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The religion of climate alarmism

By Alex Starling | Reaction | August 22, 2023

The Times’ Juliet Samuel points out that “climate change belief should be tempered by scepticism of dramatic predictions of what’s coming, theories rolled out with great fanfare and based upon massive simplifications”. Iain Martin, in a piece entitled “Naive net zero groupthink misses the point of rising geopolitical dangers“, wonders “who will be the first mainstream party leader to stop telling us fairytales and test whether the electorate can handle the truth of our situation?”.

In a hard-hitting polemic, Gerald Warner expounds on the “great fallacy regarding climate change”, namely “the assumption that because the perceived threat was global, it required a supranational, one-size-fits-all response”. From the Left, Thomas Fazi writes for UnHerd that “nightmares and elitist fantasies” have replaced “the actual material conditions of people as the basis for politics – ‘saving the planet’ becomes more important than saving actual human beings”. Similarly, Ralph Schoellhammer (“The human cost of Net Zero”) highlights the “dangerous, infantile outlook” of the climate alarmist lobby who “indulge in fantasies about the energy transition”.

One wishes that these voices had been raised before today, as the UK is committed via the Climate Change Act 2008 to rapidly decarbonising itself. The purported aim of this is to fast-track our society’s transformation into some sort of mythical evergreen carbon-free nirvana. This single-minded demonisation of carbon (and carbon emissions) brings to mind various possible fallacies – what if we are missing the woods for the trees?

It is an inconvenient and unfortunate truth that the momentum of a speeding juggernaut requires more energy and time to slow down. If only we could attach the Net Zero juggernaut to a generator to feed the grid. Ironically enough, in the wonderfully credulous world of the woke warriors against warming, it seems that such real-life parodies exist.

Resistance to Net Zero groupthink has to date been limited to a lonely chorus of diehard sceptics who have been quietly and systematically removed from the public square. This is all the more surprising when one considers the extent to which history has been rewritten, and past misdemeanours forgotten. The 2009 story of “climategate” has been almost completely erased from the national consciousness. A reminder: the efforts of key players in the climate alarmist camp to produce data that supported the AGW (anthropogenic global warming) hypothesis were shown to be somewhat irregular. Computer code that was used to produce temperature models required the application of copious quantities of “fudge factors” to produce the temperature hockey sticks that were needed to scare the populace.

Don’t take my word for it: even George Monbiot remarked at the time that the behaviour was “unscientific”. He also pointed out that one of the key protagonists “seems to be advocating potentially criminal activity” when suggesting that emails subject to an FOI request be deleted. Monbiot then lapsed – true to form – back into the language that we are used to hearing from such commentators about “deniers” who deserve everything coming to them due to uttering heresies that challenge the state religion.

Rare as it may be for me to agree with Monbiot on anything, he did claim to be someone who has “championed the science” and stated that “we should be the first to demand that [the science] is unimpeachable”. I agree with this last statement. However, and here is where we disagree, the science he is promoting is most certainly not settled and, therefore, not unimpeachable, despite what the tellybox might be telling you.

One of the entities that controls this narrative is the IPCC, the International Panel on Climate Change, a UN body. Through various working groups, this supranational religious order regularly publishes papal decrees that update the liturgy to be distributed to the masses by the priestly orders, such as the Behavioural Insights Team, aka the Nudge Unit. One of the fundamental tenets of this religion is that “one of the defining challenges of the 21st century [is] human-induced climate change”.  Specifically, there is an irreversible “tipping point” of warming due to the anthropogenic influence of greenhouse gases (CO2, methane, etc.) being released into the atmosphere.

As I have written about previously, heretics who speak out against the priesthood’s wishes get quite rapidly closed down. In fact, it seems that the priesthood wishes to make such wrongspeak a criminal offence. To limit the chances of any questioning plebeian masses going off-piste, the UN works with popular search engines to ensure that top search results align with their orthodoxy. Thankfully, the flailings of the Monbiots and ludicrous talk of “global boiling” from old men in suits have provoked some modest pushback from certain quarters. The new head of the IPCC, Jim Skea, has struck a different tone from his predecessor: “The world won’t end if it warms by more than 1.5 degrees”.  Such words are in marked contrast to recent claims about man-made climate catastrophes and fatally undermine the justification for our aggressive Net Zero policies.

But the underlying articles of faith remain, as yet, unchanged. Apparently, we must still “battle against climate change”. The “short-term focus should remain expanding renewable electricity to reduce emissions from fossil fuel electricity generation and from internal combustion engine vehicles”.  Hmm.  Forgive my scepticism about throwing perfectly functioning vehicles into landfills to be replaced by a completely new technology. A new technology with a supply chain based on raiding the earth’s crust for rare elements with an as-yet untested post-processing/reuse/recycling infrastructure.

It is high time that the heretics get to say their piece. It is an article of faith for the IPCC that reducing CO2 (and other greenhouse gas) emissions can somehow effect a reversal of recent climate changes. This is a sacrament upon which rests the whole Net Zero edifice. Sub-sacraments are threefold. Firstly, CO2 emissions have gone up materially over the last few hundred years. Secondly, this is primarily due to human activity since the industrial revolution. Thirdly, there is a direct causal link that these emissions have created most – if not all – global warming/boiling/climate change.  These all have to be true to justify the breakneck pace of decarbonisation efforts.

The first point, that CO2 emissions have definitely increased, is generally accepted even though the absolute increase of CO2 in the air has gone up over the last 100 years or so from 0.03 per cent to just over 0.04 per cent. This level is substantially lower than the optimum for plant growth – just ask anyone involved in food production, but evidence for the subsequent points is by no means clear-cut.

Going into specifics, CO2 is often a lagging indicator of temperature (both in the short, medium and longer-term), or seems disconnected from temperature variations. Moreover, if it is taken as read that CO2 levels are unprecedented in the current Holocene (i.e. since the last ice age), then we have a somewhat unsatisfactory scenario whereby the existing literature – both scientific and of professional historians – regarding the Medieval Warm Period (1 degree warmer, a millennium ago) and the Climatic Optimum (2.5 degrees warmer, 5-8 millennia ago) flatly contradicts recent alarmist claims that July 2023 was “quite likely the warmest month on Earth in 10,000 years”.

