Brent and Neil go to Manchester - Part 1

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I have not received any encouragement or inducement from anyone to write about or discuss any information related to the Manchester Attack. All research discussed is exclusively my own and based solely upon information freely available in the public domain.

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Brent Lee and Neil Sanders have released their 8 part exploration of Richard D. Hall's Book and film called Manchester The Night of the Bang. You can download Richard's book For Free Here.

If you would like to support Richard's work you can also buy his Book HERE and HERE. You can also donate to support his ongoing legal battle HERE.

Before every Episode, Brent and Neil warn their listeners they will be discussing distressing material. I will be discussing the same and will include distressing images and video. Please do not read these articles if you are not prepared to consider such material.

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Brent starts each episode by announcing the following:

Welcome to our Manchester Arena Bombing On Trial series. [. . .] On the 22nd of May, 2017, Salman Abedi detonated a bomb in the foyer of the Manchester Arena at the end of an Arianna Grande concert killing 22 people and injuring hundreds more. A conspiracy theory claiming that this bombing was hoaxed and everyone involved was a crisis actor soon became a dominant narrative in the conspirasphere. One of the main proponents of this theory is Richard D Hall. Over the course of this series we will be examining the claims made by Richard D Hall as told in his book and documentary "Night Of The Bang."

While their podcast series was recorded last year, Brent and Neil have chosen to release it during Hall's defence against a High Court civil action for harassment and GDPR breaches. Hall's trial is a matter of significant public interest and has been widely reported in the legacy media.

I published and article in April 2023 about the BBC's attack on Richard D. Hall and his legal problems. I suspected he would not be allowed to present his evidence in the High Court, and wrote:

If there is no exploration of Hall’s evidence; if it is simply dismissed out of hand by labelling it a “conspiracy theory”; if it is just asserted that the official narrative is true and cannot be questioned, then, regardless of whatever position Hall may be forced to accept, why would he, or anyone else who is familiar with the evidence he has uncovered, have any genuine cause to believe either the official account or the legitimacy of the verdict?

Unfortunately, that is precisely what happened. Two of the alleged Manchester Arena victims successfully applied for a summary judgement that has barred Hall from presenting his evidence in court. His evidence has been dismissed out of hand by the British judiciary which has simply refused to look at any of it. Hall is appealing the decision but, in my view, the judiciary is corrupt and will strongly resist examining his evidence in court.

As we explore Brent's and Neil's "debunk" of Hall's theory we should remember that the High Court denied Hall's request to see the physical evidence that placed the claimants in the Arena on the night of the bang, showing that they sustained their injuries in the Manchester Arena foyer—the City Room.

With regard to this, I wrote:

[. . .] why Davison [the High Court Master who issued the summary judgement] chose not to allow Hall’s application and requested court order to obtain this evidence seems rather odd. What is stranger still is that it was Hall, and not the claimants’ legal team, who made the request for the CCTV video. Surely the claimants’ would have wanted to submit it into evidence themselves, thereby proving “beyond all reasonable doubt” that Hall’s opinions are completely unfounded?

Absent that evidence, all we have to place the claimants in the City Room that night, substantiating that they were injured by an alleged bomb, is a reported ticket receipt and hearsay. Their claim contradicts an overwhelming body of evidence, reported by Hall, strongly suggesting that there was no bomb that could have possibly injured them or anyone else.

Brent and Neil start each episode by reporting the official Manchester Arena narrative as factually accurate. There are a couple of observations to make about this introduction. Firstly, it is factually inaccurate.

While 22 people were allegedly killed by a bomb, as reported by the legacy media at the time, less than 60 were said to have survived injuries purportedly sustained as a direct consequence of a bomb blast.

Of these, after thoroughly reviewing the evidence, Richard D. Hall managed to identify 38 individuals in his book who were reportedly injured in the Manchester Arena City Room—the foyer—where the bomb purportedly detonated. While the number of injured supposedly climbed to more than 800, the vast majority of these people were not in the City Room and were not injured by a bomb.

