There is no justice, just us - Part 3

The Appalling Trial of Richard D. Hall

Please read Part 1 and Part 2 if you want to familiarise yourself with the evidence supporting some of the points raised in this concluding article.

“Lawfare” is defined as “the use of legal action to cause problems for an opponent.” It is the illegitimate use of claimed legal authority to persecute and punish those who challenge power.

“The Establishment” was first defined in 1955 by the journalist Henry Fairlie Hose to mean:

[. . .] the whole matrix of official and social relations [including government] within which power is exercised. The [. . .] 'Establish- ment' can be seen at work in the activities of, not only the Prime Minister, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Earl Marshal, but of such lesser mortals as the chairman of the Arts Council, the Director-General of the BBC, and even the editor of The Times Literary Supplement, not to mention divinities like Lady Violet Bonham Carter.

Today, we might view the Establishment as a public-private partnership, but it’s the same thing Fairlie Hose described: a tiny gaggle of self-appointed technocrats, led by a parasite class of oligarchs, whose primary objective is to protect each other and continue to deceitfully rule—social engineering—to our detriment and their exclusive benefit.

False flag terrorism is a favoured deception used by the Establishment’s “intelligence agencies.” The Establishment exploits the resultant strategy of tension to convince us to turn to them for protection from the threats they manufactures.

Richard D. Hall was the first journalist brave enough to put his name to the reporting of the evidence that exposed the Manchester Arena hoax. Of course, Hall is an independent journalist.

The legacy media is owned by and serves the Establishment. There are virtually no legacy media journalists willing to question power, let alone report the evidence of a false flag terrorist attack. Especially a domestic false flag.

Hall is a “prominent” independent journalist in the UK who accurately reported evidence of a UK state—British Establishment—domestic false flag terror event. With a few notable exceptions, the rest of the so-called leading UK independent media outlets—just like the legacy media—hasn’t reported any of that evidence to their relatively large and growing audiences. We have to ask what purpose these limited hangouts serve. It certainly isn’t to expose the British Establishment’s criminocracy.

The alleged basis for the claim of harassment, lodged against Hall, is nonsensical and the evidence presented in his High Court trial laid bare the claim’s implausibility. Evidently, the only aspect of Hall’s investigative journalism that caused the claimants any “alarm, fear and distress” was his reporting of the Manchester hoax.

Hall undoubtedly wounded the Establishment and has an audience of sufficient size to cause the Establishment at least some “alarm.” The Establishment instigated a campaign—including the use of lawfare—against Hall, partly to discredit him in the hope of undermining the evidence he reported.

I suspect, having instigated legal action, they anticipated Hall would be forced to offer some sort of public retraction and accept liability. That he didn’t, but instead managed to garner sufficient financial support to mount a proper legal defence, I think came as something of a shock to the Establishment.

Obviously, the Establishment was always prepared to go to trial if necessary and the lawfare clearly had other objectives. Whether it went to trial or not, Karen Steyn’s judgement was already prepared in my view.

The further curtailment of freedom of expression and real investigative journalism was, I believe, the intention. But I don’t think they expected Hall to offer such a robust defence. From the Establishment’s perspective, the trial was a debacle as a result.

The Establishment was never going to proceed to trial without first ensuring Hall could not present the evidence exposing the Manchester hoaxed false flag in a court. But when Hall was also able to drum up the funding for the applications to see the evidence, purportedly substantiating the claimants’ accounts, it is likely it became an additional necessity to bar his and our access to that as well.

Karen Steyn maintained the Establishment’s preposterous argument that the alleged CCTV video of the claimants entering the City Room just before the bang could not be entered into evidence because it was “of a distressing nature.” How on earth can a supposed video of two people walking into a foyer be distressing?

Clearly one of the claimants isn’t overly perturbed by the memory. Martin Hibbert frequently discusses his account on national television and the other claimant, Eve Hibbert, wasn’t even in the court. In any event, it was only necessary to show the video to Richard D. Hall and his defence barrister, not the whole court. The fact that the prosecution fought to stop the court producing this alleged evidence—that would have supposedly demonstrated their claim and largely proven Hall wrong—should never be forgotten.

