Article Demolishing the Lies about Somali Americans as Massive Fraudsters Refusing to Integrate and Backing Terrorists

As you’re no doubt aware, Trump sent his ICE goons particularly into Minnesota to deal with the Somali community there. Right-wing YouTubers had put up videos claiming that the city’s Somali community were fraudulently claiming benefits from the state by setting up fake businesses. These included fake schools with no pupils, like a ‘Quality Learing Centre’ featured in one such video, as well as similar businesses intended to help the community which also had no students, customers or staff. The money claimed for these businesses were allegedly being sent of to support the al-Shabbaab Islamist terrorist organisation back in Somalia. They were also supposed to be falsely claiming money for autism and other disabilities, the money for which was being spent instead on supporting their businesses and stores. The people themselves refused to integrate. Those shown in the videos could not speak English, and there was a very strong impression that most were unemployed. Trump had said in another video that the Somalis were bad people, and he wanted them gone.

However, an article by Richard Michael Solomon in the journal, Current Affairs, reproduced by the Democrats in their Daily Dose of Democracy onlin4e newsletter, has demolished these falsehoods. It points out that the fraud allegations have been around for years, and have been distorted by Trump and the Maga maniacs. The involvement of the Somalis has been exaggerated, while the fact that the ringleader and many senior figures in the network are White has been ignored. The crime rate in Somali areas is the same or lower than in other areas, there is a high degree of self-sufficiency and their level of integration is high relative to the historic record.

Here’s the article:

‘Demolishing lies about Somali Americans
Richard Michael Solomon, Current Affairs: “The conservative Manhattan Institute recently claimed that Somali Americans are siphoning ‘billions of taxpayer dollars’ to a militant Islamist organization in Somalia called Al-Shabaab. The context for the allegation, made by the Institute’s City Journal, is a scandal implicating several dozen people from Minnesota, mostly of Somali descent, who defrauded the government through an autism service, housing program, and pandemic-era NGO called Feeding Our Future. The Trump Administration used these allegations to end Temporary Protected Status for Somalis, forcing hundreds of people to soon leave the country or face deportation. President Donald Trump first announced the plan shortly after the City Journal story went viral—blustering on Truth Social that ‘Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State, and BILLIONS of Dollars are missing. Send them back to where they came from. It’s OVER!’

The fraud part of the scandal is real and not particularly new. Minnesota and FBI investigators have pursued the cases for years, including against Aimee Bock, the white woman who led Feeding Our Future. What City Journal authors Christopher Rufo and Ryan Thorpe do is ignore the scheme’s white ringleader and other white suspects. They vastly inflate the numbers, blame Somali culture, and demand Somalis be deported en masse. Their evidence, too, for the Al-Shabaab connection is remarkably thin; key sources within the story itself have since called it ‘bullshit.’ Given Rufo’s track record (he once offered a $5,000 bounty for ‘proof’ that Haitian Americans in Ohio were skinning cats for meat), his rumor-based reporting is not trustworthy. But facts are no obstacle to Rufo’s imagination: in his words, ‘Somalis in Minneapolis are stealing billions from American taxpayers, loading bags of cash onto commercial flights, and funding terrorism back in Mogadishu.’

Right-wing media has used the story to reinforce an emergent narrative that Somali Americans 1) are criminals, 2) drain welfare, and 3) don’t assimilate. Public attention has inspired imitators, including a widely-discredited video by YouTuber Nick Shirley on Minnesota daycares. Deadly ICE raids on Minneapolis have followed. A closer look at the allegations, however, reveals how detached they are from reality.

Rufo and his colleagues are charlatans who incite hatred and division, but their lies are not sophisticated. They rely instead on cheap rhetorical tricks and statistical distortions. Agitators like Nick Shirley similarly borrow from the visual language of investigative journalism, but actually just manipulate their viewers with cheap editing. The truth is that Somali Muslims in Minnesota are a law-abiding community with the same or lower crime rates than other Americans. Their rates of self-sufficiency are high, and measures of assimilation are also high relative to the historic record. So why the bigotry? The lies serve to distract attention from bigger fraudsters and divide working people from confronting those with real power over their lives.”‘

Sir Trevor Phillips on the Unite the Kingdom Rally in Central London

There’s been considerable discussion this week about the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ mass rally last weekend in central London, where people draped in the England flag, the Union Jack and the Scots Saltire marched against mass immigration and the decline of Christianity, and for free speech. It’s been denounced as ‘far right’, and there was certainly an element of that. Elon Musk, who wants anything that isn’t nailed down privatised and the welfare state destroyed on behalf of himself and his buddy Trump, addressed the crowd, telling them they had to fight to be free. And the event was led by Tommy Robinson, formerly of the BNP, formerly of the EDL, a football hooligan, bully boy, mortgage fraudster and grifter, as well as libel merchant. In my opinion, of course. Trevor Phillips, the former head of the Council for Racial Equality way back when, appeared on Sky News to talk about it. Phillips acknowledged Musk’s alarming rhetoric, but said that possibly what was really alarming to some was how normal it was. It was attended by the kind of people you find in country pubs or the loo at a football club. He noted a scattering of brown and black faces, and the rally ended with a Gospel choir singing .Jerusalem’.

