Big Brother Watch launches legal challenge to England’s vaccine passport
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | December 27, 2021
London-based rights group Big Brother Watch, a vocal opponent of Covid passes being introduced in England, has launched a legal challenge to the scheme it considers an example of divisive and discriminatory dystopia.
After raising nearly a quarter of a million pounds online to fund its cause (and crowdfunding campaign continues) – which Big Brother Watch said would go entirely towards fighting against Covid passes, including via costly legal challenges – the group has decided to oppose the government’s Covid passes law in court.
Big Brother Watch is challenging the law on mandatory Covid passports in England claiming that it violates privacy, and is draconian and discriminatory in nature. They are also raising concerns that the Human Rights Act and equality law may fall victim to the new Covid pass rules.
Previously, the rights group urged its supporters to speak up against the scheme as unnecessary and counterproductive, as well as introducing a checkpoint society, surveillance state, along with mission creep and detrimental measures that will become irreversible.
In a pre-action letter to launch the legal battle against the law that is proving to be highly controversial even among the ruling majority in the UK parliament, the group notes that the government failed to provide any evidence about the Covid passes benefiting public health, while a damning parliamentary report said that there was no scientific or logical justification for their introduction.
In addition, Big Brother Watch stated, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) failed to recommend Covid passports, and for all these reasons the scheme is seen as draconian, and pointless.
Nonetheless, PM Johnson’s government recently pushed the proposal through parliament despite nearly 100 MPs from his Conservative Party voting against – the biggest rebellion of the Johnson era.
Since mid-December, those entering nightclubs, sports and other large events must show the pass that proves they have been fully vaccinated or recently tested.
In announcing the bid to reverse this policy by legal means, Big Brother Watch Director Silkie Carlo said that Covid IDs “don’t tell you that a person doesn’t have Covid or can’t spread Covid, but do make society less free, less equal and less accessible for people.”
New York Democrat introduces new social media censorship bill
The bill aims to curb people’s speech by targeting platforms
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | December 27, 2021
If a state senator got his way, the state of New York could soon get a new law aimed at regulating what content can appear on social media. The bill is designed to circumvent existing federal-level solutions in some instances and is reportedly inspired by internal documents leaked by former Facebook employee Frances Haugen.
But many legal experts believe that the bill, if passed, would eventually be overturned as unconstitutional for preventing dissemination of protected content.
The bill sponsored by state Senator Brad Hoylman wants to tackle what’s referred to as unlawful online content such as “misinformation” (particularly around Covid/vaccines), and posts that might allegedly lead users to develop eating disorders or engage in self-harm.
Envisaged in the bill is an amendment to New York’s penal code that lets citizens, the state attorney general and city corporation councils sue tech companies behind social media networks, or individuals, if they are suspected of “contributing” to spread of misinformation in a manner that’s “knowing or reckless.”
And while the bill is worded in a way that states content seen as endangering people’s safety or health should be clamped down on if it is “promoted” – including (but not exclusively) by means of algorithms and other methods of recommendation, experts say the distinction between that and any post created by users is not clear enough to stand up to legal scrutiny.
“The distinction between ‘hosting’ and ‘amplifying’ content is incoherent,” Santa Clara University School of Law professor Eric Goldman has told the New York Post, adding that Hoylman has taken that “incoherent” idea – “and embraced its most censorial option.”
According to Goldman, content that Hoylman’s bill takes aim at, such as, but not limited to, what’s considered false or harmful information that concerns Covid or political issues is in fact protected free speech under the First Amendment.
And for that reason, this expert believes, the draft legislation is unconstitutionally overbroad.
Commenting on the bill, David Greene of the Electronic Frontier Foundation concurred that the law would face First Amendment hurdles, and noted that because of the rapidly changing official guidance regarding the pandemic, it is very hard to even define what qualifies for Covid misinformation (when so much “expert” information has turned out to be false.)
“It’s really very difficult to impose liability in an environment where the truth can be hard to grasp at any point in time,” this attorney remarked.
Leaked files expose Syria psyops veteran astroturfing BreadTube star to counter Covid restriction critics
BY KIT KLARENBERG AND MAX BLUMENTHAL · THE GRAYZONE · DECEMBER 24, 2021
By covertly recruiting popular YouTube influencer Abigail Thorn to counter growing opposition to UK gov’t Covid restrictions, psy-ops pros are bringing home the tactics they honed in the Syrian dirty war.
Leaked documents have revealed a state-sponsored influence operation designed to undermine critics of the British government’s coronavirus policies by astroturfing a prominent founder of the BreadTube clique of “anti-fascist” YouTube influencers.
The project aims to conduct psychological profiling on British citizens dissenting against policies such as mandatory vaccination and lockdowns, then leverage the data to establish a YouTube channel that portrays these critics as dangerous “superspreaders” of “disinformation.”
Designed “to curb the influence of pseudoscience material online, with specific emphasis on Coronavirus-related ‘anti-vaxxing’ sentiment,” the operation is run by the UK’s Royal Institution, and dubbed “Challenging Pseudoscience.”
Its top patron is Charles, the Prince of Wales, next in line to the British throne, who recently hit out at supposed “conspiracy theories” surrounding COVID-19 vaccines. The organization received a substantial cash injection in 2020 from the UK government’s Culture Recovery Fund earmarked for video production.
Leaked files obtained by The Grayzone indicate that the Royal Institution has enlisted the services of Valent Projects, a “social change” communications firm founded by a public relations operative previously involved in the UK Foreign Office’s campaign for violent regime change in Syria. Valent has also been sponsored by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), a US intelligence cut-out, for a project aimed at “investigating disinformation.”
Valent’s central role in the operation highlights the trend of information warfare specialists bringing the techniques they honed against targets like the Syrian government back home to the West, where increasingly unpopular governments confront masses of citizens ever-bristling at coronavirus restrictions.