Unless they are complete idiots, the Establishment must have carefully considered the likely Streisand effect their lawfare on Hall risked. I think they knew the legacy media would provide the requisite propaganda cover and seized an opportunity that made drawing some attention to Hall’s work a relatively safe venture.

Like most aspect of their prosecution, that risk-assessment also backfired to an extent. It was the Establishment’s persecution of Hall—for simply being a journalist—that compelled other researchers, myself included, to publish more evidence exposing the Manchester hoax.

As noted by Hall’s defence barrister Paul Oakley:

[T]he Court is probably already aware that there is another book about these matters which has already been published. If [. . .] the resolution which Mr Hibbert seeks is to have only positive discussions about himself and his daughter even though [. . .] he has brought those into the public domain, [. . .] it is not going to, to happen. [. . .] Mr Hibbert is not expressly concerned about Mr Hall, he is concerned about Mr Hall’s conclusions. Other people are quite clearly going take up the baton. He cannot stop this.

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The legacy media viciously attacked Hall in the lead up to the trial. Casting Hall as some sort of fringe lunatic was useful in the early stages of the litigation process. It dissuaded the public from examining any of the evidence he reported.

Without a jury, prejudicing an Establishment run bench trial isn’t really necessary, but framing Hall’s “criminal liability” before the trial began was an added bonus. It created a useful fiction to back-up the appalling summary judgement.

At no stage, prior to the trial, did any legacy media outlet even reference any of the evidence Hall placed in the public domain. Unfortunately, the same is largely true for many of the more clueless independent media journalists.

Irrespective of Steyn’s unintelligible ruling, with regard to the evidence presented in the trial, it was a total disaster for the Establishment. Not only was the prosecution’s evidence clearly self-contradictory gibberish but Hall pounced on every opportunity to introduce evidence of the hoax wherever he could.

Steyn may have ruled that Hall’s “staged attack hypothesis” is a “ridiculous absurdity” but Hall showed her the image of the completely intact and undisturbed merchandise stall captured after the bang. While Steyn decided not to mention this in her written judgement, presumably she knows Hall’s hypothesis is not the “fantastical” argument she legally declared it to be.

The above image is the one Hall gave to Steyn during the trial. It shows the entirely intact and undisturbed City Room merchandise stall. The Establishment insists the merchandise stall was blown apart by a massive TATP shrapnel bomb, supposedly exploded right next to it, about four minutes before this image was captured. According to the official account—and Karen Steyn—this image doesn’t exist. Go figure!?

As the litigation progressed, a quite remarkable legacy media narrative shift occurred. Hall was no longer “Britain’s sickest man” but was reported as “a former television producer.” While still labelling him a “conspiracy theorist,” at least the legacy media referenced some of the evidence Hall reported. Though they maintained the customary deceit.

For example, Hall reportedly “claimed” that the Barr footage exists. It is not within the remit of the Establishment’s legacy media’s “journalists” to report that it does exist. They are tasked with insinuating that it doesn’t. Directing the public to view it was way out of bounds and probably beyond their investigative capability.

At this stage, we can only speculate why the legacy media backpedaled. It would be nice to think it was reluctant acknowledgement of the fact the trial did not go as planned. Regrettably, looking at the ruling more broadly, I fear that was not the reason they re-framed Hall as something more closely approaching a journalist.

We cannot view Steyn’s ruling in isolation of the Establishment’s recent attempts to test its Online Safety Act 2023 (OSA). Like Hall’s trial, these too were quite ridiculous, but that didn’t deter the effort.

The OSA’s faltering first steps have illuminated it true purpose. Under Section 179 of the OSA, it has been used to prosecute and convict individuals for the new crime of “sending false communications.” Posting “disinformation” in other words—where “disinformation” is any information the Establishment disapproves of and wishes to conceal from the public.

The OSA was touted as child protection legislation and supposedly placed an onus on the social media companies to ensure we don’t say anything that causes anyone else any “harm.” While it never had anything to do with the protection of children, but does impose said duties on social media companies, it is now obvious that, as many warned, the OSA is being used to silence us as individuals. We can and will be fined and/or imprisoned if we question the Establishment to any significant extent.

