27/06/2009 by AJ.

So, let’s see now.  It must be well over a year since I cut Aspartame out of my diet.  Of course, being a stocky fellow all my life, for far too long taking “Diet” and “Sugar Free” products seemed like a good idea.  Then I found out that not only was this additive an excitotoxin, but it also does the opposite of what it says.Have enough of it and it apparently makes you PUT ON weight.  The reason?  It allegedly makes you crave more food and more calories.  Not only that but it dumbs you down, in much the same way as apparently Fluoride does.  Find out more at http://www.dorway.com

What does all this have to do with the concept of ‘straw men’?  Well, I encountered the use of one this week, and it was in relation to Aspartame.  What this little anecdote will hopefully demonstrate is that many, many people are so conditioned to being their own sheepdogs, amongst the flock, that they actually don’t realise they are doing so.

Wind things back about a week.  Went to the local ‘cash and carry’ to pick up some supplies, and my eye was caught by a dozen-bottle pack of Kingstone Press Pear Cider.  Very reasonable price, and as their ordinary apple cider was already a hit at Cult TV Towers, well, why not try the pear variant?

The following day, and having been nicely cooled down in the fridge, I cracked open a bottle.  I was hit by a clawing taste which immediately raised my eyebrows.  This was a sweet cider, sure, but with a kickback that suggested something wasn’t right.  Checking the label, my worst fears were confirmed – “Contains a source of phenylalanine.” In other words, this was likely to be Aspartame, or one of the other similar patented artificial sweeteners that have no place in the human food chain.

In the true spirit of crusadership, which those who have woken from their slumber will know only too well, I fired an email off to the manufacturers; the core of which was as follows:

“Phenylalanine is a neurotoxin and excites the neurons in the brain to the point of cellular death. ADD/ADHD, emotional and behavioural disorders can all be triggered by too much Phenylalanine in the daily diet.

“You are likely using one of the Phenylalanine brands such as Aspartame.  The 1976 Groliers encyclopaedia states cancer cannot live without phenylalanine. Phenylalanine makes up 50% of Aspartame.

“In 2007, Sainsbury’s, M&S, and Asda all announced that they would no longer use Aspartame in their own label products.  I really think you should follow their example.”

Surprisingly, within a couple of days, I received a letter back from the manufacturers.  Included was a cheque for £15.00, which well-covered my initial outlay.  I have to say that I admire them for having written back.  That said, there are some clues in what they wrote which tell you things aren’t quite right.

First off, a confirmation that it WAS Aspartame in the pear cider. They explained the use of Aspartame as follows (and please note that, so far, I have yet to find any other cider on the market which contains it – let me know if you discover some so we can cut this practice off at the pass):

“Kingstone Pear Cider is a Medium Sweet Pear based cider of which the majority of sweetening comes from sugar.  A small amount of sweetener is added to prevent the product becoming too thick and heavy.”

Stop there, deep breath, step back, and look again at this… “too thick and heavy” … ?  Boy, the times I’ve cracked open a cider and had to ladle it out of its receptacle.  Thank goodness for Aspartame, or else we’d be still have to use a spoon to drink it!

Ah-hem.  Has to be said, if Aspartame was the ONLY answer to this problem, then every manufacturer would be using it.  Ooops, I’ll stop there.  I’ll be giving them ideas!

There was one other aspect to this reply letter which spoke volumes.  Below the date it said, in bold and underlined, “Without Prejudice”.  Those of you who have ever got into legal correspondence on any matter will know that, once this term is applied to a letter, then it means there’s a concern by the other party that the matter in question might end up in court.

So, little old me, noting the use of an excitotoxin in a bottle of cider, is causing concern to the manufacturers.  Enough to anticipate me to, potentially, take matters further.

Just think what would happen if we all did this?  Consumer pressure would soon take away the life-blood of Aspartame – by boycotting any products that contain it.

Which brings us to my ‘straw man’. With almost a whole case of pear cider in my possession, and the expense of it reimbursed, what to do?  I decided to take the bottles to work to give away.

