Graham Hancock

More on the TED debacle

From Graham Hancock:

New and deeply disappointing TED tactic

Just when I thought TED had seen the error of their ways and were trying to fix things (see my post here:

http://www.facebook.com/Author.GrahamHancock/posts/10151559299442354 ) I receive an email from TED Curator Chris Anderson telling me that yet another of their famous Blog pages has now been set up, this one apparently as a special standalone ghetto for discussion of my “War on Consciousness” presentation. This tactic helps to distance TED from the PR debacle they created for themselves by axing my talk from their Youtube channel in the first place (where it had attracted hundreds of comments and 132,000 views). Now not only is the presentation cut off from the discussion initiated by all those original commentators (and their ability to share it) but it is also cut off from the new discussion that followed exposure of TED’s censorship and shoddy methods – here: http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/14/open-for-discussion-graham-hancock-and-rupert-sheldrake/ and here: http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/18/graham-hancock-and-rupert-sheldrake-a-fresh-take/

I’m left reeling by this continual slicing down of my presentation and its context which is nonetheless cleverly done so that TED can say, effectively, “we’re not censoring the presentation because it is on our website.” Well yes, but in such an obscure place that pretty soon no-one will be able to find it, the whole debate and furor will be forgotten and TED will be able to move forward as though this never happened.

Anyway for those with the energy to keep this hot potato hot, here is the new page that TED have created as a secluded ghetto for my presentation: http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/19/the-debate-about-graham-hancocks-talk/ . So far there is no link back or forward between the two previous blog pages and this one. I have asked TED to provide such links as a matter of urgency and to make them prominent. I expect they will do so but this will only slightly reduce the problem, not solve it.

You will note when you go to http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/19/the-debate-about-graham-hancocks-talk/ that in order to actually post comments you have to click the link near the bottom that says “Join the conversation here” which takes you to yet another page!! And when you get there you will find that you can no longer post full-length comments, as on the two previous Blog pages created by TED, but only rather abbreviated ones.

In this way, little by little, I fear that TED will succeed in making the problem they created vanish like a puff of smoke. But just in case the public doesn’t allow them to get away with that disappearing act they have imposed a time-limit on this new “conversation” which they will close in less than two weeks from now. I guess the big powers like TED always do win in the end since they control the agenda no matter what we the people try to do.

TED retracts allegations against Hancock and Sheldrake

This is of interest to me because of the materialist attack on alternative views. It appears that TED have been forced to reverse their earlier stand.

The war of ideas

From Graham Hancock's page

Unprecedented developments at TED

"I appreciate and respect the fact that TED have now bitten the bullet -- which cannot have been easy for them -- and fully retracted their original incorrect allegations against the content of my TEDx presentation "The War on Consciousness". They have done so by crossing out the original allegations and publishing my rebuttal here: http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/14/open-for-discussion-graham-hancock-and-rupert-sheldrake/

"They have done the same as regards their original incorrect allegations against the content of the TEDx presentation "The Science Delusion" by my colleague Rupert Sheldrake.

"TED have also opened up a new blog page ("Graham Hancock and Rupert Sheldrake A Fresh Take") here: http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/18/graham-hancock-and-rupert-sheldrake-a-fresh-take/

"I want to put on record my immense appreciation and respect for the tremendous efforts made by so many members of my online community to get this injustice righted by their engagement on the TED website and the blog posts they have made there. I am touched and heartened, buoyed up and encouraged by this remarkable level of support and it is a sign of the times that our voice has been heard.

TED continue to refuse to restore the talks to the original platform on which they appeared -- the TEDx Youtube channel -- where my talk had been viewed by more than 132,000 people and where Rupert's talk had been viewed by more than 35,000 people before TED took them down. I regard it as unfortunate in the extreme that all the conversations and comments that appeared there have been hidden along with the talks, and that those original links have been broken, and I will continue to press for the restitution of our talks to the TEDx Youtube channel separate from and in addition to the presence they now have on the TED blog pages."

The Lifeboat Hour - Graham Hancock

Simply one of the best programs yet.