The Establishment faces the problem of trying to maintain the illusion we all live in a democracy while simultaneously removing all our supposed democratic rights and freedoms. Steyn’s ruling addresses an issue raised by the OSA. It is contrary to the legally superior Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. This needs to be dealt with if the OSA is going to stick in UK courts and a precedent was required.

A key aspect of Steyn’s ruling was to place Hall, and all other independent media journalists, effectively within the Establishment’s regulatory framework. It seems to me that Hall had to be grudgingly recast as a journalist for the greater objective of the lawfare to work.

Karen Steyn emphasised that potential abuses of media freedoms are “not limited to journalism emanating from the mainstream press.” Citing the relevant case law, Steyn added that journalism “extends to citizen journalism of the type engaged in by bloggers.”

In fact, the Establishment’s dictatorship under the OSA is pointedly restricted to the censorship of “citizen journalism of the type engaged in by bloggers.” Providing they maintain and defend the Establishment’s defined narrative—which they will—the legacy media gatekeepers of news and information are protected by the OSA. It is only the independent media and the general population who are subject to its pernicious excesses.

The OSA targets our use of online communication and particularly the conversations we have on social media. Hitherto, the Establishment has struggled to fully control our online freedom of speech. This is something they considers a global, not just a national threat to their interests. The OSA is designed to restore the Establishment’s total censorship control and return our access to news and information to the sole confines of the legacy media.

Article 10 of the ECHR stipulates:

Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.

Under the ECHR, the Establishment does have the alleged right to license broadcasters and film makers but no purported legal right to try to control people communicating using social media and the internet. This is a major problem for the Establishment if it wants to take its OSA prosecutions to a bolder and wider societal level.

Article 8 states:

Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

And Article 9:

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.

In her written judgement, Karen Steyn noted:

Any claim of harassment by speech is likely to engage the defendant’s right to freedom of expression, which is protected by the common law and article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights

Steyn acknowledged the other relevant ECHR article rights:

In this case, two other Convention rights are in issue. The claimants rely on article 8 (right to respect for private and family life). The defendant relies, in addition to article 10, on article 9 (freedom of thought, conscience and religion).

Steyn noted that none of these article rights automatically override any other unless it can be otherwise established. In his defence, Hall argued that his article 10 and 9 rights—in this instance—took precedence over the claimants article 8 rights. Steyn observed, in order to do so, Hall’s journalism must meet to necessary legal test.

To the High Court’s satisfaction, Hall needed to demonstrate:

(i) The objective of the interference in the claimants article 8 rights was sufficiently important to justify the limitation of that right.

(ii) The interference was rationally connected to that objective

(iii) Less intrusive measure weren’t possible.

(iv) Whether, having regard to these matters and to the severity of the consequences, Hall struck a fair balance between the claimants article 8 rights and the public interests.

The effect of the summary judgement ensured Hall had virtually no chance of meeting this legal test. Nonetheless, he was compelled to try, simply to offer any defence at all.

Hall was not allowed to show the evidence revealing the vital importance of his reporting. Consequently, he could not demonstrate—with evidence—that his journalism was resoundingly in the public interest nor that he had overwhelming justification for interfering with the claimants Article 8 rights.

As revealed in the court, Martin Hibbert put a huge volume of Manchester related evidence in the public domain. All of it was relevant to Hall’s investigation and his analysis of it was indisputably rationally connected to his objective of reporting the Manchester Arena hoax. But again, Hall was not permitted to demonstrate this with evidence.

Beyond questioning the claimants accounts of the alleged bombing, Hall did not intrude on the claimants’ lives. He conducted one brief visit, observing the movements of one of the claimants and never went anywhere near them again. He briefly mentioned his findings and didn’t publish any of the video footage he captured before he deleted all record of it. Any other “interference” in the claimants’ lives was restricted solely to Hall’s analysis of the information put into the public domain by Martin Hibbert.

It was only by striking out all of Hall’s Manchester related evidence that Steyn was able to rule:

[Hall] had no positive evidence that Mr Hibbert had lied about what happened to him and his daughter, and no sensible basis for believing he had done so.

Hall initially offered the High Court a weighty compendium of evidence informing his eminently “sensible” beliefs about Martin Hibbert’s honesty. But the Establishment’s High Court of justice refused to admit any of it.

