Phantasms of the Living and the Dead

After a pause of a few days, CJ has returned to writing down his thoughts on ghosts. These are an ongoing attempt by him to sort out his ideas on the matter. This is not an easy matter, as scholars – scientists, theologians, and philosophers, whether sceptics and believers, have been arguing about what ghosts are, if they exist, down the centuries. CJ in this series of blog posts follows the line of the founders of the Society for Psychic Research that ghosts are a kind of hallucination broadcast telepathically by a mind. It’s the same idea that provided the great 19th century writer L. Sheridan LeFanu with the basis for his short story ‘The House and the Brain’. In this latest post, CJ ponders the vexed question of ‘Phantasms of the Living’ as the SPR put it.

Along with investigating ghosts as the spirits of the dead, the SPR also investigated and compiled records of cases where the apparition was of a living person. These were full, so full, in fact, that Gurney, Podmore and Myer, three of the founders, published a book devoted to them, Phantasms of the Living. This comprised two volumes with a total of 1,400 pages. It is one of the books CJ recommends that serious researchers into ghosts should start before moving on to later works, such as Hilary Evans excellent Seeing Ghosts.

Looking through the surveys done over the past century of the appearance of ghosts and apparitions, it appears that there has been something of a change in the phenomenon. It may surprise the modern reader to known that in the census of hallucinations, of those that were recognised there were rather more of the living than of the departed: 32 per cent of the total number of recorded cases compared to 14.3 per cent. In 1948 Mass Observation carried out a survey for Donald West. Of the cases they recorded, only 9 per cent were of the dead while 40.5 per cent of the living. Both of these surveys also recorded cases were the apparition wasn’t recognised: 41 per cent in the census of hallucinations and 31.5 per cent in the Mass Observation’s survey. Mass Observation were a peculiar outfit. They were a group of anthropologists who lamented that ethnographically we knew more about other societies, the primal cultures over which the empire ruled, than we did ourselves and so set about the anthropological study of the British themselves. How they didn’t get arrested with some of their antics I honestly don’t know. This included studying how long it took men to urinate in lavatories to how long it took women to undress for the night. Most of their studies were much more ordinary and socially acceptable than those two examples, and I do wonder if the men making these studies ended up being beaten up or in court trying to explain to a judge that their suspicious activities weren’t voyeurism but serious science.

Back to the spooks. Over the next few years this situation was reversed. Of those ghosts the percipients recognised, the majority were of the dead. The postal survey carried out by the Institute of Paraphysical Research in 1968 and 1974found that of the 28 per cent of cases where the apparition was recognised, two-thirds were of the dead. Another postal survey carried out in 1974 by Erlendur Haraldsson found that only 11 per cent were phantasms of the living, and 31 per cent of the dead. He also cites the findings of ASSAP treasurer Becky Smith, whose survey found that 25 per cent of recognised apparitions were of the living. However, only 16 of the cases in her survey were of people recognised by the percipient. From the available information it appears that there was a change in the phenomenon between 1948 and 1968, but this may be illusory. We naturally don’t know how many of the apparitions in the unrecognised cases were of the living and dead. It’s possible that the real figures may be different, but this is impossible to know because the percipients didn’t recognise the people whose shades they saw.

One of the explanations the SPR put forward for the appearance of ghosts of the living was that they were crisis apparitions. These are broadcast telepathically by people undergoing an emergency or crisis, including their own deaths, to their loved ones. CJ notes that this feels like a natural explanation due to the fact that we are used to ghosts as distressed or seeking help. He could have added here that this type of apparition seems related to the doppelganger or fetch of traditional fairy lore. The term ‘doppelganger’ is German for ‘double goer’ or perhaps ‘double walker’. They were supernatural doubles of individuals, and it was considered an omen of that person’s death if one was seen. One of the explanations advanced in the 16th or 17th century for them was that the bodies of seriously ill or dying people exuded vapours, which coalesced into a replica of the original. After this person’s death, the fetch then went to join the fairies in their hills.

Becky’s suggested solution to this apparent change in the phenomenon is that the publicity surrounding the publication of Phantasms of the Living or the SPR’s hypothesis that ghosts were created telepathically made it more likely that people would report instances where the apparition was of someone still alive. The fact that Sheridan LeFanu uses the idea in his ghost story shows that it had permeated some way into popular ideas about spooks, at least among that section of the public that read ghost stories.

Another possibility CJ considers is that these are cases of mistaken identity. He cites an instance where he himself was struck by the astonishing similarity of a young woman drinking a milkshake in an ice cream parlour on Cheltenham High Street and that of a young female friends who had sadly passed away from lung cancer. It’s quite possible that some cases of doppelgangers and apparitions of the living are indeed due to mistaken identity. There is a limit to the number of different faces human biology can create, and so, in the words of the popular saying, ‘everyone has a double’. Well, possibly not everyone, but a few. There are cases of people who are physically identical but who are completely unrelated. I was once mistaken for someone who worked for the Ministry of Agriculture’s laboratory outside Bristol.

CJ ends his piece by wondering how many of us can visualise ourselves, and that it’s probably easier for someone to project an image of somebody else than of themselves. He therefore believes that if the ghost of a murdered girl is seen, it probably comes from the minds of other people, such as the murderer or the girl’s relatives and loved ones, rather than the girl herself. Could it come from folklorists thinking of the tale? And so could we build a ghost?

This takes us into the realm of the ‘Philip’ experiment, in which a group of psychical researchers constructed an entirely fictional entity, ‘Philip’, with whom they tried to make contact during seances. They succeeded, which seems to suggest that it’s possible for living experimenters to create entirely fictional communicating spirits, spirits that have never lived and which don’t exist outside of the imaginations of the researchers.

Related to this is an apparition that haunts the house of one of the American pulp writers. I’ve forgotten the details, but the pulp writer wrote a series of stories of a tough crime fighter. Visitors to his house since his decease have seen a dark, shadowy figure haunting it. One of the British Marvel magazines, in which this story appeared, posed the question of whether the writer’s intense concentration had resulted in the psychic creation of this apparition. I can’t remember who the writer was, but one of the writers on that magazine was Alan Moore, a titan of British and American comics as well as a ritual magician. This was about forty years ago, but it may be that whoever wrote the article based his supposition on the experiences of Moore and others.

