Moscow and Kiev issue updates on Ukrainian border guards reported killed
RT | February 26, 2022
The Russian military has claimed that Ukrainian border guards, whom Ukraine initially declared entirely slain, survived, while Kiev’s military concurred that it might indeed be the case.
Both countries’ armed forces on Saturday said that a group of Ukrainian border guards stationed on Zmeinyy (Snake) Island, located some 48km off Ukraine’s southern coast in the Black Sea, were captured by Russian forces. Russia says they were taken alive and unharmed to Sevastopol in Crimea.
However, the initial story allegedly went as follows: a group of 13 border guards on the island were confronted by a Russian warship on Thursday. The Russian ship ordered the group by radio to surrender, the Ukrainians replied “go f**k yourself,” and the Russian ship opened fire. After several hours of fighting, all the guards were killed.
The story spread like wildfire on social media and was held up by the Ukrainian government, Western media outlets and journalists as an example of Ukrainian “heroism.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky honored the troops he declared slain, saying: “On our [Snake] Island, defending it to the last, all the border guards died heroically,” and promising to award them the posthumous title of “Hero of Ukraine.”
The first signs that something else may have happened came early on Saturday, as Russia’s Black Sea Fleet announced that dozens of Ukrainian border troops were delivered to Sevastopol, Crimea, with videos online purportedly showing their arrival.
Ukraine’s Border Guard Service stated shortly afterwards that the troops on Snake Island “bravely defended themselves,” but were taken prisoner when the island was captured. According to the military branch, reports that all had perished were “preliminary,” and came after the Ukrainian military lost contact with the island. The ministry did not say how many guards were stationed on the island, and did not claim to know whether any died or were injured.
The Russian Ministry of Defense likewise confirmed the capture of the island. Spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said that 82 Ukrainian servicemen had been stationed on the island, that all surrendered, and that none were injured. Konashenkov said that as prisoners were being transported off the island, 16 Ukrainian Navy boats disguised as civilian vessels launched an attack on Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
Konashenkov said that Russians destroyed six of the Ukrainian vessels, and claimed that US drones were seen operating in the area, suggesting that the US “directed” the Ukrainian boats. These reports have not yet been corroborated.
A recording of the Snake Island garrison supposedly telling the Russian ship to “go f**k yourself” is still circulating on social media. There is currently no evidence that the recording is genuine, and Ukraine’s Border Guard Service only said that the troops gave a message indicating “no one will surrender.”
Following the Money on Climate Change Media Coverage
By Chris Morrison | The Daily Sceptic | February 20, 2022
The Associated Press (AP) is assigning another two dozen journalists across the world to cover ‘climate issues’. AP Senior Vice President Julie Pace described the move as a “far reaching initiative that will transform the way we cover the climate story”. Over 20 of the journalists will be new hires and they will be funded by an $8m gift from five billionaire philanthropic organisations, including the Left-wing Rockefeller Foundation. The money is just the latest in a series of such gifts and AP reports that 50 writing jobs are funded from these sources.
AP is not the only large media company to collect such hand-outs. The BBC and the Guardian regularly receive multi-million dollar contributions from the trusts of wealthy philanthropists. It is estimated that Bill Gates has given over $300 million over the last decade to a wide variety of media outlets. Faced with plummeting paid readers and advertisers, mainstream legacy media seems eager to tap a new revenue stream.
The money is spread wide across such media. This month, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting received $1.5 million from Rockefeller to “expand coverage of under-reported and/or inaccurately reported critical public health information”. The Quadrivium Foundation, run by Democrat power couple James and Kathryn Murdoch, is also paying climate wages at AP. On its website, the Foundation notes that it also invests in Climate Central, using meteorologists as “trusted messengers” of the links between extreme weather and climate change. Since it is not possible to link individual weather events to long term climate change with any scientific certainty, this aim looks to be a waste of money, or perhaps not.
