A Oneness of Mind - extracts

The Power of Collective Thought
and Signs of Our Times

 

A Oneness of Mind (book cover)From Chapter 1: ARMAGEDDON AND HOW TO AVOID IT

In the heady days of 1998, Millennium fever and end-of-the-world doomsday prophecy was beginning to grip the ‘alternative’ world as the year 2000 approached. With the media full of talk of the potential disasters which could befall humankind, was there a danger that the negative energy generated by all this gloom could, in itself, bring about the feared scenarios..?

Holst’s 'Mars – The Bringer of War' thunders out as a video is shown compiling images of mass-destruction; earthquakes, asteroid strikes, nuclear bombs, tidal waves As this plays, the tall dark figure of the Grim Reaper enters the auditorium, menacingly wielding a scythe. Andy arrives in one of the aisles and brings this dramatic entrance to a sudden deflating halt, shouting over the music, which is unceremoniously cut off. He sends the Reaper on his way, who, looking dejected, slinks off down the aisle apologetically .

Armageddon… coming to a planet near you soon. Or so we’re told by many sources. As the Millennium approaches, it’s fascinating to see how many people are coming to the conclusion that there’s some huge change for our Earth in the offing, that something truly transformational is around the corner. But what’s disturbing is how an increasing number are coming to see this change in a negative light. There is a lot of Armageddon-speak in the air.

This air of gloom has been reflected in the crop circle world of late. In 1995, a striking formation was found at Longwood Warren, Hampshire. A number of people got rather upset by this because it appeared to show a diagram of our inner solar system - minus the Earth. A ring marked its orbit, but, unlike the other planets, there was no smaller ring showing where we are on the map. There have been varying interpretations of this design, but many have seen the absence of the Earth from the diagram as some kind of warning that our planet may not be on the map for much longer Is this reading of the pattern correct, or unduly negative?

There have been a number of other formations over the years which have got people going in similar ways. Last year, in 1997, we received a formation at Etchilhampton, Wiltshire, comprising a circle around a rectangular grid of 780 boxes – 26 along one side, 30 along the other. Michael Glickman pointed out that it looked like a calendar grid. Taking the calendar idea further, he realised that if you take the 26 as referring to weeks, and times this by the 30, it gives you a period of 15 years. Counting 15 years from 1997, of course, takes you to the year 2012...

What we in western reckoning call 2012 is a very significant date – perhaps the most significant! – in the ancient Mayan ‘Long Count’ calendar. The Mayans were master astronomers and mathematicians, and projected their calendars into the future, accurately anticipating certain astronomical events, particularly solar eclipses. In what we call 2012, the end of time as we have known it is signified, for that’s when they believed the cycle of life would start again – one major era ends, and a new one begins on a higher plain. Many people see this in terms of the ‘end of the world’ – and believe this is what such formations are warning us about. [2012 expert Geoff Stray has since discovered that the Etchilhampton formation is indeed exactly the value of three ‘Tzolkins’ – the measurement of the Mayan calendar.]

Just to add fuel to the flames, this year, at West Overton, Wiltshire, we have a crop pattern that appears to depict a comet or asteroid heading towards what might be the Earth. Understandably, a few people are beginning to get a little bit worried about such portentous glyphs, perhaps with good reason. What if the crop circles are a warning? What if something is telling us that our time is about to end and that we had better pull ourselves into some kind of good state while there is still time? Of course, it is not just the crop circles which have led people to think there’s something big on its way. Psychics and channellers have long been saying that a huge crisis is coming. Predictions of what they call ‘earth changes’ hint at massive alterations to our planet. Some see this in terms of upheaval and devastation. Ultimately, the changes are supposed to be very positive, a transformation that we need to go through, but destruction and trauma seem to have to come first. As far back as the earlier part of the 20th Century, visionaries like Edgar Cayce were predicting such things. What is very interesting is that new psychics without any knowledge of this kind of stuff are still receiving similar information. I know a lady who started channelling through ‘automatic writing’ and knew absolutely nothing about all the Cayce-type predictions. Yet she started coming through with almost identical predictions – axis tilts, warnings of earth changes, big wars and the like. This is typical of what many psychics receive. With so many different sources picking up on the same thing, it’s easy for people to say "They must be right, there’s some big event in the offing". Maybe what we’re getting is an echo from the future, a ripple backwards in time from something of great magnitude [see World War Three and Other Non-Events for more on this idea]. But are things quite as straightforward as that?