Graham Hancock on the Lifeboat Hour

An inspiring hour-long conversation between Mike Ruppert and author Graham Hancock. The convesation ranges over the suppression of his TED-x talk, the use of psychodelics to facilitate spiritual awakening, the rise of the new Paradigm and the nature of Consciousness

The Science Delusion

This talk by scientist Rupert Sheldrake was also censored and banned by TED

Rupert Sheldrake - The Science Delusion BANNED TED TALK

Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D. (born 28 June 1942) is a biologist and author of more than 80 scientific papers and ten books. A former Research Fellow of the Royal Society, he studied natural sciences at Cambridge University, where he was a Scholar of Clare College, took a double first class honours degree and was awarded the University Botany Prize. He then studied philosophy and history of science at Harvard University, where he was a Frank Knox Fellow, before returning to Cambridge, where he took a Ph.D. in biochemistry. He was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, where he was Director of Studies in biochemistry and cell biology. As the Rosenheim Research Fellow of the Royal Society, he carried out research on the development of plants and the ageing of cells in the Department of Biochemistry at Cambridge University.

While at Cambridge, together with Philip Rubery, he discovered the mechanism of polar auxin transport, the process by which the plant hormone auxin is carried from the shoots towards the roots.

From 1968 to 1969, based in the Botany Department of the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, he studied rain forest plants. From 1974 to 1985 he was Principal Plant Physiologist and Consultant Physiologist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in Hyderabad, India, where he helped develop new cropping systems now widely used by farmers. While in India, he also lived for a year and a half at the ashram of Fr Bede Griffiths in Tamil Nadu, where he wrote his first book, A New Science of Life.

From 2005-2010 he was the Director of the Perrott-Warrick Project funded from Trinity College,Cambridge. He is a Fellow of Schumacher College , in Dartington, Devon, a Fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences near San Francisco, and a Visiting Professor at the Graduate Institute in Connecticut.

He lives in London with his wife Jill Purce www.healingvoice.com and two sons.

He has appeared in many TV programs in Britain and overseas, and was one of the participants (along with Stephen Jay Gould, Daniel Dennett, Oliver Sacks, Freeman Dyson and Stephen Toulmin) in a TV series called A Glorious Accident, shown on PBS channels throughout the US. He has often taken part in BBC and other radio programmes. He has written for newspapers such as the Guardian, where he had a regular monthly column, The Times, Sunday Telegraph, Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, Sunday Times, Times Educational Supplement, Times Higher Education Supplement and Times Literary Supplement, and has contributed to a variety of magazines, including New Scientist, Resurgence, the Ecologist and the Spectator.

Books by Rupert Sheldrake:

A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation (1981). New edition 2009 (in the US published as Morphic Resonance)

The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature (1988)

The Rebirth of Nature: The Greening of Science and God (1992)

Seven Experiments that Could Change the World: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Revolutionary Science (1994) (Winner of the Book of the Year Award from the British Institute for Social Inventions)

Dogs that Know When Their Owners are Coming Home, and Other Unexplained Powers of Animals (1999) (Winner of the Book of the Year Award from the British Scientific and Medical Network)

The Sense of Being Stared At, And Other Aspects of the Extended Mind (2003)

With Ralph Abraham and Terence McKenna:

Trialogues at the Edge of the West (1992), republished as Chaos, Creativity and Cosmic Consciousness (2001)

The Evolutionary Mind (1998)

With Matthew Fox:

Natural Grace: Dialogues on Science and Spirituality (1996)

The Physics of Angels: Exploring the Realm Where Science and Spirit Meet (1996)

And for yet another banned talk

Banned TED Talk: Nick Hanauer "Rich people don't create jobs"

Via Business Insider:

"As the war over income inequality wages on, super-rich Seattle entrepreneur Nick Hanauer has been raising the hackles of his fellow 1-percenters, espousing the contrarian argument that rich people don't actually create jobs.

The position is controversial — so much so that TED is refusing to post a talk that Hanauer gave on the subject. National Journal reports today that TED officials decided not to put Hanauer's March 1 speech up online after deeming his remarks "too politically controversial" for the site...".