To overcome doubters, much work has been put in by adherents of IPCC doctrine to simplify the message and eviscerate previously published data that conflicts with the various sub-sacraments. For example, the Medieval Warm Period and Climatic Optimum have been dubbed the “Holocene Temperature Conundrum”, a thorn in the side of the faithful, as they fundamentally undermine the obsession with emitted CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

The solution? Models! A recent Nature paper was able to erase the troublesome Conundrum by relaxing a previously stricter requirement on data points in the (vast) Southern Ocean “to increase coverage in this data-poor region” and smooth out temperature gradient over the last 10,000 years.  All this despite recognising that their model has a fundamental limitation that it is based on “priors from a single model … which are inevitably biased by model deficiencies, resolution and uncertainties in boundary conditions”.

Another attempt to discredit the historic literature is to claim that these periods of higher temperatures were actually localised events.  But this is hardly the killer argument that IPCC adherents think it is. It only highlights the current cherry-picking approach favoured by the media of highlighting isolated warm temperatures as being due to the climate, but ignoring low temperatures in other areas as being due to the weather. This is something that climate alarmists would do well to note.

The NASA analysis of the Maunder Minimum is another problem for the “global boiling” narrative. This analysis of the period from 1650 to 1710 when “temperatures across much of the Northern Hemisphere plunged when the Sun entered a quiet phase”, emphasises that in periods of overall lower temperatures, some particular geographies – such as the Atlantic and the Arctic – can in fact exhibit relative warming. So a milder Arctic could, of course, be consistent with stagnating, or even falling, global temperatures.

There are other problems for the simplistic sub-sacraments that undergird the IPCC’s creed. Water vapour is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. What of the 2022 Hunga Tonga eruption that spewed over 165 million tons of water vapour – not 50 million tons as initially thought – into the atmosphere? A combination of observations, including the earth’s recent waning magnetic field, warm localised patches of suddenly hot sea to the West of areas of subsea volcanism, lagging jumps in CO2 air concentration and the recent slowing of the earth’s rotation by unexpected microseconds (a non-trivial issue as angular momentum must be conserved – where did the energy go?), point to the conveyance of heat from the earth’s core, up through the mantle and to the surface.  The different heat capacity of air versus that of water discount the atmosphere as a source of this warming on such a rapid timescale.

These are fascinating observations. A burning desire to explain the hugely complex interactions of our natural world should be driving a deep scientific urge to come up with creative hypotheses.

However, the strictures of the dominant religion are not conducive to open-minded research. The peer review process is broken. We desperately need a “blue team” grouping of sceptical investigators that are not in the pockets of those who have pre-decided the outcome of such research. Quoting Gerald Warner: “The government should assemble a panel of genuine climate experts who have not taken the IPCC shilling, discounting computer ‘modelling’, when the result is dictated by the data fed in, in favour of empirical evidence… we need authentic, unbiased scientific information, not the extravagant propaganda of climate alarmists”.

Our current de facto accelerated Net Zero trajectory is going to be a bumpy ride. More worryingly, it seems that its proponents do not really want to discuss whether the sacrifice is worth it. Can we discuss whether it is just an almighty boondoggle? It may be worse. It could be a set of policies that will destroy society as we know it, and make our children’s futures incalculably worse.

We owe it to future generations to pause the current madcap pace of change and engage in an adult conversation to win over the rank and file. There are very, very good reasons to invest in sustainable and non-polluting clean energy, but as pointed out by sensible centrist commentators, there is no need for coercion.

Let’s remember, CO2, the IPCC’s sworn enemy, is a life-giving substance that is present in trace quantities in the atmosphere and is contributing to the greening of our planet. It would be an unmitigated disaster if we back the wrong horse(s) by rushing to enforce a flawed doctrine derived from a mistaken demonisation of carbon dioxide.

August 27, 2023 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Deaths by Vaccination Status

Safe and Effective?

NAKED EMPEROR | AUGUST 25, 2023

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) have finally published their ‘Deaths by vaccination status, England’ dataset. This is for deaths occurring between 1 April 2021 and 31 May 2023.

I know many people consider these data unreliable but I always have a look at it nevertheless.

To assess whether the vaccine is safe I decided to look at all cause deaths separated by vaccine status (Table 5). This shows the number of all cause deaths for the unvaccinated and ‘ever vaccinated’ by month. It is also separated by age group (18-39; 40-49; 50-59; 60-69; 70-79; 80-89 & 90+).

For each month I looked at the total number of deaths and calculated what percentage of those deaths were in the ‘ever vaccinated’ category. So if there were 30 unvaccinated deaths and 70 vaccinated deaths, the percentage of ‘ever vaccinated’ deaths would be 70%.

This doesn’t really tell us anything, however. The headline might be shocking, e.g. ‘90% of deaths occurring in the vaccinated’ but if 90% of the population are vaccinated then that is to be expected.

However, if a higher percentage of deaths are occurring in the vaccinated (than the percentage of people vaccinated), then perhaps the vaccines are causing some harm. There are many confounders which confuse things but it is at least a signal that something is up and should be looked at. For example if 90% of the country is vaccinated but 95% of deaths are in the vaccinated then perhaps the vaccine is causing the additional 5% of deaths.

So, I took the data showing the percentage of people vaccinated with at least one dose from the UK government website, cleaned it up so that it matched the ONS formatting and created a few graphs.

You can see that in the 18-39 age group, as the vaccine rollout started, there was a higher percentage of deaths in the vaccinated versus the number of people vaccinated. This may have been because sick or immunocompromised people were vaccinated first. The two percentages then quickly merged before beginning to separate again in mid 2022.

This is also the exact time when excess deaths began to skyrocket. Ever since that point, the percentage of deaths in the ‘ever vaccinated’ group has been higher than the percentage of people vaccinated.

Here are the graphs for the other age groups.

You can see that in all the age groups, except for the 50-59 year olds, the percentage of all cause deaths in the ‘ever vaccinated’ group is higher than the percentage of that group that is vaccinated. The data for the 80-89 and 90+ groups are particularly shocking.

Worthy of an investigation? Of course not. Instead the NHS is launching a £50,000 probe to uncover why NHS staff aren’t getting Covid and flu jabs. Probably because they can see the data presented above with their own eyes.

August 26, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Will Scientific Evidence Ever Silence the Pro-Mask Cult?

Facial equity mask
BY DR GARY SIDLEY | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | AUGUST 24, 2023

It is a long-established conclusion from the scientific world that face masks achieve no appreciable reduction in viral transmission. We knew this in 2015-16 with regard to surgeons and their patients (here and here). We knew this in 2020 from a gold-standard Cochrane review, an analysis of 14 studies on influenza and a healthcare investigation that concluded that masks “may paradoxically lead to more transmissions”. We knew this in 2021 based on the Danish mask study and two comprehensive evidence reviews (here and here). We knew this in 2022 in relation to primary schools and universities, and a debunking of premature pro-mask conclusions drawn from the Bangladesh study. And – as if more evidence was needed – at the start of 2023 we had the latest Cochrane review, yet again concluding that covering our faces with cloth and plastic does not significantly reduce the likelihood of contracting respiratory viral infections. Yet, despite this collective scream from the scientific community that the ‘MASKS DON’T WORK’, it seems that nothing will muzzle the strident protestations of the mask disciples, such as those at Independent SAGE.