Knowing how suspicious some of my colleagues are of freebies, I emailed the office with a quick explanation of why I was giving them away, summarised as a ‘warning’ in a couple of sentences and with a link to http://www.dorway.com – that way there would be no coming back later to me when they discovered the Aspartame within the gift.  After all, I didn’t want my own “Without Prejudice” letter coming from THEIR legal eagles!  Paranoid? No, just careful!

It was at this point that the ‘straw man’ entered the scene.  Someone decided they’d have a little fun, saying that I was absolutely right, that the cider WAS poison.  Unfortunately, they then thought the height of hilarity was to send a Wikipedia link to the dangers of alcohol consumption.

There then followed a couple of brief emails which demonstrated that people are pre-programmed to defend the status quo.  I think my email back was along the lines of “Ah-hah, the ‘straw man’ arrives”, which was then answered by telling me that the ‘straw man’ was in fact the ‘dangers of Aspartame’, and that they were only commenting on this ‘straw man’.  And it was just a ‘bit of fun’.

This demonstrates the level of deflection from investigation that goes on in the mindset of the general population.  I pointed out that the ‘straw man’ was actually them bringing up the ‘dangers of alcohol’, thus tarring my ‘dangers of Aspartame’ with the same brush.  This is how a ‘straw man’ works – it creates a barrier between the actual topics in hand and those folk you’re trying to pass information to.  In this case, we all know the dangers of alcohol, but the Aspartame is the unseen danger.  By making it seem the argument is actually about the alcohol in the cider rather than anything else, people don’t see the points as being separate.  They are lumped together in the mind; bowl the easy one over and the other, more difficult topic disappears from view, too.

Hence my point about members of the flock accidentally acting as their own sheepdogs.  It might have been intended as a jokey response; what actually happened was that it closed down the possibility of people taking the initiative and investigating Aspartame for themselves.

That wasn’t the end of the matter though.  A separate work colleague came up to me and revealed that my email had caused a lot of controversy.  Being ever-optimistic, I said that was good; after all, anything which helps people question what they are told can only be a positive result.  Oh, no, I’m informed, it was all about the alcohol in the cider.  I should be thinking of all those poor tramps in the park killing themselves with the cheap alcohol from supermarkets.

It’s at this point that, at last, I realised the true power of a ‘straw man’.  I hadn’t given the cider away because it was alcohol, but because it contained Aspartame.  None of them were talking about Aspartame being the reason for parting with the drink for nothing.  They had been completely distracted by blaming cider for causing drunken bums in their line of sight when walking around town.

In the same way as you see all politicians doing on the news, I got back on-topic and re-established this was all about Aspartame. As far as I was concerned, cider did not create the tramps, society created the tramps; in a free society it was their right to do whatever they liked, provided it didn’t interfere with anyone else in society.  True libertarianism, basically.  The tramps already knew the risk that alcohol caused to them, but they didn’t know what Aspartame did to them.  People have decisions to make in whatever they do; all I was doing was providing links to information, so that another of their choices was INFORMED - in this case on the consumption of Aspartame.

The colleague stopped dead in his tracks, and scuttled away.  What a very strange reaction, I thought. Had I made any progress on this?  We shall see, but I reckon there’s going to be a long road to travel yet.

All in all, this has been another one of those ‘Eureka’ moments in my life.  I’ve never thought of myself as a good debater, someone who could defend their point of view readily. Now I realise why… in most cases when I lost an argument, it was because, in the cold light of day, the course of the conversation had moved away from the point I was trying to make.

You have to be alert for what’s going on; mainly because some people have to win an argument, rather than reveal the truth.  It’s not ‘cognitive dissonance’ as such, it’s the competitive nature of our society.  In this little anecdote, the battle could ONLY be won by moving the topic to ground that the opponents were safe on.  If they don’t know anything about the topic in hand, they can’t win the ‘game’.

I think the best way to sum this all up is by adapting a quote from iconic football manager Bill Shankly: “Some people believe the truth is a matter of life and death; I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.”

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05/06/2009 by AJ.

First, apologies for being away from the blog for so long again.  There’s been so much to talk about, too - concerts by Ultravox and Gary Numan, doorstep encounters with people with religious convictions and political aspirations (them coming to me, I should state!), and incident upon incident where people all around are realising the World is just NOT making any sense in the way it is portrayed on the TV news and in the newspapers.