Brent and Neil's opening assertion that a bomb injured "hundreds more" is wildly inaccurate and potentially deceptive. Nearly all of these people were either injured in the stampede from the arena or have subsequently claimed psychological trauma injury. While anyone can make a mistake, clearly it would be wise to be mindful of possible deception going forward.

Secondly, the term "conspiracy theory" is a pejorative propaganda label used to discredit anyone who challenges official State narratives. This does not mean that every idea called a "conspiracy theory" is plausible.

Just like any other concept or explanation, some are downright silly, some are partially accurate and some are well supported by the evidence and convincing. The claimed difference between a so-called "conspiracy theory" and an evidence based account of an event, is that the Establishment calls that account—whatever it may be—a conspiracy theory. That's it, there really isn't any more to it than that.

To be clear: one of the most influential scholars—if not the most influential—in the field of conspiracy theory research is the political scientist Joseph Uscinski. Like most of his academic peers, Uscinski has tried to differentiate between evidence-based knowledge of real or "concrete" conspiracies—such as Iran-Contra or Operation Gladio—and what scientific researchers allege to be the psychologically flawed and evidence-free views held by so-called "conspiracists."

Professor Joseph Uscinski

Uscinski cites the work of Professor Neil Levy as definitive. In Radically Socialized Knowledge and Conspiracy Theories, Levy wrote:

The typical explanation of an event or process which attracts the label "conspiracy theory" is an explanation that conflicts with the account advanced by the relevant epistemic authorities. [. . .] A conspiracy theory that conflicts with the official story, where the official story is the explanation offered by the (relevant) epistemic authorities, is prima facie unwarranted. [. . .] It is because the relevant epistemic authorities — the distributed network of knowledge claim gatherers and testers that includes engineers and politics professors, security experts and journalists — have no doubts over the validity of the explanation that we [fellow members of the "epistemic authorities"] accept it.

The scientific definition of "conspiracy theory" is an opinion that conflicts with the official narrative as reported by the "epistemic authorities." If you question what you are told by the State, by its "official" representatives or by its legacy media, you can expect to be labelled a "conspiracy theorist" by the Establishment's "epistemic authorities."

"Conspiracy theorist" literally means someone who questions power. “Conspiracy theorist” is a propagandist’s label that Brent and Neil habitually use and also apply to Richard D. Hall.

The "conspirasphere," mentioned by Brent Lee, does not exist. All that does exist is a significant number of people who hold a variety of views that question power to some degree. These people do not share any identifiable demographic, social or political characteristics. They have no leadership, no cohesion as a group and no specific political agenda. They are merely individuals who are critical of the narratives they are told to believe by the "epistemic authorities."

Brent's and Neil's YouTube channel is marketed as follows:

"Some Dare Call It Conspiracy" is a podcast that explores conspiracy theories surrounding global events and politics. [. . .] Brent Lee [. . .] seeks to debunk them with evidence and rational thinking. [. . .] Together, Brent and Neil provide a balanced, insightful, and thought-provoking analysis of the most controversial and fascinating conspiracy theories of our time.

It is not unreasonable, therefore, for listeners to expect to hear "balanced, insightful, and thought-provoking analysis." The fact that the pair apparently accept, and consistently use, the propaganda label of "conspiracy theorist," seems neither insightful nor thought-provoking.

Brent Lee is evidently committed to "debunking" any explanation of an event that is contrary to the official narrative provided by the State and confirmed by the Establishment's "epistemic authorities." To "debunk" means:

To expose the sham or falseness of [something].

Richard D. Hall's account of the Manchester Arena "bang" differs markedly from the official story of the Manchester Arena “bomb,” as officially told by the "epistemic authorities." Brent and his co-host Neil Sanders are seeking to debunk Hall. This is not the same as examining evidence to establish the facts. Brent and Neil have an openly stated agenda to undermine Hall's explanation, not to evaluate it objectively.