‘Trusted messengers’ seems to be a phrase much in vogue around philanthropic operations. Last October, Rockefeller gave $4.5 million to Purpose Global, a non-profit company that aims to help corporate clients with their “cultural intelligence”. The money was given in support of facilitating a “communication network of trusted messengers”. This would “amplify accurate information and combat mis- and dis- information on COVID-19 vaccines”. In September 2020, the Gates Foundation gave the Guardian $3.5 million to “support” its regular reporting on global health. Likewise, the Global Health Security Team at the Telegraph is Gates-funded.
Old school journalists might be a little happier to see less of the ‘trusted messenger’ stuff and more of the requirement to investigate. But critical inquiry of climate change science has been more or less banned from many mainstream outlets. This is despite the fact that the hypothesis that humans cause all or most global warming is unproven, and many scientists look more to natural causes for long term change. Predictions – often termed evidence – of future warming, are based on climate models that have never provided an accurate forecast in the last 40 years. Global warming started to run out of steam two decades ago, and it has been at a standstill for the last seven. When Google Adsense banned the main climate web page tracking accurate satellite data showing the standstill, the interest was confined to just a few outlets, including the Daily Sceptic.
One of the largest suppliers of cash for climate change is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the BBC and the Guardian are two of its favourite giftees. The Guardian has received upwards of $20 million over recent years starting with £6m in 2011 to establish a “millennium Development Goals” feed that provides “compelling evidence-based content”. During the last decade, Gates has given at least $20 million to help fund the BBC World Service and $5.5 million for the Corporation’s Media Action charity.
In that time, the software tycoon, once treated with great suspicion for early monopolistic tendencies, has become a prized ‘talking head’ across the BBC for epidemics, vaccines and anti-meat diets. His recent scary tales of climate change, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster”, was recently given five airings on prime time Radio 4.
Elsewhere, there are prizes for the best behaved – sorry – most distinguished climate journalist. Every year, the foundation of BBVA, a Spanish bank heavily involved in financing Net Zero projects, hands out €100,000 to the lucky recipient. Last year it went to Marlow Hood of Agence France-Presse, who describes himself as the “Herald of the Anthropocene”, the latter being a political renaming of the current Holocene era. In 2019, Matt McGrath of the BBC pocketed the cash, while in 2020 the award went to – no great surprise – the Guardian.
Much of the BBC money appears to support advocacy in the developing world, although the terms of specific grants are sometimes hard to understand. A letter from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in August 2019 describing the purpose of a $2.03 million grant to the BBC reads as follows: “To help us learn deepen our underpinning of processes and user journeys for different sets of women’s empowerment collectives, develop use cases for where digital can help amplify effects bring efficiencies, and close gender gaps for women”.
No doubt when this non-sensical gibberish was translated into understandable English, the money was spent wisely.
Canadian Media STILL Pushing Crackpot Theory That Truckers Are Russian Agents
By Steve Watson | Summit News | February 14, 2022
As the Canadian freedom convoy rolls on and continues to influence other protesters around the globe, Canadian media continues to push outright disinformation by suggesting that the Russian government is behind the movement.
When the convoy first came to prominence at the end of January, state broadcaster the Canadian Broadcasting Company began spreading completely unfounded claims that “Russian actors” were present among the Canadian truckers holding up major cities including Ottawa and Toronto, as well as border crossings.
The tenuous reasoning behind the theory is that Canada has expressed support for Ukraine during the country’s ongoing tensions with Russia.
Rather than admit that working class truckers are sick of enforced restrictions and vaccine mandates threatening their livelihoods, CBC floated the crackpot idea that Vladimir Putin is secretly behind the protests.
CBC continues to push the conspiracy theory, with correspondent Harry Forestell filing the following report Friday giving airtime to ‘New Brunswick cybersecurity expert’ David Shipley, who is adamant that the Russians are behind everything.
Shipley proclaimed “Who would have reason right now to cause as much chaos in Canada as possible? Well, at the top of that list is Russia.”
