2014 in conspiracy theories

Ebola is a bio-weapon designed by the US government. Rosetta was an attempt to make contact with aliens. The leader of Isil is secretly Jewish. We guide you through the headlines They don't want you to know

Pay no attention to the men behind the curtain. 

There is a saying in computer science: 'Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity'.

But in the world of global politics, that's just an easy way for the secret masters of our world to pull the wool over the eyes of sheeple.

Here, laid bare before the world, is the secret truth behind nine seemingly simple news events from this year. What you are about to read may change your life forever.

Actually, we cannot emphasise strongly enough that these conspiracy theories are almost certainly nonsense. None of the things below are true. You should not take them seriously.

Or should you?

*

1. The US government blanketed the South with fake plastic snow

Way back at the start of the year, the United States was swamped by a “polar vortex”, flinging snow across even warm areas like Atlanta, Georgia. But not everybody takes snow at face value. A number of Youtube users came to believe that the federal government was using “geo-engineering” techniques to blanket the South with fake snow. In some videos, bloggers take lighters to the snow only to find it does not melt – and also turns black.
But, as many meteorologists explained, this is normal. Snow often turns straight to gas when heated, and butane – the fuel for most ordinary cigarette lighters – leaves black marks on whatever it burns. Some Youtubers had reported smelling a toxic smell – but that, too, was probably the butane itself.

2. David Cameron covered up a gigantic Scottish oil find, then rigged the referendum


On July 22, David Cameron and the Secretary of State for Scotland, Alistair Carmichael, made a flying visit to the Shetlands. No advance warning was given for the trip, and only a handful of journalists were with him. Just days earlier, prospectors at the enormous Clair oilfield, 75km west of the islands, had discovered reserves larger and richer than anyone had predicted. The workers were immediately sent home on full pay and told not to return until after the independence referendum. But you won’t hear a word about it on the biased BBC.
Of course, that might be because there’s very little evidence for it all. But the meme that unionists were covering up a mammoth oil find which would skew the economic argument towards Yes, stoked by dubious Facebook posts and spoof press releases, spread through Nationalist cyberspace like a coal seam fire. A YouGov poll of 1,084 Scots found 42 per cent thought it was “probably true”.
That wasn’t all. After the referendum, many people – including the American feminist author Naomi Wolf – claimed the vote had in fact been rigged. On her Facebook page, Wolf claimed she had a list of 500 people who had not received proper ballot papers.
A pro-independence legal group called Lawyers For Yes went through the various claims, describing them as “an impressive collection of misunderstandings, conspiracy theories, and legal howlers…usefully collected by Naomi Wolf.”

3. The Virgin Galactic spaceship was sabotaged by NASA

First it was NASA’s unmanned Antares rocket, exploding just after launch. Then it was Richard Branson’s sub-orbital rocket plane, killing one pilot and injuring the other. Coincidence? Not on your life.
Luckily, internet people were on the case. Russia, explained Agent Smith 2014, “probably managed to insert a space weapon into orbit disguised as a spy satellite.” Both ships, he noted, “were destroyed whilst in the rocket powered phase, which is when they are the most vulnerable to laser attack.”
Others had a different theory. “NASA has been stripped of funding by liberal-backed administrations,” said one anonymous user, “and liberal-backed companies led by tech giants are now entering the space race. I think it was probably sabotage.”

4. The comet targeted by the Rosetta mission was actually an alien spacecraft

For three days in November the world held its breath as the Rosetta space probe reached the comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasminko – and promptly lost track of its lander. The poor Philae craft had bounced on landing and ended up in the shadow of a crater wall where its solar panels could not catch the light. But did Philae have a hidden purpose?
According to an email supposedly sent by a whistleblower inside the European Space Agency, 67P is not a comet at all. Instead it is an alien object – possibly a spaceship – with “machine like parts” and “unnatural terrain”. The object had been emitting communications for years, and million-dollar mission to explore it was actually a secret attempt to make contact, said Scott Waring, the UFO activist who published the email. The ESA accidentally fuelled the speculation when it said the comet was “singing” with dolphin-like clicking noises which scientists still hope to explain.

5. Ebola is a bio-weapon which Obama will use as excuse for martial law

Not long after the Ebola outbreak began, an article in the Liberian Daily Observer claimed that the virus was a weapon designed by the United States military to depopulate the planet. Soon, the usual suspects were claiming that the US Centre for Disease Control had patented the virus – and was ready to make a fortune from a new, exclusive vaccine.
Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, said the virus had been engineered to kill black people specifically. “If you are black or brown, you are being selected for destruction.” Meanwhile, Professor Francis Boyle, a scholar of biowarfare and international law at the University of Illinois, said: “This isn’t normal Ebola at all. I believe it’s been genetically modified…I think the people at the top know. Probably Obama too.”
What was unusual about this conspiracy theory was the extent to which its themes were taken up by the Republican party. Steve Stockman, a congressman from Texas, speculated that Obama was deliberately making America vulnerable to the outbreak so that he could later use “emergency powers to take over control of the economy”. A radio broadcaster, Rick Wiles, feared the President would use Ebola to “round up patriots” and set up “re-education camps”.
This was not so far away from the claims of fringe writer Morgan Britanny, who, pointing to a false rumour about Obama “quietly stockpiling” $1 billion worth of disposable plastic coffins, said: “My fear is that this has all been orchestrated from the very beginning. Maybe the current administration needs this to happen so martial law can be declared, guns can be seized, and the populace can be controlled. Once that happens – game over!”
The idea of using an artificial disease to induce a crisis is hardly new. This was the central plotline of the classic conspiracy thriller videogame Deus Ex, in which a global cabal genetically engineers a deadly disease so they can make politicians compliant by controlling their supply of the vaccine.