In Episode 1, Neil Sanders claims that Hall believes that no one died. This is also false. Hall actually wrote:

There has been no evidence to date publicly presented, that I am aware of, which proves that any of the 22 died in the arena foyer. I would argue, based on evidence presented in this study, that it is more likely that most of the 22 have merely been re-located. Is it the case that some of the 22 died earlier than 22 May 2017 in accidents or from other causes?

Hall's contention is that no one died in the City Room that night. The distinction matters and it is not "rational" to avoid making the clarification.

Richard D. Hall

The pairs' intention to "debunk" Hall is evident when they refer to Hall as a "conspiracy theorist." Hall is a researcher, an author and an investigative journalist. The propaganda labelling and bias is not only declared at the outset, it is reiterated at the start of every one of the duo’s podcast episodes.

Neil Sanders was given his first break by Hall and appeared as a guest in many of Richard's videos on Hall’s Richplanet website. He says that he still considers Richard a friend and then spends the next few hours assassinating Hall's character and misleading his listeners about Hall's work. Sanders does make valid criticisms, but Brent’s and Neil’s debunking is littered with ad hominem and other logical fallacies.

We are going to focus on how the pair account for the evidence presented by Richard D. Hall that indicates the Manchester Arena bombing was a hoaxed false flag. We will also highlight the incessant use of propagandist canards, diversion, misdirection and deception that the Brent and Neil seemingly rely upon.

Neil Sanders notes that Richard D. Hall was familiar with the work of the pseudonymous UK Critical Thinker (UKC) who initially undertook a lot of analysis of the Manchester Bombing. UKC produced a number of videos on the subject that you still can peruse HERE. It is likely that the High Court will slap an injunction on Hall, forcing him to remove all the evidence and burn all his books, so you might want to grab physical copies of Hall's work HERE.

In Episode 1, Sanders noted that Strategic Operations, a US based company that specialises in providing "hyper-realistic" training scenarios to the military and other front-line services—referenced by Hall—is a "real thing." Similar companies, such as UK based CrisisCast, provide what they call "real-play actors specially trained in disaster and crisis management." Safe to say, the crisis actor and disaster simulation business is a global industry.

The legacy media has reported hoaxed false flags as if they were real. In 2016 the global news agency, Associated Press (AP), reported an alleged car bombing and claimed that it "hit a popular fruit and vegetable market near a school in the northwestern Hurriyah [Baghdad].” AP claimed it killed 10 people and injured 34. In fact, there were no deaths and the 34 injured were crisis actors.

You can watch UK Column's report on the hoaxed false flag below:

This hoax was then picked up and reported as a real terrorist attack by legacy media outlets around the world, such as the UK's Daily Mail. For another clear example of hoaxed terror event, I highly recommend you read Robert Stuart's excellent exposé of the BBC involvement in a hoaxed terror attack, which also used crisis actors, to fake an alleged attack on a children’s playground in Atareb district of Aleppo, Syria.

Sanders states that he considers the notion of hoaxed terror events involving crisis actors to be "a silly concept." His opinion is not supported by the evidence.

Sanders then mentions Hall's reference to the work of investigative journalist Dave McGowan on the Boston bombing. Having praised McGowan for his "fascinating" research, when McGowan turned his attention to the Moon landings, the Lincoln assassination and the Boston bombing, Sanders dismissed his work for some reason. Sanders doesn't explain why he thinks McGowan's later research was not equally "fascinating." Is it the subject matter he disapproves of?

Brent and Neil reported McGowan's statement, inserted as a clip at the start of Hall's film, saying "it is not a conspiracy theory to say that the government employs crisis actors to conduct these mass casualty simulations." That's right, it isn't. The global crisis actor and disaster simulation industry wouldn't exist if it were and we wouldn't have so many clear examples of hoaxed terror attacks.

I'm not sure what Neil's point was here. The UK government used more than 800 hundred crisis actors to simulate a fake suicide bombing in Manchester's Trafford Shopping Centre only a year prior to the Manchester Arena incident. As McGowan said, governments employ crisis actors. This is not a contentious point. Why was Sanders insinuating that it was?