So not quite the Nazi rally it has been described as.

Its supporters have put up videos showing some of the Black attendees at the event talking about why they’re there. Unfortunately, while it appears not to have been a racial hate-fest, it does seem to have been present amongst some of the protesters. Shady Shae, a Black YouTuber who went on the rally, has posted up a video about the horrendous racial abuse he received from White racists, telling him he wasn’t wanted or needed. I’ve also been told by some of the great commenters to this blog that some of the organisers of these marches regard ethnic minority supporters as useful idiots to give them a respectability they don’t deserve. So make your own mind up about how racist or not it was.

Fake Spirit Rapping Hand

There’s a video on YouTube from the MagicTricks.com channel about a trick hand used to rap out messages during seances and performances of state magic. The hand demonstrated is available from them. So it’s as much an advert for the product as a demonstration of it as an artefact of interest. The hand is simply a life-size model of a human hand that was placed on a board. It was used by mediums, mind-readers and magicians specialising in card tricks. The medium, or operator, would ask it questions, and the hand would mysteriously move, tapping out the answer in the form of the ‘once for yes’ code. Of course, it’s a trick, and the company is obviously selling them as a bit of fun. But I’ve read elsewhere that in Spiritualism’s heyday in the 19th and early 20th centuries, these fake hands were used by fake mediums to trick people into believing that they were receiving messages from beyond the veil. In fact, I believe there was a whole catalogue of equipment for fake mediums wanting to deceive people. I’ve decided to put it up because I do find it interesting as a contemporary relic from the age of stage magic and fraudulent mediums. I can’t put the video up here, but if you want to see it, it’s title is Spirit Rapping Hand – Spooky! – MagicTricks.com.

Nigel Farage Admits to Lying about Threats to Personal Safety

I don’t anyone will be surprised by this story, as I think our Nige has form for telling little porkie pies. The smooth-voiced Irish radical YouTuber, Maximilien Robespierre but up a video commenting on Farage openly admitting that he had lied about not attending his constituency surgery in Clacton because he was advised against it by whatever government office deals with that aspect of parliamentary business. He claimed they had told him not to hold them because of the dangers to him personally. It sounds plausible, considering we’ve had three MPs attacked and two murdered by nutters. Jo Cox, shot by a genuine far rightist, a Lib Dem MP in Cheltenham was attacked by a maniac with a samurai sword. The MP survived, but the maniac killed one of his aides. And perhaps most relevant to Farage as a man of the right, the Tory MP Amess who was killed by an Islamist assassin.

All very plausible, ‘cept it didn’t happen. Someone from the Fourth Estate, who had been doing due diligence, checked with the relevant parliamentary department, and was told they had no record of ever giving such advice. So they asked the Kippergruppenfuehrer about it. And Nige admitted that the government office was right.

Robespierre chuckled wryly and said that confirmed both the absolute lack of interest Farage has towards his constituents. He’s not interested in them, their needs and desires, except as a stepping stone to Westminster. And he’s become like Donald Trump, who spews forth lies as if there’s no tomorrow, and people still believe him. Farage has now admitted lying to his supporters, but however much he lies, they still follow him. Quite honestly, it’s no wonder that trust in parliament is at an all time low, as Open Britain never fail to point out.

And added to Farage and the other liars is Tommy Robinson. who is a liar, fraudster and violent criminal with connections to the British branch of the Kahanist terror organisation, the Jewish Defence League. But there are people falling over themselves hailing him as the man who should be PM.!

Just to cheer you up, here’s a piccy I drew a year or so ago as Nigel Farage and his fellow Brexiteer Richard Tice being given odd looks by Antoin des Caunes and Jean-Paul Gautier of Eurotrash. And yes, it is a comment on the broken Brexit they pushed us into.

Academic Tahir Abbas on the Waves of Islamic Radicalisation in the UK

After I put up the piece on the Mail on Sunday’s report about a mad mullah, Sheikh Yassir al-Habib, raising money to buy a Scottish island so that he could turn it into a Muslim theocratic enclave, I went searching the net to see if I could find any material on Muslim separatism in the UK. I haven’t been able to find many, but I did find a couple that were insightful. One was an article by Tahir Abbas in the Journal of Contemporary European Studies published by Taylor & Francis, ‘Conceptualising the Waves of Islamic Radicalisation in the UK’. This is an academic article and so it’s written in very dense language. However, the section ‘Understanding the Islamist Waves in the UK’ presents a relatively straightforward account of the history of Muslim radicalisation in Britain. This runs

‘After World War Two, imperial powers controlled much of the Muslim world. Decolonisation, military coups, and despotic regimes increasingly alienated young Muslims in the Muslim world and among Muslims in the west. By 1979, an Islamic Revolution in Iran had toppled one of these governments and inspired others to rise against their own rulers. For some young Muslims living in Britain at that time, Iran’s revolution was an inspiration; it showed them they were capable of forming their own country and self-determining their own futures. As a result, many became interested in studying Islam, and several travelled to Iran to do so ). In recent years, there has been a worldwide increase in violent extremism, which may be partially attributed to rifts caused by globalisation that have led to more individuals becoming radicalised in pursuit of their own interests. This has led to an increase in terrorism, which has resulted in increased security measures being implemented by governments around the world, including those attempting to combat violent extremism through de-radicalisation programmes or similar activities aimed at preventing violence directed at other groups or individuals within a certain area.