Now, I respectfully differ from CJ in that I don’t think there is a single, one-size-fits-all solution to the question of what ghosts are. The telepathic hypothesis may explain some ghosts and apparitions, but not all. It certainly offers a solution to the old sceptical question that if ghosts are the souls of the dead, why don’t they appear naked? A few naked ghosts were reported in 17th century Quebec, but apart from that the vast majority of spooks appear clothed. I also agree with CJ in that we don’t really know offhand what we look like, although obviously we have no trouble recognising ourselves in mirrors. I dimly remember reading back in the ’90s in one of the papers that scientists had discovered that subconsciously people think of their appearance as it was when they were in their 20s. In the Welsh medieval classic, the Mabinogion, the inhabitants of Annwn, the land of the dead, all look like young people of 30 with the exception that their hair is white. And according to some Spiritualists, at least from what I’ve read, on the after death plane we age backwards, becoming young and vital once again. Despite this, most ghost reports seem to be of the person as they were in life and seem to show that age, no matter how young or old they were.

There have been a number of attempts to solve the problem of ghosts and their appearance. Terry Pratchett in Mort explained it with Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of morphogenetic fields. Mort is Pratchett’s third book following the Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic. In it, a young lad gets recruited by Death to take over the Grim Reaper’s job. One of the souls he collects is that of a witch. At the woman’s death, the morphogenetic fields maintaining her appearance collapse, and she goes from aged crone to beautiful young woman before finally become a floating light ready for her next incarnation. The idea that our post mortem appearance could be due morphogenetic fields is interesting, though somewhat different from the theory as it was propounded by Sheldrake. I doubt Pratchett was serious about it though. My impression is that he was a Humanist, although when he was suffering from the Alzheimer’s that took him from us, he said that he could feel the presence of his father reassuring him that everything was all right. He was serious about his own writing, and clearly loved Fantasy literature, but he was also much less than respectful towards it. He couldn’t tell whether he was writing it or satirising it. At a talk he gave at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature back in the ’90s he described himself as ‘a giant hairy maggot crawling over its [Fantasy’s] corpse’. He certainly didn’t seem to believe in magic, which he found far less interesting that science, which had produced wonderful things like street lights. And it all came from the brains of monkeys, as he said in a Beeb programme on him. It seems to me that when he cited morphogenetic fields, it was as a literary device rather than a serious proposition.

Another suggested solution, proposed by the German physicist Gerd Wassermann, was an alternative form of matter, shadow matter. This could explain the ghost phenomenon, though as it stands it’s purely theoretical and so the Magonians concluded that it was another case of trying to explain one unknown with another. Nevertheless, this week there was an article in one of the journals suggesting that along with the objects of the normal matter in the universe there was an invisible, dark matter mirror universe. If ghosts are composed of exotic matter, could this dark matter universe somehow be their origin and domain. If so, what would be the physics in which this normally invisible substance becomes visible during a haunting?

I’ve also wondered before now our consciousness, our sense of self, also includes our appearance and our clothes. We do have a sense of our own bodies. For example, if we lift an arm up, we’re aware that we have done so, and although we may not always consciously be aware of it, I wonder if at some level we’re also aware of our clothes. It could be that it is this awareness of our bodies and our clothing that results in ghosts being visible and clothed in hauntings.

Another idea is that ghosts may be the product of Platonic Ideal Forms. Plato believed that apart from raw matter objects were shaped by transcendent ideal forms, somewhat like the idea a sculptor has when carving stone. Apart from the general ideal forms, there are transcendent forms of individuals as they are at any given time. Their matter may decease and decay, but their ideal form continues and is intelligible and perceptible to those with psychic gifts.

Returning to CJ’s suggestion that ghosts may be impressions of a person’s appearance as seen by another, it may be able to test this. If this is true, must an observer be in the same position as the person, whose observation generated the spook, in order to see it? Would a person in a different position not see the ghost at all, or would they see the ghost from the same perspective as the first person? For example, suppose a ghost appears in a room directly facing the entrance door. Would someone also have to be in this position to see it? Suppose there was a second person occupying a position sideways to the ghost. Would they also see the ghost facing them straight on, as the person who made the original observation saw it, and which the observer at the entrance door sees it? Or would it see it sideways, or not at all. If they see it sideways, then either there was another person there, whose telepathic impressions are still generating the ghost, or the ghost isn’t a telepathic impression from an observer.

This experiment reminds me of my experience viewing an exhibition of holograms at the Ideal Home Exhibition in Bristol in the summer of 1980. Holograms in this sense were three dimensional photographs made by lasers on glass. It was a strange experience, as when you moved from one to another the image would suddenly materialise in front of you out of, it seemed, thin air. Would something like that occur to the observer of a ghost that had been created as an image by another observer, long since departed? As he or she adopted the position of the original observer, would the ghost suddenly materialise just as the holograms did when someone moved in front of them?

CJ is raising some serious and definitely thought-provoking ideas in his series of blog posts, ideas which deserve serious consideration.

Ghosts: Working Notes (Part 4).

More Information from Stop the War Coalition’s March against the War In Gaza Tomorrow

Newsletter – 17/05/24

End the Genocide – End the Nakba – Free Palestine

Tomorrow’s National Demonstration for Palestine is part of a Global Day of Action to mark the 76th anniversary of the Nakba, the act of mass ethnic cleansing undertaken by Zionist forces to establish the state of Israel which saw over 750,000 Palestinians expelled and over 500 Palestinian towns and villages destroyed. Reflecting on the anniversary of the Nakba, Lindsey German, wrote earlier this week:

“The world is becoming a much more dangerous place, and Netanyahu’s war is helping to make it so. While Britain, the US and EU states are nervous at his attack on Rafah, and don’t want it to happen, but will not stop it because Israel is a key ally in the Middle East.

So on the anniversary of the Nakba, we find Israel, a nuclear state, acting with greater impunity than ever, and with its right-wing politicians wanting a total war not just against Gaza but in the whole of the Middle East.

We also find the Palestinian people continuing to resist and to demand justice, backed by a solidarity movement which is only growing stronger as Israel is forever branded a pariah state.”

Above is the route for the tomorrow’s march. The start point will be slightly different from marches from the BBC in the past, beginning on Mortimer St. Please use the following underground stations: Goodge Street, Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Circus.

Hundreds of thousands are predicted to march in what is the 14th national march since October, calling for a ceasefire to end the genocide in Gaza. Click here to find transport from your area. See you on the streets tomorrow!