A recent article in the Daily Mail led with the scary headline: ‘Scientists raise alarm over new Covid variant and call for return of face masks.’ Two of the scientists raising concerns were Professors Trish Greenhalgh and Stephen Griffin, the former announcing, “It’s, once again, time to mask up”, while the latter concurs – albeit more cryptically – with his recommendation of the re-imposition of a “mitigation-based approach”. Both Greenhalgh and Griffin are members of Independent SAGE.

When Independent SAGE was formed in May 2020, as an alternative to official SAGE, it claimed to be a group of multi-disciplinary experts whose mission was to offer the Government scientific advice on how to minimise deaths during the Covid crisis. In reality, it constituted a group of zero-Covid fanatics pushing extreme counter-pandemic measures: whatever non-evidenced, human-rights-infringing restrictions the Government proposed, Independent SAGE typically called for them to be longer and harsher.

A cursory inspection of the group’s membership explains a lot. The previously-mentioned Trish Greenhalgh is, undoubtedly, the most extreme spokesperson for the pro-mask cult, previously asserting that the search for rigorous scientific evidence was the “enemy of good policy“. The founding Chairman of the group, Professor David King, was the senior scientific advisor to the Government of Tony Blair, currently an influential advocate of globalist agendas promoting top-down control of the population. Another core participant is the lifelong member of the Communist party – Professor Susan ‘let’s-wear-a-mask-forever‘ Michie. Also, the current co-Chair of Independent SAGE is Anthony Costello, a Professor of Global Health and Sustainable Development at University College London and a former director at the World Health Organisation. Given the histories and affiliations of these group participants it was predictable that they would grasp the next available opportunity to call for the return of community masking.

Clearly, the use of the term ‘independent’ in relation to this group was a misnomer. In stark contrast, Dr. Ashley Croft – the independent expert commissioned by the Scottish Covid Inquiry – appears to be a much better fit for the role of supplier of impartial information, free from the shackles of groupthink and mainstream ideology. Dr. Croft is a Consultant Public Health Physician and Medical Epidemiologist. In his report he lists his conclusions about the  physical measures taken against COVID-19 as follows (emphasis mine):

In 2020 there was scientific evidence to support the use of some of the physical measures (e.g. frequent handwashing, the use of PPE in hospital settings) adopted against COVID-19. For other measures (e.g. face mask mandates outside of healthcare settings, lockdowns, social distancing, test, trace and isolate measures) there was either insufficient evidence in 2020 to support their use – or alternatively, no evidence; the evidence base has not changed materially in the intervening three years.

It has been argued that the restrictive measures introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in individual, societal and economic harm that was avoidable and that should not have occurred.

This genuinely independent voice was not well-received in some quarters. Unused to the expression of viewpoints that deviate from the dominant Covid narrative, the mainstream media predictably squealed disapproval about Croft’s perspective and resorted to attempts to smear him for his “vaccine scepticism”. And no doubt those ideologues at Independent SAGE will – as I write – be doing likewise.

As the year advances, the evidence against mass masking continues to accumulate. In April, researchers at London’s St. George’s Hospital reported that a mask mandate in 2020-21 in their healthcare settings “made no discernible difference to reducing hospital-acquired SARS-CoV-2 infections”. And – lest we forget – we purportedly live in a free and open society where coercive restrictions should only be imposed where there is unequivocal proof of a pronounced and widespread benefit from adoption of the behaviour targeted; we are a million miles away from that scenario, and that is even before we consider the harms of community masking.

But will this quieten the pro-mask cult? It seems these perpetual advocates of face coverings are driven by some supra cognitive construct that trumps the empirical evidence. Mass concealment of human faces appears to signify something sacred to groups like Independent SAGE: is it equality, egalitarianism, altruism? Or could their persistent pushing of masks be simply due to cognitive dissonance: they have stridently trumpeted the practice for so long that it would now be too psychologically painful, and damaging to their status and self-image, to admit their previous energies have been woefully misplaced? Whatever the underlying reason, we can expect escalating appeals from the muzzle mafia over the coming months.

Dr. Gary Sidley is a retired NHS Consultant Clinical Psychologist and co-founder of the Smile Free campaign.

August 26, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Revisiting the Greatest Covid Lie of All …

Covid is a ‘top killer of children’

BY BILL RICE, JR. | AUGUST 22, 2023

I read today that a new RSV  vaccine has just been approved by the FDA for expectant mothers. I know from previous articles I’ve written that an RSV vaccine for children is also on the fast track to get on the all-important childhood immunization schedule.

I’m sure we’ll all read about how RSV is one of the greatest killers of children … and thus we have yet another vaccine that’s a Godsend. (The above-linked Wall Street Journal story tells us approximately 300 children under the age of 5 die from RSV each year).

Who knows if this data is true or not?

Speaking for myself, I haven’t forgotten how the Covid vaccine was pushed with the the extremely-dubious assertion that Covid was one of the “Top 8” killers of children.

I knew that statement was brazen disinformation because I’d researched actual children’s mortality from Covid while writing this story for uncoverDC.com.

In this article, I simply highlighted the key findings from the “most comprehensive” study of its kind on Covid mortality among children. The study, produced by a team of prestigious academics in the UK, found that only 25 children in the entire UK died “from” Covid in the fist year of the pandemic.

However, the headline that should have gone viral to parents across the world is that only six “healthy” children in the entire UK died “from” Covid.

Today, I’m going to revisit the findings of that study as this might cause a few mothers to question the pronouncements of our so-called public health experts, none of whom have seen a vaccine they don’t want every child to get, regardless of how unnecessary or what the long-term negative health effects might be.

The study’s key information and findings …

Approximately 12 million children (age 0 to 17) live in the UK.

The UK researchers were able to look at hospital diagnostic codes and find out how many children died “from” or “with” Covid in the first 12 months of the pandemic.

Here’s what study authors found and reported (CYP = “Children and Young Persons.”)

N = 61 – UK children who died in the first 12 months of the pandemic after testing positive via a PCR test.

Significantly, researchers subtracted 36 “Covid deaths” from this figure because they found these children actually died from some other cause. Language from the study:

“This is the first study to differentiate between CYP who have died of SARS-CoV-2 infection rather than died with a positive SARS-CoV-2 test as a coincidental finding. Our result is 60% lower than the figures derived from positive tests thereby markedly reducing the estimated number of CYP who are potentially at risk of death during this pandemic.”