Current social and political unrest ranks among the most challenging in recent memory. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, terrorist attacks on civilian targets in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa have resulted in the deaths of thousands of people. This is a threat not only to physical security but also to global security, as terrorists can readily spread their message through social media. However, radicalisation, which is seen as a precursor to violent extremism and later terrorism, continues to be a difficult topic (see above). Radicalisation is a phenomenon that cannot be linearised due to its complexity. It is best understood as a collection of slight changes that accumulate over time to tell a story of transformation. While radicalisation and extremism are frequently used in public discourse, the term ‘radicalisation’ has been used in the media to characterise those who may adopt an extremist mindset and perform violent acts, whilst ‘extremism’ refers to those who advocate political views or hate campaigns. For some years, radicalisation has been a major concern for the British government and its security services. Over the past three decades, there have been four waves of reasons why young Muslims in the UK felt the need to travel abroad to engage in Jihadi missions. The first and second waves happened during the 1980s and 1990s; the third wave began after 2001; and, most recently (after 2011), there has been the apparent emergence of ‘homegrown’ terrorists.

Since the 1980s, radicalisation has been a characteristic of the Muslim experience in Britain. It is the belief that social and political grievances, as well as a sense of being unsupported, contribute to the appeal of radical ideas. To attract a Muslim population deemed to be technically deficient, radical viewpoints are based on an aggressive religious agenda. Young British Muslims will be attracted to radical thought as long as they are dissatisfied with the status quo and support a global jihad, both of which were evident during the last years of Blair’s administration as a result of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The first stage of radicalisation began shortly after the Iranian Revolution, when the first wave of young British Muslims left for Jihadi missions. Between 1979 and 1984, this was fuelled by the Iranian Revolution’s propaganda, which made Salafism more popular. Next, jihadists such as Abdullah Al Faisal, Omar Brooks, Anthony Garcia, Richard Dart, and Moazzam Begg were taught at international jihadist camps in Pakistan, Waziristan, and other regions. The growing body of research shows that if lone wolf terrorists are left to stew in their extremist views and become radicalised, the likelihood of them conducting an attack increases exponentially. The internet is littered with thousands of videos, articles, and other propaganda materials that can radicalise individuals. In addition, lone wolf terrorists’ social networks often provide key support in their radicalisation. Recent research by Bloom et al. shows how private messaging applications such as Telegram have been highly effective for Islamist terrorist organisations in providing secure lines of communication between recruiters and potential recruits. This enables recruiters to embed themselves within communities, build personal relationships with recruits through a plethora of instant messenger-like features, share religious teachings and propaganda, send updates on warfare against the West, images of violence against perceived enemies, and calls to action (conducted through private messages) without fear of being tracked by authorities. These sociological pressures facing young Muslims in the UK were greatest in the 1980s and until the Islamic State. Throughout this time, different waves of young Muslims went elsewhere to engage in Jihadi missions because their radicalisation became apparent at home.

Most scholars and commentators agree that radicalisation began as early as the 1980s, when a group of young Muslims under the leadership of Syrian-born Omar Bakri Muhammad called Hizb ut-Tahrir began propagating their view of Islam. By 1986, they had released their manifesto and were calling for a worldwide caliphate. Despite many arrests, Hizb ut-Tahrir was still going strong in 1988, and by 1989, they were calling for the transformation of Britain into an Islamic state. In 1990, Al Muhajiroun distributed leaflets advocating violence against Hindus and Jews. These groups were founded on anti-colonialist and pan-Islamic principles, which attracted thousands of young people from all over the world. They expressed their disillusionment with Western society through cultural traditions such as music and literature. These are just two examples among many others that show how radicalism developed in Britain before 9/11. As such, it is inaccurate to say that radicalism emerged solely because of a reaction to foreign policy, Iraq, or any other factor external to Britain itself. The evidence suggests that there has been a gradual process over decades that has led directly to terrorism today. It suggests that British extremists, with a focus on Islamist or jihadi groups, are formed within the countries of birth for most of these individuals and groups.

The radicalisation of young Muslims by Islamist ideology occurred from at least the mid-1980s. There were several key turning points when small groups of young Muslims decided to join violent Jihadi missions. Each time a new wave emerged, several factors contributed to their radicalisation: foreign wars (e.g., Bosnia), global and local politics (e.g., the Palestine/Israel conflict), domestic issues (e.g., deprivation) and security responses (e.g., the 7/7 bombings). The number of people involved was small, but it did not take many individuals to cause havoc. The issues facing young Muslims have evolved as well – for example, there was no radicalism until London’s African-Caribbean communities were rocked by riots in 1981. However, these waves of radicalisation started to slow down after 9/11 because they became harder to justify with so much anti-Muslim sentiment across Europe. Those who attract and radicalise potential young Jihadists are a small group whose influence exceeds their numerical size. Some, such as Hizb ut-Tahrir, are well-known Islamist organisations, while others are merely ad hoc groups of individuals that gather around an imam preaching extremist ideas. Gender and age also help to shape terrorist narratives. Among British Muslim men who had joined Islamic State, terrorism and radicalisation created a framework for what it means to be a man. When young men have a sense of purpose and belonging (especially those who do not fit into mainstream society), they are more likely to be drawn towards certain ideas and worldviews – even if that means embracing terrorism or leaving their friends and family behind. Muslims are being radicalised once again today. But, unlike yesterday, they are being radicalised to fight on British streets rather than for a state in another country. This is a religious anomaly that puts many young Muslims in danger. Lack of integration and economic marginalisation make these youngsters more prone to extremist beliefs, as they believe they have no other option except to turn to violence.’