6. MH-17 and MH-370 were the same plane

The shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH-17 produced an embarrassing wealth of conspiracy theories. While widely blamed on Russia, the circumstances of the crash in territory held by Ukrainian separatists were initially murky enough for a million theories to emerge as to the actual culprit.
Immediately, many claimed the crash was a “false flag” – that is, a brutal act performed by one side but blamed on the other in an attempt to smear them. Chief suspect was the USA itself. Others focused on a resemblance between MH370 and the official presidential plane of Vladimir Putin (both are white with red and blue stripes), and a supposed confluence in their flight paths. The theory was that the USA or the Ukrainian government had tried to assassinate Putin himself and then blamed the fallout on their enemy.
But the most creative theory was the ‘same plane’ plot. Multiple people wondered if the plane from Ukraine could in fact be MH-370, another Malaysia Airlines flight lost over the Indian Ocean in March. MH-370 was hijacked, some said, and flown to Diego Garcia, a British Island in the Indian Ocean hosting US military bases.
The plane was then used to set up the false flag in Ukraine, with a smattering of false passports over the corpses; theorists zeroed in on photos appearing to show “pristine” passports, and claims by Ukrainian rebels that some of the bodies were old. One particularly astute tweeted noted that “Illuminati might have been involved” because both planes were Boeing 777s – one of the workhorse airliners of the world.


7. Isil is a joint creation of Israel and the CIA, and its leader is secretly Jewish

Yes, you read that correctly: Isil's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is not even a Muslim, but a Jewish actor named Elliot Shimon trained by Mossad and the CIA to fabricate a convenient enemy.
That’s the theory, anyway. Non-existent documents supposedly released by Edward Snowden, the American whistleblower, say that British, American and Israeli intelligence worked together to create “a terrorist organization capable of centralizing all extremist actions across the world.”
This, obviously, is in service of the Israeli nation, because “the only solution for the protection of the Jewish state is to create an enemy near its borders.” The plan is to lure all the world’s Islamic terrorists into congregating under one umbrella, and then, presumably, drone the tar out of them.
There are even (fake) photos of al-Baghdadi meeting with US senator John McCain, who was beaten by Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. And all those beheading videos? Fakes, using actors and movie-style special effects. Mark Crispin Miller, a media professor at New York University, explains: “The ‘James Foley’ (seemingly) beheaded in the video is simply not James Foley…neither of these two beheadings is convincing.”
Of course, instead of this nonsense, you could read Martin Chulov’s incredible story about how Isil was born inside a US prison in Iraq.

8. Rihanna, Jay Z, Kanye West and Beyoncé are all members of the Illuminati

The actual, real-world Illuminati were a secret society founded in 1776 by a university administrator frustrated with the Church’s control over learning. The idea was to ape the Freemasons but without the expense, pushing a secular Enlightenment agenda in all areas of public life, but the society was routed in the 1780s by a government crackdown. Or was it?
The symbol of the Illuminati is the eye in the pyramid. Shawn Carter, alias Jay-Z, has taken the pyramid as a logo for his Roc-A-Fella Records label. His wife, Beyoncé, has frequently flashed a ‘pyramid’ hand gesture, as has Rihanna and Kanye West. And do I have to mention the baby, Blue Ivy? I.V.Y.? Illuminati’s Very Youngest? Come ON, people!
Full disclosure: this theory was communicated to The Telegraph via some very excitable teenagers convinced they have found the answer to all pop culture.

Source:The Telegragh

The free gift of a child suicide bomber in Northern Nigeria

Nigerian girl says parents volunteered her as suicide bomber

Police said the girl's story made it clear who was to blame for the attacks in Kano

A 13-year-old Nigerian girl has told how her parents gave her to Boko Haram militants to be used as a suicide bomber.

The girl, speaking at a news conference organised by police, said she was taken to the city of Kano where two other girls detonated their bombs.
At least four people died in the 10 December attack. The girl was arrested, still wearing explosives, police said.
About 2,000 people have died in attacks blamed on the Islamists this year.
The girl told journalists that her parents had taken her to militants hiding in a forest near the town of Gidan Zana in northern Kano state.
She said one of the leaders asked her if she knew what a suicide bombing was.
"They said, 'Can you do it?' I said 'no'," she said.
"They said, 'You will go to heaven if you do it.' I said 'No I can't.' They said they would shoot me or throw me into a dungeon."
The girl said she finally agreed to take part in the attack but "never had any intention of doing it".

  The attacks on 10 December left at least four people dead and others wounded

She said she had been injured when one of the other girls detonated her bomb and ended up at a hospital where her explosives were discovered.
It was not possible to independently verify the girl's story. Correspondents said she had no lawyer present.
Kano police said they wanted the girl to tell her story to make the public aware of who was behind the attack.
Kano State Police Commissioner Adenrele Shinaba, quoted by Nigerian media, said police wanted to dispel rumours that the attack had been linked to inter-tribal conflict.
Boko Haram, a Sunni Islamist group, has been waging an insurgency in Nigeria since 2009.
In recent months the group has taken control of a series of towns and villages in north-east Nigeria and has vowed to create an Islamic state in those areas.

Nigerian authorities have struggled to defeat them.

Source:BBC

World’s Largest Bottle Tree By Nigerian Breweries

Nigeria’s first indigenous beer brand, Star Lager has completed the building of the world’s largest bottle tree at the venue of the Lagos Countdown in Victoria Island.

The record-breaking tree is made with a total of 8,000 star bottles as against 3,000 announced during the commencement of the project.

This development was as a result of the excitement the project elicited in the minds of consumers.
Attention grabbing and beautifully made, the Star Bottle Tree sits proudly at the Star Beer Village, Eko Atlantic City.

The bottle tree is a first of its kind in the country, symbolizing greatness and the enterprising Nigerian spirit.