Exciting times, indeed, so here’s my first chance to sit down and tell you about what it was like working behind the scenes on the ALTERNATIVE VIEW conference last weekend.

I started off just by being a consultant, making the connection between the organisers and prospective venues.  When you do the negotiating you then sort-of become part of the team, so I was asked if I’d be the Hotel Liaision at the actual weekend itself.  I couldn’t argue with the logic, so I found myself right at the heart of things at the Thistle London Heathrow Hotel.

The first thing that struck me was the similarities on so many fronts to the Cult TV Festivals.  The attendees of AVII could have easily mingled with Cult TV delegates - all ordinary people, separated from the mainstream audiences only by their passion for particular subjects.  Indeed, senior hotel staff said of the AVII delegates that they were amazed at how reasonable a bunch of folk they all were.  I recall similar comments about Cult TV attendees of times past from hotel and holiday centre staff.

The way things worked out in the end saw all the aspects of the conference contained within the Thistle Heathrow conference centre itself - the Main Arena, the Workshop, the Traders’ Market, the Restaurant and Bar.  Nearly 500 people were present, with the major difference from Cult TV being that, when there was a talk going on in the Main Arena, virtually everyone was in that room, listening to the guest speakers.

I guess you don’t need to give too much choice when all the talks are jigsaw pieces that fit together to give the bigger picture.

In terms of atmosphere, AVII is less hectic but more intense than Cult TV. Most guest speakers were given an hour and a quarter, and then there were 15 or 30 minute breaks until the next speaker.  A couple of hours for lunch, a couple of hours for evening meal.  Last guest speaker concluding around 10pm to 10.30pm, and then late night entertainment in the form of a band and comedy from FKN News.

Oh, and the late night Baps on sale, to wash down the reasonably priced beer, lager, cider and wine, were simply divine!

With almost all of those booked into the hotel staying for either 2 or 3 nights (over two thirds of these took advantage of the cheaper rate you got for booking 3 nights), the bar stayed open on all of the nights beyond its scheduled 1.45am close.  Now THAT is another similarity with Cult TV - the networking going on was fantastic!

Friday didn’t really kick off until the evening; however, in the late afternoon everyone was buzzing when a BBC film crew turned up to interview some of the speakers and give an overview of the conference.  Considering that coverage of the sort of thing being discussed at AVII is usually completely excised from the mainstream media, some thought this would be a “hit piece” - luckily there was no-one about in a tin-foil hat for the cameras to gawp at.

So, the good news was that this wasn’t a hit piece.  It was very balanced, and appeared on broadcast TV over 20 times during the weekend.  The bad news is that it only went out on BBC Arabic!  For a limited time you can find the piece, which ran to almost four minutes, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/arabic/videos/newsid_8077000/8077859.stm

Now, you see, for anyone who thinks that there is nothing ‘fishy’ about the mainstream media in the UK, this is one of the biggest clues that something is just not right.  With resources stretched in all news providers, you would have expected this would have been an excellent opportunity to repackage a feature for the actual country in which the conference in question was being held.  Except they didn’t.  These are the sort of clues you have to add to the picture of what’s really going on to understand that the world is NOT as advertised.

It was a busy time right through from 3.00pm Friday (the registration desk was supposed to be open at 4.00pm, but hell, if you’re ready to roll, get rolling!) until the delayed opening ceremony at 8.15pm.  The M25 had played its usual Friday night trick of turning into a car park, hence the three-quarters of an hour delay.

Frankie Ma (well-known to all viewers of Edge Media’s Controversial TV on Sky Channel 200) was the M.C. for the weekend, but it became apparent that my scrawled house-keeping ‘parish notices’ were not legible, and there was no time to write it all out neatly.  So, I suggested that perhaps I should do these first time around, as the list had grown so long; Frankie could deal with the rest of them, from that point on, done out in my best block hand-writing, for the rest of the weekend.

Which meant I got to be the first person on-stage for the conference! And what a warm audience they were too - laughing at my jokes (incredible!) and clapping and cheering in the right places.  Let’s put it this way - afterwards I had one of the Team come up pleading to be my Manager!!!  Surreal or what???