He continued, “We are actively engaged in a geopolitical battle about the future of the Ukraine. Our Foreign Affairs minister, our Prime Minister, others have been very vocal in our support for the Ukraine and it seems very likely that the tactics that we are seeing, the creation of the massive Facebook groups using fake identities or in the case now alleged by a U.S. media outlet, a stolen identity of a Missouri woman to create these groups and to foster this communication hundreds of thousands of people, this is the Russian internet research agency playbook writ large.”
Shipley has considered that possibly the truckers are Chinese agents too, but ultimately no, they’re Russian.
He declared “You have other enemies as well. You have China, you have other states but when I narrow down my list of suspects and I don’t have enough evidence to win in a court of law but I don’t need that right now, this smacks of the kind of move that Russia has made in the past, the United States, and is continuing to do around the world.”
When asked what the solution to this pressing Russian agent problem is, Shipley’s solution was to restrict and shut down the convoy’s social media presence.
You certainly don’t have enough evidence Mr Shipley because there isn’t any.
Increased energy prices could “cause heart attacks and strokes”
In the middle of the cost of living crisis, the press has found yet another reason people might keel over… and it’s still not the vaccine.
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | February 5, 2022
Our UK readers will be familiar with the press coverage of the cost of living crisis in this country, as wages continue to fall further and further behind inflation, and the economy reels from the deliberately devastating lockdown, the cost of everything from food to fuel is ever increasing.
People are understandably troubled and anxious, whether or not the energy cost crisis is genuine or manufactured for the sake of profits, the reality is that many people will face the choice of heating their homes or eating enough food over the last two months of winter and into the spring.
This could easily result in people – especially the elderly or disabled – suffering health problems or even death due to the cold or malnutrition. Many of these people will likely become “covid cases” or “covid deaths” once they’re subjected to the totally unreliable tests.
It’s all a perfect little circuit. And it serves the Covid agenda in more ways than one, because it’s just handed the press yet another explanation for heart attacks that haven’t happened yet.
It seems like only a few days ago we ran an article pointing out all the numerous different reasons the press are predicting people will have heart attacks this year… and that’s because it was.
Stress, anxiety, the weather, “long covid” and a plague of undiagnosed aortic stenosis are all predicted to cause thousands upon thousands of heart attacks and strokes in the near future.
And now so is the increased cost of living.
Appearing on Lorraine on ITV yesterday morning, Dr Amir Khan claimed:
… if you can’t afford to heat your home, it actually causes an increased risk of developing heart attacks and strokes because your blood vessels contract to conserve heat, which pushes your blood pressure up, and over time that has an impact on your heart attack risk.”
In future, maybe they should simply run press releases saying “Covid vaccine only thing in world which doesn’t cause a heart attack”
As Neil Oliver pointed out on Twitter…
MSNBC Misinfo: Zeke Emanuel Peddles Fear, Says Unvaxxed Children ‘Likely To Get Serious Case Of Covid’
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | February 5, 2022
Dr Ezekiel Emanuel – former Biden Covid-19 adviser and brother of former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (and the real ‘Ari Gold’ from Entourage) appeared on MSNBC Wednesday, where he proceeded to peddle the lie that unvaccinated children are ‘likely’ to get a ‘serious’ case of Covid.
“This repeats what we’ve seen in older kids, five and above, where we know the vaccine does protect very well. And there we still have under 50%, I believe, of the children vaccinated, and that’s a serious problem for the country,” Emanuel told host Kristen Welker after she asked about parents’ willingness to vaccinate their children. “Parents have to be more willing – I think they hear some of these rare side effects and think they’re very common.”
“With the omicron variant, kids are either going to get the vaccine or they’re likely to get a serious condition of omicron. Having omicron with the vaccine is almost invariably going to be better and safer for children,” Emanuel added. “I am confused about parents’ attitudes. Five and above seems like a no-brainer. Two to five, I understand some hesitancy. Two and under with the small dose, I think probably a very good idea.”
It’s been widely established that Omicron is a relatively mild strain of Covid – from which children face an extremely low risk.