Full Info for Tomorrow’s Demo

More Speakers Added! Why War, Peace & Palestine Are Trade Union Issues

We’re super excited to announce that the inspirational Chris Smalls from the Amazon Labour Union in the US is coming over in-person to be part of our 2024 Trade Union Conference! Also joining our excellent line-up will be Suzan Abdul Salaam from the New Union of Jerusalem (online), Emma Rose (NEU President) and Jim Kelly (Unite London & Eastern – Personal Capacity).

We’re looking forward to an excellent conference focused on building the anti-war movement in the workplace. Make sure to get your branch to support the conference and send a delegation.

Speakers Previously Announced:

Jo Grady, UCU Gen Sec // Eddie Dempsey, RMT Assistant Gen Sec // Riccardo LaTorre, FBU National Officer // Mohammed Shafiq, Chair of PCS Black Members Committee // Sean Vernell, UCU Exec // Andrew Feinstein, Shadow World // Lindsey German, StWC Convenor // Andrew Murray, StWC Vice President

Sign Up Here

🚨 Mon 20 May – MAYDAY! Julian Assange Extradition Descision 🚨

We are joining calls for a mass demonstration outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London on Monday (20 May) from 8.30am as the monumental decision is handed down. A decision is expected on the day and should extradition be allowed moves to initiate his transfer the US could be taken immediately.

Stella Assange will be at court along with WikiLeaks’ Kristinn Hrafnsson and our team to make sure that we provide comprehensive coverage of this historic decision. Julian must be allowed to resume his life with his young family who have been robbed of their father simply for his commitment to standing up for the public’s right to know.

Click Here for More Info

New Evidence for Quantum Consciousness

This is sort of related to the articles I’ve put up recently responding to CJ of ASSAP’s ideas on UFOs an d ghosts. Roger Penrose is a highly respected British mathematician and physicist. He believes that consciousness cannot be reduced to simple, straightforward mathematical computations. In his book The Emperor’s New Mind, published decades ago in 80s or 90s, he argued that it was, in fact, produced by quantum effects in the human brain. In the 90s he and the American neurosurgeon, Stuart Hameroff, suggested that these quantum effects occurred in the nanotubercules in human brain cells. This was taken up and discussed by the BBC science documentary series, Horizon, which also covered the possibility that, due to its quantum origins, consciousness survived death and the Near Death Experience was indeed evidence of life after death.

Sabine Hossenfelder is a German physicist and science vlogger. In this video below she discusses this theory and a recent, independent study that confirms that quantum effects really do occur in this section of human brain cells. Scientists had previously discounted this possibility because it was believed that human biology was far too warm and wet. Quantum computers are suspended on shock absorbers and supercooled to within a few degrees of absolute zero in order for the quantum effects they use to appear. Now it seems this is not necessarily the case, at least as far as the human brain goes. The biologist Jack Cohen, who has spent decades assisting SF writers like Jack Niven construct plausible aliens for their novels, also believed that the human brain was also too warm and wet, but suggested that aliens with a different biology and chemistry may also use them in his book on what real aliens would look like. Hossenfelder nevertheless remains unconvinced on the matter of quantum consciousness, pointing out that Penrose and Hameroff don’t state how these quantum effects could lead to it.

What Are UFOs: Part 2

Is the Psycho-Social Hypothesis Failing the Stress Test?

This is my response to the second part of CJ’s searching investigation of what UFOs are, published on his blog yesterday. In this piece, CJ explains his dissatisfaction with the Psycho-Social Hypothesis. As he explains, the psycho-social hypothesis or model means different things to different people, but it roughly states that the UFO experience is shaped by social stresses and anxieties. My view of the phenomenon is slightly different, following that of the small press magazine Magonia. This was for a long time Britain’s leading sceptical UFO magazine, with slogans like ‘Hard on Ufology, hard on the causes of Ufology’ parodying Blair’s slogan on crime. It was based very much on the psycho-social model, which to them meant that UFO encounters were internal, psychological events prompted in many cases by an external object or phenomenon. The imagery experienced in these encounters was drawn from popular culture and folklore. Thus, in the ancient and medieval worlds, people encountered fairies, angels, gods and demons. In our modern, scientific age these have been replaced by spacecraft and aliens.

CJ makes it clear that he is certainly not an opponent of the PSH, and that he shares many of the views of Jean-Michel Abrassart. Dr Abrassart is a sceptical Belgian psychologist and UFO researcher who presented a fascinating talk on UFOs to ASSAP at their weekly online Zoom meeting last week. He showed research from a Belgian perspective that UFO narratives are shaped by culture. Belgium is a multilingual country with three different linguistic groups: the Flemish, who speak a form of Dutch; the Walloons, who speak French, and a small, German-speaking enclave. His research showed that stories of UFO encounters were sometimes confined to particular ethnicities and did not cross over to the others despite all of them sharing and occupying the same country.

CJ did not take aim at the whole Psycho-Social Hypothesis but just one aspect: that mentioned above – the theory that UFO flaps appear in response to social anxieties. He also notes that many UFOs are indeed misidentified astronomical phenomena. Jean-Michel showed how many of the flaps followed the 18-year Saros or Metonic cycle. This is when the Earth and Moon adopt the same positions to each other after that number of years, and has been used to predict eclipses since the days of ancient Greece.  It also allows one to test some UFO sightings, by returning to the location with the witness when the Moon appears in the same position as the original sighting. While it sounds ridiculous that people could misidentify such a familiar sight as the Moon, there is certainly corroborating evidence on this side of the North Sea. Magonia mentioned decades ago the case of a group of British coppers who began to believe that their car was being pursued by a UFO. They knew that in reality the object above them was the Moon, but had to stop their vehicle for a moment to be sure.

CJ then goes to show how many of the classic flaps correlate with the social anxieties of the time. The sightings of Martians in the 1950s were a response to Cold War anxieties. That of the 1970s was spurred by the emerging awareness of the ecological crisis, while the dark, sinister encounters of the ‘90s reflected the predominance of paranoia and conspiracy theories in popular culture. But these flaps don’t always reflect those fears.

There was definitely more than element of paranoia in 50s Ufology, following the writings of Donald Keyhoe who was convinced that the UFOs were preparing to invade. The American Air Force general, Kolman von Kebizcy also called for America to prepare for an invasion from Mars following the 1952 mass sightings of UFOs over Washington D.C. But it was also the era of the Contactee, people who believed they had met aliens and been given messages to impart to the rest of humanity. These were generally greetings of interplanetary brotherhood and warnings about the threat of nuclear weapons, which also reflected contemporary concerns about the threat of nuclear annihilation. In some of the messages, these were a threat to the planet itself and would throw it out of orbit if used. Other aliens warned that they put not only humanity but the whole universe in peril, and were forcing the other intelligent beings of the cosmos to act. These encounters and their messages from benevolent but concerned aliens resemble the plot of the film The Day The Earth Stood Still, which was based on an SF short story, ‘The Return of the Master’.