N = 25 – UK children who actually died “from” Covid in the first 12 months of the pandemic.

But researchers looked even harder and found that 19 of these 25 Covid victims suffered from severe “life-limiting” medical conditions.

N = 19 = Children who died from Covid but had other major medical issues.

Subtracting the deaths of children who suffered from serious co-morbid conditions left researchers with …

N = 6 – “Healthy” children in the UK who died from Covid in the fist 12 months of the pandemic.

I made some additional assumptions/extrapolations …

To be very conservative, I assumed that 500,000 children (approximately 4 percent of the UK’s children) do suffer from serious “life-limiting” medical conditions (the real percentage is no doubt lower than 1 percent).

This would give us  …

N = 11.5 million –  Approximate number of “healthy” children in the UK.

We can now calculate the mortality risk for healthy children in the UK.

Covid Mortality Math: Six (6) Covid deaths divided by 11.5 million “healthy” children = Covid mortality of 0.000052 percent.

According to this extremely thorough (albeit ignored) study, the odds a healthy UK child would die from Covid in the first 12 months of the pandemic were 1-in-1.92 million. (Math: 11.5 million healthy children/6 Covid deaths).

I decided to do some politically-incorrect analysis …

To wander into politically incorrect territory, one can also calculate mortality risk by the race of children.

For some (undeniable) reason, Covid kills a much higher percentage of Blacks and Hispanics. This is true with children and adults.

Here’s a story from April 2020 that proves that the disproportionate deaths among African Americans was already known (even though the authors of this article suggest that the CDC was already covering up these racial statistics).

The authors of the UK study also point out the racial differences in mortality rates:

“CYP >10 years, of Asian and Black ethnic backgrounds, and with co-morbidities were over-represented compared to other children.”

The authors also stressed that the absolute numbers of minority children who died from Covid was also minute. Still, the figures are strikingly minute for white children.

From further extrapolations, I concluded that only two, perhaps three, healthy white children in the entire United Kingdom died “from” Covid in the first 12 months of the pandemic.

Since there are more than 10 million healthy white children in the UK, I concluded the chance a healthy white child would die from Covid were approximately 1-in-5 million. As a percentage, this mortality risk is 0.00002. (One has to go out to the fifth decimal point to find a “risk” that is not zero.)

Why I did this research …

One reason I embarked on this research is that I was simply trying to ascertain accurate Covid information to inform any decision I made on whether my two young children should get the Covid vaccine.

I was doing my own research and did not automatically trust the proclamations of the CDC or the pediatrician groups. I know I’m not supposed to question my betters (the experts), but I did it anyway because my own children’s lives might be at stake.

I happen to be Caucasian, just like my two children. Thankfully our children are healthy and do not suffer from some terrible “life-limiting” medical condition.

Again, I was simply looking to find the mortality risk of my own two children if they didn’t get this “vaccine.” Thanks to this bold study, I found the answer I was seeking.

The data shows that my children might indeed die from Covid … but if they did they would be the one person in a cohort of 4,999,999 children who did.

To provide a little context, the odds a random person would get struck by lightning in a given year are about 1-in-750,000. The odds I might hit the lottery jackpot in neighboring Georgia are probably 1-in-3-million.

Anyway, you won’t be surprised to learn that I chose to not get my children vaccinated.

For me, becoming an “anti-vaxxer” was a no-brainer especially when I know the odds my children might contract potentially fatal myocarditis (or other serious vaccine injuries) might be as low as 1-in-3,000 (perhaps lower).

(The headline from the above-linked article notes that cases of myocarditis from vaccines are “rare” in children.  If “rare” = a “1-in-3,000 risk,” how should one label a “1-in-5-million” risk?)

Even today, I occasionally read that the risks to children from Covid is “rare” or “small” or not as high as for, say, very old people or the morbidly obese.

But that’s poor word-smithing – intentionally so in my opinion.

When the risk of death for the largest population of children in America is 1-in-5 million, maybe journalists should consider more accurate risk modifiers, such as:

“virtually non-existent” … “almost unheard of” … “the rarest of anomalies” … “certainly nothing for parents to worry about” …. “for all practical purposes … zero.”

Anyway, when I kept reading that Covid was the “Top 8” killer of children in America, my go-to thought was, “That’s what they say.”

I guess the same pediatrician groups and the UK’s version of the CDC were spreading the same fear-mongering COVID disinformation as in America.

I’m sure Catherine, Princess of Wales was worried to death about getting her children vaccinated because she knew that Covid was one of the “top 8 killers of children in the UK.”

It probably never occurred to the princess to ask, “six deaths is enough to make the Top 8?” (Actually, I’d bet 100 pounds Princess Kate, just like 99 percent of UK mothers, never saw this study.)

I’m tempted to finish this column by saying, “none of this matters.” The narrative – as bogus as it was – worked as intended. Hundreds of millions of parents rushed out to get children vaccines they didn’t need.

But the thing is … the truth should matter.

August 26, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

NEW VARIANTS TRIGGER CALLS FOR RETURN TO LOCKDOWNS

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | August 24, 2023

Mass media is calling for the reinstitution of COVID restrictions due to new variants, with no conversation about the efficacy or the harm they’ve caused. Jefferey Jaxen connects all the dots, which appears to be pointing to a Pandemic 2.0.

August 26, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | , , , | 2 Comments

Fauci declares lockdowns were ‘absolutely justified’ and suggests they should be used again to force vaccinations

Retired government bureaucrat says that tragedy in Maui was due to climate change

By Jordan Schachtel | The Dossier | August 22, 2023

Recently retired government bureaucrat Anthony Fauci just appeared at a university virtual event titled, “Pandemic Lessons and Role of Faculty in Pandemic Preparedness with Dr. Anthony Fauci.” During the conversation, Fauci, who is now affiliated with Georgetown University, made it clear that he still supports locking down society in the name of a virus, adding that lockdowns are a great tool to forcibly “vaccinate” people.

I’ll save you 40 minutes of your life and quote some of the “highlights” from the interview, in which a Wayne State University professor asks Fauci about what he’s learned from his time overseeing a “pandemic response.” The video of the chat is available via YouTube below:

Fauci falsely claimed that New York City was overrun and had “cooler trucks outside because they had no places to put the bodies.”

“You had to have something to immediately shut down the tsunami of infection,” he states, adding, “that lockdown was absolutely justified.”