As in Syria, where communications firms like Valent created, trained and instrumentalized media organizations to further regime change objectives, they have covertly recruited a famed British YouTube influencer to lend their carefully calculated messaging campaign an authentic flavor.
According to internal documents, Valent plans to design a “mass appeal social media campaign fronted and owned by prominent social media figure Abigail Thorn,” the founder of Philosophy Tube. Valent’s research on British citizens who reject official policy on COVID-19 “will be used to devise a campaign that utilises YouTuber Abigail Thorn’s existing platform to achieve a measurable cognitive shift in the target audience,” the files state.
Boasting over one million subscribers to her YouTube channel and more than 7000 Patreon supporters, Thorn has established a potent vehicle for any communications campaign. She is also a core member of BreadTube, an assortment of left-branded social media influencers that has attracted intense establishment interest for its purported ability “to pop YouTube’s political bubbles to create space for deradicalisation.”
While top BreadTubers are best known for employing memes and theatrical ploys to counter right-wing narratives, they have also dedicated intense energy to attacking the anti-imperialist left as “tankies” engaged in a secret “red-brown alliance” with right-wing extremists.
In his book, “BreadTube Serves Imperialism: Examining the New Brand of Internet Pseudo-Socialism,” socialist organizer Caleb Maupin likened BreadTube to the “counter-gangs” deployed by British and US intelligence to infiltrate and dismantle insurgent forces from Kenya to Southeast Asia.
BreadTube “speaks in the name of left-wing sounding ideals. In reality, it is likely serving one section of the American ruling elite and the intelligence agencies,” Maupin wrote.
The covert relationship between BreadTube’s Abigail Thorn, Valent Projects, and the Royal Institute appears to validate Maupin’s thesis.
“It does not surprise me at all to find out there is documented evidence that the British Royal Family and an intelligence contractor is bankrolling the work of Abigail Thorn,” Maupin told The Grayzone. “It lines up with everything I have observed about her and the BreadTube trend overall.”
Maupin continued, “BreadTube’s ‘socialism’ is not really socialism, it is mobilizing young liberals to keep dissident elements in line. It’s securing the rule of British and American corporations over the planet by trying to silence those who get in its way.”
The national security establishment’s favorite socialists
Since launching Philosophy Tube in 2013, Abigail Thorn’s YouTube channel boasts over 7000 paying Patreon fans and well over one million YouTube subscribers. By probing complex philosophical and political issues in a highly accessible, engaging manner and deploying elaborate, artisanal audio and visual effects, she has emerged as a social media celebrity. A lengthy profile video produced by the BBC refers to her as “one of the most high-profile transgender figures in the UK.”
Thorn is among the most prominent figures within the loosely knit collective of YouTube influencers known as BreadTube. Inspired by the title of anarchist Peter Kropotkin’s tract, The Conquest of Bread, BreadTube advances a hyper-identitarian, imperialism-friendly interpretation of socialist politics that has earned its creators enthusiastic promotion from establishment interests.
The New York Times, for example, published a lengthy 2019 profile of a young man named Caleb Cain who supposedly “fell down the alt-right rabbit hole” on YouTube. Cain claimed he was de-radicalized through exposure to videos by Thorn and other popular BreadTubers like Natalie Wynn of Contrapoints. During the Trump era, as the Google-owned YouTube implemented a raft of stringent speech codes, it began amplifying BreadTube influencers through its algorithm.
Other popular BreadTube figures include Vaush, a video gamer from Beverly Hills, California named Ian Koshinski. Known for his superficial understanding of Marxism, crude invective against Trump supporters (“they disappear, or we all do”), female high school athletes who complain about being forced to compete against biological males (“sorry you fucking suck, dumb bitch”), and imprisoned journalist Julian Assange (“I want Assange to die in a CIA black site just because it would trigger all the worst people on Twitter”), the self-described “libertarian socialist” has earned the moniker “Vaush Limbaugh” from his critics.
Then there is Shaun, a British BreadTuber whose recent attack on left-wing political comedian Jimmy Dore’s criticisms of government Covid restrictions contained echoes of the “Challenging Pseudoscience” project prepared for Thorn by intelligence-related outfits. Shaun’s arguments relied heavily on statements by official experts and US government bodies like the FDA and CDC. While Dore has been limited by YouTube’s sweeping speech codes, Shaun’s viral video appears to have benefited from an algorithmic boost.
“All the key signs of infiltration are there,” Caleb Maupin said of BreadTube. “Since when does US mainstream media highlight the work of Marxist revolutionaries? Why are people who seem so unfamiliar with basic elements of socialist ideology suddenly elevated to the position of respected experts by the algorithms? Why do their foreign policy views seem to line up so closely with the US State Department? I have had no doubt they were being covertly supported by powerful entities with goals other than overthrowing capitalism.”
Unlike some fellow BreadTubers, Thorn comes across as amiable and trustworthy, fostering a personal bond with her viewers and regularly publishing thank you notes to patrons, listing them each by name. These qualities have attracted support for Philosophy Tube by both public and private backers.
Thorn’s April 2021 dismantling of the politics of right-wing culture warrior Jordan Peterson has racked up almost two million views and was sponsored by Curiosity Stream, a US media streaming service. The video opens with a black screen disclosing the support provided by the company and claiming Thorn would donate her fee to the feminist campaign group, Sisters Uncut. The video is also emblazoned with YouTube’s “paid promotion” logo.
Yet no such disclaimer referring to support from the Royal Institution can be found on any of her other uploads. And that may be because the Covid campaign was intended to be covert.