The 1970s were another decade of great social anxiety. The report, Limits to Growth, had been published arguing that in the very near future the Earth would become massively overpopulated. Humanity would use up the planet’s resources leading to the collapse of civilisation. The Club of Rome had published its findings that the world’s flora and fauna were also threatened. This led to the foundation of various Green parties in western Europe, along with campaigns by newly formed environmental groups like Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund, now the Worldwide Fund for Nature, to save the whale and the tiger. Popular children’s television shows like Newsround covered these issues for their young viewers along with the threat to the Ozone layer from aerosols. There were also numerous UFO encounters, of which one of the best known is probably the abduction of Travis Walton, an American logger. This was later filmed in the 90s as Fire in the Sky. It was also the decade Steven Spielberg released his blockbusting Close Encounters, with its final scenes in which short, spindly aliens emerge from the alien mothership to meet a group of human scientists. All the people they have taken over the decades come out of the craft with them to rejoin their families. Finally, they depart, taking the film’s ordinary joe hero, Roy Neary, with them. This has undoubtedly had a massive impact on UFOs in popular culture worldwide. There were comic book adaptations and spoofs in film and television, including Britain’s own long-running comedy show, The Goodies. And the film’s slogan, ‘We Are Not Alone’, became a catch-phrase for UFOs and aliens generally. I don’t, however, recall the aliens encountered in this period giving messages about the ecological crisis. This appeared more in the 90s.

Then there was the 90s and the explosion of UFOs and conspiracy culture. The latter partly had its roots in controversies over Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and the resulting Gulf War. Many on the left believed that, instead of being a war of liberation to free the country from a murderous dictator, it was instead a ‘resource war’ to steal those nations’ oil. In America protesters marched chanting ‘Gosh, no, we won’t go! We won’t die for Texaco’. These fears and anxieties were fanned still further by George Bush Senior’s statement about creating ‘a new order’. To many, this recalled Adolf Hitler and his declaration of the same thing, as well as conspiracy theories about the founding of America by the Freemasons, as shown in the Eye in the Pyramid on the dollar bill and the slogan ‘Novo Ordo Saecularum’ – New World Order.

It also roughly coincided with the publication of two books which together helped to shape the emerging abduction narrative. These were Above Top Secret by the British violinist, Tim Good, and Communion, by the American horror writer Whitley Streiber. Good’s book claimed that America had secretly made contact with the aliens and there were secret bases all over the world, plus a group Above Top Secret, the Majestic 12, set up to supervise these encounters. Streiber’s book claimed that he had been repeatedly abducted and examined by Grey aliens. The two, and the many other similar books that they inspired, founded the abduction mythology in which America had done a secret deal with the aliens to allow them to kidnap and experiment on humans, including sexually, resulting in the creation of half-human hybrid children. This myth became a social panic, with abduction researchers like Bud Hopkins and Leo Sprinkle taking their experiencers on popular talks shows like Oprah. It exerted a very strong influence on the X-Files, whose heroes, FBI agents Scully and Mulder, were on the trail of a secret conspiracy to create human-alien hybrids in preparation for a hostile alien invasion.

So what about today? The past few years have also been a period of acute social stress. This was most pronounced with the Covid pandemic and lockdown. The virus itself was sufficiently terrifying to many ordinary people, following as it did films about scientists battling deadly germs which threatened to destroy humanity. I think one of these in the 90s was Outbreak, while a similar film, The Satan Bug, was released in the 70s. There was also stress caused by the government’s response of locking down society and industry to prevent the spread of the disease. Inessential businesses were shut down and the public were allowed out only for essential activities like shopping and a day’s exercise. People naturally worried about their jobs and businesses. There were also some truly damaging conspiracy theories, in which it was claimed that the vaccines offered against the disease contained mind control chips, or that the real purpose of the lockdown was to allow the World Economic Forum to seize power and create the one world superstate.

And this is where it gets interesting. If UFOs and other paranormal encounters are produced by social stress, then we should have experienced another wave of sightings of alien spaceships, ghosts and other supernatural beings. But we haven’t. CJ has gone through the stats. People are not seeing more alien spaceships. At the same time, the male suicide rate hasn’t risen and there hasn’t, mercifully, been an increase in self-harm either. Nor are people turning to religion or the paranormal.

Not that you would know it from the press. CJ states that magazines and newspapers, including New Scientist, have been telling their readers that the stressed population is indeed turning to religion and the paranormal, and encounters with aliens and spooks have very definitely risen. The gentlemen and ladies of the Fourth Estate have duly contacted CJ to confirm their views, only to close the interviews when he disappoints them by stating plainly that this isn’t happening. I think we can be confident this is correct. Not only is he a very diligent researcher himself, but he is assisted by Becky, who did her PhD analysing the Society for Psychic Research’s Census of Hallucinations to show that the core ghost phenomenon did not change in the 19^th century. It has been said the Victorian period saw changes in ghost imagery and narratives in popular culture. For example, ghosts generally appear solid, but Victorian artists drew them as transparent simply to show they were ghosts. This may present another challenge to the Psycho-Social Model if real ghost experiences don’t match those in popular culture, as in shows like Scooby Doo or Rentaghost.

This poses the question of what is going on here. Is the Psycho-Social Model totally invalid, despite apparently holding true for previous flaps? Or perhaps the psychological and social mechanisms that create flaps during times of stress are actually more complex than previously thought, and require a number of subtle factors that have been absent during the Covid outbreak? Or perhaps this follows a continuing trend of cultural exhaustion that some have claimed is being experienced elsewhere in society and the arts.

One of these is Stephen E. Andrews, a former bookseller and the author of 100 Science Fiction Books You Must Read. On his YouTube channel, Outlaw Bookseller, he reviews and discusses literature and bookshops, especially Science Fiction. In one of his videos he discusses hauntology, a cultural phenomenon in which the arts turn back to the past and previous tropes and images. He argues that this is occurring now in Science Fiction, as authors use the same old plots and ideas, and that this is also part of a general trend in wider literature and the arts. Here’s a link to one of his videos on hauntology.

