“And Why Stop There?”: CNN Analyst Calls For Sweeping Regulation of Free Speech On The Internet
By Jonathan Turley | November 30, 2020
We previously discussed the unrelenting drumbeat of censorship on the Internet from Democratic leaders, including President-elect Joe Biden. Those calls are growing as anti-free speech advocates see an opportunity in the Biden Administration to crackdown on opposing views. One vocal advocate of censorship and speech controls has been CNN media analyst Oliver Darcy who just ratcheted up his call for de-platforming opposing views. Like many anti-free speech advocates, Darcy simply labels those with opposing views as spreading “disinformation” and demands that they be labeled or barred from social media. In a recent newsletter, Darcy calls for every tweet by Trump to be labeled as disinformation while asking “and why stop there?” Precisely. Once you cross the Rubicon of speech regulation, there is little reason or inclination to stop. Just look at Europe.
Darcy wrote:
“Nearly every tweet from the president at this point is labeled for misinfo. Which had me thinking. Why doesn’t Twitter just take the step of labeling his entire account as a known source of election disinfo? And why stop there? Why not label accounts that repeatedly spread claims the platform has to fact-check?”
There was a time when the very touchstone of American journalism was the rejection of such calls for censorship, including at CNN.
What is chilling about Darcy’s writings is that they reflect the view of many now in Congress and in the Democratic Party. Indeed, they reflect many in the Biden campaign. Once a party that fought for free speech, it has become the party demanding Internet censorship and hate speech laws. President-Elect Joe Biden has called for speech controls and recently appointed a transition head for agency media issues that is one of the most pronounced anti-free speech figures in the United States. It is a trend that seems now to be finding support in the media, which celebrated the speech of French President Emmanuel Macron before Congress where he called on the United States to follow the model of Europe on hate speech.
Darcy is calling for a more active and extensive regulation of speech to protect users from thoughts or views that he considers false or dangerous: “Think of it as a version of NewsGuard for Twitter.”
“NewsGuard” has a lovely Orwellian sound to be added to other codes for censorship like Sen. Richard Blumenthal recently calling for “robust content modification” on the internet. Who can object to a NewsGuard, which Darcy describes like some beneficent St. Bernard watching over our news and social postings? Of course, what Darcy considers “disinformation” or what Blumenthal considers “robust content modification” is left dangerously undefined.
So put me down as preferring free speech without the helpful guards and content modification. Instead, I hold a novel idea that people can reach their own conclusions on such is disinformation just as Darcy does.
Coming Soon From Joe and Kamala: Hooray for the Revolution!
By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 26, 2020
There is something quite scary about the way leading Democrats have persistently wrapped their attempts to control the American people in platitudes and self-righteous drivel. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, who are currently pulling their team together, are no different than the Clintons and Obamas who preceded them and are already on course to establish conformity by diminishing the fundamental rights that have been hitherto enjoyed by the American people.
The current war being waged against the United States and its constitution hinges on the expressed desire to extirpate “white supremacy” aka “white privilege” aka “systemic racism.” It is a convenient campaign slogan as it immediately creates guilt and apprehension in those white people who are foolish enough to believe it. It also is a vague enough term that it becomes possible to wrap a lot of other issues into it, like gun control, destruction of traditional education, reparations and affirmative action, and even de-policing urban areas. As minorities allegedly suffer disproportionately from coronavirus it might even be expanded to include mandatory national lockdowns every time a pandemic appears, as Biden has suggested in the past.
We are already seeing how some crimes are no longer crimes if they are committed by sanctimonious social justice warriors. Prosecutors in a number of states are dismissing charges against rioters because they have “concluded the protesters were exercising their basic civil rights.” It is generally being claimed that prosecutions continue for the “real” crimes of arson, looting and destruction of public property, but at least one liberal California District Attorney will not charge anyone who maintains that he or she was doing what they did to combat racism or feed their families. She calls it considering the “needs” of the looters. The looted shops that will as a result go out of business and whose employees become unemployed evidently have no “needs.”
The Democrats have long been adept at playing identity politics. They believe that appealing to a number of groups with grievances to create a voting majority is good for the country, which it is not, because sooner or later the ticket has to be paid for and deals that abridge the freedom of most Americans must be consummated. That will certainly take place with Biden and Harris.
And Biden and Harris will likely get away with much of their divisive domestic agenda, if only because it will be carefully hidden behind fear of the Coronavirus and of more civil unrest, but the one area where they will meet real resistance is the Second Amendment. One critic describes how “There is much overlap between Biden’s platform and Harris’s previous presidential campaign proposals. They both emphasize holding gun manufacturers accountable, enacting universal background checks, banning the manufacture and sale of semiautomatic rifles and higher-capacity magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds, [and] prohibiting those convicted of domestic violence from buying guns…” And that is only for starters, with national gun registration and some confiscation certainly being considered.
Many Republicans as well as Democrats own guns and will resist any attempt at registration, much less the seizure of certain types of firearms. The death by shooting numbers have indeed risen dramatically, particularly in urban areas, but the victims and perpetrators are largely black-on-black and the weapons used are obtained illegally. Ironically, the rise in crime is in large part attributable to Democratic Party pandering to movements like Black Lives Matter with their message that violence is acceptable to bring about change. To argue that somehow controlling the legal owners of weapons is a “safety measure” is a convenient fiction.
To help the Democratic Party agenda along there will also of necessity be restrictions on free speech. One can expect greater political control over the propagandistic state media like Voice of America and it is perhaps inevitable that already censorship-heavy social media and news sites will also be regulated for content. Biden has appointed as one of his transition team for “regulating” news reporting one Richard Stengel who has argued that there is a flaw in the First Amendment of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights. He believes that free speech cannot be allowed in some cases and that anything that constitutes a “hate speech” should be criminalized. Stengel explains somewhat confusingly “I’m all for protecting thought that we hate, but not speech that incites hate.” This is, of course, yet another Democratic Party gimmick to secure the support of groups with grievances but it will impact on every American who believes that free speech is a fundamental right.
Yet another brilliant appointment by Biden is Ezekiel Emanual, bioethicist brother of former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. Ezekiel is on the Biden administration’s COVID transition team. He has a lot of interesting things to say, notably that the United States should give any newly developed and in short supply COVID vaccines to countries with younger populations so that the young could live while older Americans die. He has also said that everyone should die by age 75.
Finally, Joe’s ambitions do not end on the nation’s borders. In addition to pulling together a cabinet that will include a host of warmongers, there is talk that the new president will early in his presidency convene a “Summit of Democracies” with the stated intention of coordinating a response to Chinese, Iranian and, of course, Russian “aggression.” If it sounds like old wine in new bottles, it should.