The section ‘Discussion and Concluding Thoughts’ also contains additional information

‘The origins of radicalisation are varied, with economic, political, and religious elements being the most prevalent. British Muslims have been radicalised for decades, but the first wave of radicalisation in Britain came in the 1980s, during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Kashmiri resistance to Indian occupation. This wave of British Muslim radicalisation occurred during the Cold War, when there was increased tension between Pakistan and the UK over Kashmir. Some young men became involved with groups that wanted to fight against Great Britain and its allies in support of Kashmir’s independence. In the 1990s, Bosnia was visited by the second wave of refugees. The third wave of insurgents formed in Afghanistan before 9/11. This was followed in the 2000s by a fourth wave that was more violent and entailed more attacks on Western targets, especially after the illegal war on Iraq in 2003. In recent years, there has been a fifth wave of radicalisation among British Muslims, with many becoming increasingly focused on non-Western wars such as Syria or Iraq, such as the seven hundred or so British citizens who joined Islamic State between 2012 and 2016. British Muslim radicalisation, therefore, is a complex phenomenon that involves many varied factors and can manifest in many different ways. There are many different waves of radicalisation for various reasons: some people become radicalised for economic reasons; others because they feel excluded from society due to discrimination or racism against them; some people become radicalised for religious reasons; others because they feel alienated from their communities or societies around them; some people become radicalised for political reasons; others because they have experienced something traumatic like war or conflict in their lives; some people become radicalised due to social media-driven propaganda by extremist groups like Islamic State and al Qaeda, which attempts to convince young men and women that violence against innocent civilians will bring them closer to God.

In the last couple of decades, there has been a growth in radicalisation among British Muslims. It is important to understand why British Muslims are radicalising to get a better understanding of how to stop it. There are waves of Muslim radicalisation in Britain, but each wave is characterised by different forms of radicalisation, including suicide bombers and al-Qaeda-inspired attacks. The waves of British Muslim radicalisation have been a long time in the making. The reasons for this are multi-faceted but can be divided into three main categories: political, socio-economic, and religious. The political climate in the United Kingdom during this period has been characterised by racial tension and unrest; inter-ethnic tensions were high, with reports of public disorder throughout the country. It has been followed by an economic crisis in Britain, which has resulted in high unemployment rates among working-class groups. In addition to these factors, there was also a significant rise in Islamist fundamentalism at this time, as well as an increase in anti-Muslim racism and violence. These waves have continued into modern times, with many Britons who are Muslims feeling alienated from society as well as being engaged in criminal activities such as drug dealing or other forms of crime like theft or fraud. Government surveillance has been used to monitor British Muslims for decades to identify those who might pose a threat if they were radicalised. This surveillance has led to many being monitored for years without any action being taken against them. There have also been numerous instances where those who have been radicalised have returned home without making any attempt at conducting an attack on an individual or group of people.

There are many reasons why British Muslims might decide to become more radicalised. One of the most crucial factors is their lack of integration into British society, and they often feel disconnected from the rest of society. This can lead them to feel alienated and angry, making them more susceptible to extremist groups such as the Islamic State or Al-Qaeda. Another factor is their lack of access to education. Many British Muslim children are not receiving an education that prepares them for life after secondary school or college. This lack of education can lead them down a path towards extremism because it does not teach them how to think critically about religious texts or other sources of information. Finally, some people may be drawn towards terrorism because it gives them a sense of purpose and belonging – they may never have felt like part of society before but now see themselves as part of something larger than themselves that needs fixing. British Muslims feel disconnected from mainstream society and see their religion as a way to reconnect with it. Another is that young British Muslims have been taught by their families and communities that there are problems with the West and its values, and they want to help fix those problems.

Based on an observational methodology, I argue that British Muslim radicalisation has occurred in waves, with each wave having its own sociological and foreign policy impact characteristics. It is unclear what will happen next concerning British Muslim radicalisation—but it is possible to appreciate that British Muslims are radicalised in diverse ways, and there are several different waves of radicalisation. First, British Muslims who have been radicalised tend to be those who were already susceptible to the ideas of radical Islam. This is because they have been exposed to these ideas not only on the internet but also in their everyday lives. They may have come from families where there was a lot of tension between Muslims and non-Muslims, as well as other groups such as Jews and Hindus. They may also have had previous contact with people who had gone on to become extremists. Second, British Muslims who are radicalised tend to have low levels of education and employment. This means that they do not feel accepted by society or that they can be effective by trying to work within the system; instead, they feel that they need to separate themselves from society so that they can work towards their own goals. Third, British Muslims who are radicalised tend to come from lower middle or working-class backgrounds and live in urban areas (such as London or Birmingham). Radicalisation in British Muslim communities is a complex phenomenon that hinges on many factors. While some have argued that it is a response to discrimination, others contend that the root cause is in fact poverty, which makes it difficult for Muslims to find jobs and leads them to feel they have no hope for the future.’