Another recent study cited by economist Emily Oster also reiterated the extremely low risk young children face of severe COVID-19 outcomes. “What we can say is that based on everything we know, the risks to small children from COVID-19 are extremely small,” she wrote. –Fox News
MSNBC faced harsh criticism over Emanuel’s statement.
The network even tweeted (and then deleted) the easily debunked misinformation, receiving a serious ratio of comments to ‘likes.’
Intentional? Or…
Following the backlash, Emanuel issued a Saturday tweet in which he says he “misspoke.”
US State Department alleges Moscow prepared ‘crisis actor’ video to invade Ukraine, refuses to offer evidence
RT | February 3, 2022
The US has accused Russia of creating a propaganda video featuring crisis actors, staged fake explosions, and NATO military equipment such as Turkish drones, as a pretext for invading Ukraine in the coming days.
The claim was first published on Thursday morning by the Washington Post, which cited an unnamed US official quoting US intelligence assessments. It was then picked up by CNN and other outlets. On Thursday afternoon, State Department spokesman Ned Price said the government “made public” that intelligence, and echoed the description of the alleged video featured in the Post and CNN stories.
The video is “entirely fabricated by Russian intelligence” and is “one of a number of options the Russian government is developing as a fake pretext to initiate and potentially justify military aggression against Ukraine,” Price claimed. He added that the US is making the claim public as a way to deter Russia from its “destructive and destabilizing disinformation campaign” against Ukraine.
Pressed to show any evidence for the claim, Price said his own statement constituted evidence, and that it was “derived from information known to the US government, intelligence information that we have declassified.”
“If you doubt the credibility of the US government, of the British government, of other governments, and want to find solace in the information the Russians are putting out, that is for you to do,” Price told AP’s diplomatic correspondent Matt Lee, dismissing his line of questioning.
“Russia never does such things,” Moscow’s ambassador to the EU, Vladimir Chizhov, told RIA Novosti on Thursday, when asked about the new US allegations.
As proof of alleged Russian ‘actions’ in Ukraine, the State Department spokesman quoted the allegation anonymous US officials made to CNN in mid-January, claiming that Russia had sent a “group of operatives” trained in urban warfare to attack “Russia’s own proxy forces” in the two disputed regions of eastern Ukraine, in order to create a pretext for an “invasion.”
Moscow dismissed these claims as “unsubstantiated” hearsay. Several days later, leaders of the Donetsk militia told reporters it was British-trained Ukrainian saboteurs that were planning attacks they would then attribute to Russia as ‘false flags’.
Former Pfizer VP Michael Yeadon demands apology from media over ‘lies’ asserting vaccine safety
Dr Michael Yeadon, former Pfizer vice president and co-founder of Doctors for COVID-19 Ethics
By Patrick Delaney | LifeSiteNews | February 2, 2022
After being excoriated by mainstream media outlets regarding his concern that COVID-19 gene-based vaccines could cause fertility issues in young women, Dr. Michael Yeadon is now requesting contrition on the part of media outlets as leaked data from the U.S. military indicates heavy spikes in these tragic outcomes.
“I’m not vindictive, but I want some humility and contrition from the BBC and all other media outlets that lied to their audiences,” said the former Pfizer vice president and Chief Scientist for allergy and respiratory.
Yeadon, who spent 32 years in the industry leading new medicines research and retired from the pharmaceutical giant with the most senior research position in his field, was an author of a submitted petition to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in December 2020 that raised substantial concerns regarding a lack of sufficient testing of the experimental COVID-19 gene-based vaccines, prior to their emergency use authorizations.
With regard to the possibility of the shots endangering the fertility of women, Yeadon and his colleague, Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, wrote, “There is no indication whether antibodies against spike proteins of SARS viruses would also act like anti-Syncytin-1 antibodies. However, if this were to be the case this would then also prevent the formation of a placenta which would result in vaccinated women essentially becoming infertile.”
Such a possibility would need to be ruled out through standard experimentation prior to imposing such substances onto the entire population, according to the doctors.
