerely,

(name)

Head of Compliance. Lowell Portfolio I Ltd

(The signature attached the name is printed)

Head of Compliance? Goodness, that sounds scary! Does he carry a whip and electric baton? This is quite clearly just a template letter with my name inserted. They send them off to anybody who initiates any kind of grievance against them. Clearly they're not going to answer my questions at this time.

What strikes me about both these letters is that I don't feel I'm dealing with a living person. The tone makes me feel I'm addressing a soulless machine. I wouldn't be surprised if I am, especially with the second letter. Of course I could always phone their helpline as they advise me to, but even then, how do I know I'm dealing with a human being? This chilling YouTube video demonstrates that I cannot know, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22ZaKbxmEMA. You can bet the programmers are right at this moment updating the software to make the voice able to say the words: "I am not a robot". 

One of my favourite films is Terry Gilliam's Brazil, see here for more details: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2008/12/hanged-hangman.html. Our real world is becoming more and more like the setting of that film. The machine is run by humans, but those humans are being encouraged to behave like machines; until such time as machines are sophisticated enough that they no longer need us. I don't believe there'll ever be a matrix-like situation in which machines willingly take over by themselves. There will always be people... or Reptilians... at the top of the heap and those machines will be merely the tools of those people. However, the control structure at the moment is still dependent on human acquiescence. Apart from David Icke, the thinker I most often like to site in my own literature is George Orwell. His novel Animal Farm was written as a fictional allegory of his viewpoint on the Marxist revolution in Russia, but it contains many more general themes that foresee his later work 1984. The setting is a farm in which the animals rebel against the farmer and his human staff; and they take it over and run it themselves, trying to make it a plentiful and just society. However their efforts fail because of corruption within the new regime. The pigs slowly but surely become the new controllers of the farm until they reach the point where they are indistinguishable from the pre-revolutionary human tyrants. One of the most interesting and poignant scenes is when an elderly cart horse, and the hardest working animal on the farm, falls ill. Instead of recognizing his dedication, arranging veterinary treatment for him, and looking after him for the rest of his life, the pigs sell him to a butcher and he is taken away to the abattoir. In the scene where the horse is driven out of the farm, the vehicle the butcher uses is a horse-drawn one. I found this curious because the book was written in the early-1940's when lorries were in common use. However there's a distinct reason why Orwell chose to make the horse's death-wagon a horse-drawn van. The other animals realize what's happening and call after the vehicle warning the horse and urging him to escape. But they also appeal to the two horses pulling the vehicle: "Comrades, comrades! Don't take your own brother to his death!" But the two horses pulling the van just keep on trotting along, obediently doing their jobs. And isn't that just like humans? That was Orwell's entire point. Imagine if those two horses had realized what they were doing and refused to pull the van. That is what we must all do if we're going to cast off the yoke of the New World Order and have our own "Animal Farm".

Goblin in a Suitcase scares Cops

An unsettling and intriguing incident has been reported in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. On Wednesday the 15th of January a family turned up at a police station near the Tshabalala district of the city with a suitcase that they say belonged to a lodger at their house. They were accompanied by a "traditional healer", which I assume means a native African shaman, a sangoma like Credo Mutwa, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdZHCVvZbTY. They opened the suitcase and the police gathered round to look. It contained what's been described as a "bottle of blood" from which a "goblin" leapt out. The creature ran around the police station causing mayhem; police officers and members of the public fled the building. Some had to climb out through windows. The entity was overpowered by the shaman who then burnt it to death. Nobody knows what become of the body. There are no photographs or CCTV images of the creature that have been so far published, but witnesses describe it as being dog-like with a reptilian appearance; all witnesses agree that it gave off a terrible stench. Bulawayo's police spokesman, Assistant Inspector Bhekimpilo Ndlovu released an official statement that the event did in fact happen. The suspicion at the moment lies with a criminal gang involved with witchcraft and the public were urged to stay vigilant. The lodger who owns the suitcase has disappeared. This story was reported in a number of mainstream and alternative media outlets that can all be traced back to this story from a local journal: http://bulawayo24.com/index-id-news-sc-local-byo-41479.html.

This is just one of a number of incidents involving strange creatures that have been reported from Africa in the last few years. This photograph was put online in August 2012 by a group of hunters from Namibia who shot the strange creature they're displaying: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C0db0vF5ac. This alarming entity is vaguely humanoid, but it could be an ape or monkey suffering from a deformity. However there was apparently a forest lair of four similar creatures; could four apes all be identically afflicted? Unfortunately the camera is badly focused; see how the man in the background is much clearer. The people took the body to the police who confiscated it; a "full forensic investigation" is supposedly underway, but there have been no updates since. So what was it? An extraterrestrial being? A hybrid of some kind? A cryptid? Or the product of some horrific experiment in a government laboratory? All these possibilities should be taken seriously. African folklore is packed with legends about unearthly monsters coming from the depths of the forest or conjured up by black magicians. One of the best known is the Tokoloshe of Zulu mythology; it is the theme of a controversial video Evil Boy by the South African rap band Die Antwood, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbW9JqM7vho. So does this connect with what appeared in that suitcase in Zimbabwe last week? Maybe. The "bottle of blood" might have been the container a sorcerer would need to blend the ingredients from which he could engender the beast. Alternatively it might have been a laboratory flask from a secret military base filled with suspension fluid or nutrient mixture in which a mutant was bred; the lodger could have been an ex-employee of the base on the run. This would make the "goblin" story very similar to the chupacabra or the products of Dulce Base, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzWGsO0F3b8. In the video linked above, Credo Mutwa reports how he was abducted and held at a deep underground military and/or extraterrestrial base on the South Africa-Mozambique border. It's difficult to know what is behind this peculiar occurrence at the police station. But we do know something very unusual has happened and maybe the police will release more information in due course. I'll be sure to let you know if they do