It’s curious to see that as well as crop circles and visions from people like Cayce, which appear to forewarn of massive turmoil, many other phenomena have led people to the same general vision. UFOs, for instance, have long been appearing, and more and more people are beginning to see these signs in the sky in terms of heralding some imminent developmental leap for humanity. Some who claim to have been abducted by extra-terrestrials report having been shown visions of incredible changes to our planet, often involving destruction coming down from the sky, great earthquakes and the tilting of the Earth's axis.

Religious apparitions are another source of earth change predictions. It is claimed that Jesus, Mary and various other religious figures, have appeared to people around the world on notable occasions. These icons are not my personal salvation, but I don’t doubt that people do see these visions. It’s hard to scoff at apparitions witnessed simultaneously sometimes by hundreds of people, or, as at Fatima, Portugal in 1917, several thousand people. At Fatima, at the apparent behest of the Virgin Mary, the Sun allegedly ‘danced in the sky’. Certainly, some kind of huge light whizzed around, though one can presume it wasn’t actually the Sun, otherwise the Earth would have spun off its axis back then! But what was believed to be the Sun manouevred in the sky, perceived by the watchers to be proof that this vision of Mary was real and that her warnings should be heeded - warnings she gave to a small group of children concerning apocalyptic changes. The Vatican has since played down the significance of the predictions, saying they referred to events which have already come to pass, but many doubt this and believe the Catholic church is concealing a frightening prophecy.

What’s very interesting is that the behaviour of the light witnessed at Fatima is extremely similar to the behaviour of lights seen in some UFO sightings. Several ufologists have remarked that the reports suggest classic UFO phenomena.

People who have been present at such apparitions – and there have been many others around the world besides Fatima over the years – have made some very curious observations, the most important of which is that witnesses with a very religious mindset tend to see Mary or Jesus standing before them, and describe them in great detail, her robes, his wounds, or whatever. However, the non-religious just see a shimmering light. They both see something, but in different ways. This is fascinating. People appear to be receiving these things in whatever frame of reference it most makes sense to them in.

Another paranormal religious phenomenon is stigmata, where people – or statues! - begin to bleed with the wounds of Christ. There have been a number of famous statues which have rather morosely bled and wept all over the world, drawing devotees and pilgrims. Of course, the sceptics state it’s a load of old nonsense, and talk of condensation and the suchlike. From the reports, it’s hard to see that this explains everything. There’s too much of it going on. Personally, I believe what we are seeing is a form of collective psychokinesis, a psychic force which is breaking out in a very, very big way around the world, making itself known through all sorts of channels. I see all these as tips of a multi-tipped iceberg, which includes crop circles and UFOs. It would appear to be the same thing trying to break through with some kind of message in whatever way it needs to for people to understand it. Those who don’t respond to religious figures get secular shapes in the fields. Those who don’t respond to shapes in the fields get lights in the sky. Those who don’t respond to those get channelled messages and psychic visions and so on.

The unifying factor is that all these phenomena bring people to the same point – to a state of expectancy of something ‘big’ on its way. But increasingly people are turning this expectancy to the apocalypse/Armageddon view. ‘Armageddon’ actually refers to a specific battle predicted by the bible to occur at a place called Meggido, and ‘Apocalypse’ actually means ‘revelation’, but, in many people’s minds, they mean global destruction – nuclear conflict, earthquakes, volcanoes, asteroid strikes, flood and famine - and therein lies the danger.