Enthusiastic reporting from military contractor funded online newsletter DefenseOne supports the Biden initiative but with a warning: “And if this is truly a Democracy Summit, then Biden should make it clear that government leaders of China, Russia, Iran, Syria, North Korea and their ilk are not invited.” The process of selecting democracies will in fact be more complicated than this with politically protected states like Israel being included even though it is a serial human rights abuser and war criminal. The United States is itself a flawed democracy that is widely seen in negative terms by most of the world, but that will not stop it from attempting to host the summit.
So we Americans and presumably much of the world have a lot to look forward to in the new Biden-Harris regime that is currently taking shape. Internal democracy for all will increasingly be imperiled by pandering to special interests and more foreign wars. It is particularly interesting to note that the one thing that Democratic Party voters as well as other Americans overwhelmingly wanted above all else was a national health care system. That subject is not even on the Biden to-do list.
Amazon pulls ANOTHER book of Covid-19 dissident Berenson – and turns his title into a bestseller
RT | November 25, 2020
NY Times journalist-turned-Covid-19 skeptic Alex Berenson briefly had his latest anti-lockdown book pulled from Amazon along with its electronic version. By the time it returned, it was a top-10 bestseller on Apple Books.
First the paperback and then the electronic edition of “Unreported Truths about Covid-19 and Lockdowns – Part 3: Masks” were removed from Amazon on Tuesday, Berenson revealed in a series of tweets that same day.
The book attempts to debunk the hypothesis, favored by most governments but apparently lacking convincing scientific proof, that wearing even non-medical masks stops the spread of Covid-19.
However, Berenson had made a point of posting the new book on Barnes & Noble and Apple Books. His tweets about Amazon censorship apparently sent followers into the arms of Apple Books, where the title proceeded to soar to number nine within a few hours.
Nevertheless frustrated over Amazon’s censorship, Berenson pointed out that he had discussed the coming release of the third installment in his Covid-19 booklet series with Amazon Kindle personnel in an effort to avoid the supposedly automated deplatforming he’d experienced with the first book in the series.
“Unreported Truths about Covid-19 and Lockdowns – Part 1: Introduction and Death Counts and Estimates” was briefly banned in June before a massive backlash against the move, spearheaded by Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, successfully convinced the tech giant to change its mind.
In addition to spuriously deleting Berenson’s book, Amazon hosted “several fakes” of the manuscript, the writer claimed, complaining the e-tailer “refused to pull them despite my repeated requests.”
However, Berenson’s complaints not only convinced Amazon to bring his book back online – they drove the e-book to #1 in the epidemiology section.
Berenson is far from the only Covid-19 skeptic to be mysteriously deplatformed from Amazon. Writer James Perloff was disturbed to find his book “Covid-19 and the Agendas to Come: Red Pilled” banned last month, echoing Berenson’s concerns about the absence of a concrete explanation for the sentence. Both writers protested that all their information was thoroughly researched and footnoted.
Fortunately for would-be corona-skeptic authors, it seems Amazon banning a book is the best free marketing campaign money can’t buy. Perloff reportedly sold more copies of his book independent of Amazon than he had in partnership with the platform, and gained an even wider readership when he offered to make the e-book edition available for free. This phenomenon, in which censorship backfires and increases the attention paid to an item, is known as the ‘Streisand Effect’ – and now Berenson is enjoying its fruits once again.
Whoever Controls the Ideological Landscape Controls the world

By Dustin Broadbery | The Cogent | November 19, 2020
The following quotes are from the Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Neil Basu, published in the Evening Standard on 19th November . I have highlighted some keywords in capitals which I will refer to later in the analysis.
“Britain’s top counter-terrorism officer today called for a NATIONWIDE DEBATE on the introduction of new laws to punish people who spread ANTI-VACCINATION CONSPIRACY THEORIES.”
“Met Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said that there should be a DISCUSSION about whether it is “the correct thing for society to allow” people to spread “MISINFORMATION THAT COULD COST PEOPLE’S LIVES” as he responded to concern that false claims online could undermine the take up of Covid-19 vaccines.”
“There is a DEBATE FOR SOCIETY to have about FREE SPEECH and responsibility and people who are spreading misinformation that could cost people’s lives”
Do you see what they’re trying to achieve?
This propagandised message from the Met is attempting to reconstruct the ideological landscape, reframe the parameters of what a debate is, reclassify free speech, weaponise information, and obfuscate the important legal principle: ‘Innocent until proven guilty.’
In other words, the government is attempting to whitewash free speech towards the kind of one world ideology that was endemic in the former Soviet Union, where thinking contrary to the ideology of the Communist Party was criminalised.
But there is something even more odious concealed within this Goebbelsian public service announcement: here we have a senior police officer using threatening language to intimidate and shakedown the general population.
This is on the very same day that Boris Johnson flexed his own military muscle, announcing: record defence spending for laser guns, direct energy weapons, an artificial intelligence agency and the creation of a national cyber force (a group of computer hackers to conduct offensive operations).
Offensive operations against who exactly?
Britain is not currently at war, but according to the Assistant Commissioner of the MET, the government is waging an ideological war against anti vaccination conspiracy theorists. Ideological wars of this nature typically take place online, which is where much of the government’s military budget is being invested.
What does that tell us about who the government is at war with?
These strong arm tactics by a fledgling totalitarian regime, learning its trade, could be interpreted as coercion against the British public, and it is likely that the government is not only targeting dissenters, skeptics or those unwilling to wear the uniform of the Red Army, they are in fact threatening the entire population.
We can therefore interpret the stern warning from the Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, as follows:
1), DEBATES and DISCUSSIONS are permissible only when it comes to determining the extent of punishment to be served on those publicly voicing concerns or questioning the legitimacy or safety of vaccinations.
2), Despite the fact that a DEBATE and DISCUSSION is being proposed and this DEBATE is apparently open to all (NATIONWIDE), ANTI-VACCINATION CONSPIRACY THEORISTS are not authorised to participate in this discussion. In other words: if your own set of ideologies conflicts with state doctrine, you effectively have no voice. In fact, your voice has already been criminalised, and it is only the extent of your punishment that is so far undetermined.
3), The proposed NATIONWIDE DEBATE is in fact a fiction, when the definition of debate is: ‘a regulated discussion between opposing views.’ What’s more, there can be no debate without FREE SPEECH, which it is implied, does not exist anymore, because the war on MISINFORMATION and the ANTI-VACCINATION CONSPIRACY THEORISTS has established that the principle of free speech is, as a result of the threat of COVID, no longer permissible. As the Met’s Assistant Commissioner points out: one side of the DEBATE has already been silenced and criminalised. Needless to say, the DEBATE does not involve the other side of the DEBATE. This in turn implies that what is being proposed here is in fact a witch hunt and not a DEBATE.