“It’s important to note that none of these gene-based agents had completed what’s called ‘reproductive toxicology,’” Yeadon wrote in his recent statement. “Over a year later, this battery of tests in animals still has not been done. So there was and still is no data package supporting safety in pregnancy or prior to conception.”
Media response to valid concerns: attacks, smears, vilifications
“As a society, we’ve practiced the precautionary principle most assiduously in relation to conception and pregnancy ever since the tragedy of thalidomide, over 60 years ago. So we had hoped that some at least in the media would take this [concern] with the seriousness it deserved,” he wrote.
“Did that happen? No. Instead, we were attacked, smeared and vilified in every medium, from Twitter to the BBC,” the British national wrote. “[M]ajor broadcasters actively lied to the public, explicitly stating that these agents were completely safe in pregnancy.”
Indeed, Reuters excoriated the doctors for making their inquiry “without providing evidence, that the vaccines could cause infertility in women,” shifting the burden of proof onto the petitioners from the regulators whose job it is to ensure proper safety trials are completed before the release of such drugs.
The article quoted an anonymous spokesman for Britain’s Department of Health & Social Care, saying, “These claims are false, dangerous and deeply irresponsible.”
Reuters later attempted to “fact-check” Yeadon as well over several concerns including the danger to fertility, to which he simply reiterated common ethical principles with regard to human experimentation: “No one in their right mind thinks giving experimental treatments to pregnant women is other than reckless. Especially when reproductive toxicity testing is incomplete.”
Of special note for Yeadon was BBC Radio talk show hostess Emma Barnett, who “directly attacked me by name on air in the most unpleasant terms,” which also led to his charging the program with slander. In response, after a bit of investigation, the program editor conceded, apologized to Yeadon, and cut their false representation of the former Pfizer scientist from their recorded podcast.
“[Barnett] also had her guest, who was from the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, repeat the lies that it was perfectly safe for young women to be injected,” Yeadon called out in his statement.
Preprint paper reveals placental-damaging antibodies increased 2.5 fold after shots
Also of note for the former executive was a preprint study published last May that appeared to attempt a rebuttal of his concern that anti-Syncytin-1 antibodies could be developed due to the shots, but instead reinforced them showing a 2.5 fold increase of the placental-damaging antibodies in days 1 to 4 after COVID-19 gene-therapy injections.
The paper, which claimed a conflict of interest in being funded by Johnson & Johnson, went on to explain that though they had observed this major increase, they did not examine its “clinical significance,” thus admitting they didn’t know if these higher levels of the antibody flagged an actual safety problem with regards to fertility and miscarriage.
At the same time, the study’s authors acknowledged data showing “spontaneous miscarriage as the most common obstetric outcome after COVID-19 mRNA vaccination.”
Based on the outcome of this study alone, Yeadon said “all of these experimental products as a class should have been completely contraindicated in women younger than menopause.”
Pfizer & Moderna ‘definitely knew’ these mRNA products would ‘accumulate in the ovaries’
An additional source of concern regarding fertility was that “the mRNA products (Pfizer and Moderna) would accumulate in ovaries,” the British national explained.
“An FOI request to the Japanese Medicines Agency revealed that product accumulation in ovaries occurred in experiments in rodents. I searched the literature based on these specific concerns and found a 2012 review [here], explicitly drawing attention to the evidence that the lipid nanoparticle formulations as a class do, in fact, accumulate in ovaries and may represent an unappreciated reproductive risk to humans. This was ‘a well-known problem’ to experts in that field,” Yeadon explained.
“I’ll say that again. The pharmaceutical industry definitely knew, in 2012, that formulating these agents in lipid nanoparticles would lead them to accumulate in the ovaries of women to whom these were given.
“No one in the industry or in leading media could claim ‘they didn’t know about these risks to successful pregnancy,’” he emphasized.
Results from the U.S. military leak confirm damage done to unborn children and fertility
“So it’s with tremendous anger and sorrow that I heard of military physicians blowing the whistle about the evidence of harms in pregnancy that their proprietary safety monitoring database had thrown out,” Yeadon said, referring to last week’s revelations during a U.S. Senate panel discussion.