Why you “prefer the Science -Fiction Books with the old covers”: HAUNTOLOGY & SCIENCE FICTION #sf (youtube.com)

Apart from the issue identified by CJ, the 20^th century was a period of immense social and political change. This included the collapse of the European empires and the rise of America and the Communist Soviet Union to superpower status, as well as the shock in domestic culture of the emergence of the teenager and youth culture, feminism and the promise and threat of new technology like the atomic bomb, genetic engineering and information technology. These trends were reflected in the arts and literature, including Science Fiction. Aldous Huxley predicted a future in which babies would be grown in hatcheries in Brave New World, published in the 1920s. But this began to look like it could become reality in 1962 with the experiments of the Italian biologist Daniele Petracci. Petracci was experimenting with gestating human embryos outside the womb. One of these had even progressed to developing eyes and limbs before the experiment ended. And the second half of the 20^th century saw other scientific advances that seemed similarly threatening of promising. These included household robots, holidays in space and flying cars. These have not materialised, with the exception of flying cars. The Outlaw Bookseller considers that scientific advance is accelerating, but looking at books such Paul Milo’s Your Flying Car Awaits about the failed predictions of the 20^th century, it could seem instead that scientific and technological invention has slowed down. Some of this is due to the problems tackled being far more complex than scientists in the 50s and 60s believed, as in aging. It could be that in the absence of the spectacular social and technological change promised in previous decades, western society has settled down to a pattern and that some of the changes previously regarded as shocking are now viewed as part of traditional western society. There is still a suspicion towards parts of youth culture, for example, but Mods, Rockers and Punks no longer cause quite the alarm they did when they first emerged, and indeed are frequently the subject of affectionate nostalgia. Perhaps it isn’t just social stress that is required for UFO flaps, but specific social stresses about new social phenomena, and that society has become used to many of the old threats and concerns. In the absence of lunar and Martian colonies, for example, space travel seems almost routine. The exploration of space, and the possibility of alien life are still the subjects of immense interest. And any number of books, films and TV stories are still coming out about invasion by hostile aliens. But they’ve become an accepted part of the media landscape, and so the element of novelty that may have been part of the impetus behind previous decades’ flaps are absent. And so, although society was gripped by tension during the Covid outbreak, this did not lead to people turning to the paranormal, or meeting a helpful spaceman offering advice.

For further information, see: https://jerome23.wordpress.com/2024/05/07/ufos-cjs-angle-part-2/

Fairies, Aliens and Folklore: A Response to CJ’s ‘What Are UFOs?

A few days ago the mighty CJ put up a piece on his website asking the question ‘What Are UFOs?’, in which he took aim at elements of the psycho-social interpretation of the phenomenon. CJ’s a long-term member of ASSAP, one of Britain’s leading paranormal research organisations. Unlike the Society for Psychical Research, which concentrates on laboratory research, ASSAP was set up to investigate paranormal phenomena in the field, whether they be ghosts, fairies, crop circles, time slips or flying saucers. CJ’s been investigating such phenomena since the 1980s, following very strict scientific protocols, and has a wealth of practical experience.

At the heart of his essay are two questions. One of these is on the nature of folklore itself. What is it? Does it include popular superstitions like not putting your shoes on the table or crossing on the stairs? Where does folklore begin and literary, composed culture end? For example, when football fans start singing Beatles’ songs on the terraces, does it become a piece of folklore? What are the authentic features of traditional fairy encounters, and, indeed, is there are a single class of being that comprises the fairies?

In fact, these are questions folklorists themselves have been discussing for a very long time. Books on folklore, such as Linda Degh’s Legends, often begin with that very question. And what counts as folklore is very wide. Folklore can be thought of as any popular custom. The folklorists of the 19^th century viewed it in terms of an ancient, timeless popular culture arising from a particular ethnic group, preserved in the rural customs of agricultural communities. There was supposed to be a distinction between this timeless, popular culture, the authors of which were unknown, and literary culture produced by the educated upper classes.

This distinction between elite, educated culture and that of the masses has more or less collapsed. The more you examine folksong and folk literature, the less it seems to be the timeless remnant of ancient beliefs and practises. The Marshfield mumming play, in which the hero fights an enemy, is killed, but restored with a pill from a doctor, has been one of those folk customs whose origins have been claimed to lie back with the dying and rising gods of pagan antiquity. Research back in the 90s by contrast claimed that similar plays dated no earlier than the 18^th century, and were commonly performed at local fairs. Similarly, songs and dances travelled across Europe, taken from one country to another by itinerant musicians from quite an early date. A 16^th century writer, for example, remarked on English musicians going to fairs to hear the latest tunes and catches from other performers in Germany. Instead of autochthonic expressions of the essential soul or spirit of a particular ethnic group or locality, people were swapping tunes and songs across countries and continents. Musicologists have suggested, for example, that there are African elements in western sea shanties. As for their connection to particular areas, that was frequently just where folksong collectors like Cecil Sharpe happened to pick them up. While he marked them down as coming from Suffolk, Yorkshire, Somerset or wherever, this didn’t mean that the songs were exclusive to those areas.

Nor is folklore restricted to rural communities. The focus on them by the early researchers no doubt was part of the reaction of some parts of educated society to the rise of science and the machine age in the 19^th century. This was felt by some intellectuals as a threat to traditional western culture and its metaphysical assumptions. And so scholars investigated the ancient traditions and stories of rural communities, collecting stories of witches, ghosts, giants and fairies as well as rustic tunes to preserve this popular, pre-industrial culture and its basis in the supernatural against the new, scientific materialism.

At the same time, other scholars questioned this focus on the countryside and asked whether towns didn’t have their folklore as well. Yes, they did, and there was a burgeoning interest in what became known as urban legend in the ‘90s, following the publication years earlier of Jan Harold Brunvand’s books on phantom hitch-hikers and so on. And the actual subject matter of folklore can be more or less anything that has entered popular culture. One book on folkloristics covers subjects as diverse as Navajo Indian pottery figures for tourists, American barn types, and jokes and humour in American gay culture. These latter have a deeper social purpose than just amusement. They were often told to subtly find out whether the person being talked to was gay or not. Some jokes would be only understood by other gays. If the person told the joke smiled and laughed, it could be assumed they were a fellow member of the community. And new forms of urban folklore were emerging all the time. One example of this was the photocopylore that turned up in offices and workplaces, in which someone had photocopied or faxed a particularly remarkable or humorous piece and pasted it up in the office. Several of these, I remember, were jokes at the expense of American football players on scholarships at universities, as well as the general drudgery of office life.