Astroturf campaign seeks to achieve ‘measurable cognitive shift’
The “Challenging Pseudoscience” operation designed for Thorn was launched in February 2021 by liberal science journalist Angela Saini. The author of several popular titles and a forthcoming book on “the origins of patriarchy,” she is also part of The Lancet Covid-19 Commission’s Task Force on Global Health Diplomacy.
The commission’s chief, Peter Daszak, a zoologist who serves as president of the US-based NGO known as EcoHealth Alliance, was forced to resign in June over conflict of interest issues.
In the years leading up to the outbreak of Covid-19, Daszak worked extensively on bat coronaviruses and gain of function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. His organization received tens of millions in funding from the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a division “[countering] weapons of mass destruction and improvised threat networks.” In December 2019, Daszak warned that coronaviruses can “get into human cells,” one can “manipulate them in the lab pretty easily,” and “you can’t vaccinate against them.”
The host of Saini’s project, the Royal Institute, was founded in 1799 by British scientists of the day “with the aim of introducing new technologies and teaching science to the general public.” Landed gentry and royalty have always occupied the Institution’s highest levels. Queen Elizabeth II’s cousin, Field Marshal Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent, has served as president since 1976.
The files indicate that the Royal Institution enlisted the services of Valent Projects, a communications firm “[working] with clients in the UK and all over the world to counter disinformation and strengthen the bonds between people.”
Valent was founded by Amil Khan, a former Reuters and BBC reporter who officially left journalism “to help good causes navigate the new information landscape.”
From February, Valent Projects proposed a “two-phase” project to “develop an understanding of the psychological drivers behind the generation and spread of anti-vaxxer narratives.” It planned to exploit this data “to develop and test public messaging responses.”
The findings would “inform other programming by Challenging Pseudoscience… as well as other stakeholders including the science community and concerned governments and public health bodies.”
In the campaign’s first phase, extensive online interviews were to be conducted, along with “ethnographic research” to secure “comprehensive understanding of the key online audiences driving anti-vaxxing mis/disinformation around the Coronavirus pandemic.”
Valent Projects then planned to “draw together insights” from these findings, developing “comprehensive audience profiles” – including “demographic information” – to design a “mass appeal social media campaign fronted and owned by prominent social media figure Abigail Thorn,” who runs online channel Philosophy Tube.
Valent indicated its intent to exploit Philosophy Tube’s sizable platform to “achieve a measurable cognitive shift [emphasis added] in the target audience.”
Reaching the intended viewers was forecast to be a significant task in itself, however. Valent noted most Philosophy Tube viewers are within the 18 to 35 age range, but “existing research” suggested the “most prolific consumers of pseudoscience material” were over the age of 45.
The firm felt the “best topic to address this issue is probably along the lines of ‘the thing about expertise’ [sic].” Fittingly, in August 2020 Thorn uploaded a video, “Who’s afraid of the experts?” Featuring comedian Adam Conover of the popular show, “Adam Ruins Everything,” the 45 minute-long defense of the scientific consensus on the HIV/AIDS debate is the first result in any search for the term “vaccine” on Philosophy Tube’s channel.
The leaked documents thus expose what had long been suspected by critics of BreadTube: the popular social media collective has been instrumentalized by powerful interests with connections to Western intelligence agencies.
An astroturfed information warfare campaign hiding in plain sight
Multiple requests for comment from The Grayzone to Abigail Thorn’s agent and Angela Saini have gone unanswered.
When quizzed about the leaked files on Twitter, Valent Projects CEO Amil Khan flew into a rage, angrily asserting they were “obtained through hacking and then doctored,” in the manner of “classic doxing,” and threatened legal action against this journalist for publicizing them.
Khan later pumped out a series of tweets aimed at controlling the damage of his imminent exposure. In one, he falsely claimed that a co-author of this piece would publish their reporting in “Russian state affiliated media.”
Yet when challenged about his claim of doctoring, Khan did not respond.
Subsequent requests for clarity on which elements of the documents were maliciously altered and how that might have taken place have also gone unanswered. But evidence of the secret project’s existence was hiding in plain sight.
For example, Valent Projects lists the Royal Institution on its website as a client. An accompanying writeup notes it “developed and implemented a data-led behaviour change campaign [emphasis added] aimed at understanding and working with the psychological drivers behind anti-vaxer sentiment in the UK” for the organization.
Similarly, a post on the company’s official LinkedIn page refers to an “analysis of tens of thousands of UK-based social media users “posting/sharing anti-vax content online” it conducted for Countering Pseudoscience, which would “be used to inform ethnographic research designed to understand ‘why’ people hold these views.” In other words, a specific programming strand outlined in the documents.
From Valent Projects’ LinkedIn page
Moreover, none other than Abigail Thorn was guest-of-honor at Challenging Pseudoscience’s launch event in February, “Vaccines: Warriors and Worriers,” which featured a debate on “how vaccines work, why people are skeptical despite the evidence, and how disinformation about vaccines spreads online.”
Abigail Thorn of Philosophy Tube participating in the Royal Institution’s “Vaccines: Warriors and Worriers” event
Also on the event’s panel were an immunologist named Zania Stamataki and Marianna Spring, the BBC’s first “specialist disinformation reporter.” She has repeatedly perpetuated falsehoods about the size of anti-lockdown protests in 2020 and nature of their participants. In a bizarre experiment, she furthermore personally set up numerous “fake troll” accounts on assorted online platforms that “engaged” with “misogynistic” content, allegedly for academic purposes.
In May, Thorn published a characteristically ornate video, “Ignorance & Censorship,” which touched on the topic of “disinformation” and vaccines. The next month, Challenging Pseudoscience convened a similarly named panel discussion, “Misinformation or Censorship.”
