FT266

On a grey and overcast weekend in late March 2010, there is an atmosphere of passionate polemic about much of the Alternative View Four conference taking place at The Thistle Hotel, Heathrow. The ironic proximity of possible chemtrails does not escape me. The conference, founded by Ian R Crane as a community, declares as its mission statement on its website: “To advance awareness and facilitate discussion of Political, Scientific and Spiritual alternatives without constraint by Consensus Reality and/or Received Wisdom”. 

AV4 sets out to do exactly what it says on the tin. In a new millennium which has seen the terrorist game-changer of 9/11, all-out war between nations of the West and the Middle East, the return of terrorist bombings to the heart of London and the implacable march of concern and disagreement over the reality and causes of climate change, AV4 certainly has an atmosphere conducive for people from all walks of life to seek an alternative view of just what on Earth is going on, and why. This view attempts to move beyond a world of comfortably middle class news presenters, those smiling virtual friends in our homes, who segue, with an excruciating grind of punning gears, over to grinning current affairs correspondents offering us crass, pre-packaged 24-hour news on a loop, helpfully spewing out condescending tabloid representations of global events they seemingly had expert knowledge of all along, just waiting to wheel them out when their own sense of topicality dictates they do so. The consensus view of things – depending on your point of view. 

The many and varied attendees at AV4 are a testament to the fact that more than enough people from all walks of life refuse to settle for this ‘consensus view’, be that at a local or a global level. The knee-jerk thought for those sceptical of the sceptics, perhaps, might well be ‘Conspiracy Theory Fest’, but that would be to display the kind of pre-packaged thinking and the acceptance of things at face value that many of the speakers and audience of AV4 would decry. My perception of the attendees at AV4 is (partly) of a collection of disparate individuals I might expect to find myself in the midst of at a G8 or G20 protest: a very broad church of beliefs, viewpoints and agendas with a focal meeting point in the event itself but not necessarily a single common concern; as well as those following esoteric interests of the kind you might find at FT’s UnConvention. Can a consensus view be reached on the way things ‘really are’? Indeed, is any awareness of the way things ‘really are’ possible, when each views the would-be whole through the prism of his or her own outlook, ideology, agenda; or through the spray of sparks of any given axe a-grinding? 

As for the latter, given the disparate range of speakers and subject matter (apart from one, for me, truly dissonant moment that I viewed as nothing but a crude attempt to subvert the subversive), AV4 is refreshingly free from axe-grinding. 

In a spirit any fortean would recognise, each speaker puts forward a case for the way he or she believes things are and the audience is left to draw its own conclusions from what is being presented, and then, of course, question it. If we are entering the realm of conspiracy theories, global cover-ups, the perpetuation of regulated lies being visited upon the populace by an incumbent government or corporate body (in many minds, the two are either indivisibly intertwined, or one and the same), the first question one perhaps needs to ask is: why do you believe that? If we can successfully deconstruct and move beyond that question – and if not, we are all ‘ad hominem erectus’ – then some proximity to the truth (or at least, a truth) about the way things ‘really are’ in the world might be reached. It’s the same question any fortean should ask him or herself regarding belief in the supernatural, Bigfoot or the psi powers of men who stare at goats. Similarly, it’s the question any attendee of AV4 might first ask if not subscribing to the cock-up theory of humanity and its history. 

While not quite the jamboree bag of phantasmagorical subject matter one might find at an UnCon, the speakers and subjects on offer at AV4 are nevertheless many and varied. There was President of the National Health Federation, Scott Tips, speaking on the wonderfully-named ‘Codex Alimentarius Commission’ (set up by the World Health Organisation and the Food and Agriculture Organisation), the inference of which is that it effectively regulates the corporate controlled health of America and beyond. F William Engdahl spoke on ‘The Hidden Agenda of GMO’ (genetically modified organisms) and the holding of developing worlds to ransom with patented ‘suicide’ seeds. There were talks on the current geological status of the planet by Peter Taylor, ‘Climate Change in an Age of Deception’, and by Dr David Bellamy, ‘Tales from a Fallen Icon’. The tenor of Dr Bellamy’s talk on climate change was prefaced by his perception that, given his strident disavowal of climate change as primarily man-made, he has become a pariah in the popular media. I missed the talk ‘Politicising Science: Brainwashing our Young’ given by another former familiar face on our TV screens, Johnny Ball. Set these two talks beside that of Dr Manjir Samantha-Laughton, whose presentation ‘Punk Science: the Real Deal About Planet Earth’ took us into the more esoteric and speculative realm of a new framework for the Universe she refers to as the ‘Black Hole Principle’, and it’s clear that AV4 is certainly not short on variety. 