Headline Speaker, Dr Len Horowitz suffered two catastrophes over the weekend - one in each of his keynote speeches.  On the Friday, the bulb in the main central projector blew (but professionals like Edge Media weren’t phased by this - they simply transferred the slide content to the two smaller ‘big screens’ - one on each side of the stage).  On the Saturday, he knocked over a full glass of water into his laptop, which meant he had to do the whole thing without a presentation supporting him.

The weekend flew by, minor teething problems with breakfast service soon sorted for the rest of the weekend, and provision of things like soya and organic milk having to be brought into being.  The hotel was hit by several key staff calling in sick, which meant more work for those on duty, but it was all carried off admirably.  Well done all at Thistle London Heathrow!

Highlight of the weekend was the Sunday night double header.  First up was TV legend David Bellamy, putting to the sword windmill energy efficiency and the myth of man-made global warming.  Hopefully when this gets played out on Controversial TV (Sky channel 200) in the weeks running up to the next Alternative View conference, it will draw in a considerable audience.   Indeed, having all the presentations from the weekend being broadcast in this way will certainly draw people to the next AV, without a shadow of a doubt.  This is an event that is going to grow and grow as people wake up to the lies they are being told by the mainstream media.

Edge Media did indeed record the whole event, and went one step further.  The talks were edited and mastered to DVD there and then, allowing delegates to actually buy these talks the following day and take them away with them.  Absolutely incredible use of technology.  These DVDs will be available to buy at http://www.ianrcrane.co.uk soon.

Closing the event was AV founder Ian R Crane - joining the content of the previous speakers’ talks together for an uplifting conclusion.  Amongst all the doom and gloom, there are rays of hope, which people can see as the potential for real change (without Obama being anything to do with it!).  We have the power, all we have to do is take it back from those we have given it away to.

The power to change things is in our own hands.  Strangely, last night, on European and Local Election Night, I had an encounter at a local restaurant which put everything into perspective.  Basically, at our table, things got heated as I couldn’t believe that there was still doubt in a friend’s mind that 9/11 was an inside job - a fairy tale created by the establishment to justify two wars and the gradual erosion of our civil liberties.  A lady on the table opposite found this remark from me distasteful, so I politely asked why she thought that.  She had been to Ground Zero on a couple of occasions and therefore thought that the dead should be respected. I noted that absolutely they should be, but we should also be respecting the firefighters and others from the emergency services who are heading to painful and agonising deaths from what happened on that day, and they all want the truth to come out, as they were people who were actually there when it happened and they know damn well tha we have’t been told the truth.

Especially when 6 of the 19 alleged hi-jackers are still alive around the world and protest their innocence, and have not been consequently arrested.  Especially as none of their 19 names appear on any of the airline flight manifests for the planes involved. How did they get aboard if they weren’t passengers on the list?

And most especially since two scientists who have managed to get hold of rubble and dust from Ground Zero at the time of 9/11, and have been able to independently prove, conclusively, that a highly-engineered weapons-grade explosive was present in the particulates.

Surprisingly (!), this is NOT mentioned in the mainstream media.

And that’s before I got on to explain the mystery of World Trade Centre 7, the third building to suddenly fall into its own footprint at freefall speed, in the late afternoon of 9/11.  An “unexpected” occurrence which was actually reported by the BBC a full TWENTY MINUTES BEFORE IT HAPPENED.

Oh, and the minor detail of the most sophisticated air defence outfit on the planet, who know when a plane is doing something unusual over its skies within seconds, was made to stand down by a guy in a cave thousands of miles away.  A guy who had gone for dialysis in an overseas American hospital just a few months before this.

The evidence is there.  You just have to look for it.  And then join it together to see what it all means … if you can’t, look up what “Cognitive Dissonance” means, and realise that it is entirely possible you are suffering from that condition.

The situation isn’t hopeless.  We are simply being told that it is.

AV3 is just being organised, and AV4 is already pencilled in for next year.  Look out for details, and come and play your part in getting aware and informed. Part of defeating evil is quite simply understanding what it looks like and what it is doing in our name.

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