Consequently, Hall’s single, brief visit to Eve Hibbert’s address could be described by Steyn as:

[. . .] a wholly unwarranted interference with the family’s right to privacy [article 8], which is properly characterised as oppressive and unacceptable.

As discussed in Part 1, Steyn ruled that Hall’s view—that Manchester was a hoaxed false flag—constituted an “opinion” and not a “belief.” The reason Steyn gave was that Hall had openly stated he was willing to change his view if he could just see some evidence of a bombing or anything showing the claimants sustained their injuries in the City Room from a bomb.

Having decided this was unnecessary, Steyn judged that Hall’s “belief” failed the second of the Grainger criteria and was just an opinion. Therefore, Steyn rejected Hall’s “reliance on article 9” of the ECHR.

The Grainger criteria are used in the UK to establish if a belief is protected under the Equality Act 2010. The separate and legally superior ECHR article 9 states that we all have the “freedom to change [our] belief and [the] freedom [to publicly] manifest [our] belief, in [. . .] practice and observance.” In rejecting Hall’s Article 9 defence, Steyn apparently ignored the ECHR.

Ignoring the ECHR is precisely what the British Establishment wants to do. The global Establishment’s claim, that they can decree our rights, is wholly illegitimate. Our inalienable—or unalienable—rights stem from Natural Law, not some jumped-up bureaucracy that pretends it has the authority to bestow, or remove, our rights.

Sadly, most of us have no appreciation of our real rights or where they come from and have fallen for the Establishment’s con-trick. This leaves us imagining they have the authority to define our rights. We abide by the Establishment’s related legal declarations for no reason other than our own misplaced belief in the Establishment’s imaginary authority.

Thus, Steyn was able to set a genuinely “alarming” case precedent:

In considering the quality of the course of conduct, I have taken account of the personal characteristics and vulnerability of those Mr Hall was targeting. I have borne in mind Mr Hibbert’s engagement with the media, but he did not thereby lose his article 8 rights. [. . .] [S]ince he first published each of the publications complained of, the Sentencing Remarks have been given, the Inquiry has reported, the inquests have occurred [. . .] yet he [Hall] continues to publish them. Moreover, the claimants were not given to understand that the harassing conduct was over with the publication of the Film, the Book and the 2020 Video. The Book expressly referred to “further investigation of the participants”, and the need for “more evidence,” [. . .] intensifying the impression given by the treatment of any images and statements by victims, or family members, that had reached the public domain, that the claimants (and others) would continue to be surveilled.

In the view of the Establishment’s High Court, Hall’s harassing “course of conduct” was his publication of a film, a book and his subsequent investigations of public domain statements published by people who were considered vulnerable. This is now judged to be oppressive surveillance not investigative journalism.

These people were deemed vulnerable because the Establishment defines them as victims. The evidence proving this alleged “fact” is exclusively restricted to the evidence officially sanctioned by the Establishment.

Any unofficial evidence that brings these official definitions into question is “fantastical,” “preposterous” and constitutes an “absurdity.” Such evidence, no matter how clearly established by any journalist and regardless of whether or not it is freely available in the public domain, is inadmissible in the Establishment’s courts.

The Establishment has ruled that its official account of any event can never be questioned by any journalist because evidence that is not approved by the Establishment does not exist and, therefore, all such journalism is unreasonable, unwarranted and liable. Given the Establishment’s magical power to render evidence nonexistent, any consequent calls for further investigation of the Establishment’s fictional stories are officially baseless.

Any journalist—or any other individual—who persists with questioning the Establishment’s official stories will inevitably be found guilty of harassing the vulnerable victims who were harmed in the implausible event defined by the Establishment. The victim’s Article 8 ECHR right to a private life now automatically override the journalist’s Article 10 right to freedom of expression, irrespective of how much information the vulnerable victim publishes in the public domain to promote the Establishment’s yarn.

Effectively, Karen Steyn has ruled that anecdotes from so-called victims are all the “evidence” the Establishment needs to establish the veracity of its fairy tales. Any persistent public questioning of those anecdotes, by anyone, is verboten.