And this is where UFOs come in. The second question of CJ’s critique is whether fairies really can be identified with today’s UFOs and aliens. This is based on the books of Fortean writer John Keel and the American-French astronomer and computer scientist Jacques Vallee. They noted in their books – UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse by Keel, Passport to Magonia by Vallee- that UFO encounters often followed the same motifs as fairy lore. UFOs and their occupants. They suggested that UFOs and their alien pilots are the 20^th century successors to traditional fairy beliefs. But the imps and goblins of previous centuries have had to change with the times. In modern, technological society people no longer believe as they did in fairies. These have therefore been replaced by the imagery of Science Fiction and space travel.

Some of the motifs of traditional fairy lore do indeed seem to fit the UFO phenomenon. Evans-Wentz in his classic The Fairy Faith in Western Europe, quotes ‘an old Irish mystic’ as saying that the fairies are an older race, who come from the stars. Some of the UFO aliens reported from Scandinavia and also from Italy certainly resemble the short gnomes and goblins of western European fairy tales. And some of their activities also resemble those of past supernatural entities. The abduction phenomenon, in which people are forcibly taken aboard alien craft and raped to produce half-human hybrids, is very similar indeed to medieval tales of demons having sex with sleeping mortals, and even jinn in the Islamic world. One Arab story has three maidens made pregnant by a jinn, who enters their house through a gap into elsewhere opening in their bedroom wall. He is accompanied by a number of lights. And just like the aliens, who take their progeny away from those who bore them, so this jinn takes back into his world his children by the girls.

There are several problems with the identification of today’s aliens with fairies. One of these is with the collection and recording of such traditional narratives, that CJ identifies as a problem. He states in his article that European fairy lore is very much a literary phenomenon, influenced and shaped by writers like Shakespeare, and that we have difficulty knowing what ordinary people really believed about them. This is a fair point. Jeffrey Burton Russell in his history of witchcraft in the Middle Ages discusses fairies and their origins as it affects the later development of witch beliefs. Roman civilisation had a number of supernatural beings below the gods and their messengers, the daimones. These included tree spirits, the dryads, and lamias, part-women, part snakes. Belief in such beings persisted after the fall of the Empire into the 7^th century in Spain until they were somehow replaced by the fairies. He identifies the latter’s origins in the Latin fatare, ‘to enchant’, and states that there seems to be little difference between supernatural fairies and witches when they first appear on the continent.

It is suggested that fairies are ultimately based on the three fates that are believed in Greek folklore to appear at a child’s birth to cast its destiny. Other historians have suggested that there was an international fairy cult stretching over Europe and the Middle East, whose remains have sometimes survived to the present as in Romania. In the west under pressure from the witch hunters the fairy cult’s central beliefs were distorted. In the original fairy belief, young women left their bodies to meet the Queen of the Fairies and enjoy a round of singing, dancing and the company of the young men they fancied. Under the pressure of the witch-hunters’ interrogation, however, this became the witches’ sabbat, in which they flew to meet the Devil and instead of a pleasant feast, ate foul food among other lurid horrors.  In this manner, the elite concerns of the witch hunters served to transform traditional folk beliefs.

Western fairy lore has been the source and subject of literary romance since the Middle Ages. Medieval authors wrote and sang tales of the quests of heroic knights, assisted by benevolent fairies like Oberon, and these tales remained popular after the end of the Middle Ages. By the 17^th century authors started writing their own fairy stories as conscious literary inventions, and this has carried on down the centuries with much-loved tales like Peter Pan and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter tales. These have shaped to a greater or lesser extent the popular image of fairies. It was Shakespeare, apparently, who added the gossamer wings. As for their size, Oberon is described as about the size of a child of three or older. He’s small, but not tiny. And sometimes glimpses of popular beliefs about the fairies can be seen. For example, church records from 12^th century Exeter record the local bishop forbidding the local people from putting small objects, including bows and arrows, in their barns for the elves to play with.

CJ also talks about the differences between various kinds of fairy creature, such as barguests and other spectral entities. Are they of the same type as brownies, goblins and so on? These creatures may be very different from each other, and so it is reasonable to ask whether they refer to the same types of supernatural entity.

Keel and Vallee, however, did not argue that there was a simple equivalence between fold fashioned fairies and UFOs. To begin with, fairies were not the only supernatural creatures modern UFOnauts resembled. Vallee in one of his later books discusses the similarity between UFOs and their pilots and the pagan gods of the Ancient Near East. Keel also discusses medieval demonology. While demons are supernatural, they were also generally considered a separate set of beings than the fairies, although sometimes the two were identified with each other. Keel and Vallee also didn’t think that UFO aliens were literally fairies either. Rather, the phenomenon that took the form of fairies, demons, angels and other supernatural beings in the past now took the form of spacecraft and aliens in the UFO mythology. They saw them therefore as ‘Ultraterrestrials’ – beings from beyond our reality. Vallee considers that they come from parallel universes, a view that he has incorporated in his SF novels such as Fastwalker.

The investigation of the links between fairy beliefs and UFO lore does not end with the views of Keel and Vallee, however. Their books provided the foundations for the Psycho-Social Hypothesis, which goes further than this. It maintains that there is little or no objective reality to UFO encounters. They are primarily internal, psychological experiences that take their imagery from contemporary culture. In the past this was the myths about gods, demons and fairies. Today the content and imagery are taken from Science Fiction. These experiences may be sparked by a real phenomenon, such as a misidentified sighting of Venus or aircraft and the content generated by poorly understood psychological or neurological phenomena, such as sleep paralysis. Back in the ‘90s there was considerable interest in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy as the source of such illusory encounters, and it does seem that it can explain some. Those suffering from it may experience hallucinations that do draw on contemporary culture and folkore. One poor fellow who had it used to see a witch, complete with cauldron, in his kitchen during attacks. But this explanation seems to have fallen from favour in recent years, possibly because there is no single explanation for UFO encounters.