Source:ThisDay

Strange normality

Diana Darke returned from London to Syria recently to reclaim her house from profiteers. She found her neighbours and friends in Damascus coping surprisingly well and even laughing.

Nothing in Damascus was as expected. Convinced there would be food shortages, I had vowed to eat very little during my stay. Yet while the besieged suburbs are starving, the central food markets are overflowing.
The fruit stalls of Sharia al-Amin boast bananas from Somalia, the Bzouriye spice markets are buoyant with top-quality saffron from Iran and walnuts from Afghanistan. Lebanese wine and beer are freely available. Prices are higher than before, but still largely affordable for most people.
Sandwiched between the heavily-armed checkpoints, street stands selling thick hot Aleppan sakhlab, a sweet white drink, are everywhere.
Cafes and pastry shops are bursting with sticky delicacies, the famous Bakdash ice-cream parlour is buzzing with people as ever.

To judge from the carpets of cigarette butts on the pavements, smoking rates, always high, are higher than ever. In the main thoroughfare of Souq al-Hamidiya all the usual clothes and flamboyant underwear outlets are still thronging with customers - not a single boarded shopfront - quite a contrast to the average British high street.
Sporadically, in the days as well as the nights, shelling is disturbingly loud.
President Bashar al-Assad's artillery is fired from Mount Qassioun, directly above the city, towards the eastern Ghouta region - the scene of last year's chemical attack, whose pockets of resistance are still a thorn in the side of the government. Villages there have suffered a food blockade for the last 18 months.
But by all accounts there is much less noise than there was a year ago.

Mount Qassioun, seen across the rooftops of Damascus

From that point of view, very gradually, life in central Damascus is getting better. Yet from other points of view, just as gradually, it is getting worse.
Beyond the 3.5 million who have fled the country as refugees, a further 7.5 million have been internally displaced - added together that's about half of Syria's entire population. Homes which are left empty, if they have not been flattened, are vulnerable to immediate seizure by others - usually the owners have no idea who has moved in and it is too dangerous to go back and find out.
Almost as often, but rarely reported, Syrian homes are taken by profiteers, exploiting the weak or the absent.
My own house in the Muslim quarter of the Old City of Damascus, bought and restored in 2005, fell victim a few months ago.
It had been lived in for more than two years, from the summer of 2012 to the summer of 2014, with my consent by displaced friends whose homes had been destroyed in the suburbs. Now they had been evicted by my ex-lawyer and the previous owner conniving together to take it for themselves and split it 50:50.
Determined to get it back I recently returned to Damascus to throw them out and after 15 roller-coaster days, I succeeded. Things can happen surprisingly fast in Syria. You go to meet the judge one day, and he comes to inspect the house the next - without payment.

A blacksmith made a new metal door to cover the smashed antique one

Among the many moments of high drama were two break-ins, six changes of lock, the installation of two metal doors and the exposure of the bogus security reports which had led to my friends being evicted in the first place.
Bit parts were played by a fake general on a forged 25-year lease, and a single Baathist mother in the house with her newborn baby.
But in some ways life goes on almost as normal: dining with one friend in her 50s, whose car was lost in a random mortar attack, she explains how she now accompanies her 16-year-old nephew by taxi to play in the orchestra at the Opera House to make sure he is not picked up and enlisted into the army. At the checkpoints she clutches his cello between her legs so that the soldiers will not take it.

Checkpoints and road blocks, such as this one in Yusuf al-Azma Square, are a common sight

Another friend works for the national electricity grid: his job is to repair electric cables damaged in the clashes. Over lunch at his home with his family, he tells me how one of his team stepped on a mine and was blasted to pieces in front of him - the man next to him had his eyes blown out.
He himself was lucky, escaping only with shrapnel in his intestine. He spent two weeks in hospital, two weeks at home recuperating, then went straight back to work. His attitude is simple: anyone who damages Syrian infrastructure is hurting the Syrian people.
The alleys of the Old City are full of children playing football. Many go to the school round the corner from my house.
Such is the overcrowding - some say Damascus's population has risen from four to seven million because of internally displaced refugees - that their school-day is from 11:00 to 15:00, with one shift before them and another shift after them. They have 50 to 60 in their class but their enthusiasm to learn and to do their homework is undiminished.
The only other foreigners I saw on the streets were Iraqi Shia, men and women led round in groups to visit the shrines by a man wielding an orange lollipop sign.
When I met an old friend at the tourism ministry who still works at his office every day, he explained how this kind of religious tourism is now all they have left, some 200,000 pilgrims a year, after 8.2 million foreign visitors in 2010. He expresses no political views - he is just someone who has chosen to stay and do his job as best he can, like millions of others.

A skincare and healthcare exhibition was held in Damascus in early December

All over the country, even in IS-held Raqqa, I was reliably informed, government employees now draw their salaries direct from cash points on specific days, causing long queues outside the banks.
For the last two nights when I was finally able to sleep in my house in Old Damascus I experienced what everyone else has to suffer on a daily basis - scarcely four hours of electricity a day, no gas, no hot water, limited cold water.
It was tough, yet strangely invigorating, crossing the chilly courtyard to wash in a dribble of icy water, warmed by the knowledge I was surrounded by loyal neighbours who were looking out for me. Without them I could never have retaken my house: they protected me, helped me at every turn.
A crisis brings out the worst and the best in people. What I found in Damascus was that a genuine kindness, a shared humanity and an extraordinary sense of humour are well and truly alive. Decent Syrian citizens are together doing their best to fight against immorality and corruption. Morale, in spite of everything, is high. Laughter keeps them sane.
Not once did anyone mention sectarianism. "Da'ish" - a pejorative term for IS based on an acronym formed from the letters of its name in Arabic - was universally condemned as beyond the pale.

