February 2012
1 post
January 2012
5 posts
Don't be that guy
The post that was here has been pulled, it revealed the personal details of a troll who left an awful comment online. They have learnt their lesson, received a severe shock and promised to apologise to the journalist they targeted.
Thousands of people have already seen his personal details, I don’t feel the need to expose him further.
Apology Tweeted:
Back to Twitter.
Mapping #OperationBlitzkrieg
The map below shows all the Irish locations listed in the recent #Operationblitzkrieg leaks. I have removed names and exact addresses (house numbers, etc.)
View Operation Blitzkrieg map of Ireland (redacted) in a full screen map
The map draws together data from 4 leaks, revealing the spread of far right support across the country. There are 58 listings for Dublin with many based in Tallaght,...
December 2011
1 post
North Korean arms links to Ireland
Sunday World piece on Xmas day following up North Korean links to Ireland;
A piece I wrote for Sunday Mirror in October 2009 about North Korean links to Irish politicians. Reposted after the death of Kim.
FORMER Official IRA members have revealed the group’s links to Communist North Korea, where members received military training in the late 80s.
Official IRA volunteers have...
November 2011
3 posts
While the left was sleeping the EDL enter party...
Imagine the streetfighting thugs of the EDL joined forces with an organised and well funded far right political party, a terrifying prospect isn’t it? It has already happened and everyone seemed to miss the whole thing.
Last Saturday EDL leaders met in the West Midlands where they agreed a tie-up between their group and the British Freedom Party, with the EDL serving as the street wing and...
Watch#NOV9 London Student Protests on Yahoo! covered by myself along with Yahoo! news reporter Adam Parris Long.
Fool's gold: How Stuart Hughes tricked the global...
This is the man who has tricked some of the biggest global news organisations into running fake stories about the world’s most expensive homes, yachts and cars.
Hundreds of stories about fantastic gold products manufactured by Stuart Hughes have appeared in respected publications over the last 4 years.
He has previously been praised for; selling a gold iPhone to Victoria Beckham, selling the...
October 2011
4 posts
Ireland's Harigate: Examiner journalist...
Earlier this year I helped expose Johann Hari’s dishonest and lazy journalism techniques. I have since been contacted by a number of people who hold suspicions about certain journalists stealing work and cutting corners. One of these instances was so shocking I could not skip over it.
While the Irish Examiner’s Dr Steven King is not as widely known as Johann the extent of his plagiarism is mind...
September 2011
2 posts
Meet the EDL
This footage was shot in collaboration with brighttyger.com at the September 3rd EDL demonstration on the edge of Tower Hamlets.
White Riot; a critical account of punk’s racial...
I interviewed the authors of a new book from Verso Press exploring the complex, contradictory ways in which punk has interacted with the politics of race. You can read it over here.
Brian Whelan interviews the authors of a new book from Verso Press exploring the complex, contradictory ways in which punk has interacted with the politics of race.
From its birth punk rock has been obsessed with...
August 2011
1 post
Nasa scientist refutes Hari's prize-winning...
As revelations emerged about legal threats received by the Orwell Prize from lawyers at the Independent last week I made an unpopular statement about how nobody would want to win the prize again.
How could anyone want to win this award when it allowed Johann Hari’s bad journalism to go unnoticed? Well, it could be worse, the Orwell Prize have spent weeks working to investigate and correct their...
July 2011
5 posts
WatchThe EDL have been making a lot of noise over the last few days about how they aren’t violent like their Norwegian comrade. This video, showing horrific race attacks on the London Underground, was posted on Facebook profiles of EDL members on 21 June 2011. Manchester AFA speculate on the source here.
For more, follow me on Twitter.
David Samuels' serious factual errors about Sean...
In August of 2009 the Independent published an article entitled ‘Counterfeiting: Notes on a scandal’ by US ‘non-fiction writer’ David Samuels. The piece contains a number of serious factual errors that damage the reputation of a 77-year-old Irish man currently facing extradition to the US under disputed charges.
The article was published a long time ago, I am aware, but many journalists will no...
The Iron Lady: Thatcher's Screws obit
This NOTW supplement cover will never see the light of day so I thought I’d share it here. I suppose it is now something of a rarity since the paper has closed.
There were fears earlier this year that Thatcher would go the same Saturday night as a big UK sports celeb. Of course its standard procedure for papers to have pre-made obits for major public figures.
Back to Twitter
The final hours at News of the World
Some pictures and video I took from the last day of the News of the World are included in this Yahoo! News article.
Some day all newspaper offices might look like this:
June 2011
3 posts
Time to come clean Johann Hari
Johann claims he just takes quotes from the subject’s own writings, but we’ve already established here and here that he is also taking other people’s interviews and passing them off as his own.
This is probably the last blog post I’ll do on this so I’d ask that you take a good look and make up your mind. I contacted the original interviewer Matthew Todd from...
Lets crowd-check Hari's quotes
Apparently I have started a ‘shitstorm’, according to some of my peers. I’m quite busy at work today but while the debate rages over whether Hari’s defence is acceptable or not I’d really like people to jump in and check his quotes themselves.
I like this one from ‘The Bravest Woman in Afghanistan: An Interview With Malalai Joya.
I ask if she was frightened,...
Is Johann Hari a copy-pasting churnalist?
Orwell Prize winning hack Johann Hari has some explaining to do. After reading a recent blog post detailing how he seems to have plagiarised large parts of his interview with Antonio Negri I thought I’d have a closer look at his work.