Abbas concludes

‘British Muslim radicalisation can be traced back to the period of immigration to the country. Most of these immigrants originated in South Asia. As these new immigrants conformed to British culture and society, they began to integrate. During this time, however, there were also instances in which individuals felt alienated by their new surroundings or dissatisfied with life in Britain. Therefore, radicalisation should not be viewed as the problem of a few stray individuals. Instead, radicalisation is a social phenomenon, a social problem, and a social outcome; no radicalisation occurs in a vacuum. It exists because it is the tipping point a person reaches as a result of the frustrations they experience in their daily lives, where they do not have the answers to the questions they seek regarding the self and other and are pessimistic about the future due to the precariousness of their realities. Therefore, the different waves of radicalisation in the United Kingdom reflect distinct periods of economic decline and misfortune that disproportionately affected Muslim minorities.’

See: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14782804.2023.2204421#d1e337

This is a very thorough article tracing the roots of radicalisation among British Muslims to foreign events, such as the war in Bosnia in the ’90s, Muslim resistance to the Indian occupation of Kashmir, the wars in Afghanistan and Blair’s illegal invasion of Iraq, as well as sociological factors in the UK, including high working class unemployment, racism and islamophobia and lack of proper education, as well as a ‘crisis of masculinity’ amongst young Muslim men. Hopefully, with more carefully reasoned analysis of these movement like the article above, better ways will be found to prevent further radicalisation and convince otherwise alienated individual susceptible to radical ideologies that they are nevertheless important parts of modern multicultural Britain, and that their integration into wider British society will benefit them and their communities, rather than the adoption of hatred and violence.

Private Eye Reviews Yvette Fielding’s Book on Most Haunted

Last week I posted a series of responses to various essays by CJ, one of the leading members of the parapsychological research group, ASSAP, on the nature of ghosts and hauntings. One of these was also a response to his article taking to pieces a rather mendacious article in the Star that misrepresented the work of another serious researcher into the paranormal. A couple of decades ago CJ worked as a researcher for the ghost-hunting programme Most Haunted, presented by Yvette Fielding and medium Derek Acorah. Acorah was sacked after he was caught cheating by the show’s resident parapsychologist and sceptic, Dr Ciaran O’Keeffe. Now Fielding has a book out about her time on the show, and Private Eye have reviewed it in this fortnight’s issue. I’m putting it up here as I feel it will be of more than a little interest to people like CJ, who have a serious interest in psychical research and how it is reflected and (mis)represented in the popular media.

‘Ghost busted

Scream Queen: A Memoir

Yvette Fielding

(Ebury Spotlight £22).

“Is it possible to talk to the dead?” Yvette Fielding, television’s “First Lady of the Paranormal” asks in this memoir. The answer is, of course “No”. But Fielding believes – or professes to – that the dead are veritable chatterboxes. You can barely get them to shut up and she’s built a career out of it.

She and her husband, Karl Beattie, created Most Haunted, a long-running “paranormal investigation” show that first aired on Living TV in 2002. With her motley crew of ghost hunters, Fielding would set up shop at supposedly haunted buildings, and ghost-related shenanigans would ensue. Mediums would talk to spirits and sometimes be possessed by them. Team members would claim to see, hear or feel spooks. Sometimes they were even attacked by them.

Viewers had to accept a lot on faith because, for obvious reasons, the ghosts were never caught on camera. The only mysterious thing about Most Haunted was why anyone ever watched it: It was sold to “over 100 countries”, we are told no fewer than four times in this book.

Fielding saw her first ghost at the age of 26, when staying at her mother’s house. The apparition was half a soldier (the top half). A chat with a local historian revealed that during the Second World War, a soldier had been cut in half in an accident on the railway line at the bottom of the garden. Mystery solved! (Later, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, Fielding saw a pair of ghostly legs. “To this day, we have no idea who those legs belonged to,” she writes.)

The spectral soldier ignited Fielding’s interest in the paranormal and a few years later, after hearing about a cameraman friend’s visit to a haunted house, she and Beattie hit on the idea for Most Haunted.

Derek Acorah, a former footballer turned “medium”, was a star of the show. Acorah was “possessed” on a fairly regular basis and his ludicrous performances were hammier than Miss Piggy eating a bacon sandwich in a charcuterie. Fielding insists that for a while she thought he was genuine, but also admits that, when filming for the very first episode of the first series, Acorah claimed to be in touch with a spirit who, it later turned out, had been invented by the owner of the property. Yet Most Haunted stuck with Acorah for six years before he was eventually fired (passing permanently into the spectral realm in 2020), and even then his dismissal seems to have been prompted by his abusive behaviour towards the crew rather than his obviously fraudulent antics.