How much longer, as the war approaches its fifth year and the number of greedy opportunists in society increases, such neighbourhood camaraderie can survive is an unanswerable question. But after this fortnight in Damascus I am much more optimistic than before.

Behold, the lion-killer who became an Israeli hero

The ashes of a swashbuckling hero of the British Empire are to be reburied in Israel after a service attended by the country's prime minister. John Henry Patterson was a soldier, big-game hunter and writer, whose exploits inspired three Hollywood movies. The BBC's Kevin Connolly explains why he is so admired in Israel.

The man who was to become a hero to the British and to the Israelis was neither British nor Jewish. Like many servants of the crown in the days of Empire he was an Irishman born in County Longford in 1867 to a Protestant father and Catholic mother. Ireland was then part of the United Kingdom and military service was a popular option for many young Irishmen - partly from a want of other opportunities and partly from a sense of adventure.
In Patterson's case we can assume it was the sense of adventure. By 1898 he'd been commissioned to oversee the construction of a railway bridge over a ravine at Tsavo, in Kenya, but found work was being held up by two man-eating lions who were terrorising the huge camps housing the Indian and African labourers.

It's hard to be sure, but the two lions between them may have killed more than 100 people in all. Patterson wasn't an expert on lions, although he'd shot tigers on military service in India, but to protect his workers and get his bridge finished he resolved to kill the predators.
Man-eating behaviour isn't common among lions - it's possible that the two killers at Tsavo had got the taste for human flesh from the careless disposal of human remains over the years. Over a three-week period Patterson killed both the predators. His workers, who'd been growing fractious, presented him with an inscribed drinking cup to salute his extraordinary nerve. It remained one of his most treasured possessions. Patterson told the whole story in his best-selling book, The Man-Eaters of Tsavo.
The book has inspired no fewer than three Hollywood movies - Bwana Devil (1952), the Killers of Kilimanjaro (1959) and The Ghost and the Darkness (1996). The American hunter Remington, played by Michael Douglas, who appears in The Ghost and The Darkness is a pure invention - in real-life our Irish hero did it all himself. The lions to some extent are the stars of the story and they were exceptional creatures. These animals measured 9ft (2.7m) from the nose to the tip of the tail, and after they'd been shot each of them required a team of eight men to carry them back to the camp. The stuffed carcases are in the Field Museum in Chicago but the taxidermist's art has apparently somewhat diminished their impact... according to legend the original skins had been used as rugs and so when it was decided to stuff and mount them they came out slightly smaller than they had originally been.

Male Tsavo lions don't have manes - an evolutionary quirk attributed to the fierce heat in the region

Nothing ordinary ever seemed to happen to Patterson. Bwana Devil is generally cited as the first full-colour 3-D movie made in English and so is a Hollywood milestone in itself. When you see those old black and white photographs of movie audiences thrilling to the 3-D experience in their cardboard spectacles with blue and red plastic lenses, there's a good chance they're watching Patterson in action. The film also deserves to be remembered for a slogan designed to reassure audiences that the coming of startling 3-D realism didn't mean the end of old-fashioned romance. "Bwana Devil!", it said. "A Lion in Your Lap; A Lover in Your Arms!"

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Lt Colonel J H Patterson recorded in the 1940s

Having your life turned into a Hollywood movie isn't always a positive experience. A few years after the events at Tsavo, Patterson was involved in a scandal that made him the talk of big-game hunting high society in Africa. On safari a fellow British soldier, Audley Blyth, died of gunshot wounds in his tent, as ugly rumours swirled that Patterson had been rather too close to Mrs Blyth, who was also a part of the expedition. At one point it's believed that Patterson threatened to sue Winston Churchill for slander as the incident became the talk of fashionable London dinner tables. Ernest Hemingway was intrigued enough to fictionalise the story in The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber - and true to form it was eventually turned in to yet another movie, The Macomber Affair (1947).

Big-game hunting is no longer fashionable, of course, but it's worth remembering that hunters tended to see themselves not as despoilers of the natural environment of Africa but as experts in it. Patterson shot an eland in 1906 and had the head mounted. He thought it had some unusual characteristics and when it was eventually seen by a member of faculty at the British Museum in London it turned out to be a sort of unique sub-species that to this day bears Patterson's name, Taurotragus Oryx Pattersonianius.

There was nothing honorary about Lt Col Patterson's military rank. He served with distinction in a British cavalry regiment during the Boer War in South Africa, winning the Distinguished Service Order, and when he was recalled to the colours during World War One he was almost 50 years old.

It was during the Middle East campaign that he found himself in command of the Zion Mule Corps, a group of Jewish volunteers eager to serve the international cause and to advance their own cause of creating a Jewish state at the same time. Patterson became a passionate supporter of Zionism and the ranks of the detachment he commanded included influential heroes of the cause, including Ze'ev Jabotinsky and Joseph Trumpeldor.

Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky (1880-1940)

• Zionist leader, journalist and orator born in Odessa
• He founded the militant Zionist Revisionist movement that played an important role in the establishment of the State of Israel
• Convinced the British government to allow military participation by Jewish refugees from the Ottoman Empire during World War One

Joseph Trumpeldor (1880-1920)

• Zionist pioneer and former hero of the tsarist army, born in Russia
• Died at the Tel Hai (Tal-ha in Arabic) former settlement in 1920, in an early battle of the Arab-Israeli conflict

Source: Encyclopedia Britannica

Patterson took his Jewish volunteers to war around the dangerous beaches of Gallipoli in what history remembers as a doomed British effort to attack the German Empire through the territory of its ally, the Turkish Empire. It's often said that Patterson thus became the first commander to lead Jewish forces on to the field of battle for two millennia making him an important figure in the history of Zionism.