Wherever the Establishment can show that a person was “harmed” by something you said online, the ECHR is no longer a potentially useful defence when the Establishment decides to prosecute you for “sending false communications” under the OSA.

If that were not bad enough, it gets worse.

Steyn’s judgement provides a case precedent the Establishment can use to bolster its pursuit of a proposed law to make any investigative journalism of a state terror narratives effectively illegal. Once enacted it will be extended to cover other claimed events. Such laws always are.

In my opinion, the trial was never really about either Martin or Eve Hibbert. Nor was it specifically concerned with censoring Hall’s work. The proverbial cat is out of the bag in that regard.

Paul Oakley referred to written evidence from Martin Hibbert. In doing so, I think he identified the Establishment’s primary objective in supporting the claimants to front the lawfare against Hall. It explains why the Establishment was willing to risk the Streisand effect—confident it would be mitigated by the legacy media.

Oakley observed:

Mr Hibbert’s third witness statement [said] “In December 2022 I reached out to Manchester’s mayor, Andy Burnham, to discuss campaigning for a new law to better protect survivors of tragedies from harassment and conspiracy theories. I live in hope that before too long it will be a criminal offence for people like Mr Hall to make money from conspiracy theories, especially in relation to terrorist attacks or atrocities.” [. . .] I submit to the Court that that is [the] true intention of Mr Martin Hibbert in bringing this claim, and that would be an astonishing interference on the right to freedom of expression.

Following Steyn’s ruling, as usual, Martin Hibbert was set center stage before the legacy media. Whether he knows it or not, he is currently the Establishment’s chosen face for the Manchester Attack.

The Establishment’s BBC, which was clearly instrumental in bringing the case against Hall, reported Martin Hibbert’s post-judgement comment that he intended “to bring a new law in Eve’s name.”

As a direct result of the Manchester Attack, we already have The Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill. It is called Martyn’s Law, named after Arena victim Martyn Hett.

For events where more than 800 people attend, enhanced “invacuation”—entry—security will be imposed. This will include, but is not limited to, “comprehensive security systems,” “searching and screening individuals,” and behaviour monitoring, etc. Martyn’s Law will certainly help the Establishment corral us into accepting Digital ID.

A central theme of the prosecution’s harassment claim was that Hall made Eve Hibbert “that girl from the Arena.” As we discussed in Part 2, this was an insane accusation for the claimants to level against Hall. Martin Hibbert has relentlessly promoted Eve as “that girl from the Arena.”

In yet another legacy media interview, this time with The Mirror, Hibbert reportedly said he wanted to introduce “Eve’s Law” in order to “open the door for change, and to help protect others from what we have been put through in the future.”

It is patently absurd, having just won a civil claim to stop a journalist allegedly drawing attention to his daughter’s victimhood, that Martin Hibbert’s immediate response was to press for national government legislation—expressly linked to the Manchester victims—to be named after his daughter. Were it not for the chilling effect the proposed legislation will have on our freedom of expression, Martin Hibbert’s words would be a comical irony.

With the narrative realigned as required, the BBC reported the claimants’ victory against “a former television producer who claimed the attack was staged.” Thanks to the summary judgment—enabling the High Court to ignore all of the relevant evidence—the BBC were free to publish the desired propaganda.

The so-called “obvious, tragic reality” of the Manchester bombing was indisputable, according to the BBC, by virtue of nothing more than “so many ordinary people” attesting to it.

Real evidence be damned!

Continuing to propagandise on behalf of the Establishment, the BBC said:

It is the first time such action has been taken - and won - in the UK against a conspiracy theorist. The ruling follows a BBC Panorama and Radio 4 podcast investigation in 2022, which revealed how the Hibberts were among victims targeted by Mr Hall. [. . .] This civil case sets a huge precedent for terror attack survivors and people more generally targeted by conspiracy theories here in the UK. [. . .] It is a blueprint for holding the people who spread these ideas on social media to account.

Indeed it is a blueprint.

Steyn’s ruling is a blueprint to ignore evidence, throw the ECHR in the bin and stop power being held to account. It is a blueprint to justify so-called laws to censor and imprison the rest of us of we dare to question the Establishment.