“Lockdown has a purpose,” the pseudoscientist continued. “One of the purposes, if you don’t have a vaccine, it’s to get more ventilators, get the hospitals better prepared … until you decompress the pressure on the hospitals.

Fauci wasn’t done yet. Here comes the truly evil insanity…

“If you have a vaccine available, you might want to lock down temporarily so you can get everybody vaccinated,” he suggests.

Rejecting the idea that lockdowns are a moral question, he added that “lockdowns have a place, but they are not a permanent solution.”

The conversation continued, with the longtime NIAID chief declaring that “climate change” is “playing a role” in causing outbreaks.

He then calls for an “international commitment to decrease the carbon imprint in society so you don’t have the kinds of crazy weather we’re having in this country.”

Yes, that’s a real quote.

He went on to blame the tragedy in Maui on climate change. “It’s completely, really amazing what’s happened with climate change,” he concludes.

August 25, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | 2 Comments

‘Unvaccinated’ Does Not Mean Unprotected

The False Claims (Pseudoscience) Provided by Governments and Doctors over the Last Three Years

By Judy Wilyman Phd | Vaccination Decisions | August 24, 2023

Not only are you not unprotected due to natural immunity if you did not get the COVID injections, but the COVID injections were NOT vaccines. Therefore, you are also not ‘unvaccinated’ or an ‘antivaxxer’. Here are the reasons why the genetically engineered COVID injections were NOT vaccines:

A drug cannot be described as a vaccine until it is tested for a minimum of 10 years because many of the adverse health outcomes come out months and years later.

Question 1: How can a synthetic (man-made) drug be claimed to be ‘safe and effective’ or that the benefits far outweigh the risks, without this long-term data?

Question 2: Why did governments claim that it “would prevent people getting COVID disease” from the beginning of the roll out, when it was never tested in clinical trials, to see if it prevented COVID disease?

Welcome to the first Vaccination Decisions Substack. I have been writing newsletters for over a decade attempting to provide the knowledge that people need to understand the influence of the pharmaceutical companies and the UN’s World Health Organisation (WHO), in the Australian government’s decisions on public health policy.

This became necessary because the diversity of media ownership laws in Australia were removed over the last two decades, and this has led to a lack of independent vaccine information being provided to the general public.

Democracy only exists when the people can hold their government to account. This ability is removed once there is a lack of independence in the media. In Australia we have a corporate-sponsored media that is ~80% owned by Murdoch News Corp.

In this situation reality can be inverted as you have seen over the last three years: black becomes white due to the mis- and disinformation presented when governments collaborate with a corporate-sponsored media to control the information you receive. This is also described as public-private partnerships. Australia’s politicians are heavily influenced by corporate lobby groups, financial bonus’s and being required to present the government narrative through party policy.

Australia is in a Pre-Police State (Independent, Andrew Wilkie, Australian Parliament 10th September 2015)

Currently, the Australian government is attempting to further this censorship by pushing through new legislation in the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) Amendment (Mis and Disinformation) Bill 2023. This bill will allow the government to continue promoting the medical fraud that the UN/ WHO is directing (with financial incentives) to all member countries in global health policies.

There is a clause in this ACMA amendment bill that exempts politicians from being censored for the mis or disinformation that they provide on social media platforms. This legislation will completely remove the façade of democracy that still exists in Australia.

I have provided below a list of some of the false claims that governments and the medical-industry have made over the last three years that are now putting global populations at risk. It is time for everyone who has this knowledge to stand up visibly for the truth to ensure that ethics and principles can be restored to our society and institutions.

“If we lose courage we lose the truth and without the truth there is no other virtue” (Sir Walter Scott).

The False Claims Provided by Governments and the Medical industry in 2020-22:

  1. Humans would not have any natural immunity to this new mutated Coronavirus 2019 (False). (The family of Coronaviruses cause the common cold, so the correct assumption is that we would have some natural immunity to a new mutation).
  2. The PCR test can be used in people without symptoms to diagnose COVID disease (False). (It is a supportive tool and can only be used to assist in diagnosis when someone has symptoms. The PCR test is being misused and misinterpreted).
  3. A healthy person can be diagnosed as an ‘asymptomatic case of disease’ using a PCR test (False). (A PCR test cannot be used to diagnose disease in people without symptoms: finding a virus in a person does not indicate they will ever get a disease because viruses only cause disease symptoms if there is a poor environment (terrain). A healthy person should never be classified as a ‘case of disease’ and isolated from society).
  4. An ‘asymptomatic infection’ is a ‘case of disease and a ‘risk to the community’ (False). (This is an infection without symptoms and can only be identified with an antibody test (not a PCR test). A positive antibody test shows you have gained natural immunity to an infection without any disease symptoms. You are not a risk to others and healthy people should never be tested to see if they have a respiratory virus. There are hundred’s of viruses that cause ‘flu-like symptoms’.
  5. Flus and colds disappeared in 2020-22 (False). (They were re-classified as a new disease called ‘COVID’ based only on a PCR test that was misused in healthy people. The diagnosis was not based on symptoms, or systematic testing for any other virus, bacteria or medication that cause the same symptoms).
  6. These COVID mRNA injections are ‘vaccines’ (False). (They are genetically-engineered modified mRNA drugs until they are proven to prevent disease and that the benefits far outweigh the risks).
  7. COVID ‘vaccines’ would prevent you getting COVID disease (False). (These genetically-engineered COVID injections were never tested to see if they prevent COVID disease and they are causing COVID disease.
  8. COVID ‘vaccines’ would reduce the severity of COVID disease (False). (Hospitalisations and Deaths increased when the COVID injections were implemented in 2021-22 and UK data also shows that 92% of alleged COVID deaths were triple vaccinated).
  9. COVID ‘vaccines’ are ‘safe and effective’ (False). (Many deaths and illnesses were recorded in the short-term trials and in post-marketing surveillance).
  10. Adverse events are ‘rare’ (False). (How can they be claimed to be ‘rare’ when the injections had not been studied in the genetically diverse population when they were marketed in 2021?).
  11. The COVID ‘vaccines’ stimulate the immune system to produce a ‘Coronavirus spike protein’ (False). (They stimulate the immune system to produce a recombinant synthetic (man-made) protein that is foreign to our bodies and is being called a ‘spike protein’. This foreign protein can result in autoimmune diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis, Lupus, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Arthritis, Diabetes, Graves Disease, Guillain Barre Syndrome etc.

The book “Slaying the Virus and Vaccine Dragon” by John O’Sullivan et el, exposes the psychological strategies that were used by governments (directed by the WHO’s public-private partnerships) to predict and manipulate a global ‘pandemic’ based only on an industry-designed mathematical model that had hidden assumptions about viruses and vaccines. (Book Review).