John Henry Patterson (left) with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's parents

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told me that his older brother, Yonathan, was named in honour of John Henry Patterson, who had come to know their father when he lived in New York campaigning for the Zionist cause in the mid-1940s.

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Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to Kevin Connolly about John Henry Patterson

The family still has an engraved goblet given to Yonathan by Patterson to celebrate his birth. Yonathan went on to become an Israeli national hero who died leading the extraordinary raid on Entebbe in Uganda in 1976 in which commandos from Israel's special forces rescued hostages who were being held at an airport by members of the German Baader-Meinhof gang and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Prime Minister Netanyahu told us he regarded Patterson as godfather to the Israeli Army as well as the godfather to his brother and says it's right that Israel should honour him. He's expected to attend the burial of Patterson's ashes on Thursday.

Little village of naked poeple

VIEW GALLERY

 
At first glance, this sleepy little village looks like any other to be found in the heart of London’s commuter belt.
But the manicured lawns and neatly trimmed bushes are hiding a multitude of skin.
For this outwardly respectable Hertfordshire village is the home of Britain’s oldest naturist colony.
And while you don’t have to be nude to live here – they probably won’t sell you a house if you’re not.
Splashing in the swimming pool, mowing the lawn, even enjoying a pint in the local, its inhabitants are always stripped for action.

Dave King Photography

Fancy a pint: Mark and Tina

 
But after 85 years of quietly enforcing its undress code, the secret village of ­Spielplatz – the name means playground – is about to bare all to the rest of us for the first time.
Next month it opens its doors for the first time for a no-shorts-and-all TV documentary for More4.
The nudists next door will be exposing to the world what their neighbours, postmen and supermarket delivery drivers get to see every day of the week.
But veteran resident Iseult ­Richardson, 82, who has lived in the village nearly all her life, can’t see what all the fuss is about.
“There is no difference between naturists and people who live up the street,” she insisted. “We all live normal lives but are just lucky enough to live in this extraordinary place. It’s like a small estate.
“We have all sorts of deliveries. The milkman comes and delivers and we used to have a paperboy though that’s stopped now.
“The postmen and tradesmen know us and take us as they find us. They never seem perturbed.

Laid bare: Iseult a resident since 1930. Here in her younger years

 
“Sometimes they have to walk all the way into the middle of the site, if they are carrying something heavy like a cooker.”
The village was founded by Iseult’s father Charles Macaskie, who bought the leafy 12-acre site for £500 in 1929.
It’s in Bricket Wood, a few miles outside St Albans, and is a permanent home to the owners of 34 of its smart little bungalows.
There are another 24 houses ­available to rent to summer visitors.
The mainly two-bed bungalows come with all mod cons, including mains ­electricity, water and sewage.
The heart of the village is its club house where the residents get together in the altogether for discos, karaoke sessions, quiz nights and pool tournaments.
A few hundred yards away, ­unsuspecting motorists crawl past on the busy M1 motorway.
The idyllic, heavily-wooded village is not so much dingley dell as dangly dell.
But as TV viewers will see, there’s trouble brewing in the nudist ­paradise, as property developers home in on the village as the perfect spot for a multi-million pound housing estate.

Repairing the mast: Nudist village

 
At the moment Spielplatz is run as a club and anyone who wants to buy one of the bungalows – a bargain at an average of £85,000 – has to be vetted by the board.
Usually, they will have been part- time members for at least a year, according to Iseult.
She said: “The places get bought and sold like anywhere else. People sometimes move on when they retire and go to somewhere sunnier.
“Recently one was bought by a couple who didn’t quite like it, so they got planning permission to knock it down and build a new one. It’s nearly finished and they’ll move into their new home in a couple of months.”
As resident Tina Yates, 64, says: “It’s just a small community where ­everybody gets to know everyone else.”
But like any community, the nudists have their flash points. ­Property ownership is far from the only bone of contention.
Residents are struggling to agree about how to deal with family members who love ­dropping in, but won’t drop anything else. Die-hards insist it should be a case of get your kit off or clear off.

Dave King Photography

Happy community: A villager

 
But moderate members of the board want to admit people wearing clothes for taster sessions.
Financial director Vic Lightfoot, 68, a twice married father of three originally from High Wycombe, has had trouble persuading girlfriend Maggie Fitzgerald and daughter Joanne to enter into the spirit of Spielplatz.
Joanne was even asked to leave for failing to disrobe at an open day.
Vic admits: “You can’t just have anyone there who isn’t a naturist – it would turn into a housing estate for voyeurs.
“It was embarrassing for the people who told me of the objections. It might sound weird, people who are naked being uncomfortable with people with clothes on.
"Since then we have had discussion and I have come up with a couple of suggestions. Perhaps if we had sarongs for hire...”

Would you like to live in a nudist village?

His girlfriend Maggie, 66, thinks she should get a pass because she can’t expose her body to the sun for health reasons.
“No one has ever said, look Maggie you need to get you clothes off. I have helped put quiz nights on, prepare food, been one of the crowd.
“When you swim, you’re not allowed to wear clothes and I have been swimming. I don’t have a problem with it. People go there to escape the real world. And taking clothes off is the ultimate escape.
“I have to remind Vic when he’s at my place to put his trousers on. To be fair, he keeps his ­underwear on if he’s sitting on a plastic chair.
“There are some things you don’t want stuck on a plastic chair."
■ The Naked Village, 9pm, More4, December 11.

Taboo babies

Saving Kenya's children born of incest

Some babies are as young as one day old when they arrive at Kanduyi, says welfare officer Alice Kimotho

Baby X is sleeping quietly, wrapped in a warm blanket and held close in a motherly embrace in a Kenyan orphanage and children's home.

