Thursday 16 October 2014

Chemtrail Hoaxer Threatened

Chris Bovey is a conspiratorial activist from Devon whom I've met several times; I've come to like and respect him. He has helped organize Ian R Crane's AV conferences, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/shift-2-with-ian-r-crane.html. Unusually though, he doesn't believe chemtrails are real. I've looked into both sides of the subject and I disagree with him completely; I think chemtrails are very real indeed. However I don't have a problem with him over that. If I rejected everybody who disagreed with my views I'd be a pretty lonely person, in fact I'd virtually be a hermit. A few weeks ago Chris was on a plane flying from Buenos Aires in Argentina to London, England when the aircraft had to make an emergency landing. It came down at an airport in Brazil, but before it did it had to jettison some of its fuel. I only recently found this out when talking to an aviation engineer; when aeroplanes take off sometimes they're too heavy to land straight away because of the weight of all the fuel on board. This is not a problem on a longhaul flight, like the one Chris was taking, because by the time they reach their destination most of their fuel load will have been used up and the aircraft will be light enough to land. However if the aircraft has to land short due to unforeseen circumstances then the pilots have to dump some of their fuel; it's a waste, but there's no other way. Chris was in a seat where he had a good view of this operation and he filmed it. The plane landed safely and nobody was hurt. While waiting for the replacement flight Chris decided to post the film he'd shot online see:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8ccsh6XND0. He pretended not to know what it was and asked for an opinion from the conspiratorial community. He says his motivations were innocent and light-hearted, and he didn't intend the trick to go as far as it did. Within a few hours his post had gone viral and it had half a million views with comments claiming that this was "proof of chemtrails!" Chris was very amused and decided to write another post claiming that he'd been arrested at London's Heathrow Airport and that they'd confiscated his mobile phone, so it was just as well he'd uploaded it to the net beforehand. According to Chris a lot of people believed this too. Chris was then invited onto the Richie Allen Show on Volcania Radio where he confessed, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=138nGp5QkZA. Chris was essentially pulling a "Carlos", a bit like this one that was luckily exposed before it began, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/warning-ufo-hoax-coming-soon.html.

It's true unfortunately that a lot of people did believe Chris Bovey's hoax without question, but not everybody. I saw the video on Facebook before Chris came clean and liked it because it was interesting to see, but I didn't comment. Maybe I should have because I honestly tell you that I did wonder if it was just a fuel dump. I did see a few comments along those lines too. Unlike James Randi and his Carlos hoax, I don't think Chris made the video with malicious intentions. It does us no harm at all to think more critically and maybe Chris has done us a favour, whether or not you think chemtrails are real. As Richie says in the radio show above, this has no bearing at all over whether chemtrails are real or not, despite what Chris says. Chris is not completely alone; in fact the late great Jerry E Smith also denied the existence of chemtrails. The only really objectionable part of this story was the way Chris was treated in the aftermath of his confession. He received "vulgar abuse" including threats to rape him. He was called a shill and a government informer; not terribly original that one. This kind of behaviour is extremely counter-productive and those who engage in cowardly cyberbullying should be ashamed of themselves. I know that the conspiratorial community does have a thug element; I remember Charlie Veitch changing his mind about 9/11 after his foolish decision to take part in a BBC documentary about the attacks. He received a mountain of hateful abuse as a result. I was one of voices appealing for calm. As much as I disagree with Charlie, I don't think he deserved that, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/charlie-veitch-911-u-turn.html. I hope that the tide turns for Chris as well and the trolls find another hole to crawl into very soon.

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