Some of those who gloomily await the outcome of these predictions have come to the conclusion that the visions mean there is nothing which can be done about them. There are certainly many, many things wrong with our civilisation, but a growing number believe there is no way around these problems without some huge, devastating and destructive change, something which will really rattle us. I don’t agree. Change is needed, but surely it’s a total abdication of our responsibilities to sit back, as some people do, and say, "Well, I can’t do anything about it! It doesn’t matter; it’s all going to blow up soon anyway. I’ll just sit here and wait for the Lord/UFOs/Spiritual Masters to save me."

It frightens me how many people have this waiting-to-be-saved attitude. Does it occur to them to think, as they just sit there on their bottoms, "Well, hang on, could I alter this? Could I help make these changes without having all this destruction?" Too many have decided that future events are carved in stone, and that there is no way of affecting them. I’d like to challenge this perception. If, as so many say, we create our own reality, then surely the more people who expect some kind of Armageddon, the more likely it is to happen? We know from many experiments which have been carried out over the years that there have been enough examples to prove beyond any doubt that consciousness changes matter. Quantum physics suggested this back in the 1930s, and scientists have been trying to cover it up ever since, seemingly burying the results in jargon to avoid too many realising that consciousness does indeed influence the material world - and that science has proved it. Truly, there is a ‘power of the mind’.

This power has been demonstrated on notable occasions in the crop circle world. People have influenced the creation of crop formations with their minds. In recent years there has been a slight but notable move away from the concept of all-powerful, all-knowing celestial circlemakers who have come to save us all. An increasing number are coming to believe there is some element of collective outpouring in the circle-making process, and that the mass-consciousness of people may actually be affecting – or creating - the phenomenon.

At Oliver’s Castle, Wiltshire in 1992, a group from the organisation CSETI, who try to contact extra-terrestrials by using meditation and flashing lights into the sky, concentrated on their logo one night, asking for it to be created as a crop circle. This logo appeared in the fields as a formation that very night. One could say this was a coincidence, but it’s hard to dismiss it as such when there have been so many other cases of people carrying out similar experiments with success.

Members from my own group, Southern Circular Research, tried a number of experiments in Sussex using meditation and psychics. In 1995, we sat up on the side of Wolstonbury Hill (near Hurstpierpoint) one evening and concentrated our minds, using crystals, seated on specifically dowsed earth energy lines. We had a certain shape we expected would appear. Lo and behold, that night exactly that shape appeared as a formation at Felbridge, West Sussex. We didn’t make it, and no-one outside the group knew of our work. There are so many other cases of people influencing the arrival of circles just by the power of thought. There are well-documented reports of even individuals asking for certain patterns at certain places, and those very shapes then appearing soon after.

Experiments with telekinesis under laboratory conditions have shown quite clearly that matter can be affected by mind. Work with ‘Random Number Generators’ (RNGs) suggests there is a field around us which responds to thought, indeed is thought. There is now an active programme around the world of RNGs, computers sitting there in sealed rooms streaming out meaningless figures. Yet these can be influenced to create specific sequences of numbers by collective world events through seemingly non-physical means. Comparison to the times of large global happenings, in which many minds are focused on single events such as big news stories or New Year’s Eve celebrations, sees the RNGs produce streams of specific numbers at much higher rates [further chapters go into more detail on RNG experiments]. The implications of these results are profound...

[The chapter goes on to look more deeply into the concept of collective consciousness, its effects and implications for how we might avert doomsday scenarios and improve our day-to-day lives...]

From Chapter 3: CONSPIRACY AND HOW TO LIVE WITH IT

In 2000, everyone in the ‘alternative community’ was talking about lizards. Shape-shifting extra-terrestrial lizards, that is, taking over the world from their positions of power and influence. Other global conspiracy theories fought for their place alongside. But what real difference does believing in such shadowy threats make to the situation? If conspiracy is all around, how do we deal with it in our day to day lives..?