But, as the name we are using for him would suggest, he is no ordinary child.
For Baby X, now one month old, was born as a result of an incestuous union.
Like many others at Kanduyi Children's Home, in Bungoma county 400km (250 miles) west of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, he had to be rescued from his family before they killed him.
In Baby X's case, just two days after his birth the security forces, acting on a tip-off, raided his home and took him away, saving him from a death sentence condoned by elders of the area's Bukusu community.
There are others like him at Kanduyi, a clean if ageing collection of stone buildings with corrugated iron roofs - children with ages ranging from one day to 18.
'Taboo babies'
Incest is taboo in this part of Kenya as it is almost everywhere. According to Kenyan laws it is punishable by five years in prison or life imprisonment for sex with a minor.
But for centuries the traditional punishment in many Kenyan communities has been death - and among the Bukusu it is not necessarily of the man or woman involved but of the child born from the forbidden union.

'We are having rampant irresponsible sexual relations”

Stephen Kokonya Bungoma county culture minister

And while it is not legal for a community to impose a death penalty - only a judge can do this - in rural areas it is part of customary laws as such babies are considered cursed.

The Bukusu call them "be luswa" meaning "taboo babies", fearing they will bring curses such as infertility and mental problems.
"Any time we receive a report that a taboo child has been born somewhere we rush to save it - otherwise you may reach there only to be told that the baby died," Alice Kimotho, the children's welfare officer in charge at Kanduyi, told the BBC.
"Most of these deaths are very suspicious."
Titus Kolil, an administrative officer at the home, says incest is "very frequent" in this part of Kenya, blaming "cultural biases".
He does not give further details but speaks of three or four new cases each month just for Kanduyi to handle.
The nature of a taboo is such that there will be other cases about which the local authorities never hear.
"We are having rampant irresponsible sexual relations," says Stephen Kokonya, the Bungoma county culture minister.
"And most of these relations... are actually relationships between very close relatives, including even fathers having relations with their own children."
Girls growing up in rural homesteads are particularly vulnerable when they reach puberty because they have to move out of the family hut to sleep in the kitchen or another building.
Force
Mr Kokonya said his administration was using "cultural leadership structures" to address the problem.
"We are campaigning against retrogressive values.

The 15-year-old mother of the rescued baby is now back at school

"We believe we shall be able to communicate what is positive for communities to embrace and what is negative for communities to discard."

He threatened to beat me up if I leaked it to anybody”

15-year-old girl raped by her uncle

The records at Kanduyi Children's Home show that Baby X's mother is a 15-year-old, who was impregnated by her 17-year-old uncle.

The girl has since been moved to live with relatives 25km away from her home, and is now back at school, repeating the year she missed during her pregnancy.
I go to visit her at her guardian's home.
With her aunt present, she quietly tells me what happened.
"He used to force himself on to me," she says. "He threatened to beat me up if I leaked it to anybody."
She says she has no love for her uncle or their baby.
"Since I begot him with my uncle I can't love him. They say it is bad."
Later I ask her what she would like to do when she finishes school and she says she would like to become a doctor.

Officials say educating cultural leaders will be the best way to change attitudes in remote areas

Tears are now rolling down her cheeks, and she asks her aunt to help her finish her education.
The 17-year-old uncle, who did not have to relocate from his home, declines to speak to the BBC when we contact him.
'Right to life'
At a nearby shopping centre I meet some members of a Bukusu elders' council.

They suffocate the baby by pressing the mother's thighs together killing the baby discreetly”

One of them declines to comment on Baby X but tells me how an unborn taboo child is often killed.

"When the girl is about to deliver, they summon some women who pretend to help her deliver but instead they suffocate the baby by pressing the mother's thighs together, killing the baby discreetly.
"They believe the baby should die for the girl to live peacefully in the community."
Villagers in this region sometimes also kill second-born twins, as they are thought to bring bad luck. Those who want to keep their babies are forced to flee their homes.
Another elder says the practice of killing taboo children might stop if perpetrators of incest were sufficiently punished.
"The government lets rapists and those participating in incest go scot-free," he says.
"If these criminals were arrested and punished then cases of taboo children would be eliminated."
Mr Kokonya says proving cases of infanticide in these rural areas is difficult - so few cases are prosecuted.
But the culture minister said he wanted to remind "those old men who are sitting down and making such a decision" that they are "interfering with the basic fundamental right to life".
At Kanduyi, as Baby X wakes up and older children play noisily outside the classrooms, it is clear that those who might have died are very much alive.

But how many born in similarly unhappy circumstances have been less fortunate?

Source:BBC

Drinking urine and bat blood to live

How I drank urine and bat blood to survive

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Mauro Prosperi was 39 years old when he took part in the 1994 Marathon des Sables - a six-day, 250km (155-mile) race through the Sahara described as the toughest race of its kind. Following a sandstorm, the former Olympic pentathlete was lost in the desert for 10 days. Here he tells his story.

What I like most about running extreme marathons is the fact that you come into close contact with nature - the races take place in beautiful settings such as mountains, deserts, glaciers. As a professional athlete I hadn't been able to enjoy these surroundings because I was so focused on winning medals.
I found out about the Marathon des Sables by chance. I had already retired from the pentathlon when a good friend said to me: "There's this amazing marathon in the desert - but it's very tough." I love a challenge so I started training immediately, running 40km (25 miles) a day, reducing the amount of water I was drinking to get used to dehydration. I was never home.
My wife, Cinzia, thought I was insane - the race is so risky that you have to sign a form to say where you want your body to be sent in case you die. We had three children under the age of eight, so she was worried. I tried to reassure her. "The worst that can happen is that I get a bit sunburned," I said.
When I arrived in Morocco, I discovered a marvellous thing - the desert. I was bewitched.