4), An important legal precedent has now been established that overrides the principle of ‘innocent until Proven guilty.’ due to the implied guilt of ‘ANTI-VACCINATION CONSPIRACY THEORISTS, without the enactment of legislation. In other words, this witch hunt commenced before the rule of law convened. We can therefore assume that some kind of Kangaroo Court has taken place behind closed doors, without scrutiny or DEBATE from the legislative or judicial branches of government. This in turn implies that the legal process for enacting laws is surpassed by arbitrary policing by preference.
5). Despite the word ‘NATIONWIDE’ implying an open and transparent culture of DEBATE for everyone, as we have already established: the DEBATE will be mediated and directed by a small constituent belonging to one side of the DEBATE. Namely, the executive branch of government (the police), and its public relations agency (the media).
6), The emergency powers which the government granted itself back in March, under the Public Health (Control of Disease Act) 1984 and the Coronavirus Act 2020, not only abolished debates and scrutiny in parliament, these measures dissolved parliament from 650 MP’s to 50 MP’s. Therefore, If the constitutional affairs of this country cannot be determined by lawmakers in parliament through DEBATE, it is improbable that the general population would be invited into such a DEBATE. Therefore what is implicitly meant by the word DEBATE is official diktat.
7). The notion that MISINFORMATION COULD COST PEOPLE’S LIVES, is one of the most dangerous legal propositions in the history of democracy. Implying the government has decreed a new category of criminal activity, equivalent to thought-crime. Granting the government powers to regulate our thoughts and communications. If it can be argued that a person could be killed by misinformation, then the very principles of ‘intent,’ ‘premeditation’, ‘motive’, and in turn ‘guilt’, are transformed into something else, and each of these parameters of guilt could be preceded by ‘thought’ or ‘word’, as an incitement to cause injury or death. This kind of legal precedent could therefore become an important weapon of censorship, the likes of which has not been attempted previously, and Orwell’s concept of Thought Crime might become a reality in the 21st century. The intervention of Britain’s top anti-terrorist officer in this debate is especially alarming, because it presents evidence that the state is looking to brand anyone questioning the official narrative, with what it deems MISINFORMATION, as a terrorist.
8). All systems of ideological control are concerned with dissolving the power of their opposition. Whether a political party looking to gain more seats in parliament or the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) prohibiting other political parties altogether. The idea that a CONSPIRACY THEORIST presents a threat to people’s lives, grants unprecedented emergency powers to the government to censor, criminalise and prosecute its opposition. Unlike apartheid in South Africa – where a social segment was discriminated against because of the colour of their skin – a conspiracy theorist is not identifiable by any incontrovertible features, and is instead singled out on the basis of the government’s interpretation of their dissenting ideological stance.
It could therefore be argued that anyone disagreeing with the state, is in fact a CONSPIRACY THEORIST and open to prosecution.
CNN guest explains why a mayor who protected killer cop from going to jail has no place in Biden cabinet, gets cut SECONDS later
RT | November 25, 2020
A CNN interview on why progressives are unhappy with Joe Biden’s possible cabinet picks was cut less than a minute after it began, as the guest pointed out that one of the candidates had covered up a murder while in office.
Rahm Emanuel, a star Democratic fundraiser and the former mayor of Chicago, was floated this week as a potential secretary of transport for Biden. After the suggestion was met with a tsunami of anger from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, rumor had it that a “less visible” position would be offered to him instead.
On Tuesday, CNN invited Jamaal Bowman, a progressive New York politician who earlier this year unseated 16-term congressman Eliot Engel in a primary landslide victory, to discuss Biden’s transition and whether there was a “progressive enough” candidate to get his endorsement.
Bowman, who is black, started saying it was “incredibly alarming” that they were considering a person who tried to cover up a murder of a black 17-year-old by a white cop, when the broadcast suddenly froze mid-sentence and was replaced with the CNN logo.
Most important, it appears CNN never had him back on after the “technical difficulty”/censoring of Jamaal Bowman’s comments on Rahm Emanuel in the below video. https://t.co/IbewOmM2p0
— 💥Robert (@CronoMage) November 25, 2020
Emanuel is accused of standing in the way of an investigation into the murder of Laquan McDonald. The black teen was gunned down by a Chicago police officer in October 2014, just as Emanuel was fighting an uphill battle for his second term as mayor. Only months after his reelection, a judge forced the release of dashcam footage which became key evidence in the murder trial and conviction of the officer responsible for McDonald’s death. Before its release, no charges had been made in the case.
Leaked emails later showed how the mayor’s office tried to keep the damning video confidential as part of a settlement with the victim’s family. They also indicated that Emanuel was more concerned with his campaign than in serving justice for McDonald.
There is a laundry list of other reasons why progressives hate the idea of Emanuel joining Biden’s administration. To name a few, he pushed for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), mass deportations and the 1994 crime bill, lobbied for bailing out the “too big to fail” banks during the 2008 financial crisis, and shut down dozens of public schools in Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods.
Some even suspect that floating his candidacy was meant as a distraction: whichever bland centrist eventually gets the position will be perceived by the progressives as being at least not as awful as Emanuel.
Demanding Silicon Valley Suppress “Hyper-Partisan Sites” in Favor of “Mainstream News” (The NYT) is a Fraud
By Glenn Greenwald | November 25, 2020
The most prolific activism demanding more Silicon Valley censorship is found in the nation’s largest news outlets: the media reporters of CNN, the “disinformation” unit of NBC News, and especially the tech reporters of The New York Times. That is where the most aggressive and sustained pro-internet-censorship campaigns are waged.
Due in part to a self-interested desire to re-establish their monopoly on discourse by crushing any independent or dissenting voices, and in part by a censorious and arrogant mindset which convinces them that only those of their worldview and pedigree have a right to be heard, they largely devote themselves to complaining that Facebook, Google and Twitter are not suppressing enough speech. It is hall-monitor tattletale whining masquerading as journalism: petulantly complaining that tech platforms are permitting speech that, in their view, ought instead be silenced.
In Tuesday’s New York Times, three of those censorious tech reporters — Kevin Roose, Mike Isaac, and Sheera Frenkel — published an article on Facebook’s post-election deliberations over how to alter its algorithms to prevent the spread of what they deem “misinformation” regarding the election. The most consequential change they implemented, The New York Times explained, was one in which “hyperpartisan pages” are repressed in favor of promoting “a spike in visibility for big, mainstream publishers like CNN, The New York Times and NPR” — a change the Paper of Record heralded as having fostered “a calmer, less divisive Facebook.”