The Union Jack is displayed on the screen. The epic strains of Rule Britannia pipe up. Andy comes through the auditorium waving a huge Union Jack, singing along with the music, encouraging the audience to do the same. As the music fades, the flag is tossed aside into the wings.

What a way to treat the British flag Union Jacks! England’s glory! This blessed plot! This morning I want to get your patriotic hearts going. [Jokingly:] Even if you are not British, you will know that Great Britain is the seat of real power in the world, as we shall see.

Now this particular Symposium is a very special one. This is the 10th anniversary of the Glastonbury Symposium and because it’s our anniversary, we have a very special guest, who has come to give us a birthday greeting this morning. So, please welcome - Her Majesty, The Queen.

The British National Anthem starts. Andy encourages an amazed audience to stand up in respect. Accompanied by co-MC Karen Douglas, on comes ‘The Queen’ in a fetching pink outfit and matching handbag, wearing a suspiciously dodgy cardboard Queen mask. Andy belts out ‘God Save the Queen’ along with the music.

[Respectfully:] Your Majesty, this is the hugest honour that has ever, ever been bestowed upon us. Do you have any special words for us today?

Queen: "It gives me great pleasure to be here on the 10th anniversary of the Glastonbury Symposium"

Hold on! Something’s not quite right. Your Majesty, excuse me for being rude, but isn’t there something wrong – with your face?!

Andy rips off the Queen mask - revealing an evil-looking green alien beneath. At this, the ‘Queen’ hisses and begins to throttle him. A couple of audience members pelt up on stage and try to drag her off. A struggle ensues. Eventually, she is dragged away

I can’t believe it! The Queen is an extra-terrestrial reptile! How can this be? Are David Icke’s theories true? Could it be that the Queen is really a blood-sucking shape-shifting alien? Does the Queen Mother sacrifice babies at Balmoral? And if it’s true that the Queen is an extra-terrestrial lizard, what other hidden forces govern our world? Is everything one great big conspiracy? What is amazing is how many people are now genuinely willing to believe – and I don’t know whether they’re right or wrong – that the Royal Family are, in fact, extra-terrestrials who long ago seeded themselves on Earth, infiltrating the higher echelons of society to keep humanity enslaved to their evil alien whims, maintaining the purity of the alien bloodline.

Presumably, if all this is true, it follows that Prince William is also a lizard. All the girls fancy him now, but wait until that mask comes off... His wife will have a shock on her wedding night.

A very interesting court case took place recently. Neil Hamilton was a House of Commons MP for a number of years, and suddenly he was accused of being involved in a ‘cash for questions’ sleaze racket. The allegation was that he took large amounts of money from people and, in return, asked the question the payer wanted raised in Parliament. Very naughty. Though he denies the allegations, nevertheless he lost his position as MP.

As a direct result of this scandal, an amazing court case took place with Mohammed Al Fayed, a rich and very influential businessman, owner of the London store Harrods. He has a standing grudge against the Government because, try as he might, he cannot get a British passport out of them [he has since moved to Switzerland]. When the ‘cash for questions’ row hit the tabloids, Al Fayed confessed publicly that Neil Hamilton had taken money from him to ask a question in Parliament, a statement that was blasted across the British media.

Enraged, Neil Hamilton and his high-profile wife Christine took Al Fayed to court, denying that they had ever taken money from him. The case went on for weeks and weeks, and yet, though they thought they had a watertight case, astonishingly (to them) the Hamiltons lost their case. The jury believed that Al Fayed had told the truth, and that he had given them money.

What is of real interest in all this is what was said during the trial. Mohammed Al Fayed is the father of Dodi Fayed, who died in the horrific car crash which killed Princess Diana. If you weren’t here in the UK when Diana died, you may not have appreciated the atmosphere which pervaded the country in the wake of her loss – it was unbelievable. Nothing like it had been experienced in British life for many years. It was like everyone had lost their mother, or sister, overnight. The upwelling of collective grief was massive.