Then, the newly-launched Challenging Pseudoscience podcast shared two prior Royal Institution debates – the aforementioned Vaccines: Warriors and worriers, and “Disinformation and how to counter it,” which featured none other than Amil Khan as a speaker. It would be entirely unsurprising if this deluge was a coordinated effort.
A wide-ranging, long-running, cross-platform propaganda campaign involving multiple actors requires substantial resources. Until 2020, however, the Royal Institution struggled financially despite its royal patronage and elite trustees.
The organization has been forced to rent out its grand central London headquarters for conferences, corporate bashes and weddings. To plug a multimillion pound budget deficit in late 2015, the Royal Institution auctioned off treasured first editions of works by Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton and other eminent scientists. The fire sale prompted the BBC to ask whether the organization was on the verge of collapse.
Miraculously though, in October 2020, the Institution received hundreds of thousands of pounds from the UK government’s £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund “to help face the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic and ensure it has a sustainable future.”
An accompanying press release noted the Royal Institution had over the course of the pandemic “[developed] a successful programme of weekly science talks online” broadcast via its “well-established” YouTube channel, which today boasts 1.11 million subscribers. The cash injection would “increase the number of livestreamed science talks” hosted by the organization, and help it develop “new digital content.”
Valent Projects staffer Hamish Falconer has disclosed that the “exciting” Challenging Pseudoscience campaign has also received “generous support” from the Open Society Foundations of CIA-adjacent billionaire George Soros.
As the Washington Post’s David Ignatius reported in 1991, Soros was at the heart of a network of “overt operators” helping US intelligence carry out “spyless coups” against former Soviet satellite states.
In July 2021, Soros teamed up with fellow billionaire Bill Gates to purchase a UK-based Covid-19 test developer for $41 million.
Three months later, as Alex Rubinstein documented for The Grayzone, Soros partnered with tech oligarch Reid Hoffmann to found Good Information Inc, a social media censorship operation marketed under the aegis of “countering disinformation.”
Hamish is the son of Charlie Falconer, a longtime friend and former roommate of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. Following Blair’s May 1997 election victory, Falconer senior was elevated to the unelected House of Lords, and served in a series of high-ranking government posts throughout his pal’s tenure.
Along the way, he applied “huge pressure” to Attorney General Lord Goldsmith to change his view that invading Iraq would be illegal. His intervention may have played a decisive role in greenlighting the war of aggression.
Valent founder “embedded into terrorist organizations,” ran Syria psy-ops for armed extremists
Hamish Falconer’s hiring at Valent Projects in March 2021 highlights the firm’s deep ties to the UK’s intelligence apparatus. At the time, he was ostensibly on leave from the UK Foreign Office.
Khan trumpeted Falconer’s hire on LinkedIn, declaring that “he brings the action end to our work – experimenting and innovating with digital influence for good.” Having met in Pakistan “over a decade ago,” the pair “have not stopped talking and comparing notes since.”
Falconer’s spartan online résumé sheds little light on his professional history, noting only a spell at the UK government’s Department for International Development, followed by a seven-month gap, before he joined the Foreign Office as a ‘Diplomat’ until August 2020.
No detail is offered either on where Falconer has been posted, or what his role entailed at any point. He is a graduate of Yale University’s Maurice R. Greenberg World Fellows Program, named for the AIG founder who nearly became CIA director. The Greenberg fellows program identifies and grooms prospective future influencers, including no shortage of US-backed would-be coup leaders. Among the most famous alumni of the program is jailed Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny.
The Greenberg program’s profile of Falconer states, “he has led the Foreign Office’s Terrorism Response Team, UK efforts to start a peace process in Afghanistan and served in Pakistan and South Sudan,” and served a stint at the National Crime Agency – London’s equivalent of the FBI.
Counter-terror is not a stated Foreign Office purview, but just one of “three core areas of focus” for the UK foreign intelligence service MI6. It may just be a coincidence the agency’s spies typically pose as ‘diplomats’ overseas.
By contrast, Khan’s activities between December 2008, when he left his position as ‘hostile environments reporter’ for the BBC, and October 2017, when he joined elite UK national security think tank Chatham House as an ‘associate fellow’ – the next entry on his public CV – can be pieced together with much greater certitude, but still only approximately.
Valent Projects founder Amil Khan
A leaked document indicates that he first crossed paths with Falconer while managing a ‘countering violent extremism’ propaganda campaign for the UK government in Islamabad. The file relates to a Foreign Office funded effort to train “articulate Syrian armed and civilian grassroots opposition entities,” and promote them to “Syrian and international audiences” as a credible alternative to the government of Bashar al-Assad.
The project was delivered by ARK, a shadowy intelligence contractor founded by the likely MI6 operative, Alistair Harris, which has raked in innumerable lucrative contracts from waging covert information warfare operations on behalf of the UK government.
Khan was heavily involved in ARK’s Syrian efforts. Another leaked file, outlining some of the company’s work inside Syria shows that it oversaw a “rebranding” of the CIA-armed Free Syrian Army to portray it as a moderate, secular force unconnected to the hardcore jihadist factions that dominated the armed opposition. Khan is named as one of three operatives managing the media office of the parallel Syrian National Coalition government controlled by London through intelligence cutouts like ARK.
This work placed Khan in extremely close quarters with members of violent ‘rebel’ factions implicated in hideous crimes against humanity. That he “[provided] political and media support to opposition political and military groups” in Syria has been openly confirmed. A scathing internal Whitehall review of the Foreign Office’s information warfare operations in the country concluded they were “poorly planned, probably illegal, and cost lives.”
It wasn’t the first time Khan been in such murderous company. At some point after leaving ARK in August 2014, he joined InCoStrat, another contractor that conducted destabilizing psy-ops on the UK government’s behalf throughout the Syrian crisis. InCoStrat delivered “strategic communications support” to a variety of armed groups on-the-ground, including the notoriously brutal, Saudi-backed militia known as Jaysh al-Islam.