But although the imagery is that of aliens and space travel, behind them lies traditional fairy motifs. Thus, Joe Simonton’s encounter with small aliens while out prospecting in the Rockies also follows one convention of traditional fairy lore. In fairy tradition, precious fairy objects taken from their owners by the heroes become, in the light of day, perfectly ordinary and worthless. Fairy gold, for example, becomes a pile of leaves. Simonton found the aliens cooking pancakes. He was offered one, and took it back to be analysed. It was then found to contain nothing more exotic than flour and salt. Back in the 90s the lawyer and TV host Clive Anderson had a pair of ufologists on his late night show, Clive Anderson Talks Back. These two blokes described their encounters with aliens. As proof these were genuine, the aliens had given one of guys a rock, which he duly produced. Cue audience laughter. A rock could provide convincing proof of the reality of the phenomenon, if it was made of some exotic material from one of the planets, say regolith from the Moon or Montmarillonite from Mars. But this, however, was just an ordinary stone.

There is a wider point about the Psycho-Social Hypothesis. As it rejects a supernatural or paranormal basis for the experience, it does not matter whether the material generating the experience is based in authentic folklore or not. The fairy literature behind encounters with aliens resembling fairies may be literary, such as the small, winged aliens who asked a British housewife baking Christmas cakes back in the 70s if they could have one, but this does not affect the nature of the experience itself. Not all ufologists, whose views have been influenced by the PSH go so far as to deny that there is a paranormal element to the UFO experience. Jenny Randles stated in one edition of her small press UFO magazine, Northern UFO News, that there was a paranormal element to the experience which was using the motifs of traditional fairy lore and SF. Kevin McClure, another long term writer and researcher of the world of the strange and paranormal, came to a similar view. There was a genuine paranormal phenomenon behind the experiences, which was using traditional supernatural tales and SF to communicate with us. This was the basis for his extremely short-lived magazine, Alien Scripture, with its subtitle ‘Who is talking to us and why?’

CJ states that theGareth essay is just one of a projected series in which he will discuss what UFOs are. In part 2 he intends to examine other features of the phenomenon. This should be interesting. Although the Psycho-Social Hypothesis has established itself as a major alternative explanation to the Extra-Terrestrial Hypothesis for UFO experiences, there are definitely questions to be asked about it. One is that sometimes paranormal encounters do not resemble established folklore or literary tropes. Gareth Medway argued this in article published by Magonia back in the ‘90s. I think Gareth’s a priest or leading member of one of the new pagan religions in Britain. He was also the author of The Lure of the Sinister, a book that cast a very sceptical eye on the various Satanism scares that have occurred over time and that were causing hysteria and distress then with rubbish stories of the terrible abuse of children in Satanic orgies. In his article, he discussed a paranormal vision a man experienced out riding one evening. This fellow reported seeing something like a fist rising up from the ground. He had no explanation for the vision and was genuinely confused by the experience. The next evening, just as he was out riding again, he experienced the same vision. Gareth argued from this that if such encounters were based on folklore and popular culture, then the vision should have conformed to the contemporary imagery of the time. But it didn’t. And I’ve no doubt that there may be other problems with the Psycho-Social Hypothesis and other explanations for the UFO phenomenon waiting to be investigated.

I look forward to what CJ says in part two.

For further information, go to:https://jerome23.wordpress.com/2024/05/06/what-are-ufos/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3VCjJDO6tTcifznYHpDoUhHXVnYjQBpMeFnIJ4RLeGnxPDmefDSqsdsa4_aem_AYHr2BLRWzM6VP4g4Sb2M1eQvTF1mH6xUlD3z77kKpYv3RzWOrKnNgEtXrRJu121Y_Fi291mnyBHGQ194PTYrRv4

1977 Programme on the Mysterious Gnome Kidnappings in Formby

This is another video from the Beeb Archive channel, and comes from a programme ‘Voice of the People’. It’s about a local crimewave in Formby when people had their decorative garden gnomes stolen. It started with one It began with the theft of one family’s beloved garden ornament, who was cut off at his feet because he was fixed to the ground. The thief left a ransom note demanding 25 pence left in an envelope at the local car park. 25 pence was worth rather more in them days, when I think you could buy cheap chews for half a penny and 2000 AD for 16p. The thief then started stealing others’ gnomes as well. The programme has a naturally jokey approach to the topic, talking about underground coppers hunting the thief and jokes about trying to restore the broken gnome with the National Elf Service. It goes on to speculate about a mad millionaire in his castle determined to have the biggest gnome collection of them all, illustrated by a suitably sinister figure on a piano. Eventually the thief put all the gnomes back. The only clue to his identity was that he had big feet by the foot prints he left behind.

I’m putting this up because there was a craze for such thefts as late as the ’90s, mostly done as pranks. The thief or thieves would steal the gnomes, but pretend it had gone for its holidays and so send back postcards to the family of the gnome from locations around the world. In America there was a similar craze for stealing the pink flamingos with which some families decorated their front yards. The landlords of one house, that had been let to students, found 100 such birds in their basement.

Playing the Pink Panther Theme by Dance on the Big Piano

Well, it’s the aftermath of Thursday’s council and elected mayoral elections and the media are going through the results and what it presages for the fortunes of the Tory party. Here in Bristol the Green have become the biggest party on the council. I’m not altogether surprised, as they were only seat behind Labour at the last elections. I think their rise probably has much to do with Keir Starmer trying to remake the Labour party in the Tories’ image as well as dissatisfaction with the administration of the elected mayor, Marvin Rees. I have some reservations of their victory, as elsewhere the Greens have shown themselves to be very woke. Down in Brighton they were teaching Critical Race Theory in schools, which I believe to be just anti-White racism expressed in a postmodernist revision of Marxism. However, we shall see how it all works out in Bristol.

And whoever you voted for, I hope you voted for the person or the party that was offering you what you wanted, rather than go automatically to the two main parties because of the false logical than anything else is a wasted vote.

Away from this, I found this fascinating little video on YouTube from the Inspiro Tech channel. It’s of a man and a woman playing the Pink Panther theme on what is described as the Big Piano/ Il Grande Piano. It’s actually a huge electronic keyboard. The video was put up two years ago, and I think the Big Piano was an Italian invention from hints in the video and its blurb. There seems to have been a series of events around it. One other video has the two playing the anti-Fascist anthem Bella Ciao, and there’s a short video showing two young women also playing the Pink Panther on it.

It reminds me of one of the musical projects of the Russian audiologist, spy and musical instrument maker Theremin. He’s the fellow who gave his name to the electronic instrument that operates by changes in the local magnetic field. It reacts to the proximity of performer’s hands, so they play it without actually touching it. Bill Bailey once played it on the Jonathan Ross Show, and it freaked Wossy out. Theremin also tried to construct an instrument that would be played by the dancer’s movements. However, he was employed by the KGB to construct bugs. One of these was actually installed in the Great Seal undetected. It didn’t have its own power source, but leeched power from the environment and so it was virtually undetectable to the instruments at the time. The KGB, however, felt he was more interested in music than spying, They smashed the instrument, and so one of the potentially most fascinating electronic instruments was lost forever.