However, during the course of the Hamilton trial, Mohammed Al Fayed got up in court and openly accused the Royal Family - ! - of having murdered Princess Diana. He said that Prince Philip, in particular, had conspired with his aides to kill her. How and why are for others to consider. Was the driver really drunk? Was there another car involved in the crash, deliberately driving the Mercedes into the wall? Why were the security cameras in the underpass area turned off at the time? Maybe we will never know. But wouldn’t you think, with an accusation as shocking as Al Fayed’s, that everybody would have raged, "What! How can he say that?!" However, despite those who simply laughed such a suggestion off, amazingly a lot of people were quite happy to accept this idea as a possibility, almost with a resigned shrug. Have we got so used to the idea of having conspiracy all around us that we can quite happily accept that Princess Diana was murdered by the Royal Family? Maybe we have. That’s an incredible thing. Polls have shown that a surprisingly large number of people believe there was a conspiracy to murder Diana.

But what do we find ourselves doing about this? What difference does it make to our lives that we suspect somebody somewhere along the line, be they the Royal Family, arms dealers or whatever, actually went so far as to kill our Princess? Who has said "Quick, stop them! We must find them! Let’s do something about it – now"? Most people simply turn the page of the newspaper and move on to something else. We’ve got used to conspiracy.

This whole concept that there are these conspiracies around us has become part of the fabric of our lives. We take it in our stride. There’s a lot of fuss, for instance, about the American dollar bill bearing the Great Seal – the ‘all-seeing eye’ on the top of the pyramid. Conspiracy theorists have said this is obvious evidence that the whole of the American constitution was set up as a conspiratorial Freemason-controlled entity out to rule our lives. Many believe this - but we all accept it. There it is in our faces, the all-seeing eye in the wallets of every American citizen. But no-one objects to using these wicked pieces of paper; they just use them, because there’s no other currency. So, we accept there is a level of conspiracy at work in the world banks, and that the money we use is controlled by forces beyond our influence. We let it go on around us. It is our own complacency and docility that permits what conspiracy there is to flourish. Nobody allows it to happen but us!

The crop circle world is a good microcosm of global conspiracy theory. Let’s go through a few conspiracy stories...

[The chapter goes on to look at different aspects of many conspiracy theories, challenging our preconceptions and reactions to it, and looking at how WE have to make a difference in the way we live our personal lives, feeding positively into the collective mind...]

From Chapter 5: WORLD WAR THREE AND OTHER NON-EVENTS

In the post-September 11th summer of 2002, with the Taliban crushed, it was becoming clearer that America and Britain weren’t going to stop there. As plans were drawn up to make trouble for Iraq as a follow-up (coming to horrible fruition just months later), a climate of fear was being deliberately cranked up, leading many to shivers that a third global conflict was in the offing. But how much was fear-based illusion over reality, and what effect was that fear having on the collective consciousness..?

A video is shown, The Day Today, a BBC satirical ‘news’ programme. The Jeremy Paxman-like interviewer (Chris Morris) manages to crank up a perfectly run-of-the-mill interview between two country’s politicians into an open conflict between them until war is declared on air! At this, the TV studio is instantly transformed into an over-the-top ‘War’ setting, mocking the way television delights in conflict as mass entertainment. The video cuts to shocking images of real war, set against the mournful opening tones of Two Tribes by the band Frankie Goes to Hollywood. The song hits full blast. Andy enters, wearing a gasmask, as the song and video end with an onscreen bang

War, what is it good for, eh? [Audience dutifully answers: "Absolutely nothing!"] What you saw there was a BBC spoof programme called The Day Today. It makes the point that when the media is presented with something bad, it can often make it worse, enabling small situations to become large situations very, very quickly. This is not to lay the blame for war on the media, of course; they’re simply the people who report it. But the way things are related and handled can have a big effect. And sometimes we ourselves are to blame for cranking up situations which might have been calmer if treated differently.