Fielding repeatedly claims that everything in the show is “real and not made up”. How, then, to explain the writer Will Storr’s experience on the set of an episode of Most Haunted Live, as described in a chapter of his book Will Storr vs The Supernatural? He manages to sneak a peak at a copy of the filming schedule and is surprised to see that “happenings” are scheduled in advance. “Yvette and Derek explain local folklore and have a happening”. “Yvette and Derek at St Nicholas Church – further happenings”. Curiouser and curiouser.

Fielding doesn’t mention that episode. She does wonder whether there’s “been some kind of establishment cover-up about the paranormal”. Why might that be the case? “All governments and religions rule by control and they probably don’t want the masses thinking that there might be another plane after this life.” Her suspicions were apparently first aroused when Ofcom ruled that Most Haunted was “entertainment” and not a genuine investigation into the paranormal – proof positive surely of a global conspiracy.

Among all the supernatural guff, we get snippets of some of Fielding’s other work in TV. She was Blue Peter’s youngest ever presenter and had some genuinely hair-raising experiences on the children’s programme. She describes going down a bobsleigh run in Germany. It was so terrifying that when more footage was needed, she refused to do it a second time and the director stood in for her. She also had to re-record the audio . She did it sitting in a car pretending to be in the bobsleigh as crew members shook her seat. Deception in a TV show, eh? Whoever heard of such a thing.’

P. 35.

Private Eye doesn’t have much time for books on the paranormal. They don’t review them, as a rule. Back in the ’90s they reviewed Brian Inglis’ excellent Natural and Supernatural, and were as unimpressed with that as they were about Fielding’s book. In the case of Inglis’ book, they explained their scepticism by saying that such books were theologically unnecessary. By which they presumably meant that they added nothing to genuine belief and understanding of the supernatural. I’m not sure this is the case. As for the question of whether you can really talk to the dead, there is plenty of evidence that some mediums have been able to in the form of information they gave during seances which they couldn’t possibly have gained through conventional means. This classic example of this is the cross-correspondences, a series of mediumistic messages from the 1920s from different communicating spirits, but which were all connected with each other. But there are also any number of fake mediums, many of whom were exposed by people like the escapologist Harry Houdini and the Society for Psychical Research. Back in the early part of this century, one American TV medium was the subject of Penn and Teller’s attack on the paranormal and pseudoscientific, Bullshit!, as well as lampooned in South Park. There was also a medium touring over here who was widely, and justifiably suspected of fraud, who was also subjected to a campaign against her.

The Mirror did a piece a year ago about Derek Acorah being caught faking his communication with the spirits on the show, and the German vlogger, TheSneezingMonkey, but up a video about it nearly two weeks or so ago. O’Keefe was suspicious that Derek was somehow getting hold of information on the local spooks collected by the researchers. So he, like the mischievous property owner in the first programme, started making ghosts up. Derek duly claimed to be in touch with them. These included, when Most Haunted visited the Tower of London, the infamous South African terrorist Kreed Kafer. Then there was the highwayman Rik Eedles and a story about Richard the Lionheart and a witch manifesting in the garderobe of a medieval castle. The two above names were anagrams. Kreed Kafer = Derek Faker, and Rik Eedles ‘Derek Lies’. And the story about Richard I and the witch was a play on The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. There were other hints too. During one episode, Acorah claimed to be in touch with the spirt of Dick Turpin’s love, Mary. He got possessed, and shouted ‘Mary loves Dick’, which seemed to amaze Fielding as a piece of double-entendre.

As for the supposed conspiracy to suppress knowledge of the paranormal realm, this doesn’t wash for a number of reasons. Firstly, most religions have a concept of the hereafter, including rewards and punishments for those who fail to believe or follow their doctrines and morality. It therefore makes no sense for religions to try to suppress knowledge of the supernatural. After all, Karl Marx famously said that ‘religion is the opium of the people’. She is, however, right in that there is legislation governing the presentation of spiritualism on television and radio. I believe this followed a conference on spiritualism by the Anglican church in 1936. By law, programmes on it can only be presented as an investigation, or entertainment. Back in the 1990s there were other programmes on the paranormal, such as BBC 2’s In Search of the Dead, that were presented as investigations and did include footage that spiritualist and psychical research groups claimed to show genuine supernatural phenomena. If Ofcom ruled that Most Haunted was entertainment, rather than an investigation, it was almost certainly because that’s how it struck the regulator, not because they were part of the global conspiracy to stop people realising the reality of the paranormal world.

Most Haunted stopped a long time ago, though it says something about the power of the programme and its popularity at its height that it’s still remembered after all these years. It almost seemed to go mainstream at one moment when it was spoofed on the BBC comedy show Dead Ringers. This had two of the impressions, one playing Fielding, the other, Jon Culshaw, being Acorah, entering a shed in a garden centre. They then surprised and bewildered the poor young woman serving them with ‘Derek’ informing her that there was a tortoise in there that hibernated. Hibernated! Culshaw/Acorah then pretended to be possessed and started singing ‘I don’t want to dance’ in Desmond Decker’s voice. The popularity of Most Haunted and similar shows led to the emergence of the spoof medium, Shirley Ghostman.