TED and the war for human consciousness

It seems that the talk by Graham Hancock that I posted the other day has been censored and removed,so here is the talk reposted with a response by Graham Hancock.

TED's statement on the matter is available HERE

Graham Hancock - The War on Consciousness BANNED TED TALK

The more I wade into the morass that is TED the more horrified I become at the illusion of openness this organisation has wrapped around itself, when the truth as I have now learned from direct experience is so very different. TED talks a good talk about itself, its nobility, its achievements. "We believe passionately," TED boasts, "in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we're building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world's most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other." (see here: ‪http://www.ted.com/pages/about).



But the truth is quite different. Over the matter of the censorship on Youtube of my "War on Consciousness" presentation and Rupert Sheldrake's "Science Delusion" presentation, TED is closed minded, operates with an extremely limited view of what is scientifically orthodox, wishes to stay safely within that orthodoxy, and is patronising and disparaging about those who question their policies. As TED Curator Chris Anderson (‪http://www.ted.com/speakers/chris_and...) writes here (‪http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/14/open-f...) in response to comments criticising TED for censoring my presentation: "Right now this comment section is over-run by the hordes of supporters sent our way by Graham Hancock. It would be nice for you to calm down and actually read some of the criticisms of his work so that you can get a more balanced view point. And meanwhile, we'll be reading the views of anyone who'll be patient enough to express them in a reasoned way ...as opposed to throwing around shrieks of censorship when nothing of the kind has happened."



Mr Anderson seems to have plenty of time to pour scorn on those who disagree with the way TED has handled this matter, but so far, more than five hours after I posted them he has not found the time to answer the four simple questions I asked him on page 1 of the public forum he set up (‪http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/14/open-f...) supposedly to foster open discussion of the presentations by myself and Rupert.



Here are those four simple questions again:



(1) TED says of my "War on Consciousness" presentation: "...he misrepresents what scientists actually think. He suggests, for example, that no scientists are working on the problem of consciousness."

I would like TED to identify where exactly in my talk they believe I say that "no scientists are working on the problem of consciousness"? Also in what other specific ways does TED believe I misrepresent what scientists actually think?



TED says of my presentation: "He states as fact that psychotropic drug use is essential for an "emergence into consciousness," and that one can use psychotropic plants to connect directly with an ancient mother culture."

I would like TED to identify where exactly in my talk they believe I state as a fact that psychotropic drug use is essential for an emergence into consciousness. I would also like TED to identify where exactly in my talk I state that one can use psychotropic plants to connect directly with an ancient mother culture.



(3) TED states that there are many inaccuracies in my presentation which display a disrespect both for my audience and for my arguments.

I would like TED to indentify where exactly in my talk these alleged "many inaccuracies" occur.



(4) TED says of my "War on Consciousness" presentation: "He offers a one-note explanation for how culture arises (drugs), which just doesn't hold up."



Again I would like TED to identify the point in my talk where I state this. Do I not rather say that some scientists in the last thirty years have raised an intriguing possibility — emphasis on POSSIBILITY — which is that the exploration of altered states of consciousness, in which psychedelic plants have been implicated, was fundamental to the emergence into fully symbolic consciousness witnessed by the great cave art? I can cite a wide range of respectable peer-reviewed scientists who have suggested this possibility and I do not see how reporting their work, which I have every right to do, can be construed as offering "a one-note explanation for how culture arises (drugs)." Besides is every talk that touches on the origins of culture obliged to consider all possible factors that might be involved in the origins of culture? How could any speaker be expected to do that in one 18-minute talk?



‪http://www.grahamhancock.com

"The war for human consciousness is escalating and becoming more clearly defined. On one side you have me, Graham Hancock, and Joe Rogan (and many more like Vandana Shiva, Terrence McKenna, Gregg Braden and every Gaian mf one of us).

"On the other side you have TEDx.

"Make your choice. But watch this video first. Way to go Joe. Fist bump."

---Mike Ruppert

JRE: Eddie Huang TED Conference Exposed

Joe Rogan talks to Eddie Huang about his experience at the TED conference.