References exposing these false government claims are:

1. Dr. Paul Marik, the Truth about the Shots

2. The mRNA Vaccines are Neither Safe Nor Effective

3. Pfizer, FDA, CDC Hid Proven Harms to Fertility from Vaccine Ingredients.

4. Life Insurance Data proves 34% increase in deaths in young people 35-44 Years since 2021 when the COVID ‘Vaccines’ were implemented.

August 25, 2023 Posted by | Book Review, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | 1 Comment

The Royal Society Lockdown Report Authors Understand That by Ignoring the High Quality Evidence they Reach the Politically Acceptable Conclusion

BY DR CARL HENEGHAN AND DR TOM JEFFERSON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | AUGUST 25, 2023

This week saw the publication of a suite of systematic reviews by the Royal Society (RS) on the effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions in the pandemic.

Politico headlined with ‘Top review says Covid lockdowns and masks worked, period’. The Guardian led with ‘Lockdowns and face masks “unequivocally” cut the spread of Covid, report finds’, and the i newspaper stated: ‘Masks and social distancing did reduce Covid infections, new report shows, proving lockdown sceptics wrong.’

So there you have it, a slam dunk, sceptics, you were all wrong. You should have masked up and stayed in lockdown.

Even more so when you listen to the Chair of the report’s group, Mark Walport, who said: “There is sufficient evidence to conclude that early, stringent implementation of packages of complementary NPIs was unequivocally effective in limiting SARS-CoV-2 infections.”

Four systematic reviews informed the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions in the Covid pandemic. However, here is some of what these reviews report.

A systematic review on environmental control measures:

Many of these studies were assessed to have critical risk of bias in at least one domain, largely due to confounding factors that could have affected the measured outcomes. As a result, there is low confidence in the findings.

Testing, contact tracing and isolation interventions among the general population on reducing transmission of SARS-CoV-2:

One study, an RCT, showed that daily testing of contacts could be a viable strategy to replace lengthy quarantine of contacts. Based on the scarcity of robust empirical evidence, we were not able to draw any firm quantitative conclusions about the quantitative impact of TTI interventions in different epidemic contexts.

Effectiveness of face masks for reducing transmission of SARS-CoV-2:

We analysed 35 studies in community settings (three RCTs and 32 observational) and 40 in healthcare settings (one RCT and 39 observational). Ninety-one percent of observational studies were at ‘critical’ risk of bias (ROB) in at least one domain, often failing to separate the effects of masks from concurrent interventions.

Effectiveness of international border control measures during the COVID-19 pandemic:

There is little evidence that most travel restrictions, including border closure and those implemented to stop the introduction of new variants of concern, were particularly effective.

The report makes the same errors that the UKHSA and Public Health England did. They ignored the critical biases and the confounders when drawing conclusions. Some of the comments misunderstand the evidence required for making healthcare decisions.

Chris Dye, Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Oxford, who led the review on masks for the Royal Society, said if they had only looked at randomised controlled trials, they would have come to the same conclusion as the Cochrane review. However, the researchers behind the paper released Thursday chose to analyse a larger body of studies and found strong evidence that masks work.

So, if we ignore high-quality evidence, we arrive at the conclusion we want – they fully understand the politics. Low-quality evidence means the estimated effect will differ substantially from the actual effect – we’ve known this for quite some time, and it is fundamental to the delivery of evidence-based interventions. An approach that uses low-quality evidence shouldn’t inform healthcare, and it doesn’t. That’s why we have NICE, which uses the best available evidence to develop recommendations that guide health, public health and social care decisions.

Did the reviewers, for instance, ask if there was a protocol for any of these studies – something we have previously pointed out. There were none, despite protocols being essential for robust research.

There is something we do agree with in the report, that the “future assessments should also consider the costs as well as the benefits of NPIs, in terms of their impacts on livelihoods, economies, education, social cohesion, physical and mental wellbeing, and potentially other aspects”. However this report looked at none of that.  The single focus on one outcome, ignoring harms, further hinders informed decision-making.

The RS report wants us to believe that RCTs are impossible during a pandemic: “While RCTs should not be discounted, it is highly likely that most information in a future pandemic will continue to be observational.”

Yet the pandemic has re-emphasised the importance of high-quality randomised clinical trials and highlighted the need for preparation, coordination and collaboration.

The Royal Society review shows that some academics are losing their ability to think critically. Instead of retrofitting evidence to preconceived conclusions, it would be much better to report the uncertainties and set out those questions that need addressing. Refusal to acknowledge uncertainties does a disservice to society and undermines public trust in research.

Staying at home decreases your risk of all sorts of hazards – in the short term, you won’t get run over and you’ll reduce the risk of an infection or an accident. But what matters is the costs of what happens when you reemerge.

August 25, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | 2 Comments

Biden Probe Censored Findings of Intelligence Agency Scientists That Covid was Likely Made in Lab

BY WILL JONES | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | AUGUST 25, 2023

U.S. President Joe Biden’s 90-day probe into the origins of COVID-19 censored the input of intelligence agency scientists who concluded the virus was most likely genetically engineered. Sky News Australia‘s Sharri Markson has the story.

In May 2021, President Biden tasked the Intelligence Community with providing an assessment into how the pandemic began after reports, first published by Sky News, that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been hospitalised with Covid-like symptoms in November 2019 in the suspected first cluster of the pandemic.

When the report was published it concluded that most intelligence agencies assessed the virus, even if it had leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was natural rather than manipulated in a laboratory.

Sky News can reveal that this was not the assessment made by the four groups within the intelligence agencies that actually engaged in scientific analysis, who concurred that there was either a highly likely or reasonable chance the virus was genetically engineered.

Scientists at the Defence Intelligence Agency’s National Centre for Medical Intelligence (DIA NCMI) had conducted rigorous research on the genomic sequence of the virus and firmly concluded that it was, most likely, a laboratory construct.

In a world exclusive, Sky News can for the first time reveal their story, their research and their discoveries about SARS-CoV-2.

They had been working with the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction unit, until the co-operation between the two agencies was blocked, with a director at the Defence Intelligence Agency claiming the FBI was “off the reservation” on the topic of the origins of COVID-19.

Well-placed sources familiar with the work that unfolded inside the intelligence agency and their interactions with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for the 90-day probe spoke to Sky News for this investigation.

Their internal research at the Pentagon-based agency led to a finding that was described internally as a “smoking gun”.