More alarmingly, the NYT suggested (i.e., prayed) that these changes, designed by Facebook as an election-related emergency measure, would instead become permanent. Marvel at these two paragraphs and all of tenuous and self-serving assumptions buried in them:
New York Times article, “Facebook Struggles to Balance Civility and Growth,” Nov. 24, 2020
The conceit that outlets like The New York Times, CNN and NPR are the alternatives to “hyper-partisan pages” is one you would be eager to believe, or at least want to induce others to believe, if you were a tech reporter at The New York Times, furious and hurt that millions upon millions of people would rather hear other voices than your own, and simply do not trust what you tell them. Inducing Facebook to manipulate the algorithmic underbelly of social media to artificially force your content down the throats of citizens who prefer to avoid it, while rendering your critics’ speech invisible — all in the name of reducing “hyper-partisanship,” “divisiveness,” and “misinformation” — is of course a highly desirable outcome for mainstream outlets like the NYT.
The problem with this claim is that it’s a complete and utter fraud, one that is easily demonstrated as such. There are few sites more “hyper-partisan” than the three outlets which the NYT applauded Facebook for promoting. In the 2020 election, over 70 million Americans — close to half of the voting population — voted for Donald Trump, yet not one of them is employed by the op-ed page of the “non-partisan” New York Times and are almost never heard on NPR or CNN. That’s because those news outlets, by design, are pro-Democratic-Party organs, who speak overwhelmingly to Democratic readers and viewers.
It is hard to get more partisan than the news outlets which the NYT tech reporters, and apparently Facebook, consider to be the alternatives to “hyper-partisan” discourse. In April, Pew Research asked Americans which outlet is their primary source of news, and the polling firm found that the audiences of NPR, CNN and especially The New York Times are overwhelmingly Democrats, in some cases almost entirely so.
As Pew put it: “about nine-in-ten of those who name The New York Times (91%) and NPR (87%) as their main political news source identify as Democrats, with CNN at about eight-in-ten (79%).” These outlets speak to Democrats, are built for Democrats, and produce news content designed to be pleasing and affirming to Democrats — so they keep watching and buying. One can say many things about these news outlets, but the idea that they are the alternatives to “hyper-partisan pages” is the exact opposite of the truth: it is difficult to find more hyper-partisan organs than these.
Then there is the question of who does and does not spread “misinformation.” It is rather astonishing that the news outlets that did more than anyone to convince Americans to believe the most destructive misinformation of this generation: that Saddam had WMDs and was in an alliance with Al Qaeda — The New York Times, The Atlantic, NBC and The New Yorker — have the audacity to prance around as the bulwarks against misinformation rather than what they are: the primary purveyors of it.
Over the last four years, they devoted themselves to the ultimate deranged, mangled conspiracy theory: that the Kremlin had infiltrated the U.S. and was clandestinely controlling the levers of American power through some combination of sexual and financial blackmail. The endless pursuit of that twisted conspiracy led them to produce one article after the next that spread utter falsehoods, embraced reckless journalism and fostered humiliating debacles. The only thing more absurd than these hyper-partisan, reckless outlets posturing as the alternatives to hyper-partisanship is them insisting that they’re the only safeguards against misinformation.
Note how insidiously creepy is The New York Times’ description of a censored, regulated internet. They call it “a vision of what a calmer, less divisive Facebook might look like,” and claim an unnamed Facebook employee described it as “a nicer news feed.”
Yes, discourse that is centralized and regulated, where no dissent is tolerated, where alternative voices are silenced, is always “calmer” and “less divisive.” That’s always the core goal of censorsing speech and ideas: to eliminate “divisiveness” and to pacify the population (“calmer” and “nicer”). That is always the result when orthodoxies imposed downward from the most powerful institutions of authority can no longer be meaningfully challenged.
The censorious mentality being peddled with increasing aggression is always chilling and dangerous. That it is media outlets — which ought to be the most vocal champions of free discourse — instead taking the lead in begging and pressuring Silicon Valley to censure the internet more and more is warped beyond belief. The internet should be free and left alone, especially by those with their record of deceit and propaganda.
Indeed, if we are to have it an internet controlled from above by unseen tech overlords in the name of eliminating “hyper-partisanship” and “disinformation” and fostering a “calmer” and “nicer” population, the sites now being artificially and manipulatively promoted are the absolute last ones who can credibly claim entitlement to that benefit.
Sen. Whitehouse Threatens to Prosecute Climate Realists If Dems Take Senate
By James Taylor – ClimateRealism – November 18, 2020
U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) threatened climate realists with criminal prosecution in an interview with E&E News, published yesterday. Whitehouse said Democrats gaining control of the U.S. Senate would be key to launching investigations, hauling climate realists in front of Senate show trials, “or even potentially in grand juries.”
E&E News reported Whitehouse is “keen on investigating the fossil fuel industry and what he sees as a massive conspiracy of dark money hindering action on climate change.”
In the interview, Whitehouse said:
“If we are not vigorously investigating that with all of the tools at our disposal, then that machinery will continue undisturbed to do its dirty work of denial and obstruction,” Whitehouse said.
“If it’s having to explain itself to legislative committees, or produce discovery about its activities in litigation, or even potentially in grand juries, then there’s a whole different complexion to our prospects going forward.”
Whitehouse explicitly singled out The Heartland Institute, which publishes ClimateRealism.com, for his threats.
“Who funded 200,000 fake textbooks that the Heartland Institute mailed around to schoolteachers all around the country? That’s a hell of a big expense…,” Whitehouse said.
Whitehouse appears to be referencing Heartland sending 300,000 copies of the book, Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming, to K-through-12 and college science teachers throughout America. The book was co-authored by Ph.D. climate scientists S. Fred Singer, Robert Carter, and Craig Idso. Whitehouse does not appear to have a climate science Ph.D. degree.
Ironically, Whitehouse revealed his fascination with “dark money” conspiracy theories, and expressed his threats to prosecute people on the basis of his conspiracy theories, on the same day billionaire tech baron Jeff Bezos announced the first distributions from a $10 billion fund Bezos has set aside to advance climate alarmism. Recipients of Bezos’ money include dark-money climate activist groups ClimateWorks Foundation, Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, Union of Concerned Scientists, World Resources Institute, and World Wildlife Fund – none of which publicly disclose the full list of their donors.