Sander then reports that Hall claimed in his book that the Boston bombing hoax proves that governments fake terror events and that Hall's conclusion was based upon Dave McGowan's work. Hall cited McGowan in his film, but McGowan is not referenced at all in Hall's book.

Hall wrote:

One example of such an exercise took place at the Boston marathon in 2013. This terror drill was reported, and is still being reported on Wikipedia for example, as a real attack, but in fact it was a simulated terrorist training incident. The [Boston bombing] training exercise has been comprehensively exposed in the film ‘The Boston Unbombing’ – 2016.

The film, The Boston Unbombing, presents a wealth of evidence that does, in my view, expose the Boston bombing as, in all likelihood, yet another "hoaxed" false flag event. Given Brent and Neil's declared intention to "debunk" anything that questions the narratives approved by the "epistemic authorities," it is unlikely they would publicly agree that the film shows that the Boston bombing was a hoax.

We should consider this for a moment.

The "epistemic authorities," wedded to State narratives, claim sole "authority" to stipulate what is true and what isn't. Obviously, this is an idiotic assertion. Truth is determined by establishing the facts after careful consideration of the evidence. No one on Earth has any legitimate right to claim the unique "authority" to declare the truth.

A film like The Boston Unbombing, or Richard D. Hall's Manchester The Night of the Bang, carries no more but no less "authority" that an official report or a proclamation issued by the government. All that matters is the evidence and what facts that evidence may or may not establish. From an epistemological perspective, claiming some sort of magical power to be the official author of the truth is ludicrous.

It is up to us to decide for ourselves what we consider to be true or not. For example, I agree with Hall that The Boston Unbombing demonstrates, in the case of Boston, that the US government hoaxed a terrorist attack. It is inconceivable how it could have been hoaxed without government involvement at some level.

Brent and Neil evidently do not agree, as is their right, but they promote themselves to their audience as people who "uncover the truth." It is crucial they report the evidence to their listeners as accurately as they can, if that is their intention.

We all make mistakes and miss evidence that may be vital. I know I do, and I am not holding Brent and Neil to any higher standard.

Clearly, Sanders either made another error or, for some reason, did not want to disclose that Hall's source was The Boston Unbombing not Dave McGowan. This was a notable oversight. Familiarity with the evidence presented in that film would suggest to Brent's and Neil's listeners that Hall's contention is not so outlandish after all. But they did not pass on that information to their audience.

With regard to Manchester, Sanders agrees with Hall that there are no images of any identifiable dead or injured people shown in any officially released images, nor any in the legacy media nor any posted by any witnesses on social media or the internet. Brent and Neil also acknowledge that the absence of any phone footage, shot by any concert goers, of any "carnage" is, at least, surprising.

Neil Sanders then mentions the still image—reportedly taken by a man called Chris Parker—released by the legacy media (shown below) and the 43 second phone footage posted by a man called John Barr. Both were captured inside the City Room less than 4 minutes after Salman Abedi supposedly detonated his bomb. Throughout our exploration of Brent and Neil go to Manchester, we will refer to the photograph as “the Parker photo” and the phone-shot video as "the Barr footage."

The Parker photo

Brent and Neil tell us about the witness testimony of two concert goers who reported that they were turned back from entering the City Room by Arena security before the "bang" was heard. The official Lord Kerslake Report states that concert goers were turned away from the City Room after the bang.

Sanders says that Richard D. Hall reported the two witness statements contradicting the Kerslake Report. While this is true, what Sanders neglected to mention was that the contradictory witness statements were not included in the Kerslake Report.

Hall reported:

These statements are not mentioned in the Kerslake report. [. . .] According to first hand witnesses the Kerslake Report is incorrect. Showsec stewards diverted concert goers away from the foyer before the bang, not after the bang. This, and other observations I will present, shed doubt on the motives of those who wrote the Kerslake report. Was the Kerslake report merely an attempt to re-enforce an official, pre-agreed narrative?

