Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

UK’s Online Safety Bill Shields Mainstream Media & Axes Alternative News Under Guise of Press Freedom

By Ekaterina Blunova – Samizdat – July 8, 2022

The British government has tabled an amendment to the Online Safety Bill seeking to prevent social media giants from taking down mainstream news without an appeal process. While London is declaring this to be a further boost to journalism protections, this new safety net is not meant to be applied on alternative media sources.

“Social media is now the main source of information about the world for 16-24-year-olds, and for all ethnic minorities in the UK,” explained Ellis Cashmore, honorary professor of sociology at Aston University in the UK.

“Yet platform moderators have practically unrestricted power to edit, and, if they wish, remove content. This is an unheard-of censorial power. I can’t think that, in history, proprietors have ever had such colossal power to control the flow and content of information, not just to one population, but to the world.”

The Online Safety Bill was first introduced in the British Parliament in March 2022 with the aim of holding social media platforms, search engines and various websites to account for hosting illegal activities or spreading harmful content.

The newly introduced amendment is “designed to guard against the arbitrary removal of articles from journalists at recognized news outlets when shared on social media platforms,” according to the UK government’s website. The authors of the amendment draw attention to the fact that half of British adults use social media for news, with Facebook*, Twitter and Instagram* being the most popular platforms. When it comes to 16-24 year-olds, the internet is the most-used platform.

Once the bill comes into force, social media giants would be required “to ensure recognized news publishers’ articles remain viewable and accessible on their sites even if they are under review by moderators.”

The introduction of the new amendment can be explained by the fact that the tech giants have proved themselves impossible to control, the professor explained.

“Tech companies operate in a relatively unrestricted way and governments around the world usually rely on the companies’ goodwill,” he said.

Still, the new amendment is focused on so-called “category one companies”, which include “the largest and most popular social media platforms”, and is not designed to shield alternative media sources.

The bill’s selective approach has been manifested by its earlier amendment obligating social media platforms “to proactively look for and remove disinformation from foreign state actors which harm the UK.” It specifically singles out Russian news, with an obvious reference to Sputnik News and RT – both presently banned by the EU and social media giants after the beginning of the Russian special operation to de-militarize and de-Nazify Ukraine.

“Freedom of speech and expression are highly valued principles in western Europe and North America,” says Cashmore. “But it is interesting that, after the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, there were no protests at the decisions of western governments to prohibit broadcasts and news supplies from RT, Sputnik and maybe a few less important news outlets.”

The professor notes that wiping Russian news from the media sphere is senseless given that many westerners are interested in learning Russian perspectives. “This does not mean they would be persuaded or even influenced, but they feel entitled to make up their own minds independently. They have been denied that facility,” Cashmore stressed.

“Since February, Russia, its people and its values have been condemned, denounced and stigmatized,” said the professor. “Vladimir Putin has been personally vilified. It is difficult to see this ending, at least not for 30 years. Russia has been excluded from many world affairs and many believe Russia and the other BRICS countries may coalesce into an international configuration to rival NATO. This would become a new world order.”

Meanwhile, the bill’s amendments have raised concerns among British campaigners who are warning the government that in its current form the proposed internet safety laws are “on the verge of being unworkable,” according to The Independent.

In particular, campaigners have advocated for a number of measures to strengthen freedom of expression and rights safeguards to better protect people from marginalized backgrounds and expand transparency requirements on firms to boost access to data for researchers and academics.

*Facebook and Instagram are banned in Russia over extremist activities.

July 8, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | | Leave a comment

Iran detains UK deputy ambassador for alleged spying

Samizdat | July 6, 2022

The UK’s second-most senior diplomat in Tehran is reportedly among three foreigners who have been arrested by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) for alleged espionage activities.

Giles Whitaker, deputy chief at the UK embassy in Tehran, stands accused of taking soil samples in a restricted area, according to a report on Wednesday by Iranian state television. Video footage released by the IRGC purports to show the veteran envoy, who was accompanied by family members, gathering soil samples in Iran’s central desert, where missile exercises were being conducted.

Whitaker reportedly apologized for the infraction and was expelled from the area. The media report didn’t specify whether he and the other suspects are still under arrest. The other detained men were identified as the husband of Austria’s cultural attaché in Iran and Maciej Walczak, a Polish university professor who was visiting the country under a scientific exchange program.

The IRGC’s footage purported to show Walczak and three colleagues collecting soil samples in a restricted area of Kerman province, where another missile test was being conducted. The Polish professor is reportedly from Nicolaus Copernicus University, which the Iranian broadcaster said is “associated with the Zionist regime.”

The allegations come amid stalled talks to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which former US President Donald Trump canceled in 2018. Under the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – signed by Iran, the US, Russia, China, the UK, France and Germany – Tehran agreed to limitations preventing nuclear weapons development in exchange for sanctions relief.