The costs for The Heartland Institute publishing and distributing Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming came up somewhat short of $10 billion. The Heartland Institute has an annual budget that varies between $3 million and $7 million, not $10 billion.
James Taylor is the President of the Heartland Institute. Taylor is also director of Heartland’s Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy.
Western universities, publications under pressure to shun Iranian academics
Press TV | November 24, 2020
Many sources within the Iranian academia have reported a trend among Western publications and universities of rejecting submissions and applications from Iranian academics and students.
Mohammad Hazrati, PhD student at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL)’s School of Law, reported the most recent case involving himself on Monday, saying Thomson Reuters had refused to publish one of his articles that had already been accepted by an international legal journal.
‘Effrontery, discrimination’
“In March, I submitted my article to International Energy Law Review. It was accepted a couple of weeks ago,” he wrote in a tweet.
“Today, to my complete surprise and through sheer effrontery, they emailed me, saying they won’t be able to publish it because my address referred to an Iranian location,” he added.
Hazrati shared a screen grab of Reuters’ email, in which the Western media organization had said it “has a sanctions policy” and was “not allowed to publish materials from Iranian residents.” The agency had, therefore, advised that he provide it with his UK or QMUL address or have the organization’s legal department “retract” his article.
Zeinab Qassemi Tari, assistant professor of American Studies at University of Tehran, retweeted Hazrati’s comments, verifying the Iranophoic trend and shedding more light on its full aspects.
She decried the ongoing “discrimination against Iranian academics,” regretting, “I’ve heard from several colleagues that their papers are being rejected without going thru the peer review process.”
“Some western governments have instructed universities to reject applications from Iranian students,” Qassemi also announced.
Speaking to Press TV on Tuesday, she said it had been “a year and half now” that her colleagues have been having their articles rejected by the Western journals.
Qassemi reminded that after an article is submitted to a given journal, it is usually reviewed by two people and then either rejected providing reasons or the academic is told how he or she could modify his article and make it suitable for publication.
However, the Iranian academics have been having their articles rejected either “instantaneously” or without any reason. She did not rule out that the submitted articles may not qualify for publications, but said Iranian-sourced articles have been being rejected so frequently that makes one suspect existence of a pattern.
The campaign, the academic said, would lead to “gradual and systematic elimination of the Iranian voice,” especially the voice of those residing in the Islamic Republic that have a more up-close access to the country’s situation than foreign-based researchers.
Given the standing conventions that outlaw such selective attitude on the scientific arena, the selective approach towards Iranians amounts to “educational discrimination” and “violation of human rights,” Qassemi stated.
Qassemi said even prior to establishment of the trend, Iranian academics used to have a very hard time getting something published that would not conform with the “dominant discourse” that the West has been promoting.
The discriminatory activities began by the United States. Throughout the controversy-riddled tenure of President Donald Trump, many Iranian academics have been arrested on several occasions and held for draw-out detention periods that in two cases, wound down only after the Islamic Republic embarked on diplomatic efforts to secure their release.
The developments prompted Tehran to warn that the US had begun luring the academics onto its soil and place them in detention after they walked into the trap.
Many Iranian students have also been granted an initial entry into the US, but not let back into the country again.
Pfizer’s Experimental Covid-19 Vaccine—What You’re Not Being Told
By Johnny Vedmore |
Unlimited Hangout| November 18, 2020
The vaccine information war has kicked up a gear, and the mainstream media vultures are circling to descend on any content that they can easily label and dismiss as misinformation. Laws will be passed throughout legislatures globally to criminalise anyone who publicly misunderstands any part of the complex biological processes involved in many of the new experimental vaccine technologies that are being used to produce Covid-19 vaccine candidates.
Even now, intelligence agencies and intelligence-backed tech companies are set to deploy sophisticated methods to censor content and deplatform news websites that they view as promoting ‘vaccine hesitancy’ as well as ‘vaccine misinformation’, particularly as a Covid-19 vaccine candidate lurches closer to approval.
It is expected that by month’s end the mRNA vaccine produced by the scandal-ridden pharmaceutical giant Pfizer will be approved by the US government via an emergency-use authorization, with other countries expected to follow suit. Pfizer, in anticipation of the seemingly imminent and assured approval of their vaccine candidate, has already been manufacturing hundreds of millions of doses of its vaccine for weeks and has received praise from governments and mainstream media alike for its self-reported claims that its vaccine is 90 percent effective.
In particular, the success of the experimental mRNA mass vaccination program appears to hinge on the general population being unable to effectively articulate their concerns and objections. Whilst the mainstream media are quick to point out when somebody makes an error in how they believe the mRNA vaccine works, they don’t offer any further information than the official government line. Public distrust in vaccination programs is not the fault of those who don’t understand the way this brand-new technology works. Public distrust is all-pervasive because only one side of the argument is allowed to be heard. We do need to understand the technology involved, as there is a difference between mRNA vaccines and DNA vaccines. Having a general understanding of the reason why someone should object to being given an experimental mRNA vaccine is necessary for creating a clear and coherent argument.
We are about to examine a subject that has been one of the most censored topics in the modern era. But now, more than ever before, we are in desperate need of the information that is being systematically hidden from the public. This article will be banned and attacked by those who believe we, the general public, shouldn’t know all the information about what they want to achieve from the coming mass global vaccinations. The reason for the current establishment’s unwillingness to speak about this subject leads to perhaps unnecessary suspicion. Such suspicions will never be dismissed via the currently employed tactic of smearing anyone who questions intentions. If governments worldwide want their populations to submit to these vaccinations, then they need to stop patronising people and speak honestly. However, since that is unheard of, they will continue to employ coercive tactics, as they will be trying out a never-before-approved experimental method to boost the immune system by manipulating the process our DNA uses to signal for the creation of certain proteins, and we have little idea of what the long-term impact this brand-new therapeutic technology could have on our health. No politician, medical expert, or pharmaceutical representative is willing to accept responsibility for challenges that might be around the corner.
Many of the pharmaceutical companies researching potential coronavirus vaccines are using old methods. They take a proverbial pinch of the virus and infect your immune system at a very low and slow rate, allowing your body the time it needs to build up a natural immunological resistance to the illness. But developing those types of vaccines is a slow and arduous process, and the current leaders in the race to mass global vaccination are pharmaceutical companies using a radical new method that has never been tried before.
‘They are going to hack the cells in your body in order to make them into drug factories’, says Nathan Vardi, a staff writer for Forbes, in a video titled Why Pfizer Is Betting Big on an Unproven Treatment for Covid-19, from March 2020. ‘The problem is with this approach’, Vardi admits, ‘is there’s never been an approved mRNA product’.