Since Most Haunted, ghost hunting shows have gained in popularity and now seem to be all over cable and satellite TV. I’ve heard they also seem to include the presenters getting possessed or attacked regularly. As do various ghost hunting groups, who put their exploits up on YouTube and social media. Most Haunted is gone, but its memory and popularity remain.

Here’s TheSneezingMonkey’s video on the exposure of Derek Acorah.

Disabilities Minister Suggests Reforming PIP to Benefit Vulnerable People

This comes from the I, ‘PIP benefit assessments for disabled people may not be working and need adjusting, minister admits’ by Chloe Chaplain. It begins

‘The controversial disability benefit system could need adjusting to ensure vulnerable people are properly supported, a Government minister has said.

Disabilities Minister Tom Pursglove told i he was not ruling out changing the way Personal Independent Payment (PIP) assessments work amid fears that the system is inaccurate and arduous.

Mr Pursglove said he did not expect the PIP process would be overhauled entirely but that the Government would “take stock” on potential issues as it pushes through changes.

Concerns have been raised over the assessment after the Government announced plans earlier this year to streamline the benefit system and place more emphasis on PIP.

MPs on the Work and Pensions committee have suggested the government is effectively raising the bar for vulnerable people to receive support.

PIP assessments are also often wrong, forcing people to appeal their case. i revealed earlier this week that more than 200,000 people have been wrongly denied PIP in recent years.

The minister said that he wanted to see more correct decisions and this could mean the system has to be looked at.

“We don’t envisage that there will be wholesale change around the PIP assessment, but obviously, we will want to take stock as we move forward with the reforms,” the minister said in an interview with i.’

For more information, go to: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/pip-benefit-assessments-for-disabled-people-may-not-be-working-and-need-adjusting-minister-admits/ar-AA1e3YIo?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=229be7d1326440e3b6bf901a7320c949&ei=67

This smacks of desperation now that they look set to lose heavily to Labour. I have absolutely no confidence in what’s being said, as the Tories lie worse than Kier ‘Kiddie Starver’ Starmer. They’ve had well over a decade to fix PIP, and haven’t done so. I don’t expect that they will do so now. The whole benefits system needs to be overhauled and restored to levels that actually support people. This will mean undoing the assumptions of the Blair government that a certain percentage of all disability benefit claims are fraudulent as well as PIP itself. And this isn’t going to happen. Pursglove has said he doesn’t want to change the system too much. And even if he wanted to, the right-wing press and media would immediately have a fit because they’re selling papers by lying to the public that the system is awash with scroungers and fraudsters.

This is another election promise, all set to be broken when it’s no longer of any use.

1960s Logging Footage with UFO-Shaped Blimp

I found this interesting little video on the Wellness Cottage channel on YouTube. It’s of newly released film footage of logging from the 1960s, which includes a balloon which looks rather like a UFO. I haven’t watched all of it, just the first few minutes as I’m really not interested in logging. But what I do find interesting is that the Americans were clearly using dirigibles like this to lift the fallen tree trunks onto the trucks and vehicles. And I very much wonder how long the Americans carried on using them, as it might explain, or help to explain, the Travis Walton abduction.

Walton was a member of logging team, who was supposedly abducted and examined by aliens aboard a UFO in 1976 or so. His story was later filmed in the ’90s as Fire in the Sky, with James Garner as the sceptical sheriff. There have been allegations that he abduction was a fraud, as the logging team were behind in their work and Walton himself had a chequered past. He also failed a polygraph test the first time he took it, but passed the second. But polygraphs don’t necessarily prove anything, only that the person taking them has a bad response to questions. It’s why, I believe, they’re inadmissible in court.

From what I remember of the film, Walton’s team were coming back at night when the saw a red light in the sky. Walton got out, and was hit by a strange light. I can’t remember if he disappeared, or the others simply took fright and left him. After several days missing, he turns up in one of his friends and neighbour’s houses naked and shivering and cowering in fear. I’ve no idea what really happened. But it occurred to me that if there was a similar blimp operating in the area, possibly it could have been an element in the abduction, which was really an internal, psychological experience. Which is not to say that the experience wouldn’t have been terrifyingly real to Walton.

But this is just my speculation. It could well be that the blimps had stopped being used by the time Walton had his experience, or that even if they were still being used, they were nowhere near him and his fellow lumberjacks. I’m sceptical about UFO abductions, but perhaps he really was kidnapped by aliens.

Did Gordon Brown and Jackie Smith Really Order the Police Not to Investigate the Pakistani Grooming Gangs?

One of the stories going around the right, and especially the Islamophobic right, is that Gordon Brown and the-then Home Secretary Jackie Smith not only knew about the Pakistani grooming gangs, but ordered the police not to investigate them. It’s alleged that in 2008 they sent out a circular to the police forces stating that the victims had made a lifestyle choice and that, in order to preserve the peace, they were not to investigate them. I tried to do a bit of investigation into this rumour just using Google yesterday. They allegation is supposed to have been made by Nafzir Ali, the heroic prosecutor, who was behind the campaign to get these gangs arrested for their heinous crimes and put away. Ali is supposed to have made the allegation during an interview on Radio 4, which was then edited out and never broadcast.