“In the intervening months since journalists (including but definitely not limited to Emma Barnett) chose to downplay or downright lie about our concerns, we learned that women in the U.S. military were experiencing 3X normal rates of miscarriage,” he explained.
In fact, these data leaks, given by three “decorated high-ranking soldiers who are doctors and public health officials,” in sworn declarations under penalty of perjury, show several increases in negative impacts upon fertility, including spontaneous abortion, among this military population where enforcement of an experimental COVID gene-vaccine mandate is strictly observed.
As presented by these soldiers, the following 2021 increases only include the first 10 months of the year (January through October) and are compared with the full five-year average of figures taken from 2016 through 2020.
- Miscarriages — increase of 279%
- Female infertility – increase of 471%
- Male infertility — increase of 344%
- Congenital malformations (birth defects) – increase of 156%
And considering most children conceived after these injections had not been born before November 2021, the final figure of birth defects is likely to significantly increase as well.
Journalists, regulators and manufacturers: ‘You are way out over thin ice and deep water’
After Yeadon’s request for contrition from the BBC and other media outlets, he went on to implore readers, “please do not get injected with these inherently dangerous and ineffective experimental products. Warn anyone you know about the risks to pregnancy, now confirmed by whistleblowers from physicians in the U.S. military.
“Please also tell them there are likely to be other reproductive health consequences, even in young girls, because of accumulation [of lipid nanoparticles] in their ovaries.“
Having originally alerted the EMA of several other possible toxic outcomes due to the injections, Yeadon highlighted that he and Dr. Wodarg were sadly also right about their warning of “allergic, potentially fatal reactions to the vaccination,” citing examples from the UK of emergency interventions and tragic deaths.
“Having had two of two serious harms we warned about, prior to regulatory authorisations, come to pass,” he said. “I humbly recommend that governments and journalists everywhere recognise what you’ve done and lobby for or directly decide to immediately and completely withdraw all these experimental products from the market, before some of the other specified concerns (or issues we didn’t think of) show up in the safety monitoring systems.”
“Journalists, regulators, healthcare professionals and politicians, as well [as], of course, the manufacturers, you are way out over thin ice and deep water. I don’t know how you’re planning to get out from under this before the wider public more fully appreciates what you’ve done,” Yeadon wrote.
“One possibility is that you won’t be able to hide your complicity in the massed harms you’ve done to millions of people. In this case, I look forward to giving evidence against you in a court of law,” he concluded.
Dr. Yeadon’s full statement can be accessed here.
Relax, Wisconsin Public Radio, Climate Change Isn’t Making Human Health Worse
By H. Sterling Burnett | ClimateRealism | January 28, 2022
A story run by Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR) today claims climate change poses a threat to human health. Disease and mortality data show this is false. During the recent period of modest warming, deaths resulting from extreme heat and weather have declined sharply, and research indicates climate change is not contributing to pandemics or parasite borne diseases.
WPR’s story, titled “Wisconsin health providers say climate change is a medical issue,” features input from the climate activist group, Wisconsin Health Professionals for Climate Action. WPR writes:
“Heat waves, cold spells could harm people, along with dangerous flooding, according to Wisconsin Health News panelists. Last year, top medical journals warned that climate change, not COVID-19, was the greatest threat to public health.”
“In the Midwest, climate change is likely to bring extreme temperatures and flooding, along with more mosquito and tick diseases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP).”
While many top medical journals and the politically controlled CDCP have claimed climate change is causing worsening health and increasing incidences of premature mortality, hard data presented in peer reviewed literature proves this is false.
Data from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration presented in Climate at a Glance articles disprove claims that heat waves, cold spells, and incidences of flooding have increased during the recent period of modern warming.
If instances of extreme heat or cold, and flooding events aren’t increasing, or are in fact declining, they can’t be causing an increase in adverse health events, which is precisely what the data establish.