Khan also played a central role in this dubious initiative. In a document discussing its ability to “[develop] contacts in Arabic-speaking conflict affected states,” InCoStrat bragged how, “in his previous career as a journalist,” Khan “established relationships with, and embedded himself into terrorist organizations in the UK and the Middle East,” gaining “unique insight into their narratives, communication methods, recruitment processes and management of networks” as a result.
InCoStrat was founded by ex-Foreign Office political officer Emma Winberg and UK military intelligence journeyman Paul Tilley, a former director of Strategic Communications for the UK Ministry of Defence in the Middle East and North Africa. Winberg left to join Mayday Rescue, parent ‘charity’ of the fraudulent humanitarian group known as the White Helmets. She later married its founder, James Le Mesurier, who died in mysterious circumstances in 2019 after damaging revelations of financial corruption came to light.
A broad landscape of state-backed Covid propaganda ops
It’s probable the “Countering Pseudoscience” project is just one part of a wider landscape of online astroturf initiatives designed to restore cratering public trust in authorities around Covid policy.
Valent Projects has also conducted work for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a neoconservative think tank, researching “violent actors using the ‘dark web’ to mobilise recruits and threaten public figures in Europe.” This initiative was likely also aimed at countering lockdown opposition.
Back in April 2020, Khan appeared on a panel discussion convened by the organization, “Countering Disinformation in a Time of COVID19.”
At the start of December, the Institute released a brief report, “Between conspiracy and extremism: A long COVID threat?”, which attempted to frame the “radicalization” of anti-lockdown protesters as a terrorist threat. What input Khan may have had in this publication was unclear.
Valent Projects is just one of an array of companies that have brought psy-ops techniques honed in Syria and other theaters of Western information warfare back home with them, like soldiers returning from battlefields marketing their deadly skills to private security and intelligence firms. And Abigail Thorn is just one YouTuber, at a time when the British state is known to be maliciously recruiting digital personalities to further its interests across the globe.
For example, Foreign Office contractor Zinc Network maintains a clandestine nexus of Russian-speaking social media influencers throughout the former Soviet Union, to promote “media integrity, democratic values [and] complex social issues,” a campaign so intensive its relationship with these individuals necessitates “daily management.” This squadron of undercover psy-ops warriors are supported by an expert “in-house team of Russian speaking producers, researchers and digital growth strategists” in London, helping them create, edit and promote their output.
Coincidentally, Zinc has been engaged in efforts since the onset of the pandemic to concoct a link between extremist activities and anti-lockdown, vaccine hesitant views. It has also published research on how to best market a test-and-trace app to UK citizens, “as part of a broader research project on public understanding of and support for Artificial Intelligence.”
It is simply inconceivable that similar operations have not been enacted elsewhere in the world, or that this phenomenon is exclusive to the UK. Further, it is impossible to know if the next slick viral video countering grassroots dissent of an official narrative is state or quasi-state propaganda, cleverly crafted to induce a “cognitive shift” in viewers, in which the star of the online show is effectively an intelligence asset rattling off a script drawn up by full-time spooks.
Patrick Vallance’s Defence of SAGE Modelling Fails to Convince
By Will Jones | The Daily Sceptic | December 24, 2021
Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance has come to the defence of SAGE and its modelling after some torrid headlines this week following a Twitter exchange between lead modeller Professor Graham Medley and Spectator editor Fraser Nelson in which Professor Medley revealed that SAGE had not been asked to model less disastrous scenarios.
Writing in the Times, Dr. Vallance appeared directly to contradict some of the statements made by Prof. Medley, leaving observers baffled as to which of the two is correct as it is unclear how both can be. Dr. Vallance claimed that modelling of other, less severe scenarios, had been done and presented to Government, while Prof. Medley said it had not, at least by his team at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). Dr. Vallance writes:
The modellers always have to make assumptions and do so across a wide range of possibilities, some optimistic and some pessimistic. They do not, contrary to what you might have heard, only model the worst outcomes. They will make assumptions about vaccine effectiveness, they will model different levels of viral transmission, mixing patterns and different levels of disease severity. The range of assumptions modelled can be very broad; for disease severity for Omicron one model explored a range from 10% of Delta severity through to 100%. For immunity a range of assumptions on vaccine efficacy, speed of vaccine rollout and vaccine coverage in different parts of the population were explored.
This claim is backed up by the minutes of the most recent SAGE meeting, published yesterday, although it doesn’t square with what Prof. Medley told Fraser Nelson. Prof. Medley, who chairs the SAGE modelling committee, said that lower virulence scenarios don’t “add any further information” and implied his committee – SPI-M – had not been asked to provide them.
Fraser asked Prof. Medley: “I guess the question is why LSHTM did not (like JP Morgan) include a scenario of lower virulence – given that this is a very-plausible option that changes outlook massively.”
What would be the point of that? Not a snarky question – genuine to know what you think decision makers would learn from that scenario… If somebody draws a line on a graph it doesn’t add any further information. Decision-makers are generally only interested in situations where decisions have to be made… That scenario doesn’t inform anything. Decision-makers don’t have to decide if nothing happens… We generally model what we are asked to model. There is a dialogue in which policy teams discuss with the modellers what they need to inform their policy.
Fraser later observed that Prof. Medley appeared to be saying his brief was very limited and did not include less severe assumptions and outcomes.
He seemed to suggest that he has been given a very limited brief, and asked to churn out worse-case scenarios without being asked to comment on how plausible they are… Note how careful he is to stay vague on whether any of the various scenarios in the SAGE document are likely or even plausible. What happened to the original system of presenting a ‘reasonable worse-case scenario’ together with a central scenario? And what’s the point of modelling if it doesn’t say how likely any these scenarios are?