If this is true, this would be a damning indictment of Brown and Smith, and their critics and opponents would be entirely right in calling for them to be jailed for a very long time. I don’t find anything particularly incredible about the allegation. The governments can and do stop investigations that are felt not to be in the public interest. With a serious allegation like this, it may well be that the Beeb would edit it out of an interview fearing legal or political repercussions. Tory critics have claimed that there is a strong bias in the BBC against them. I don’t find this entirely credible, but they have been able to support it with evidence that some elements of the Beeb were connected to the Labour party at the time, whose reporting was unfairly biased towards Blair’s Labour party. But as Blair at the time was turning Labour into a neoliberal party of the right, this doesn’t mean that it was a socialist or pro-working class bias.

The problem with these allegations is that they were made by a woman at a Tommy Robinson rally. It’s possible that she was telling the truth, though I didn’t find out what her background was that allowed her to know about this supposed interview and its suppression. Not everything Robinson says is a lie, and he was interviewing the gangs’ victims and promoting their stories while the police were still trying to silence them. But Tommy ‘Ten Names’ Robinson, as one of the great commenters here has called him, does not inspire confidence. As I’ve said, he’s a violent thug, who was in the BNP before supposedly become non-racist and deciding instead to pick on Islam. He has convictions for assault and mortgage fraud, as well as contempt of court and attempting to sneak into America while banned. He lost a libel case against a Syrian lad, who he claimed was the real bully after the lad was the victim of a racist attack by other boys at school. He claims to be some kind of citizen journalist, but his reports made at the time of these gangs’ trial violated the rules of journalistic impartiality and threatened to cause a mistrial. In which case, the trial would have to have been abandoned and the gangs, if guilty, let off.

The fact is that unless there is a public inquiry, we don’t know if this really happened. 38 Degrees did post a petition calling for one, but it hasn’t happened yet and I doubt that it will.

Why Do Right-Wing Men Support Andrew Tate and Tommy Robinson?

One of the great commenters on this channel asked me this yesterday. I must say that I really don’t know much about Andrew Tate at all. He seems to be some kind of cult figure on the right, and there were a number of videos put up on YouTube by right-wingers shocked at his conversion to Islam, wondering if it was genuine. I gather also that he’s anti-feminist, but the only other thing I really know about him is that the Romanian police arrested him on charges of enslavement and people trafficking after he got into some kind of spat on Twitter with Greta Thunberg. The right-wing American activist and YouTuber Matt Walsh coincidentally put up a video about this question, ‘Why do young men support Andrew Tate’ on YouTube yesterday. I haven’t watched it, so really don’t know why some men do. My guess is that, to them, he represents traditional masculinity and conservative values against the woke left.

In the case of Tommy Robinson, I think the short answer is that the people that support him are thugs. Robinson used to be a BNP stormtrooper before founding the English Defence League and Pegida UK. He’s got convictions for assault, and his house is actually in his wife’s name because of another conviction for mortgage fraud. There’s a video up on YouTube showing what he’s really like. It’s of him punching and beating someone at a sports match. His method of dealing with critics is to dox them, telling his supporters not to bother that person, and then later taking the video down, so that it doesn’t look like he’s encouraging people to go round and harass them He’s also done this personally to his critics and their families. He turned up at the house of the parents of one of his critics in Cumbria with his horrible mate Avi Yemeni, demanding a word in the early hours of the morning. He also went round banging on the windows and doors of Australian anti-racist and teacher Mike Stuchbery, as well as slandering him as a paedophile. It ended with Stuchbery leaving his job to go to Germany. He also got hit with a heavy legal case after he libelled a Syrian immigrant kid who’d suffered racist bullying at school. Robinson claimed the lad was the bully while interviewing one of the boys responsible for the attack. Robinson got sued for libel, lost, and was ordered to pay substantial damages.

A fair number of his supporters seem to be football hooligans. A few years ago when he was running the English Defence League, their supporters included football casuals, so called because they wore casual clothing looted from the stores they trashed. When he turned up in Bristol, he was supported by the Democratic Football Lads’ Alliance, who might be genuine football fans, but I suspect otherwise. As for respectable Conservative support, I’m not so sure. The Lotus Eaters support him, but talk about him in coded language as ‘the bad man’ in case they get a YouTube ban for doing so. I don’t know if other right-wing web sites support him. I haven’t seen him interviewed by the New Culture Forum, even though they have interviewed History Debunked’s Simon Webb. Possibly this lack of obvious support is because of his violence and criminality, just as many Tories in the 1970s stopped supporting the NF because of it.

Unfortunately, the long official coverup of the grooming gangs has given him ammunition. He’s made a number of videos about them and spoken to their victims, in contrast to some of the police and local authorities that have tried to silence them. He’s thus able to present himself as a lone voice standing against official complicity in these terrible crimes.

I’ve covered Robinson and his wretched followers in a number of blog posts, and the anti-racist, anti-religious extremism organisation, Hope Not Hate, have published a book exposing him and his crimes. My guess is that some men support him for the same reason they support Tate, and that Robinson also represents to them traditional Britain against the Muslim threat. But how much support he has beyond his own milieu I really don’t know.