27 February 1997 Edition
Television: Do you believe they put a man on the Moon?
There is a conspiracy theorist in our office who is convinced that men never landed on the Moon on 20 July, 1969. The moonwalk was faked in a film studio and the entire world was duped. How we laughed when he expounded his theory. Well, the other night I found out he is not alone.
There are others, ranging through various degrees of weirdness and nerdiness to the apparently quite sane, who are also convinced it never happened. Channel 4's For the Love of... (midnight, Monday, 24 February) gathered six of them in the studio with long-haired hack Jon Ronson to explain. It's all in the photos which have tell-tale signs of studio work, you see. And not only that. Someone in the studio deliberately left the clues in the pictures to tell you they were fake.
And then there's the radiation. They tell us you can't survive for more than a couple of days outside the Earth's atmosphere without the protection of a massive lead shield which Apollo 11 did not have. They didn't have the technology to complete the mission, but they did have the technology to engineer the hoax and because JFK had promised to send a man to the Moon and back before the end of the `60s, the scientists and politicians decided to whop the Commies' ass with the biggest con-job in history. Since NASA controlled everything, including all the television pictures and photos, they could pull it off.
This all raises intruiging possibilities. Was the Malvinas War fought at all or was it a TV scam dreamt up by Thatcher and Galtieri to boost their flagging fortunes? Was the famous 1947 Cavan vs Kerry All-Ireland Football final played in the New York Polo Grounds at all? Did Mícheál O'Hehir, Radio Éireann and the GAA mock it up on a pitch somewhere in windswept Mayo, Ireland's answer to the Nevada Desert? I think Seán O Donaíle should investigate.
One of the most fascinating programmes of the week was Ray Mear's World of Survival (BBC2, Monday, 24 February, 8.30pm), which focused on traditional Inuit survival skills in the Arctic Circle, a spot almost as inhospitable as the lunar surface. He visited Baffin Island, where temperatures reach below minus 40 degrees Celsius in the depths of winter. Yet the Innuit have managed to survive on the ice and snow plains for thousands of years. A team of skilled hunters can build an igloo in just 45 minutes. The technique involves carving blocks of snow and stacking them, the snow sounding just like polystyrene as it is manipulated into place. The introduction of a traditional seal blubber lamp raises the temperature inside the igloo to freezing point, which is a real feat when just outside it is minus 30 Degrees.
This was the first of a series of journeys to inhospitable landscapes by Mears and was an impressive debut. He showed how difficult it is even to get a drink of fresh water in the Arctic, despite appearances. The relatively easy part of one solution was going out to shoot a caribou. The Inuit hunter, while butchering the carcass, will take a section of the stomach, pack it with snow and put it back inside the body cavity. By the time the job is finished the snow has melted and the hunter can get a drink by sucking the liquid through a fresh chunk of snow which acts as a filter.
Fishing will never be the same either after watching an Inuit hunter dig through five feet of solid ice just to get at the water or stand stock still for up to four hours at a time with a harpoon above a seal's blowhole waiting to make a kill. Experienced hunters can find their way even in the middle of a dense fog purely by studying the way the wind has blown the snow. Mears regretted that so many young people are choosing not to learn the old skills these days, survival skills which are incredible to witness and are a testament to human versatility. But those old ways are so arduous that it is an unsurprising development.
The most moving programme of the past week was Panorama's documentary (Monday, 24 February, 9.30pm) about the Bridgewater Three (four including the late Pat Molloy), who spent 19 years in prison despite glaring evidence that they, like the Birmingham Six and others before them, had been fitted up by West Midlands police.
Non-disclosure of key evidence by the police led to their conviction and the failure of subsequent attempts, right up until last weekend, to have the men cleared. Michael Hickey went so far to demonstrate his innocence that he staged an 89-day rooftop protest in the `80s during the middle of winter. Afterwards, shattered by the experience, he required psychiatric treatment. Listening to these men speak was like listening to Paddy Joe Hill or Gerry Conlon or Judith Ward, ordinary people whose lives were taken from them because the state needed a scapegoat. That it took so long before they finally won their freedom is a useful marker against which Britain's system of justice can be judged.
More evidence of compassion in British prisons was provided by World In Action (UTV, Monday, 24 February, 8pm). Due directly to Home Secretary Michael Howard's hands-on approach to the running of prisons, more prisoners are now chained up than ever before. One woman, in prison for stealing a handbag, told how she was chained to a bed while she gave birth - hardly the sign of a civilised society. Republicans are only too well aware of Howard's dehumanising and punitive prison policy but the thought of this monstrous man becoming Major's successor is scary indeed.