Now, we all know what happened on September 11th 2001. What is of interest here is the way the ‘alternative’ community responded to it last year. There were many e-mails floating around in the wake of the events, a great outpouring of feeling. Everyone had seen these television images of the towers and the Pentagon and was witnessing the political threats of hellfire which followed from it. What really astonished me was how many people were screaming "This is it, it’s the end - oh my God, it’s World War Three!" It wasn’t just one or two e-mails – many of them were spreading doom-laden panic about an impending world war. But it wasn’t World War Three – World War Three failed to commence, and it still hasn’t commenced I am pleased to say. What we got instead was, in fact, a simple attack on Afghanistan – more of a rout really. But it certainly wasn’t a third world war.

Many ‘alternative’ thinkers secretly believe that they have access to a certain higher ‘knowledge’, a more enlightened attitude to the world, if you like. Sometimes it can border on egotistical superiority if this isn’t held in check. But those who do consider themselves to have a slightly different and more, shall we say, illuminated view than some other people, surely have a responsibility to try to make a difference? Whilst we alternative-types may all like to talk about going out and creating this lovely new spiritual world, we’ve still got to deal with some practical realities. If too many people go out and pull triggers or push buttons tomorrow, there may not be time to build a new world. So we have to address some very serious issues in practical ways – and right now, an overriding issue is the spreading of FEAR.

You will have all seen on your televisions and in the newspapers the incredible amount of fear which has been generated since the September 11th attacks. And it’s not going away – indeed, the fear is actually mounting. This is not helped by the fact that we’re all very quick to see the worst in events. Through our fear, we can swiftly jump to the conclusion "Oh no, this is it!" before it actually is ‘it’. Fear is the most dangerous ingredient in what is - as we shall see – a very powerful process.

Back in the 1991 Gulf War, many said "It’s World War Three." I can remember people in pubs gloomily looking into their beer saying "Well, this is it, it’s the beginning of a third world war." But, once again, it wasn’t. And, going back before that, even with the Falklands War - an argument over two sheep, a bit of grass and a post office! - I can remember people in England saying that it might be the start of a global conflict. So the process of fear spreads very easily and, unfortunately, we can find ourselves succumbing to it without always realising.

This is not to say that there is no risk of a global conflict, because, of course, there is. But we have to be careful. Fear can create a self-fulfilling reality. It’s the collective will that holds the key here and we’ve got to contain our fears if we want to avoid a global conflict situation. That’s why I’ve called this presentation World War Three and Other Non-Events. Despite all the paranoid cries in the immediate wake of September 11th, the feared global conflict turned out to be a non-event. We have to make sure it remains a non-event.

Global conflicts are not caused by single occurrences. What happened at the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon was not going to be the cause of a world war overnight. It doesn’t work like that. People often say that World War One was started by the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Well, that might have been the final trigger, but, of course, there was a long series of events which built up to that. The shooting was just the final straw. Likewise, September 11th was the end process, if you like, of another series of events which we had little public awareness of - and therein lies part of the problem.

Putting aside conspiracy theory, and whether the attacks were ‘allowed’ to happen by whoever, one has to say, looking at the evidence, that al-Qaeda probably was responsible somewhere along the line, even if it was manipulated into a position of doing it. Assuming this link - whilst not in any way justifying or doing down the terrible events that happened on September 11th - you’ve got to look back through recent history to see the cause and effect process which led these people to carry this out.

We in the West were very quick to cry "Why us?", but if you read the works of, for instance, Noam Chomsky, particularly his current book 9/11, you’ll begin to realise why these attacks took place. It’s very illuminating because it reveals - again, without in any way justifying the terrible things that happened in the USA - exactly what we in the Western World have been doing to the Middle East and other parts of the world for years. The West has been sponsoring its own forms of terrorism when it suits, for many, many years. People who we’ll call ‘freedom fighters’ one day suddenly become ‘terrorists’ again on another, when we’ve dispensed with any use for them. The Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, for instance, were very handy to us in getting rid of the Taliban - but only a few years ago the Northern Alliance were classified as terrorists to be fought. So, Western politicians and businessmen manipulate and do all sorts of arms deals with all sorts of funny little groups as the mood takes them. To turn around and say, "Well, I can see no reason why these attacks happened" is really to be blind. There were reasons. Not justifications! But reasons; cause and effect led this to happen.