Again, this seems like a rather crucial piece of information for Brent and Neil to omit. It is reasonable that the conclusion of an official report differs from the accounts of some eyewitnesses, providing it offers evidence to justify doing so. It is not reasonable for an official report to simply ignore contradictory eyewitness testimony.

Sanders then turns to the selfie footage of Nick Bickerstaff that was reported by the legacy media. In the video, Bickerstaff claimed that he had just seen the horror in City Room, stating that people were "bashed to bits." He filmed himself looking for his daughter, Ellen.

The official narrative from the "espistemic authorities" states that Abedi detonated his bomb after Ariana Grande concluded her performance with her 22nd song. Neil Sanders notes that there are number of features in the Bickerstaff footage that Hall reported to indicate that Bickerstaff shot the footage before the bang.

Sanders points out, in the Bickerstaff video a man called Jordan Kenney can be seen heading towards the Bar in the concourse that is situated outside the City Room. Sanders also reports that Kenney, while sat in the Arena with his friend Laura, filmed the moment when the crowd panicked and stampeded in response to hearing the bang after the concert had finished.

Jordan Kenney seen in the Bickerstaff video

There is a considerable amount of evidence in the Bickerstaff video, reported by Hall, that Sanders mentions casually, as if it were irrelevant. Sanders will attempt to "debunk" these points later.

Sanders notes that people are seen casually strolling around, seemingly unconcerned by the fact that a bomb has just exploded. He notes that Kenney is heading to the bar and that people are mocking Bickerstaff. He also observes there appears to be a live feed of the concert on the screen behind Bickerstaff. All of which tends toward a suspicion that Bickerstaff shot the video before the bang.

Sanders says that this was enough to convince Hall that Bickerstaff is a crisis actor. Of course, if Bickerstaff did shoot the video before the bang that would indicate either that he had foreknowledge of what was about to occur or had been instructed to film his own performance by someone else who had foreknowledge. That he was literally acting out a crisis is a distinct possibility, if that suspicion is accurate.

This is only the start of Brent and Neil's "debunk" and they go on to add a lot more detail. Nonetheless, Neil Sanders' easy dismissal of the Bickerstaff footage contradicts an observation he has already made.

Sanders noted that Kenney shot and posted phone footage of the panicked crowd after the bang was heard. That is to say, Kenney was acutely aware that there was a loud bang and people were panicking. A melee and a stampede ensued. Frightened people, including many children, were screaming and crying as they surged for the exits. As shown in the video below.

As reported by Hall, and acknowledged by Sanders, Kenney said that he and and his friend Laura fled the Arena after the bang. Kenney was in as much of a rush to get out safely as anyone else. Kenney did not nonchalantly stroll up to the bar, or saunter to the exit, during the panicked evacuation after the bang. Yet that is precisely what he is seen doing in the Bickerstaff footage.

As Episode 1 of Brent and Neil go to Manchester ends, what have we learnt from their "debunk" so far?

Governments use crisis actors and simulate realistic civil emergencies, such as terrorists attacks. There is a global crisis actor industry dedicated to hoaxing such events. There are discrepancies between witness statements and official reports into the alleged bombing. There is evidence suggesting some people had foreknowledge of the reported attack. There is a dearth of photographic and video evidence supporting the official narrative. This has all been reported by Richard D. Hall.

We have also learned that Brent and Neil are seeking to "debunk" Hall's work, rather that objectively analyse it. They have an apparent tendency to omit vital evidence or disparage it without explanation. They believe the "epistemic authorities" have a unique right to issue the official truth and Brent and Neil, just like the rest of us, are prone to making factual errors.

Brent Lee and Neil Sanders will flesh out their claimed debunk in considerable depth. They are clearly setting their debunk up as they continue to lay out what they consider to be the main elements of Hall's theory in Episode 2.

Please join me in Part 2 tomorrow, as we consider the arguments the pair are constructing.