Prosperi runs with fellow Italian Mario Malerba in the 1994 Marathon des Sables

These days the Marathon des Sables is a very different experience, with up to 1,300 participants it's like a giant snake - you couldn't get lost if you tried. But back in 1994 there were only 80 of us, and very few who were actually running, so most of the time I was on my own.
I was always the first Italian to reach the next stage and I'd put up a flag on my tent so that we could all get together in the evenings. It was fun.
Things went wrong on the fourth day, during the longest and most difficult stage of the race.
When we set out that morning there was already quite a bit of wind. I had passed through four checkpoints when I entered an area of sand dunes. I was alone - the pacemakers had gone ahead.

The camaraderie of desert running

Suddenly a very violent sandstorm began. The wind kicked in with a terrifying fury. I was swallowed by a yellow wall of sand. I was blinded, I couldn't breathe. The sand whipped my face - it was like a storm of needles. I understood for the first time how powerful a sandstorm could be. I turned my back on the wind and wrapped a scarf around my face to stop the sand from wounding me. I wasn't disoriented, but I had to keep moving to keep from getting buried. Eventually I crouched down in a sheltered spot, waiting for the storm to end.
It lasted eight hours. When the wind died down it was dark, so I slept out on the dunes. I was upset about the race because, until then, I had been in fourth place. I thought: "Oh well, I can't win now but I can still make good time. Tomorrow morning I'll get up really early and try to reach the finish." You have 36 hours to run that stage of the race - any longer and you are disqualified - so there was still a chance. What I couldn't have imagined was how dramatically that storm would change everything around me.

Marathon des Sables competitors battle a sandstorm in 2006

I woke up very early to a transformed landscape. I didn't know I was lost. I had a compass and a map so I thought I could navigate perfectly well, but without points of reference it's a lot more complicated.
I wasn't worried because I was sure that sooner or later I'd meet someone. "Who knows how many others are in the same situation?" I thought. "As soon as I see someone we can team up and get to the finish together." That was my plan, but unfortunately it didn't work out.

Marathon des Sables runners snake across the sands in 2009 - it attracts more than 1000 people a year

After running for about four hours I climbed up a dune and still couldn't see anything. That's when I knew I had a big problem. I started to walk - what was the point of running? Running where?

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Find out more

• Mauro Prosperi spoke to the BBC World Service programme Outlook
• Outlook airs Mon-Thurs
• Tells personal stories from around the world

• Listen to the interview
• Subscribe to Outlook podcast

When I realised I was lost, the first thing I did was to urinate in my spare water bottle, because when you're still well-hydrated your urine is the clearest and the most drinkable. I remembered my grandfather telling me how, during the war, he and his fellow soldiers had drunk their own urine when their water ran out. I did it as a precaution, but I wasn't desperate. I was sure the organisers would find me soon.

When running the Marathon des Sables you have to be self-sufficient, and I was well-prepared: I had a knife, a compass, sleeping bag and plenty of dehydrated food in my backpack. The problem was water. We were given fresh water at the checkpoints, but when the storm hit I only had half a bottle of water left. I drank it as slowly as I could.
I'm very resistant to heat and I was very careful. I would only walk when it was cool, early in the morning and then again in the evening. During the day, when I wasn't walking, I'd try to find shelter and shade. I was wearing two hats - a baseball cap with a red woollen hat on top - to keep the temperature as constant as possible. Luckily my skin is quite dark so I didn't really suffer from sunburn.

Prosperi's map of the 1994 Marathon des Sables

On the second day, at sunset, I heard the sound of a helicopter coming towards me. I assumed it was looking for me so I took out my flare and shot it in the air, but he didn't see it. It was flying so low that I could see the pilot's helmet, but he didn't see me - he flew right past.
The helicopter, on loan from the Moroccan police, was returning to base to refuel. Since 1995, because of my experience, runners have been equipped with the kind of flares they use at sea - which they're not happy about, because they weigh 500g - but at the time the flares we had were really small, no bigger than a pen.
Nevertheless I remained calm, because I was convinced the organisers would have the resources to find anyone lost in the desert. I still thought I would be rescued sooner or later.

The holy man's tomb that almost became Prosperi's tomb

After a couple of days I came across a marabout - a Muslim shrine - where Bedouins stop when they are crossing the desert. I was hoping it was inhabited, but unfortunately there was nobody there - only a holy man in a coffin. But at least I had a roof over my head, it was like being home. I assessed my situation: it wasn't rosy, but I was feeling all right physically. I ate some of my rations, which I cooked with fresh urine, not the bottled urine that I was saving to drink - I started to drink that on the fourth day.
The marabout had filled up with sand from all the sandstorms, so the ceiling was very low. I went up to the roof to plant my Italian flag, in the hope that anybody looking for me could see it. While I was up there I saw some bats, huddled together in the tower. I decided to drink their blood. I grabbed a handful of bats, cut their heads and mushed up their insides with a knife, then sucked them out. I ate at least 20 of them, raw - I only did what they do to their prey.
I stayed in the marabout for a few days, waiting to be found.
I gave in to despair only twice. Once was when I saw the helicopter and it didn't see me. The other time was when I saw the aeroplane.
I had been in the marabout for three days when I heard the sound of a motor - an aeroplane. I don't know if it was looking for me, but I immediately started a fire with whatever I had - my rucksack, everything - in the hope the plane would see the smoke. But just then another sandstorm hit. It lasted for 12 hours. The aeroplane didn't spot me.
I felt it was my very last chance to be found. I was very depressed. I was convinced I was going to die and that it was going to be a long agonising death, so I wanted to accelerate it. I thought if I died out in the desert no-one would find me, and my wife wouldn't get the police pension - in Italy, if someone goes missing you have to wait 10 years before they can be declared dead. At least if I died in this Muslim shrine they would find my body, and my wife would have an income.