The various scientific explorations into the therapeutic applications of potential mRNA treatments are still in their infancy, but the method has been lauded as a potential solution to the treatment of cancer and infectious diseases, for protein replacement, and for gene therapy.
In January 2020, the de facto leader in the mRNA field was the pharmaceutical company Moderna, but—in the wake of Covid-19—other major companies began to focus on the mRNA method. Moderna was able to pioneer that method several years ago, thanks to funding largely provided by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Now, as 2020 draws to a close, the race to develop the winning Covid-19 vaccine is in full swing, and another Big Pharma company has seemingly beaten Moderna to the development of a supposedly effective mRNA vaccine, thanks to Pfizer teaming up with BioNTech, a small German company, to pip Moderna to the post. But, in this race to ‘save humanity’, there are bound to be pitfalls, especially when introducing completely new health technologies into mainstream use. Has Pfizer rung the finishing bell in this global race to end the current pandemic, or, instead, is it hurtling towards a disaster of epic proportions?
There are very informative scientific papers available from just before the pandemic began that give us an insight into this new mRNA technology. So here I’ll examine the DNA manipulating method, the vaccine, the people behind the research and development at BioNTech, but most important, I’ll examine Pfizer, and look at how the company has avoided accountability when things go wrong—and things do go wrong at Pfizer.
mRNA Vaccine Technology and How It Works
The vital interaction that mRNA has with our DNA has made selling mRNA vaccine technology extremely difficult for those who believe it’s the future of human medicine. The fact that it will alter the function of your DNA in your body has made many people suspicious of what unexpected horrors could arise through mass use of this new and experimental technique.
Unsurprisingly, the people marketing the vaccines have tried to downplay the aggressive and genetically manipulative nature of the treatment. In fairness, trying to explain the workings of such a complex new technology in plain English is exceedingly difficult. This is apparent when one listens to representatives of the mainstream media, who are often mealy mouthed when describing the biological processes that will take place when you receive the mRNA vaccine. But inability to articulate the technology isn’t surprising when you consider that part of your DNA, after breaking in two through a natural process, will then be combined with the experimental mRNA in a way that seems esoteric to many of us. It’s almost impossible to imagine such a process taking place in one’s own vulnerable biological system, in one’s DNA, the most precious building blocks of life that define your very existence.
After a preprogrammed strand of mRNA has merged with a naturally severed part of your DNA, it will request the production of a protein that should help trigger your immune system. In theory, this should boost your immune system and aid in the mass production of the proteins necessary to successfully fight the specific illness. The inserted messenger-RNA (thus, mRNA) should be relatively easy to design and programme as long as the scientists involved have the genetic coding for the infection it is to fight. In this case, the necessary data was released in January 2020 by the Chinese. Mild side effects to this process should be expected.
Although no extreme side effects were reported by Pfizer during the stage 3 testing of their mRNA vaccine, nearly every participant suffered mild symptoms, including swelling of the arm, irritation of the skin, and headaches, to name just a few. But, as we shall see, the information that Pfizer releases about its clinical trials and what happens in reality can be quite different.
I have just described the basic information you require for understanding how the coming mRNA vaccine works, but what I can’t describe to you is what happens in the long term. This form of therapeutic alternative has never been allowed or sanctioned before, aside from small clinical trials. There has never been an FDA-approved clinical trial for mRNA medicine because its usage comes with an abundance of ethical and moral questions and unknown possibilities.
At the same time, the utilisation of the mRNA method could also be one of the biggest leaps forward in technology ever recorded in human history. If we give the technology the benefit of the doubt and assume that it has no negative long-term side effects, then it is a potential treatment for almost every human illness on earth. Opening this mRNA floodgate would mean normalising regular vaccinations for nearly every imaginable ailment. In the best-case scenario, you could be vaccinated against cancer, heart disease, diabetes, dementia and Alzheimer’s, and any other human ailment that derives from a fault in your DNA. In the worst-case scenario, you could be left dead or crippled like Pfizer’s victims in its experiments on Nigerian children during the late 1990s.
All that being said, the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine has a major downside to it. Pfizer and Moderna have stated that their mRNA vaccines need to be kept at -70° C and -20° C, respectively, which is a significant logistical challenge. Without these extremely cold temperatures, the mRNA and combined nanoparticles will lose their integrity. There are no studies on the effect of poorly stored mRNA vaccines on the human body. In comparison, DNA vaccines are much easier to transport and store as they are much more stable molecules.
As we have seen, the potential for mRNA technology is boundless. If the vaccine is successful in normalising the process of gene editing for medicinal benefit, there will be pressure to continue editing genes in other ways. It isn’t hard to see that the technology could have cosmetic, medical, and military applications that could range from phosphorescent skin to military bioweapons beyond our imagination. That is the reason why the people behind this technology are reluctant to speak about its potential game-changing mRNA method, for it represents our first real steps into transhumanism.
Pfizer’s Profitable Partnership with Germany’s BioNTech
As we have seen, Pfizer wasn’t the primary company in the mRNA business at the turn of 2020, but its immediate partnership with BioNTech saw it beat its main competitor, Moderna, to the finish line. BioNTech, based in Mainz, Germany, is led by a husband and wife team and, prior to the partnership with Pfizer, was dedicated to mRNA-related cancer-treatment research.
Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci, the couple leading BioNTech, are of Turkish descent. Şahin’s family were from southern Turkey, and he studied for his doctorate in Cologne, whilst Türeci’s family came from Istanbul. The two met at the University of Hamburg.
BioNTech already had a collaboration agreement to develop mRNA‐based vaccines for prevention of influenza with Pfizer as far back as February 2019, and their commercial strategy of collaborating with selected partners paid off when the race to the coronavirus vaccine began. Since then, there has been global media interest in BioNTech, mainly in the form of puff pieces focussing on Şahin and Türeci’s romantic life. But BioNTech also has many links to other Big Pharma giants and some of the well-known movers and shakers in the medical world. As well as its partnership with Pfizer, in 2019 BioNTech also had partnership deals with Bayer, Genentech, Sanofi, Genmab, Eli Lilly, Roche, and of course they received funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In September 2019, just before the first people were infected with the new strain of SARS-CoV-2, the German news outlet Handelsblatt reported that ‘the Gates Foundation is investing around 50 million euros in the Mainz biotech company BioNTech. The money will be used to research HIV and tuberculosis vaccines’.