Looking Through a Book on American Folk Art

This is another video by the artist Lisa Shea, this time looking through the book American Folk Art by William C. Ketchum, jnr. Shea’s blurb for the video runs

‘American Folk Art by William C. Ketchum Jr is a large-format, full-color glossy book which showcases a variety of folk art styles. There are portraits of people, scenes of towns, chairs, jugs, door stops, weathervanes, figureheads of ships, quilts, and much, much more. I like how the book shows that folk art isn’t just one thing. It isn’t just a dour-faced man sitting face-forward on a chair, staring at the viewer. Folk art comes in a wide variety of styles, materials, and personalities. I enjoy this book quite a lot. I find it brings me inspiration every time I read it. Ask with any questions! Direct link to the book on Amazon, no affiliate code: https://www.amazon.com/Folk-Art-Willi…‘

Shea roughly defines folk art as art produced by people without a formal artistic education, although there are some trained artists who work in this style. It’s a kind of naive art, where there may be little perspective and the objects are painted flat to the viewer. The paintings are generally of friends and family, painted by a talented friend or neighbour of the subject, or of scenes the artist found interesting,m such as that on the cover. As the blurb states, it also extends to objects, including weathervanes. Shea comes from Massachusetts, and states that there are many weathervanes on houses in her area. People are more or less confined to their houses when the snow comes in the winter, and so people used to occupy themselves by producing works like these.

This is a fascinating look at the kind of works ordinary people create, some of which cross the Atlantic to here in Blighty. Every now and then a piece of folk art appears on Antiques Roadshow here in Britain. The example I remember is a weathervane which I think was made in Canada. Yes, I know it isn’t the US, but it’s close.

‘In the Garden of Unearthly Delights’ – Flicking through Josh Kirby Art Book

This comes from the Lisa Shea Artist channel on YouTube. Shea’s an artist from Massachusetts, who’s put up a number of videos flicking through various books on art. One of these is In the Gardens of Unearthly Delights, showing the amazing work of Fantasy artist Josh Kirby. Her blurb for the video runs:

‘Josh Kirby (1928-2001) was an incredibly talented artist who primarily worked in science fiction and fantasy themed art. Josh painted a LOT of intricately detailed artwork for book covers. While other artists in his time frame did shiny, glossy dragons and flawless-skinned maidens, Josh was much more interested in the more unsettling aspects of organic life. His gnomes would have bumps and warts. His dragons would have folds and injuries. He often went right past the ‘cartooney’ aspect of this genre and delved into a gritty, blemishes-and-all view which was quite refreshing. Josh was TALENTED. I know a lot of artists in this genre had impressive skills. Josh is right up there with the best of them. His use of color, his incredibly detailed compositions, it’s all just so beautiful to study. Published in 1991, In the Garden of Unearthly Delights is a comprehensive presentation of a range of Josh’s artwork styles. From the more serious to the more playful, from sci-fi to barbarians to dragons, we get to enjoy quite a wealth of what Josh created. Well recommended. Here’s a direct non-affiliate link to on Amazon – https://www.amazon.com/Garden-Unearth…‘

The book’s title is clearly a reference to Hieronymus Bosch and his great, enigmatic work, the Garden of Earthly Delights with its strange creatures. Bosch’s works appear to have a distinct, Christian religious message while the works Kirby illustrated were far more secular and often much less serious. Kirby’s best known for his covers for Terry Pratchett’s books, but he was around and working long before then. The book’s divided into different chapters by theme, such as ‘Monsters and Maidens’ and ‘Aliens and Androids’. Shea notes that his warrior women and maidens don’t wear much, but neither do many of his male warriors. He also did some realist works, such as portraits of the director Alfred Hitchcock, who he still painted warts and all. There’s a bit of controversy brewing at the moment over the possibility that Pratchett’s publishers may replace the Kirby covers. You can well understand why. For many fans, Kirby’s covers, bursting as they are with detail and exuberant action, are the definitive depictions of Pratchett’s Disc World and its bizarre inhabitants. I can see that the publisher might think it’s time to change them, and use a fresh artist. However, if this does happen it will be sad to see the end of Kirby’s brilliant, fantastic vision on Tewwy’s works.

Bernie Sanders Explains Why It Is Not Anti-Semitic to Criticise Netanyahu’s War Crimes In Gaza and Demand He Be Held Accountable

Yay for Bernie Sanders, the Democratic Senator for Vermont. If we lived in a just universe, he’d be in the Whitehouse now, just as Jeremy Corbyn would be in 10 Downing Street. He’s a secular Jew, but he understood the hardships and problems of America’s ordinary working Joes and Joannas. Clips of his presidential campaign showed him being embraced, and comforting all kinds of people, including theologically conservative, blue-collar Christians from the American south, worried about unemployment, healthcare and the destruction of the domestic industries that were their livelihoods.

In this video, addressed to Benjamin Netanyahu, Bernie tells him clearly not to insult the intelligence of the American people, and states, over and again, that it is not anti-Semitic or pro-Hamas to

point out that in a little over six months that his extremist government has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians and wounded over 78,000, 70 per cent of whom are women and children.

point out that his bombing has destroyed more than 221,000 housing units in Gaza, leaving almost a million people, half the population, homeless

To note that his government has obliterated Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, electricity, water and sewage.

To realize that his government has annihilated Gaza’s healthcare system, knocking 26 hospitals out of service and killing 400 healthcare workers.

To note that his government has destroyed all of Gaza’s 12 universities and 56 of its schools, with hundreds more damaged, leaving 625,000 students with no educational opportunities.

To agree with virtually every humanitarian organisation in saying that your government, in violation of American law, has unreasonably blocked humanitarian aid coming into Gaza, creating the conditions in which so many thousands of children face malnutrition and famine.

He states clearly that anti-Semitism is a vile and disgusting form of bigotry that has done unspeakable harm to many millions of people. But please, he says to Netanyahu, do not insult the intelligence of the American people by attempting to distract us from the immoral and illegal war policies of your extremist and racist government. Do not use anti-Semitism to distract attention from the criminal indictment you are facing in the Israeli courts.

It is not anti-Semitic to hold you (Netanyahu) accountable for your actions.