Tuesday, November 29, 2011

What Spiritualists Face : James Van Praague

A piece in the once respected Huffington Post (the on-line newspaper sold by  Arianna Huffington for over 100 million dollars without her informing the dozens of writers and contributors who had worked gratis for the publication.) shows the type of gratuitous attacks anyone involved in the paranormal can come under.

Now it carries a Weird News section, not to dissimilar to tens of thousands of other websites but this piece caught our eye. Magician James Randi who has made a  living out of  attacking anything outside his realm and Spiritualism comes in for a bashing from the man as well. The new Huffington Post is stumbling and perhaps this one reason.


Randi operates the so-called :  The James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) describing itself as : a non-profit organization dedicated to providing reliable information about paranormal claims, and helping members of the public protect themselves against 'psychic' and pseudo-scientific scams"

It may not be 'for profit' but it's a great channel for promoting James Randi who offers a $1M prize for anyone who can prove various matters. The Spiritualist lawyer Victor Zammit offers a similar prize for anything who can disprove things paranormal yet Randi has never applied for it. 

The article is the usual series of false claims with a demand that Praague disprove the lies (something we at Enmore are used to over the past 2 years). One myth it perpetuates is that Barbara Walters called Praague a 'fake' because he said to her in a private moment off-screen that she had 'blood problems' Walters had a complete health check-up and then went on The View and against all journalistic principles called James on the health claim. 6 Months later she was rushed to hospital for an emergency heart operation.

Here's the late Don Lane getting fed up with Randi and tossing him off his show:

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