If people are looking to apportion blame for what happened - and lots of people still are - I think we have to remember the words of Kahlil Gibran, from the book The Prophet. I remember when I first read this passage years ago, I was quite shocked by it, and it’s still quite shocking. But when one takes a little time for the truth of these words to sink in, it’s very valuable. Gibran writes, in the voice of ‘The Prophet’:

"Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of you, but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world. But I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you, so the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also

"And this also, though the word lie heavy upon your hearts: The murdered is not unaccountable for his own murder, and the robbed is not blameless in being robbed. The righteous is not innocent of the deeds of the wicked, and the white-handed is not clean in the doings of the felon. Yea, the guilty is oftentimes the victim of the injured You cannot separate the just from the unjust and the good from the wicked, for they stand together before the face of the sun even as the black thread and the white are woven together. And when the black thread breaks, the weaver shall look into the whole cloth, and he shall examine the loom also."

They’re uncompromising words, but there’s a lot of truth and sensibility in there. And yet, in the wake of the attacks in America, what are the very things that have been stirred up by certain sections of society? – hatred, condemnation, blame, fear – continually. This is still going on. In a way, the blatant media manipulation has been even more shocking than the spoof we saw at the beginning of this presentation.

In the immediate aftermath of the September 11th attacks, a US television company broadcast images of Arabs apparently celebrating the downfall of America. This was supposed proof that the whole Arab world was celebrating this terrible destruction - yet it was a total lie. Those images were proven only about two days later to be from the 1991 Gulf War, showing Arabs celebrating the invasion of Kuwait. This blatantly false manipulation was broadcast absolutely knowingly. There was no way the people at the TV company could not have known what they were doing. They would have had to have gone into their archives and retrieved that footage with full awareness. It was deliberately broadcast as a piece of contemporary footage to stereotype the Arab world as evil. This stirring act of hatred and bias by the television company was a crime against humanity. It should not have gone unpunished, yet it did. In fact, the majority of the Arab world did not celebrate what happened on September 11th. There was a lot of condemnation that was not reported. Again, I urge you to read Noam Chomsky.

So, the propaganda of fear is all around us. There has been little official attempt from the various governments and authorities to really understand the whys of what happened on September 11th - instead they’ve used it. This situation has been used to spread fear and shut out the voice of anybody who might disagree with them. Totalitarian law - oppression – is being brought in without opposition in the name of protecting us from terrorism. We would never have stood still for some of these draconian interferences against freedom just a year ago. Now we have been led to beg for them.

As an example, here in the UK we’ve got a new law that came in which basically suspends ‘habeas corpus’, the act that states no-one can be kept locked up in prison without a charge. But now this law has been decreed not to apply to ‘foreign nationals’. So there are suddenly various groups of Middle Eastern people, previously living quite happily in Britain, who have been locked up. They’ve been detained for months with no charge. Even their families haven’t seen some of them for months. What is going on? This is not to say that some of them weren’t suspicious characters, but this cannot be right. These are the kinds of things that are being justified through all this fear.

Three years ago, I gave a talk at the Symposium about conspiracy theory [Chapter 3]. What is going on now is not conspiracy. The taking away of our freedoms, the imposition of new security measures it’s not conspiracy - it’s open policy. It’s in our faces! They’re doing it with our consent! So don’t talk to me about conspiracy - it’s blatant, as blatant as it could possibly be, and all sorts of dubious things are coming about now as a result of these new measures they say we need to protect us.