BioNTech has a small five-person management team and a four-person supervisory board. Şahin is the CEO of the company; he was also the head of the scientific advisory board of Ganymed Pharmaceuticals AG from 2008 until 2016, when the company was acquired by Astellas Pharma. BioNTech’s chief business officer, Sean Marett, previously worked in global strategic and regional marketing, and in sales at GlaxoSmithKline in the United States and at Pfizer Europe, as well as for Evotec and Lorantis. The company’s chief operating officer and CFO, Dr Sierk Poetting, joined BioNTech in September 2014 from Novartis. The chief strategy officer at BioNTech is Ryan Richardson, who had previously been an executive director of the global health-care investment-banking team at J. P. Morgan in London, where he advised companies in the biotech and life sciences industry on mergers and acquisitions, equity, and debt capital finances. The German BioNTech’s four-man supervisory board includes Ulrich Wandschneider, who is also a member of Trilantic Europe.
Pfizer: A Company Never Held to Account
If it were only BioNTech that was responsible for the creation of this futuristic vaccine technology, then maybe people would have more faith in the product. But Pfizer casts a dark shadow of conspiracy wherever it does business. Pfizer’s previous use of experimental drugs in secretive and scandalous studies has inspired Hollywood movies and court cases lasting over a decade, as it resulted in the deaths of many children. Yet, the media organisations touting its coronavirus vaccine as a heaven-sent miracle have provided little to no coverage of Pfizer’s previous experimental disasters.
Pfizer entered into the vaccine business in late 2006 by acquiring the British influenza-vaccine company PowderMed for an undisclosed fee. Pfizer was admittedly excited about the deal, stating that ‘PowderMed’s unique DNA vaccine technology is particularly promising’ and that ‘its pipeline of vaccine candidates for influenza and chronic viral diseases could have major potential’. In fact, beginning in autumn 2005, many Big Pharma companies had taken their first steps into the vaccine industry. Novartis entered the vaccine business by acquiring 56 percent of Chiron, whilst GlaxoSmithKline expanded its vaccine base by acquiring ID Biomedical of Canada. Competition was heating up among the big players, and the vaccine industry was seen as a safe bet, with reports of new vaccines selling for hundreds of dollars. But Pfizer’s reputation over the preceding decade had taken a severe knock due to the company’s disastrous experimental trials in Africa.
In 1996, an experimental trial took place in Nigeria. Under the cover of severe outbreaks of cholera, measles, and meningitis in northern Nigeria, Pfizer set up the secretive trials in Kano, the second largest city in Nigeria, to test its experimental antibiotic, Trovan (trovafloxacin). It tested the experimental drug on two hundred children. The children’s parents assumed that the children would receive the standard meningitis jab, but Pfizer staff instead set up two control groups. Half of the children were given the experimental Trovan, and the other hundred were given a reduced dosage of the leading meningitis equivalent. The lower dose was to help artificially skew the results in the favour of Trovan for marketing and competitive purposes.
In 2002, a group of Nigerian children and their legal guardians sued Pfizer in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. In court documents, the plaintiffs alleged that five children who received Trovan and six children whom Pfizer had ‘low-dosed’ had died as a result, whilst others suffered paralysis, deafness and blindness. The alleged actual number of those who died due to their involvement in the trial, per Nigerian sources, is over fifty.
Pfizer was supposed to check the children’s blood samples five days into the trials to look for any abnormalities and then change their treatment to the full-strength leading meningitis drug if there were any problems. However, they failed to do so. Instead, the Pfizer team waited for the irreversible symptoms to manifest physically before switching the treatment for the study’s unwitting participants. After realising that they had just murdered and crippled these children, Pfizer, like any giant pharmaceutical corporation would, left the scene of the crime in a hurry, failing to do any further evaluation of the patients.
Pfizer spent the next ten years denying any responsibility for the disaster, eventually releasing a statement entitled ‘Trovan, Kano State Civil Case—Statement of Defense’, in which the pharmaceutical bigwig stated among other things ‘that mortality in the patients treated by Pfizer was lower than that observed historically in African meningitis epidemics, and that no unusual side effects, unrelated to meningitis, were observed after 4 weeks’.
Pfizer eventually settled the case for $75 million on condition that it would not be held responsible for its actions. The Guardian newspaper reported in 2011 that the first four settlements in the lengthy court battle had been given to the families of four of the children who were killed during the trial. In an unabashed attempt to make the court settlement of $175,000 harder for each of the surviving families to claim, the victims’ families were forced to provide DNA samples to prove they were actually related to the deceased. This tactic turned out to be very effective from the company’s perspective, as many of the families didn’t trust Pfizer, which led some to pull out and refuse the settlement because they thought the DNA samples were a ploy by Pfizer to commit further illegal secret experiments upon them, or worse.
The Nigerians were represented by two brave lawyers, a Nigerian lawyer named Etigwe Uwo and a Connecticut-based lawyer, Richard Altschuler. According to Altschuler, it was the story of Pfizer’s Kano coverup that prompted John le Carré to write the novel The Constant Gardener that was adapted in the feature film. Like the situation depicted in the movie, Pfizer used scare tactics and smear campaigns to try and hinder any investigation into the Kano incident.
In 2006, Pfizer cut its workforce by 20 percent, reducing the number of its US employees by 2,200 people. The Financial Times reported on 29 November 2020 that this was something that was happening in all of the major pharmaceutical firms stating, ‘Big pharma is rushing to restructure across its business from manufacturing to how it markets and sells its drugs’. But Pfizer was mainly concentrating on radical change to its drugs sales force.
Pfizer was hit by further major scandals over the following year. One included the illegal premarketing of the HIV drug Maraviroc, which initially stalled the drug’s approval by the FDA. The scandal saw Pfizer publicly fire three of its top executives, including its assistant sales manager, Kelly Fitzgerald, (who returned to work for Pfizer and is currently their assistant sales director), HIV sales director, Art Rodriguez, now working for California’s Valued Trust, and the Mid-Atlantic director, Bob Mumford.
Get Your Facts Straight and Another Way Out
Whilst a DNA vaccine will change your DNA permanently, an mRNA vaccine will not permanently change your DNA. It takes one sentence to clear up that misunderstanding of the technology, and people should not be criminalised for such a simple misunderstanding. However, the mRNA vaccine does bind with part of your DNA to alter the proteins being produced. This is the very place where companies wish to trap opponents of their experimental vaccine campaigns. Just because someone doesn’t fully understand the process involved shouldn’t mean they should be demonised and forced into taking this experimental combination of nanoparticles. In fact, individuals should reject the vaccine until companies explain how it works and if there are any long-term side effects. You shouldn’t let anybody put anything into your body until they can tell you if any long-term consequences could occur. This is a basic principle of self-preservation that trumps any risk of a virus, especially a virus that has proven to be just a little bit more deadly than the common flu.