From what Professor Medley says, it’s unclear that the most-likely scenario is even being presented to ministers this time around. So how are they supposed to make good decisions? I highly doubt that Sajid Javid is only asking to churn out models that make the case for lockdown. That instruction, if it is being issued, will have come from somewhere else.
Dr. Vallance, on the other hand, says:
Often the job of scientific advice is to allow ministers to understand both a central case and the uncertainty surrounding it, what drives that uncertainty and when the uncertainty might be reduced. Speaking scientific truth to power is a difficult but necessary part of the democratic process if ministers are to be able to make an informed decision. This is what SAGE does.
If Dr. Vallance is accurately describing the advice given to ministers by SAGE, why did LSHTM not model those scenarios and estimate their likelihood? Why did the chairman of the SAGE modelling committee state that such scenarios had not been requested because they do not add anything useful to the discussion? The only explanation I can think of is that the broader range of scenarios referred to in the minutes of the SAGE meeting dated December 20th was not reflected in the SAGE memo circulated to ministers for that afternoon’s Cabinet meeting. That is, SAGE modelled less gloomy scenarios but didn’t bother to include them in the advice it gave to the Cabinet.
Dr. Vallance claims SAGE is a neutral adviser, being neither pessimistic nor optimistic and not pushing for any “dogmatic” answer or directive.
It is not the job of SAGE to take a particular policy stance or to either spread gloom or give Panglossian optimism. Ministers and the cabinet need to hear the information whether uncomfortable or encouraging. They of course need to factor it in to all the other information that provides inputs to policy decisions. SAGE does not provide dogmatic answers or directives, it provides information, advice, scenarios and helps determine possible consequences of actions. Part of the advice may contain a “reasonable worst case scenario” – data that are often seized upon.
But they are just that – a reasonable worst case scenario and one of many possible outcomes and trajectories presented to ministers for planning purposes and decision making.
But Dr. Vallance is failing to acknowledge the reason that prompted the need for his defence of SAGE modelling in the first place, which is that the chairman of his main modelling committee had stated that they had not been asked to provide alternative scenarios to ministers because it “doesn’t add any further information”. Dr. Vallance implies that others are at fault for having arbitrarily “seized upon” the reasonable worst case scenario presented to ministers, ignoring that the present controversy arose because the Government’s lead modeller said no other scenarios were modelled because they were pointless.
Dr. Vallance is also being, at best, naïve about the key role SAGE’s projections and advice have played in pushing the Government into making extreme interventions. His comments here about it being “not the job of SAGE to take a particular policy stance or to either spread gloom or give Panglossian optimism” are contradicted by his enthusiastic endorsement of boosters earlier in the same article – “Vaccine boosters are crucial” – and by what he told the BBC in October about his risk-averse approach to the pandemic.
My mantra for a long time during this (pandemic) has been… you’ve got to go sooner than you want to in terms of taking interventions. You’ve got to go harder than you want to, and you’ve got to go more geographically broad than you want to. And that is the Sage advice. And that’s what I’ve been saying. And I will say it going forward, and the prime minister knows that’s what I think. And he knows that’s what I would do in that situation.
That sounds very much like he’s offering policy recommendations to me, and recommendations of precisely the kind he’s denying SAGE makes in his Times article.
Dr. Vallance concludes with a defence of the role of science and the scientific method in the pandemic.
Science has served us extraordinarily well during this pandemic and has given us many insights as well as new diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics. Science is self-correcting, and advances by overturning previous dogma and challenging accepted truths. Encouraging a range of opinions, views and interpretation of data is all part of the process. No scientist would ever claim, in this fast-changing and unpredictable pandemic, to have a monopoly of wisdom on what happens next.
Yet two of America’s top scientists, Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci, have been exposed as plotting to smear the eminent authors of the Great Barrington Declaration. Dr. Collins wrote to Dr. Fauci that the declaration was the work of “three fringe epidemiologists” and “seems to be getting a lot of attention”. He added that “there needs to be a quick and devastating published takedown of its premises. I don’t see anything like that online yet – is it underway?” Shortly afterwards an online ‘fact check‘ appeared, courtesy of a team that included U.K. Government-linked MP Neil O’Brien.
So much for challenging accepted truths and encouraging a range of opinions.
It’s good to see the gloomy lockdown zealots on the back foot for a change and having to defend themselves. I just wish they could stick with the facts rather than spinning make-believe and changing the ‘facts’ to fit the narrative rather than vice-versa.
Stop Press: Dr. Jenny Harries, Chief Executive of the UKHSA, has also taken to the airwaves in defence of the advisers’ doomy forecasts, telling the BBC that while there’s “a glimmer of Christmas hope in the findings that we published yesterday”, it “definitely isn’t yet at the point where we could downgrade that serious threat”, referring to her earlier claim that Omicron was “probably the most significant threat we’ve had since the start of the pandemic”. For evidence she pointed to the “quite staggering” speed of spread compared to previous variants – despite her own agency publishing data this week showing that the household secondary attack rate (the proportion of household contacts an infected person infects) of Omicron is lower than the direct secondary attack rate (an almost equivalent measure) of the Alpha variant this time last year.
Two thirds of recent UK “covid hospitalizations” are not for covid
el gato malo – bad cattitude – decmeber 26, 2021
at what point will the world wake up to the fact that we are currently inhabiting far more of a testdemic than a pandemic?
data from the UK is showing that only 1 in 3 recent “covid hospitalizations” is actually in the hospital for covid. the vast majority were there for something else and tested positive after admission. this is literally tripling the reported count of new patients.
“Two-thirds of new Covid hospital patients in England were actually admitted for a different ailment, MailOnline’s analysis of NHS data suggests – as a growing number of studies show Omicron is much milder than Delta.