I was very interested to read that in the US they’re planning a programme of smallpox vaccinations for the entire population in case of a smallpox attack from terrorists. Putting aside the issue of the detrimental effects of some vaccinations, who’s going to benefit the most from that? The medical companies! All based on, and sponsored by, fear.

Most of all, what is constantly being cranked up now is the need for a good WAR – preferably against Iraq. It is blatantly obvious certain of our leaders are not going to countenance anything other than a war against Iraq. These leaders - in our names – are leading this little campaign of propaganda to make us all feel that attacking Iraq is the right thing to do.

Certainly, there are problems with Iraq. Clearly there are things to be done and clearly there are dangers. But, maybe there are other options. They say they have explored all other options, that there are no other options but war. But I don’t believe that’s true. There are other options that have not been looked at. The very word WAR, the ‘WAR on Terrorism’, for instance, is highly dubious. It shouldn’t really be called a war, but I think the word was very carefully chosen. The Cold War kept the Western economy bubbling along for a long time, but when that unexpectedly finished, it’s almost as if someone thought "Hmm, what shall we do now?" Hence, the War on Terrorism. What a fantastic idea; a war that can never end! There can never be an end to such a campaign in a million years, but forever we’re going to be saying "Well, we must fight the War on Terrorism", continually justifying this oppression, this taking away of freedoms, this increasing investment into weapons, boosting the arms industry yet further. A fantastic wheeze! And obviously, in the midst of this, it increases western imperialism in the Middle East. Quite clearly, a lot of what this is about is the expansion of our influence there, whether it be for oil or other undeclared agendas.

A contact of mine in the RAF told me categorically that the Americans already had their invasion of Afghanistan planned three months before the September 11th attacks took place. He knows because he was monitoring the planes coming into their bases. They knew something was in the offing. Again, you can say, well, did they know of the impending attacks on the USA and do nothing about it, or was it a coincidence? The fact is, we will never know for sure. Now, however, they want to go into Iraq.

So we’re being kept bubbling along on fear constantly. And whenever the fear feels like it’s going down a little bit, you’ll notice that they invent something to make you fearful again. The anthrax scare was a good example. Anthrax, in the wake of the terrorist attacks, begins to get mailed to various people in America. White powder comes out of envelopes and people get ill. The media was full of accusations of evil Arab towelhead terrorists sending this anthrax over. And who did it turn out to be? An American. It was nothing to do with the Arabs at all. It was a useful thing to keep going, though.

The anthrax thing has since been dropped somewhat, and more recently we’ve had talk about so-called ‘dirty bombs’, explosive devices using low grade radioactive waste. Never has such a device been used, yet our television and papers are full of the threat of it. That threat has been vastly exaggerated for effect. We will scare ourselves to death before anything else takes us to the grave. There is a risk, of course, and though it is a horrible thing to contemplate, it will be a surprise if we get through the next 25 years without a terrorist attack that involves a radioactive device of some kind. However, our fear is more deadly – and exploitable. Even the nuclear threat may be not quite what it seems, as we shall see.

There have now been a number of ‘mass-terror’ warnings trumpeted by governments and intelligence services, whole nations put on high security alert. Not one of these alerts has come to anything, yet no explanations nor apologies have been forthcoming afterwards. But they keep us on our toes. Basically, there has been a constant stream of fear-based stimulus to ‘manufacture our consent’, as Chomsky would say, to let the authorities do anything they like.

The fact that the vast majority of human beings cannot state a simple truth correctly without embellishing or forgetting something, is a point to remember. This is how hysteria begins. Someone who experiences a happening just a week before can relate a completely different version of events to somebody else you speak to. People can’t even tell you what happened just an hour ago without some shift of emphasis in the telling. So, with all this fear and hysteria going on, we don’t know where the reality is anymore. What is the real threat and what is exaggeration..?

[The chapter goes on to explore recent events, comparing them to scare stories of the past, and challenges our expectations and beliefs which generate or are susceptible to fear, feeding into the collective...]

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