BY LIAM O COILEAIN
There are others, ranging through various degrees of weirdness and nerdiness to the apparently quite sane, who are also convinced it never happened. Channel 4's For the Love of... (midnight, Monday, 24 February) gathered six of them in the studio with long-haired hack Jon Ronson to explain. It's all in the photos which have tell-tale signs of studio work, you see. And not only that. Someone in the studio deliberately left the clues in the pictures to tell you they were fake.
And then there's the radiation. They tell us you can't survive for more than a couple of days outside the Earth's atmosphere without the protection of a massive lead shield which Apollo 11 did not have. They didn't have the technology to complete the mission, but they did have the technology to engineer the hoax and because JFK had promised to send a man to the Moon and back before the end of the `60s, the scientists and politicians decided to whop the Commies' ass with the biggest con-job in history. Since NASA controlled everything, including all the television pictures and photos, they could pull it off.
This all raises intruiging possibilities. Was the Malvinas War fought at all or was it a TV scam dreamt up by Thatcher and Galtieri to boost their flagging fortunes? Was the famous 1947 Cavan vs Kerry All-Ireland Football final played in the New York Polo Grounds at all? Did Mícheál O'Hehir, Radio Éireann and the GAA mock it up on a pitch somewhere in windswept Mayo, Ireland's answer to the Nevada Desert? I think Seán O Donaíle should investigate.
One of the most fascinating programmes of the week was Ray Mear's World of Survival (BBC2, Monday, 24 February, 8.30pm), which focused on traditional Inuit survival skills in the Arctic Circle, a spot almost as inhospitable as the lunar surface. He visited Baffin Island, where temperatures reach below minus 40 degrees Celsius in the depths of winter. Yet the Innuit have managed to survive on the ice and snow plains for thousands of years. A team of skilled hunters can build an igloo in just 45 minutes. The technique involves carving blocks of snow and stacking them, the snow sounding just like polystyrene as it is manipulated into place. The introduction of a traditional seal blubber lamp raises the temperature inside the igloo to freezing point, which is a real feat when just outside it is minus 30 Degrees.
This was the first of a series of journeys to inhospitable landscapes by Mears and was an impressive debut. He showed how difficult it is even to get a drink of fresh water in the Arctic, despite appearances. The relatively easy part of one solution was going out to shoot a caribou. The Inuit hunter, while butchering the carcass, will take a section of the stomach, pack it with snow and put it back inside the body cavity. By the time the job is finished the snow has melted and the hunter can get a drink by sucking the liquid through a fresh chunk of snow which acts as a filter.
Fishing will never be the same either after watching an Inuit hunter dig through five feet of solid ice just to get at the water or stand stock still for up to four hours at a time with a harpoon above a seal's blowhole waiting to make a kill. Experienced hunters can find their way even in the middle of a dense fog purely by studying the way the wind has blown the snow. Mears regretted that so many young people are choosing not to learn the old skills these days, survival skills which are incredible to witness and are a testament to human versatility. But those old ways are so arduous that it is an unsurprising development.
The most moving programme of the past week was Panorama's documentary (Monday, 24 February, 9.30pm) about the Bridgewater Three (four including the late Pat Molloy), who spent 19 years in prison despite glaring evidence that they, like the Birmingham Six and others before them, had been fitted up by West Midlands police.
Non-disclosure of key evidence by the police led to their conviction and the failure of subsequent attempts, right up until last weekend, to have the men cleared. Michael Hickey went so far to demonstrate his innocence that he staged an 89-day rooftop protest in the `80s during the middle of winter. Afterwards, shattered by the experience, he required psychiatric treatment. Listening to these men speak was like listening to Paddy Joe Hill or Gerry Conlon or Judith Ward, ordinary people whose lives were taken from them because the state needed a scapegoat. That it took so long before they finally won their freedom is a useful marker against which Britain's system of justice can be judged.
More evidence of compassion in British prisons was provided by World In Action (UTV, Monday, 24 February, 8pm). Due directly to Home Secretary Michael Howard's hands-on approach to the running of prisons, more prisoners are now chained up than ever before. One woman, in prison for stealing a handbag, told how she was chained to a bed while she gave birth - hardly the sign of a civilised society. Republicans are only too well aware of Howard's dehumanising and punitive prison policy but the thought of this monstrous man becoming Major's successor is scary indeed.
BY LIAM O COILEAIN