Prosperi worked for the mounted police in Sicily

I wasn't afraid of dying and my decision to take my own life came out of logical reasoning rather than despair. I wrote a note to my wife with a piece of charcoal and then cut my wrists. I lay down and waited to die, but my blood had thickened and wouldn't drain.
The following morning I woke up. I hadn't managed to kill myself. Death didn't want me yet.
I took it as a sign. I regained confidence and I decided to see it as a new competition against myself. I became determined and focused again. I was thinking of my children. I put myself in order - Mauro the athlete was back. I needed to have a plan. I still had quite a lot of energy left, I wasn't tired. As a former pentathlete I was used to training 12 hours a day and I had trained well for the Marathon des Sables so I didn't feel too weak. I still had some energy tablets, too.

Prosperi started in Zagora and was found in Tindouf 300km from the finishing line

I regained my strength and mental lucidity. I decided to get out of the shrine and start walking again, but where to? I followed the advice the Tuareg had given us all before we started the race: "If you're lost, head for the clouds that you can see on the horizon at dawn, that's where you will find life. During the day they will disappear but set your compass and carry on in that direction." So I decided to head for those mythical clouds on the horizon.
I walked in the desert for days, killing snakes and lizards and eating them raw - that way I drank, too. I think there are some instincts, a kind of deja vu, that kick in in an emergency situation: my inner caveman emerged.
I was aware that I was losing an incredible amount of weight - the more I walked, the looser my watch felt on my wrist. I was so dehydrated I couldn't urinate anymore. Luckily I had some anti-diarrhoea medicine which I kept taking.

Is it a good idea to drink your own urine in an emergency?

• Drinking urine is not recommended.
• Urine is a waste product containing salts and the more dehydrated you are, the more poisonous your urine becomes.
• The first "catch" of urine is more dilute and may be of some benefit, but that's likely to be before you know you're in trouble.
• Drinking blood may help to prolong survival - survivors at sea have drunk turtle blood, of a similar concentration to human blood.

I wanted to see my family and friends again and I concentrated on that. I wasn't afraid. At the same time, I started to view the desert as a place where people can live. I could see the beauty of the desert. I paid careful attention to every trace - even dried excrement gave me clues about what direction to go in.

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“Start Quote

I started to think of myself as a man of the desert”

End Quote Mauro Prosperi Desert survivor

I learned that there is food all around you, if you learn to look. As I was walking through the desert I recognised dried riverbeds where succulents grew, so I squeezed their juice out and drank that.

I started to think of myself as a man of the desert. Later, a Tuareg prince dedicated a poem to me - according to him I was a "chosen one" because I survived for so long in the desert.
Meanwhile, the organisers were out looking for me. My brother and brother-in-law had flown in from Italy to join the search. They found some of the traces I had left behind, like my shoelaces. They got to the marabout and found signs of me. But they were sure they were looking for a body.
On the eighth day I came across a little oasis. I lay down and drank, sipping slowly, for about six or seven hours. I saw a footprint in the sand, so I knew people couldn't be far.
The next day, I saw some goats in the distance - it gave me hope.

The song of the Tuareg
Singing springs under the palms of the green oasis, listen to the call of the Tuareg in the night, in the calm/ At the pace of my pale camel I go, I travel without destination/ The desert is a world, a land of thirst and hunger/ The immense dunes stretch out, like an ocean of misfortune, from the waves of stirring sands.
Excerpt from a poem dedicated to Mauro Prosperi by a Tuareg prince

Then I saw a young shepherd girl. She saw me too and ran away, scared. After nine days in the desert I must have looked quite a sight, I was black with dirt. The girl ran towards a large Berber tent to warn the women I was coming. There were no men in the camp - they had gone to market - but the women took care of me. They were so kind. An older woman came out of the tent and immediately gave me some goat's milk to drink. She tried to give me some food as well, but I threw it up. They wouldn't allow me into the tent because I was a man, but they put me on a carpet in the shade of their veranda. Then they sent someone to call the police - they like to camp close to military bases for protection.

A visibly thin Prosperi returns to a hero's welcome in Italy

The police came and carried me to their Jeep. They took me to their military base, blindfolded, because they didn't know who I was. They thought I might be dangerous. They had guns and I thought at times that they were going to kill me. When they found out I was the marathon runner who had got lost in Morocco they took off my blindfold and celebrated. I discovered that I had crossed the border into Algeria. I was 291km (181 miles) off course.

Prosperi has run the Marathon des Sables seven times: in 2001 he came 12th

They took me to hospital in Tindouf, where finally, after 10 days, I was able to call my wife. The first thing I said to her was: "Have you already had my funeral?" Because after 10 days lost in the desert you would expect someone to be dead.
When they weighed me in the hospital I had lost 16kg (35lb) - I weighed just 45kg (99lb). My eyes had suffered and my liver was damaged, but my kidneys were fine. I couldn't eat anything other than soup or liquids for months. It took me almost two years to recover.

Prosperi plans to run a 7000km race across the Sahara next year

Four years later I was back at the Marathon des Sables. People ask me why I went back, but when I start something I want to finish it. The other reason was that I can't live without the desert. Desert fever does exist, and it's a disease that I've absolutely caught. I'm drawn back to the desert every year to greet it, to experience it.
I ran eight more desert marathons and am now preparing for my biggest yet. Next year I'm planning to run 7,000km (4,350 miles) coast-to-coast across the Sahara from Agadir (Morocco) on the Atlantic Ocean to Hurghada (Egypt) on the Red Sea. Sport and nature are part of my life, and these races allow me to experience them first-hand.

My wife was a saint. She coped with me for many years but at a certain point, because of my lifestyle, we decided to split up. We are still best friends, maybe more so now than when we were married. I have a new partner but she knows I am a man on a mission. I can't change.

Source:BBC