One of the scientists discovered that the size and location of a fragment of COVID-19 resembled the same fragment in Wuhan Institute of Virology research from more than a decade earlier, in 2008. It was the same technique that the WIV had used in grant applications to make chimeric viruses.

“This paper is the smoking gun of everything. When the team reviewed this data, they thought ‘This is created in the lab. It’s a reverse genetics construct,” a source said.

But their input into the 90-day origins probe was censored.

Sources close to the inquiry estimated about 90% of the DIA NCMI edits were deleted, censored or simply weren’t included.

A longer article in the Australian has further details.

They [NCMI scientists Robert Greg Cutlip, Jean-Paul Chretien and John Hardham] wrote an unclassified working paper, dated May 26th 2020, titled ‘Critical Analysis of Anderson et al. The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2′. Their paper was circulated within the NCMI and among multiple scientists within the intelligence community. It was also intended for wider publication, so that the public could have a greater understanding of the new virus sweeping the globe. But it was never allowed to be disseminated more broadly, in yet another cover-up of scientists who questioned the natural origins narrative perpetuated by senior officials.

The report was scathing of the Proximal Origin authors’ claim that COVID-19 had a natural origin.

“We consider the evidence they present and find that it does not prove that the virus arose naturally. In fact, the features of SARS-CoV-2 noted by Anderson et al. are consistent with another scenario: that SARS-CoV-2 was developed in a laboratory, by methods that leading coronavirus researchers commonly use to investigate how the viruses infect cells and cause disease, assess the potential for animal coronaviruses to jump to humans, and develop drugs and vaccines.”

While Kristian Anderson and the other authors that the “high-affinity binding ofthe SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to human ACE2 is most likely the result of natural selection on a human or human-like ACE2”, Chretien, Cutlip and Hardham disagreed.

“This is not a scientific argument but rather an assumption of intent and methodology for a hypothesised scientist,” they wrote.

“Instead of aiming to design a virus that binds with high affinity to ACE2, a researcher may have chosen to investigate, empirically, the effect of one or more receptor binding domain variants on receptor binding or infectivity.

“In fact, leading coronavirus research laboratories have been doing this for years to study the potential for bat coronaviruses to infect humans.”

The paper then provides examples of where these experiments happened at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“In the context of this research, SARS-CoV-2 could have been synthesised by combining a backbone from a coronavirus similar to RaTG13 with the receptor binding domain of a coronavirus similar to the one recently isolated from pangolins. Such research might have aimed to investigate pangolins as possible intermediate hosts for bat coronaviruses potentially pathogenic for humans, and would have been consistent with the longstanding line of investigations described above.”

Chretien, Cutlip and Hardham also disagreed with Anderson et al.’s argument that there was no known progenitor virus that could have led to the creation of SARS-CoV-2.

“However, the absence of a publication does not mean that the research was not done,” they wrote. Perhaps the experiments were aborted or not reported because of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak? Perhaps the results were never intended for publication?

“In a recent example of delayed publication from the COVID-19 pandemic, WIV researchers first reported RaTG13 in January 2020, but later stated that they had discovered the virus in 2013. The possibility of the SARS-CoV-2 furin site arising during passage in thelaboratory cannot be dismissed.”

The esteemed authors go on to say that “laboratories also have directly inserted furin cleavage sites into coronaviruses”.

They cite several examples including the Shi Zhengli gain-of-function experiment with the University of North Carolina.

Their paper concludes that the Proximal Origin authors’ arguments “are based not on scientific analysis, but on unwarranted assumptions”.

“A long line of research shows that leading coronavirus laboratories do not work as described in the laboratory-origin scenario Anderson et al. consider and dismiss. SARS-CoV-2 – a bat coronavirus with pangolin coronavirus receptor binding domain – is consistent with the chimeric constructs these laboratories have developed and studied for more than a decade.

“We highlight the features of SARS-CoV-2, noted by Anderson et al,. are consistent with longstanding and ongoing laboratory experiments; the evidence Anderson et al. present does not lessen the plausibility of laboratory origin.”

Following this the group continued to work on the virus.

By June 2020, their genomic analysis of amino acids and nucleotides was producing fairly conclusive findings that COVID-19 was genetically engineered.

While their recommendations and working products are highly technical, there are four main reasons for why they found that SARS-CoV-2 was most likely genetically engineered.

They thought perhaps the backbone was related to the virus miners in Mojiang, China, caught in 2012 and had been modified.

Then came the discovery that was described internally as the smoking gun. The majority of the SARS-CoV-2 virus genome is similar to bat coronaviruses. However, a small region of the spike gene, encoding the spike protein’s receptor binding domain (RBD), is identical to that of the pangolin coronavirus MP789.

Hardham reported to NCMI that the size and location of the pangolin fragment in SARS-CoV-2 was similar to the same RBD fragment described in one of Wuhan institute’s previous research publications.

In a 2008 paper by Shi Zhengli and Ren Wuze, the Wuhan researchers identified the minimal cassette that would be necessary to change the binding to different host ACE2 receptors – this refers to how the virus crosses from species to species.

Once the Wuhan researchers identified the minimal RBD cassette, they proposed using this same technique in their future work – including in grant proposals sent to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

This same technique (minimal cassette) is found in SARS-CoV-2.

They also found scientific papers in which Shi Zhengli, who had worked at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, described working with furin cleavage sites in the precise location where they appeared in SARS-CoV-2. “Shi helped research furin cleavage sites in the Netherlands laboratory that are very similar to SARS-CoV-2,” sources close to the inquiry told the Australian.

“This paper is the smoking gun of everything. Figure 7 is literally the description of the pangolin RBD insert. When the team reviewed this data, they thought ‘This is created in the lab. It’s a reverse genetics construct.’ They identified the minimal cassette required to change the host range.”

The NCMI researchers shared their findings among scientific elements of the intelligence community, and their colleagues concurred.

Over the next year, their work and analysis continued, drawing in and involving other scientists from separate units, including the Institute for Advanced Technologies in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Their findings were shared and discussed with scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the CIA, the FBI’s weapons of mass destruction unit and the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

The Australian understands that the scientists generally concurred that the virus was most likely genetically engineered.

“We briefed everyone on these findings. We were in alignment,” sources close to the inquiry said. “All four of the scientific groups concurred it was not a natural virus.”

But, on July 7th 2021, the group was blocked from sharing other findings with the FBI.

A director at NCMI is understood to have instructed them: “You may not speak with the FBI WMD anymore. They are off the reservation on this.”

The reports in Sky News Australia and the Australian are worth reading in full.