As detailed in Climate Realism, here, deaths resulting from climate related events have fallen to a historic low, having fallen by more than 99 percent over the past 100 years.
On July 1, 2021 The Lancet published what is arguably the largest study ever to examine excess mortality associated with temperature. The study’s authors, 68 scientists representing universities and research institutes in 33 countries spanning all regions of the world, came to two very clear conclusions: Cold temperatures contribute to far more deaths each year than warmer temperatures; and deaths associated with extreme temperatures, hot or cold, are declining.
This study confirms what research previously published in The Lancet, the Southern Medical Journal, and other outlets, has consistently shown: Cold is the biggest temperature related killer, not heat, and as he earth warms the number of deaths related to extreme temperatures is falling dramatically.
Also, contrary to the impression given in the WPR story, there is no evidence insect borne tropical diseases are expanding their range or sickening, or claiming the lives of greater numbers of people as the earth has warmed.
The vast body of scientific literature referenced in Chapter Seven of Climate Change Reconsideree II: Biological Impacts and Chapter Four of Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels fails find any link between global warming and the spread of Lyme disease, malaria, Dengue fever, West Nile virus, and other vector-borne diseases are either grossly overstated or outright false.
For example, a 2010 study in the peer-reviewed science journal Nature:
“[C]compared historical and contemporary maps of the range and incidence of malaria and found endemic/stable malaria is likely to have covered 58% of the world’s land surface around 1900 but only 30% by 2007. They report, ‘even more marked has been the decrease in prevalence within this greatly reduced range, with endemicity falling by one or more classes in over two-thirds of the current range of stable transmission.’ They write, ‘widespread claims that rising mean temperatures have already led to increases in worldwide malaria morbidity and mortality are largely at odds with observed decreasing global trends in both its endemicity and geographic extent.’”
Also, in a 2008 article in the Malaria Journal, Pasteur Institute of Paris professor Paul Reiter wrote:
“Simplistic reasoning on the future prevalence of malaria is ill-founded; malaria is not limited by climate in most temperate regions, nor in the tropics, and in nearly all cases, ‘new’ malaria at high altitudes is well below the maximum altitudinal limits for transmission, [continuing] future changes in climate may alter the prevalence and incidence of the disease, but obsessive emphasis on ‘global warming’ as a dominant parameter is indefensible; the principal determinants are linked to ecological and societal change, politics and economics.”
Despite numerous claims to the contrary, claims parroted by WPR without citing any hard evidence, human health is not being threatened by climate change. Indeed, on every health indicator: human lifespan, premature mortality, premature births, infant mortality, hospitalizations linked to extreme temperatures or weather events, hunger, and malnutrition, to name the most often discussed health indicators, humans are living better, longer, healthier, lives than ever before.
Justice For the Hyde Park One
By Andrew Rootsey | The Daily Sceptic | February 1, 2022
As you may recall, we secured Debbie’s acquittal at Cheltenham Magistrates Court on the December 20th 2021 for offences relating to organising/being involved in organising a gathering of more than 30 people during a period of national lockdown or alternatively for participating in the gathering.
The relevant gathering was a protest held in Stratford Park in Stroud in November 2020 against the restrictions imposed on the British public under the Coronavirus Regulations. The protest was called the ‘Freedom Rally’ and was attended by more than 50 people.
The Stroud ‘Freedom Rally’ was held two days into the second national lockdown and therefore at the time it was illegal to organise a gathering of more than 30 people or to meet in groups of more than two people. A conviction would have left her liable for a £10,000 fine.
Ms. Hicks was acquitted of both offences after the court accepted our argument that her arrest and prosecution was a disproportionate interference with her human rights – namely the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, given that she was engaging in a legitimate protest.
The court found that Ms. Hicks had organised the ‘Freedom Rally’ and had breached the Coronavirus Regulations in force at the time by doing so. However, she had a reasonable excuse because she was attending a legitimate, peaceful and well-organised protest. The officers on the ground at the protest had been labouring under a misapprehension of the law – that protesting was not lawful under the Regulations – and were essentially imposing a blanket ban on protesting. Therefore, their actions in arresting her were not rational or proportionate.