In the two weeks to December 21, hospitals in England recorded 563 new coronavirus inpatients — the majority of which are believed to be Omicron now that the variant is the country’s dominant stain.
But just 197 (35 per cent) were being primarily treated for Covid, with the remaining 366 (65 per cent) only testing positive after being admitted for something else.
Experts told MailOnline it was important to distinguish between admissions primarily for Covid so that rising numbers do not spook ministers into more social restrictions or scare the public from going to hospital.
The rising number of so-called ‘incidental cases’ – people who are only diagnosed with the virus after going to the NHS for a different ailment – is in line with the picture in South Africa.
Studies in the epicentre Gauteng province have shown up to three-quarters of Omicron patients there were not admitted primarily for the virus.”
how, at this stage of affairs and after 2 years of time to learn to get the stats straight is everyone still getting this all so wrong? it outright beggars belief.
how is anyone supposed to make decisions or analyze data when the quality is this low?
if you relentlessly test everyone in sight, symptomatic or no, for covid using overclocked PCR tests at 40+ Ct you’re going to find it everywhere. these tests were never actually suited for purpose and have been locking onto trace virus, dead virus, and all manner of other non-clinical positives.
this is not a sound basis for analysis or behavior.
this has been widely known for ages. and yet it persists unabated.
it has spilled over into every other statistic.
hospitalization has been massively tainted by it as nosocomial spread is rife at the trace level. this issue gets amplified by the payout for finding such “cases” as it allows for more billing on new codes and access to additional insurance and coverage pools. this has turned the hyper-aggressive hunt for cases in hospitals into a huge profit center.
deaths are the same. death with (or within 30 days of) discernable trace virus detection by super sensitive assay is an outlandishly inclusive definition that vastly exceeds actual “death from covid” as a primary or even significant cause.
nothing else is counted this way. ever.
not in all of human history has anything remotely like this taken place.
we’re running more covid tests in a week in the US that we’ve run flu tests in entire decades and more in a season than we’ve run flu tests in the history of the nation.
is it any wonder that with such inclusive definitions, over-amplified detection modalities, and obsessive and malincentivized testing regimes that this all looks so “unprecedented”?
of course it does. we’ve never looked for anything in all of human history the way we’re looking for covid. what other result could one even plausibly expect?
we’ve tested our way into a pit of inescapable dodgy data quicksand.
continuing to treat this “data” as though it is clinically or societally meaningful has become a far greater problem than the disease itself.
the cure, of course, is simple:
stop this OCD level testing strategy.
- stop testing the asymptomatic altogether
- dial down the amplification on PCR to 30Ct at a max and probably something more like 26
- stop obsessively testing healthy children
- stop encouraging people to test themselves over and over and to demand the same from their friends and family
sending out rapid tests to everyone is not good public health policy. it’s epidemiological derangement.
it’s cosplay medicine that perpetuates panic through performative ritual and obeisance. it serves no useful end save digging this hole deeper.
it will not end, assuage, or mitigate spread or the pandemic. it will only lead to more misguided perception and response.
this is not normal. it’s not science. it’s not even sane.
in another big win for irony (who, let’s face it has been having a banner year) the relentless fear and overtesting is actually becoming a problem for hospitals.
the testdemic has become the problem and is combining with a profound lack of perspective to generate astonishing harm.
“a virus so dangerous that you need to test for it to tell it apart from the common cold” is a laughable pretext for hijacking half the planet.
it’s clear these folks cannot hear themselves anymore.
public health has turned into some sort of golem that cannot be turned off and will mindlessly keep digging a trench until the heat death of the universe unless someone steps in and disables it.
so stop it. stop getting tested.
when you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes and this is a very, very stupid game we’re all taking part in…
The Beginning of the End? The virus part of the pandemic will probably soon be over.
eugyppius | December 26, 2021
Early reports that Omicron is substantially milder than other SARS-2 strains are every day confirmed by new data. A month into the unprecedented South African case spike, driven entirely by Omicron, Corona deaths remain low. It’s earlier days in the United Kingdom, where Omicron is only just over half of cases. So far, though, it is the same story there:
In the coming months, Omicron will outcompete all other lineages everywhere in the world. At that point, Corona will have completed its transformation into a mild coronavirus that nobody should care about, in the same way that nobody cares about other common human-infecting coronaviruses like hCoV-OC43. Unforeseen developments are always possible; Omicron might in time acquire greater pathogenicity. Particularly if we insist on vaccinating widely, we might drive its evolution in new and potentially dangerous directions. Those are, however, mere possibilities. Right now, everything tells us that the virus part of the pandemic will soon be over.
The major question, is how the rest of the Corona Circus will respond. Some thoughts on that:
In the short term, rising cases will probably fuel demand for more vaccinations. This is the blunt, stupid way that our public health experts respond to infections now, but it is not a game that will go well for the vaccinators. The vaccines will fail even more profoundly in stopping Omicron transmission, and there will be far fewer severe outcomes for them to prevent. I don’t know how long the crackpot vaccination regime can survive overt absurdities like this.
Omicron will probably also unwind the broader containment regime. South Africa has already abandoned their most intrusive tracing, quarantine and isolation policies, declaring a shift towards mitigation (which is what they should have done in the first place). Trying to defeat a minimally symptomatic highly contagious virus with the comically inadequate tools of the contact tracer is simply too ridiculous.