It’s worth wondering why these stunning scientific conclusions from within the U.S. intelligence community – which are at odds with the official statements from U.S. intelligence officials throughout the pandemic – are being released now. This must have been authorised, and Markson’s source, as before, is likely to be Robert Kadlec, the U.S. biodefence chief who has always pushed the lab leak theory, though appears to have been overruled on this for much of the pandemic. Why this is all being aired now is not entirely clear, though it is clear that Biden is being blamed for the censorship and cover-up, despite the fact that it pre-dated his presidency. Are the intelligence agencies turning on Biden?

The 2008 “smoking gun” paper for a WIV origin is intriguing, though the basic issue with a WIV origin remains: if Shi Zhengli realised it was from her lab, why did she publish a paper in mid-January 2020 comparing SARS-CoV-2 to RaTG13 and stating the former did not appear to have emerged naturally from the latter, casting immediate suspicion over her lab’s research? Perhaps she was just trying to show that similar viruses exist in the wild. But then there’s the question of why China spent weeks not taking any measures against the spread if it secretly knew or suspected it was an escaped experimental virus engineered to be more contagious. Conversely, there’s the weird foreknowledge of U.S. intelligence, sources from which claimed to be following the outbreak in China in mid-November 2019, before it was detectable.

While there is clearly a renewed push from elements within U.S. intelligence on the lab leak theory, questions remain.

August 25, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

The Digital Services Act Will Give the EU Sweeping New Censorship Powers, Forcing X and Facebook to Remove Content that Challenges Mass Migration, Transgender Ideology or Net Zero

BY DR FREDERICK ATTENBOROUGH | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | AUGUST 25, 2023

The European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) comes into force today, obliging “very large online platforms” to swiftly take down what unelected European Commission bureaucrats decide to define as ‘disinformation’.

As Laurie Wastell points out in the European Conservative, the DSA obliges online platforms to swiftly take down so-called disinformation. From today, the EC has at its disposal an aggressive enforcement regime, such that if Big Tech companies fail to abide by the EU’s ‘Strengthened Code of Practice on Disinformation’, which requires swift censorship of mis- and disinformation, then they can be fined up to 6% of their annual global revenue, investigated by the Commission, and potentially even prevented from operating in the EU altogether.

So, who is to say if something is misinformation? In the case of social media platforms operating within the EU, the EC is the arbiter of that, since it is the Commission that will decide if platforms like X and Facebook are doing enough to combat it. (It is the EU’s executive body, the EC, that is invested by the DSA with the exclusive power to assess compliance with the Code and apply penalties if a platform is found wanting.)

And what kind of speech is the DSA expected to police? The Code defines disinformation as “false or misleading content that is spread with an intention to deceive or secure economic or political gain and which may cause public harm”. That sounds innocent and apolitical enough. Yet the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), which was launched by the EC in June 2020 and aims to “identify disinformation, uproot its sources or dilute its impact”, appears to adopt a much broader, deeply politicised understanding of the term “misleading content”.

Consider, for instance, some of the key “disinformation trends” listed in the EDMO’s recent 2023 briefing on disinformation in Ireland. They include “nativist narratives” that “oppose migration”, “gender and sexuality narratives” that touch on drag queens and trans issues as “part of a wider ‘anti-woke’ narrative that mocks social justice campaigns”, and “environment narratives” that criticise climate-change policies and Greta Thunberg.

Clearly, what is common to such narratives is not that they constitute disinformation in the sense outlined in the Code — that is, “false information intended to mislead”. Rather, they represent opposition by members of the public to unpopular policies favoured by European elites — in this case, mass migration, transgender ideology and Net Zero.

In the words of EC President Ursula von der Leyen, it is vital that companies censor disinformation of this kind to “ensure that the online environment remains a safe space”. Safe for whom, one wonders — politicians or citizens?

Well worth reading in full.

Dr. Frederick Attenborough is the Communications Officer of the Free Speech Union.

August 25, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Free Speech Union Highlights New Risk to Free Speech in the Workplace: Carbon Literacy Training

BY TOBY YOUNG | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | AUGUST 25, 2023

The Free Speech Union has just published a briefing on carbon literacy training by Thomas Harris, its Director of Data and Impact. The FSU is concerned that it will have a chilling effect on free speech in the workplace in the same way that unconscious bias training and anti-racism training does, with employees reluctant to challenge the ideas behind it for fear of jeopardising their careers.

Carbon literacy training is spreading rapidly across UK offices and places of study, with over 67,000 citizens certified as ‘carbon literate’ according to the Carbon Literacy Project (CLP), the main organisation behind the initiative. (Between financial year-end September 2021 and September 2022, CLP’s income grew from £183.8k to £637.7k, an increase of nearly 250%.) The training takes it for granted that we’re in the midst of a ‘climate emergency’ and recommends that employees embrace various radical solutions, including net zero.

The Free Speech Union is concerned that this training is embedding a particular orthodoxy about climate change in British workplaces, leaving employees feeling unable to challenge it. While it’s indisputable that average global temperatures have increased since the mid-19th Century people hold a range of views about the causes and severity of climate change and that in turn influences their opinion about the best way to tackle it – or, indeed, whether tackling it is possible or necessary. Different solutions to the problems created by climate change are informed by different values and recommending one approach over another inevitably involves making a political choice. There is no-such thing as an apolitical, ‘scientific’ solution. Consequently, employees should not be put under pressure to endorse a particular approach or threatened with disciplinary action if they fail to adjust their behaviour to follow this approach, particularly in their private lives.

In those companies seeking accreditation as a ‘Carbon Literate Organisation’ (CLO), up to 80% of staff are expected to become ‘carbon literate’. Carbon literate accreditation requires employees to embrace a particular view about climate change and identify at least one action they can take to reduce their own carbon footprint, as well as at least one action involving other people. The FSU fears that employees may be penalised if they refuse to comply with these requirements because they do not share a particular point of view.

The FSU first became aware of this new threat to free speech in the workplace when it was contacted by a member who is concerned about his career after he challenged the carbon literacy training provided by his employer. The FSU believes he was right to be concerned. To secure CLP’s platinum, gold, and silver CLO accreditation, companies are expected to embed carbon literacy in the annual targets of staff members and evaluate their performance accordingly. This means that employees who don’t subscribe to a particular view on climate change could find themselves missing out on pay awards or promotion unless they self-censor or pretend to hold convictions they don’t have.

If you’re being forced to undergo carbon literacy training in your workplace and are worried you might get into trouble for challenging the climate activist agenda behind it, you can contact Thomas Harris at the Free Speech Union here. And if you’re not already a member of the FSU, you can join here.

August 25, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Fauci, the Covid Fairy

Bitchute

August 25, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

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