As a test I picked a recent interview of Hari’s at random and went through his quotes, doing a basic check for plagiarism. The results are pretty damning.
I...
May 2011
1 post
Street politics: 'Beating the fascists'
My piece from Look Left issue six.
For two decades British anti-fascists fought a cold blooded battle for control of the streets against burgeoning far-right movements, Brian Whelan meets the authors of a controversial new book by activists who were there on the frontlines.
[ Due to copyright claim book cover has been removed until resolution - to see the image check -...
February 2011
1 post
November 2010
1 post
October 2010
1 post
September 2010
4 posts
“If this big swing to Labour happens as predicted you could have the position...”
– Finian McGrath, Yahoo! editor’s blog.
Yahoo! Ireland News Blog
I have an editor’s blog over on Yahoo! Ireland now for comment and debate around the week’s events.
While former editor of the News of the World, Andy Coulson, faces mounting accusations over his alleged knowledge of reporters practising ‘dark arts’, we take a look at the possibility that Irish reporters could just as easily have been listening to your voicemails.
...
Jihad Jaara vows to return to Palestine
Was asked about this piece from 2008 recently so thought I would stick it up online, it even got a mention in the New York Times.
EXILED Palestinian militant, Jihad Jaara, who played a leading role in the siege at the Church of the Nativity in April 2002 and currently lives on Dublin’s Northside, has vowed to return to his home and family in Palestine.
(Above siege at church of the nativity,...
August 2010
11 posts
Subcontracting kills: Chile's mining unions speak...
CHILEAN trade union leaders have declared that hundreds of miners are dying every year because of a drive to boost profits through subcontracting in the industry, with many accidents being hidden from the public.
One local union leader has stated that he believes over 350 miners may have died in the last 18 months in Chile and that many mining contractors are lying about the safety of their...
The Ku Klux Cahill: General's niece is Nazi...
THESE SHOCKING pictures show the niece of Martin Cahill, The General, training for what she calls ‘racial holy war’.
Vicky Cahill (37) grew up in the North inner city as part of the notorious Cahill crime family but has made a name for herself as one of the leading lights in the international ‘white power’ movement.
Operating from the US Cahill has spent the last six years raising money for...
Google, friend or foe?
Wednesday night’s talk at the Frontline Club was a great grudge match. The Mirror’s head of online, Matt Kelly, seems hugely confident that he can build successful sites without pandering to Google and SEO. Tweeting after the event he told this blog “I don’t think our kids will use google as a synonym for search somehow. The plates are moving”. Of course social media...
What was Giles Coren thinking?
For someone who is so meticulous about meaning every word that he writes, Giles Coren’s tweets last night seemed pretty damning.
Luckily this morning the world’s angriest food critic let us all in on the joke. He was just pretending to have driven home drunk. Previously Coren swore “Really I ought to avoid Twitter. And all forms of mass communication” after making...
Africa's Last Taboo
Audio extracts from Sorious Samura’s talk at the Frontline Club last week after a screening of his Dispatches documentary Africa’s Last Taboo.
The documentary deals with the plight of gay men in Africa and here Samura discusses his involvement in the persecution of albinos and the slow progress that is being made across Africa.
Listen now -
The documentary doesn’t...
My latest Piece for the NUJ's Expose blog →
A BNP activist is living a secret double life, desperate to prevent his employers from finding out about his extremist views – despite having stood as a candidate in last month’s election.
The Irishman who saved Hitler
[My piece that ran in The Examiner, Independent, Daily Mirror and Daily Mail and a hat-tip to Northside People who broke it]
LONG-LOST documents have revealed the story of the Irishman who changed the course of history by saving the life of a young Adolf Hitler.
Recently rediscovered memoirs of an Irish soldier tell how he led a military operation to save the young fuhrer’s life during WW1.
The...
1 down, 299 to go
I’ve got a yarn on BNP election candidate Charlotte Lewis (pictured below) in today’s London Evening Standard and its also the Splash on the Sutton Guardian.
UPDATE: Its in the Daily Mail and the Daily Star now too.
July 2010
1 post
June 2010
2 posts
WatchBackstage ruck between security and teenage fans as MIA makes her getaway from Big chill.
WatchMIA’s getaway after stage and backstage invasion at the Big Chill. Filmed from relative safety of the media/guest area.
May 2010
2 posts
London quick update
So my role as editor at Yahoo! Ireland is going well, you can follow my progress on the new look Irish Yahoo! site - Yahoo.ie
I saw a man get shot last weekend, caught Rusko, Diplo and Maluka last night at Union Street car park and we’re getting a cat from a local rescue centre. Its a bank holiday here today but normal service will be resumed on the Yahoo! Ireland front page from tomorrow.
Army lads at it again
Interesting piece in the Sunday Mirror after I left Ireland, looks like the right-wing skinheads I exposed were never expelled from the army and one was even sent to Kosovo.
Nice tattoos Mr Kellett. He was caught out bragging about his sick rape fantasies. Full story here.
April 2010
9 posts
Irish History Podcast
Last one from Northside People. Had great times there, finished up last week. Start new job Tuesday!
AN UNEMPLOYED Northside archaeologist has become an overnight internet success thanks to his history podcast which has stormed up the iTunes charts.
The recording by Fin Dwyer, from the North Inner City, has overtaken podcasts by top celebrities including Ricky Gervais, Jonathan Ross, Ian Dempsey...