Those hardcore conspiracy theory subjects are never far away. Daniel Estulin gave a talk on a body which needs little introduction in these pages – ‘The Bilderbergers’. In a preface to his talk, Estulin referred to the accepted view “as a ‘Cartesian fantasy world’ in which history and events are shaped by the isolated intentions of individuals” and “not the dynamics of social processes”. 

In itself, the AV4’s organisers perhaps see the event as an attempt to affect the dynamics of social processes in microcosm. Master of Ceremonies Andy Thomas told me: “We are trying to offer an Alternative View with not so much metaphysics this time around; it’s hard geopolitics, what some would rather casually call the conspiracy view, but it’s so much more than that. We’ve been covering everything from new physics to genetically modified foods – the whole global agenda. It’s trying to give the big picture to people who maybe need to know more – because some people know that there is something not right, but they don’t know where to start and Alternative View does offer a good starting point”. 

Any convention worth its salt has the real interaction taking place in the same location the world over: the bar. It was in the bar that I looked for people who felt that something is not right about the world, some sort of united rainbow coalition of new consensus, as it were, arrived at through those individual prisms of outlook and belief. One woman, an English teacher, told me: “I came here to get information I wouldn’t get any other way and because, on the whole, I trust the people who are giving the information. Though I believe in having a sceptical approach anyway, I’m more sceptical towards those who are in charge of the media than those who are giving an alternative view.” Another attendee, David, considered the news we are given is “nothing more than propaganda, falsehood and distortion”. Fergus, from Dublin was there because he’s not happy with the way things are, citing, as one instance, the way Ireland had voted ‘No’ to the Lisbon Treaty yet somehow subsequently was coerced into voting ‘Yes’. Fergus had come to be amid like-minded people, “because it’s crazy when you are with a crowd of friends and you can’t say how you really feel. Here, we can say exactly what we feel.” Fergus and David were among a group who had never met before but had soon come together in a spirit of shared concerns, and, effectively, the consensus view that “we are being lied to and we’re are not happy about it”. If any one viewpoint unites the individual prisms of outlook and belief of AV4 attendees, then this is it. 

The Open Forum is in many ways the focal point of the weekend. A variety of AV4’s speakers take to the stage in a discussion prompted by questions and contributions from attendees on the floor – of which there is no shortage. Topics range from climate change, life-altering medical cover-ups, wind farms and 2012. That the speakers on stage are not necessarily in agreement on some of these topics – in fact, far from it – is refreshing. It was in the Open Forum that events – for me – took an unwelcome turn, when one attendee among a small delegation talked about the ‘evil’ in the world being perpetrated by one part of the world upon another. (No prizes for guessing from whom, towards whom.) Now the concept of evil, especially posited in the name of religion, is a whole weekend conference in itself. This contribution drew much applause from the hall, which surprised me, and elicited a down-to-earth response from Deek Jackson of the far from wholly un-satirical ‘Landless Peasant Party’: “So far as I know there is no law of physics or any tangible way of measuring what is good or evil and it is my view that there is no such thing as evil, or good, in the world. Our lives on Planet Earth are short cosmically, all life on Earth will be gone soon, cosmically, and the Universe won’t mind and it won’t think it is good or bad. There’s just what you like. But characterising other people or people’s actions as good or evil makes you the arbiter of what’s good or evil, and I don’t think that’s possible in any absolute way.” On the evidence of his website, Deek Jackson is an irreverent and avowed atheist, one who makes Richard Dawkins look like a village vicar. Such a response does, in combination with what went just before it, take us to a point of development beyond that of the ‘ad hominem erectus’ stage. Any convention entertaining that level of debate, as well as boasting a disaffected Johnny Ball, Dr David Bellamy sounding off and a talk on ponerology (Brian Gerish had in fact given a presentation on the study of evil as a concept) has plenty going for it. All the talks were accompanied by giant video screen coverage in the main hall; all were available on DVD within an hour of being delivered to the audience. There were workshops and a dealer room throughout the weekend and it was well attended. It was the talks on food regulation, GM crops and seed patenting which affected me most of all – these are very real concerns that could tangibly affect all of us. 

As for AV5, Andy Thomas told me that it is set for 11.11 (with an offshoot planned beforehand in Ireland) and “That’s going to go more into the whole 2012 view, the slightly more esoteric realms. A little bit more Earth mysteries and prophecies but inevitably with this side of things, as well.” 

In a climate of WikiLeaks, claims that milk from cloned cows is now being sold in UK supermarkets, and ungodly alliances between political parties seemingly only united in their former public schoolboy credentials, these are, as ever, interesting times. AV5’s take on it all, as well as the possibility of an impending cosmic and/or global catastrophe in 2012, might just make it a case of ‘Last Chance to See’ for us all. Who knows? To help get closer to answering that question, I may very well amble along for the alternative view at AV5. 

www.avfour.co.uk