Our bodies should be the most important concern for us all. Fundamentally speaking, all our liberties and freedoms are of little concern if we’re dead or crippled. Don’t let them shame you into giving over your precious and delicate shell to medical scientific experimentation by companies that are incapable of taking accountability for their actions. This is the core argument that you need to keep at the forefront of any debate, rather than whether your DNA is permanently changed or whether its functions are just altered. If you’re going to get into the gutter to battle out the science then you must get your facts straight. They will use any potential misunderstanding you have to wipe your voice from the debate. It is they who bear the burden of articulating clearly why we should take the vaccine; it is your right to refuse.
However, there is something no one has mentioned so far about this new mRNA technology that could give those who oppose the vaccine another way out. Normally, to be effective, a vaccine must be given to as much of the population as possible. Mass vaccination has been used historically as a synthetic herd immunity to stop the spread of a virus to the vulnerable people in our society. But this technology is different, and its method of working means it is no longer necessary to use mass vaccination.
The whole point of why mRNA vaccines are more effective than our current vaccine technologies, per its proponents, is that it precisely targets the protein-production part of your DNA’s normal life cycle. This improves the response that an individual’s immune system will have when fighting a virus. It can be targeted socially in a similar way. If the majority of people who catch Covid-19 are asymptomatic, then it’s ridiculous to give them a vaccine. Because this vaccine protects individuals in their response, there is no good reason why everybody in our society should be forced to take it. It is used to increase specific protein production in someone who’s at severe risk—that’s how a medicine works normally. You don’t take HIV medication if you don’t have HIV. You shouldn’t be taking cancer drugs unless you have cancer. And you shouldn’t need to change your DNA’s production of specific proteins unless it’s personally necessary to do so.
The biggest lie being told to the people of the world is that everybody needs to take this vaccine. And ironically, the experimental mRNA technology that they’re desperate to use makes mass vaccination unnecessary.
Johnny Vedmore is a completely independent investigative journalist and musician from Cardiff, Wales. His work aims to expose the powerful people who are overlooked by other journalists and bring new information to his readers. If you require help, or have a tip for Johnny, then get in touch via johnnyvedmore.com or by reaching out to johnnyvedmore@gmail.com
France’s new law limits press freedom
By Chris Den Hond | Press TV | November 22, 2020
Paris – Thousands in Paris, tens of thousands all over France are protesting for the second time in a week against the Global Security Law.
This new law has been voted in the French parliament and makes it illegal to film and publish images of police officers. For these demonstrators this new law is a violation of the right to inform. Earlier this week, the police used tear gas and water cannon when protesters took the street in front of the French parliament. With the new law, it will become illegal to film this kind of police intervention.
During the yellow vest movement, videos have been used in judicial investigation concerning police violence. With this law, the French state can more easily hide illegal actions, committed by police officers. It can also more easily hide scandals which opens the door for abuse of power.
The French government says they want a better protection for their police force, but the new French law is seriously criticized by the Human rights Council of the United Nations as well as by a large spectrum of the French civil society, journalist associations, trade unions, political parties and human rights defenders.
One year of prison and 45,000 Euros of penalty: that’s what someone risks for publishing the face of a police officer. Many people here say that the French government is using the coronavirus crisis to limit personal and public liberties.
YouTube removes lockdown-sceptical interview with renowned immunologist Dr Mike Yeadon for ‘violating terms of service’
RT | November 20, 2020
Dr Mike Yeadon has argued that the British government is using “lethally incompetent” scientific advice in its Covid-19 response. YouTube has mysteriously taken down a video in which the immunologist explains his point.
The UK government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) has got many things about the Covid-19 pandemic wrong, says Dr Mike Yeadon. He is an expert in allergy, immunology, and respiratory diseases, with over three decades of experience, including working as Pfizer’s vice president and chief scientific officer. Apparently his credentials amounted to nothing, though, when digital ‘censors’ at YouTube noticed that he was criticizing the prevailing narrative on the necessity of lockdowns.
For its modelling, SAGE assumed that the entire population was susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 when it first emerged in China last year. And it now considers that only a fraction of the public has been infected so far, based on the detectable presence of antibodies in their blood. These premises are behind the harsh restrictions currently in place in the UK, which are designed to prevent a massive and deadly outbreak of Covid-19.
According to Dr Yeadon, the assumptions are totally wrong, and the worst of the disease is over, with Covid-19 falling into the background as a relatively nasty but otherwise ordinary seasonal respiratory disease. A significant part of the population was actually not susceptible to the virus, thanks in large part to cross-immunity from previously being exposed to other kinds of coronaviruses. Those range from the relatively exotic but closely related SARS-CoV-1, the pathogen behind the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak, to human coronaviruses causing the common cold.
The large number of positive Covid-19 tests is not indicative of the number of active cases, Dr Yeadon believes. The common PCR test detects RNA remnants of the coronavirus, but it cannot tell if they came from live viruses or those long conquered by the immune system. There are also false positives. Mass testing causes an increase in those, he says, as people less experienced in how to properly conduct tests are recruited to run them.
On the other hand, the percentage of people currently immune to Covid-19 is seriously underestimated because it is measured by the presence of antibodies in people’s blood, Dr Yeadon argues. Antibody levels rise when an organism reacts to an active infection, but immune response memory – which determines whether the immune system is trained to beat a disease – is stored in T-cells. So, a person perfectly capable of standing up to Covid-19 may test negative for antibodies, he concludes.
Dr Yeadon has made his case and explained why he believes SAGE’s advice to be “lethally incompetent” in a number of interviews, including a 30-minute sit in with Unlock UK, a lockdown-sceptical media outlet. The video was published on Friday and is available on Facebook, but for some reason it was banned by YouTube, which says it violated its terms of service.
Western tech giants have been relentlessly pressured by politicians and legacy media to fight against misinformation on their platforms. Their idea of what constitutes misinformation seems to be closely aligned with prevailing narratives, while complaints about censorship mount from those challenging the mainstream narrative.
This seems especially true for Covid-19 response coverage, as many people find restrictions at best controversial and at worst a government assault on liberties. Just this week, the UK’s top counter-terrorism police officer, Met Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu, advocated punishing those who spread “misinformation that could cost people’s lives,” like anti-vaccination conspiracy theories.
Dr Yeadon, incidentally, argues that mass vaccination against Covid-19 would be unnecessary, because the outbreak has almost run its natural course before an efficient vaccine was even available.
View the video.