In complete contrast – and a perfect example of how this contentious piece of legislation is flawed and open to misinterpretation – on the November 16th 2021 the City of London Magistrates Court convicted Debbie of breaching similar coronavirus regulations by protesting in Hyde Park against the imposition of lockdown restrictions during the pandemic. The District Judge in this case found that Debbie did not have a ‘reasonable excuse’ for protesting and found that the interference with her Human Rights was proportionate. Debbie was convicted and sentenced to a financial penalty.
The case raises important issues on freedom of expression and assembly, as well as the chilling of the right to protest. We wish to appeal this case to the High Court in order for the High Court to settle the important questions of law raised.
A fundamental consideration for the High Court is the ambiguity of the right to protest during the Coronavirus pandemic during periods of national lockdown and the operation of the ‘reasonable excuse’ jurisdiction in this regard.
The Government has made it clear, as have the courts, including in Debbie’s case before the Cheltenham Magistrates Court, that protesting during the Coronavirus pandemic was never illegal. Yet that was not always clear from the Coronavirus regulations nor was it the understanding of most police officers. How the reasonable excuse defence is to operate in these circumstances requires clarity and we are confident that the High Court will settle the issue in our favour and set a precedent for future cases and those seeking to appeal against their own convictions.
Debbie Hicks is probably best known for filming within the Gloucester Royal Hospital in December 2020 during Tier 3 restrictions. Debbie did so, exercising her freedom of expression, in order to highlight that Government restrictions were having a devastating effect upon access to healthcare across the board and to investigate mainstream media reports that hospitals were overflowing with patients.
Despite her efforts to avoid confrontation, she was challenged at the hospital by two employees. During the exchange, which lasted less than a minute, Debbie did not film the staff members. She explained the purpose of her visit and her views as to the provision of NHS services during lockdown. Staff members took offence at her comments and subsequently made a complaint to the police. Debbie immediately left the hospital voluntarily and was subsequently arrested at her home in front of her family and charged with using abusive, threatening or disorderly words or behaviour.
Debbie was not at the hospital deliberately seeking an encounter with staff. She has in the past been a vociferous supporter of the NHS and has supported NHS staff in respect of vaccine mandates.
In connection with this episode, Debbie stood trial for an offence under Section 5 of Public Order Act on January 6th 2022 and having adjourned the case in order to hand down his judgement the District Judge convicted Debbie of a S5 Public Order Act offence on January 19th 2022 at Cirencester Magistrates Court.
We wish to appeal this conviction as well and ask that the High Court settle this case on the basis that the District Judge was wrong in law to convict Debbie of this offence. We are firmly of the view that the Prosecution case simply did not cross the threshold of what constitutes abusive, threatening or disorderly words or behaviour. The District Judge’s analysis was flawed and did not properly interpret Supreme Court authorities nor give appropriate weight to Debbie’s rights of freedom of expression and assembly as enshrined in the European Convention for Human Rights, nor give appropriate weight to the political nature of Debbie’s views when the case law makes clear political freedom of expression should be given special protection.
Debbie is trying to raise £10,000 to take both cases to the High Court. She hopes that those who continue to believe in freedom of speech and the the right to protest will continue to support her. Our hope is that if we can get these convictions overturned, it will set a legal precedent for those convicted of similar offences and who may face prosecution in the future.
Debbie needs to raise funds in order to pay her legal costs and any help is hugely appreciated. Her fundraiser can be found here.
Andrew Rootsey is a solicitor at Murray Hughman.
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Guy Mettan: Russophobia Made War Inevitable
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A Look Back At Israel’s Role In Selling The Iraq War
The Dissident | December 28, 2025
… As Netanyahu meets with Trump to push new lies to justify a new war in Iran, it is well worth remembering Israel’s previous role in pushing lies and pushing for the war in Iraq. – Read full article
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