In the longer term, things look much more uncertain. It is hard to shake the feeling that Corona has swept away the last vestiges of liberal democracy in Europe, and perhaps in the whole world. I don’t think these political systems have been very good for the West, but our new theocratic regimes steered by the Corona astrologers have been vastly worse. As soon as the hysteria boils off, many of these villains will begin trying to get the panic machine up and running again. The alternative is a future where nobody much cares what they have to think, where they’re no longer able to interfere in millions of lives, and – perhaps most crucially – where a lot of politicians, journalists, and ordinary people begin to realise what utter failures they and their policies have been. There are failures that lose you your job, there are failures that make you a public disgrace, and then there are their failures, the kind that lead to arrest, indictment, imprisonment, and worse.
WHO approves Novavax and COVAXIN
By Steve Kirsch | December 26, 2021
ICYMI: On December 17, the WHO has granted the Novavax vaccine Emergency Use Approval.
The Novavax vaccine was granted emergency use authorization in November in Indonesia, the first country to do so, and was soon followed by the Philippines. The company has also filed with the U.K. and the European Medicines Agency, with plans to apply to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration before the end of this year.
This is good news because this vaccine is a “traditional” vaccine that does not transfect your existing cells, so it “should” have a much better safety profile than any of the three vaccines now available in the US for two major reasons:
- No transfection. All of the existing vaccines basically invade your cells and tell them to express a spike protein; your immune system may then start attacking your own organs and kill you as explained here. This doesn’t happen with Novavax because you are injected with the antigen.
- A controlled amount of antigen. The other major safety benefit is that a controlled amount of antigen is injected. With the mRNA vaccines, the amount of antigen that is ultimately expressed is a complete crap shoot.
Does this mean that Novavax is “safe.” No, it just means it has the potential to be safer assuming they didn’t screw up anything else. And even if they got everything right, simply injecting particles with the spike protein could be dangerous. In short, it’s possible that there may not be a safe vaccine for this virus.
Certainly Dr. Richard Fleming doesn’t think the Novavax vaccine is safe. One of my followers wrote: “it’s viral like particles (spikes) adhered to plastic inner core, mixed with proprietary saponin adjuvant called Matrix M1.”
Are you feeling lucky?
However, I seriously doubt the FDA will approve it for use in the US since it would take away market share from the other manufacturers
The FDA doesn’t approve things based on science or safety anymore. Those days are gone.
If this vaccine were approved in the US, everyone in the US would want it and avoid the other three existing vaccines like the plague. Their market share would drop to zero. So it isn’t going to be available here. The FDA will make up a reason it isn’t safe. So it will not be accepted in the US (e.g., for satisfying the unethical vaccine mandates) even if it works just as well as the other vaccines. Mandates are not about safety; they are about forcing compliance with what the government wants you to do.
The good news is that other parts of the world will have a safer alternative which is better than what they have now. So in that sense, this is “good news.”
COVAXIN approved on November 3, 2021
COVAXIN is another traditional vaccine that was approved by the WHO on November 3, 2021. Many people believe it is a safer option than any of the alternatives.
The vaccine is formulated from an inactivated SARS-CoV-2 antigen.
What I would do today: avoid all of them
If I were forced to make a choice of vaccine today, and COVAXIN and Novavax were among the options, I would definitely look at the current evidence and make a choice.
However, if I weren’t forced to choose a COVID vaccine now, I would still refuse to be vaccinated because COVID isn’t deadly or dangerous if you know how to recognize and treat it.
Only after the safety profile is well established in large populations, would I even consider it. I’ve learned my lesson never to trust the regulatory agencies and drug companies again.
“In VAERS we trust.”
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Argentina’s Javier Milei sells out his country for Israel
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Book Review
The Greatest Threat to World Peace? A Review of Daniele Ganser’s ‘USA: The Ruthless Empire’
Review by Marilyn Langlois | November 10, 2023
If you regard the United States as perhaps flawed but overall a force for good in the world . . .
If you scoff at the notion that the US, a republic founded on principles of freedom and democracy, has morphed into a world empire, perpetrating assassinations, coups d’état, acts of terror and illegal warfare . . .
If you want to promote peace but haven’t yet explored deceptive events that precipitate US warmongering . . .
. . . here is a volume that will clear the air and paint an honest picture of the significant, not-so-rosy impact US foreign policy and actions have had in the world around us.
USA: The Ruthless Empire, by Swiss historian and peace researcher Daniele Ganser, is the newly published English language translation of his book Imperium USA, originally written in German and published in 2020. Here is a summary of key points — including some lesser-known ones — along with remedies for a more peaceful future, that are covered in the book. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Argentina’s Javier Milei sells out his country for Israel
- Putting Nukes in Finland Won’t Make Country Safer, Finnish Politician Cautions
- Ukrainian drone strike kills worker at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant
- What the West Hides About Soviet Role in De-Colonization
- Villains of Judea: Douglas Feith
- US pension fund invests hundreds of millions in weapons firms supplying Israel
- US bill to grant Americans serving in Israeli army same rights as US troops
- What a president, a movie star, a congressman, and a cell phone all dared to say
- ‘An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership’: Merz
- Pakistan Throws Open Its Gates for Iran’s Transit Trade to Third Countries
- If Americans Knew
- Palestinians in Gaza Want to Rebuild Food Systems. Israel Isn’t Letting Them.
- Under Trump, Green Card Seekers Face New Scrutiny for Views on Israel
- Sheep Theft Sent Shockwaves Through a Palestinian Village. Then, a 12-year-old Boy Was Shot Dead
- Trump alum helps Israel mount AI influence campaign
- Dispatches From Catastrophe
- Despite Denials, AIPAC Is Now Funding Campaign of Ala Stanford In Philadelphia
- Israel’s neighbors are irate about its treatment of religious sites
- Israel escalates in Gaza: killing, torture, hunger – Daily Update
- Six Months into Gaza Ceasefire, Setting the Record Straight About Aid
- ‘Silent suffering’: Why children in Gaza are losing their ability to speak
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
Aletho News 