Wednesday’s Iranian media report suggested that the alleged spies were trying to help build a new case on “military aspects of Iran’s file in the International Atomic Energy Agency.”

Whitaker has been deputy head of mission at the British embassy in Tehran since November 2018. His UK government career has spanned more than three decades and has included stints at embassies in Moscow, Berlin and Islamabad, as well as at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

The IRGC has arrested dozens of foreigners on espionage charges in recent years. Rob Macaire, then UK ambassador to Iran, was apprehended in January 2020 for allegedly inciting protests over the Iranian military’s accidental downing of a Ukrainian passenger jet.

July 6, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

London wants social media to “proactively” tackle would-be disinformation from states such as Russia

Samizdat | July 5, 2022

London has proposed new legislation that would require social media to “proactively” tackle “disinformation” that allegedly pours into the UK from foreign states such as Russia and harms the nation, the government said on Tuesday. Platforms failing to do so will be subject to huge fines or could be blocked.

The legislation, which is subject to parliamentary approval, would oblige social media platforms to hunt down what the government believes to be fake accounts that act in the interests of foreign states and seek to influence UK politics, including elections.

The new amendment will also compel social media, search engines and other websites to crack down on such accounts in order to minimize the number of people exposed to “state-sponsored disinformation.”

“We cannot allow foreign states or their puppets to use the internet to conduct hostile online warfare unimpeded,” said Nadine Dorries, the UK culture and digital secretary, pointing out that the Ukraine conflict has shown that Russia is ready to weaponize information.

According to the proposed law, social media will have to make creating fake accounts more difficult and will also need to fight bots used for misleading the public. Ofcom, the British media regulator, will have the authority to fine any internet resources that don’t comply up to 10% of their global turnover.

The amendment is set be included in the National Security Bill, which will be discussed by British MPs next week.

This latest move by the UK government would directly target, for instance, the Russian pranksters known as Vovan and Lexus, who had pulled a stunt on UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace and Home Secretary Priti Patel. As a result, their channel was banned by YouTube in late May.

On Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov criticized the West for harassment of Russian journalists, saying that Western countries have “buried the freedom of speech with their own hands.” In his view, Western governments intentionally create their own laws allowing them to decide what is “freedom of information” and what is “propaganda.”

July 5, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Twitter censors story of British mother who died after reaction to Covid vaccine

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | July 4, 2022

Three children in the UK were left without a mother after she died from a massive stroke determined to be caused by blood clots that formed after she received the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, but Twitter is labeling conversations about this information taking place on the platform as “misinformation.”

Previously healthy Lucy Taberer, whose youngest is a five-year-old boy, succumbed to the consequences of the Covid shot 22 days after she was vaccinated. At first, the 47-year-old experienced mild side-effects, described in reports as common, to then develop a bruise, skin rash, and pain that the doctors at first dismissed as being caused by kidney stones.

In the end, it turned out that the victim’s reaction to the vaccine had been to develop blood clots that proved to be fatal.

Her death certificate reads that Taberer died of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis and vaccine-associated thrombosis with thrombocytopenia.

Local media, including Leicester Mercury, reported about it, and Taberer’s step daughter tweeted a link to the story, but was quickly shut down by Twitter, which labeled the post as “misleading.”

To add insult to injury, she was advised to click another link, provided by Twitter’s “fact-checkers,” that would “explain” why health officials think Covid vaccines are safe “for most people.”

Since the tweet about the woman’s death did not claim the vaccines were unsafe for most people, it remains unclear what logic drives Twitter’s censorship around the topic, other than the desire to stop any mention of the jabs in a negative context, whether true or false.

GB News reported on this, wondering if it wasn’t enough for a child to deal with the loss, but also “have to be insulted in their grief if they mention it on the internet.”

Host Mark Steyn noted that three guests who regularly appear on his show were among those awarded compensation after the UK government last week admitted Covid vaccines in some cases can be deadly. All three lost their loved ones to the vaccine.

But, he noted, social media have been slow (or not interested) in catching up, even as governments are starting to pay out compensation.

July 4, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

The Dutch Farmers’ Protest and the War on Food

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | July 2, 2022

This week, tens of thousands of farmers have gathered from all across the Netherlands to protest government policies which will reduce the number of livestock in the country by up to a third.

In a typical example of media weasel-wording, the press reports on this all headline something like “Dutch farmers protest emissions targets”, but this is a massive lie by omission.

The government policy being protested is a 25 BILLION Euro investment in “reducing levels of nitrogen pollution” true, but it plans to achieve this by (among other things) “paying some Dutch livestock farmers to relocate or exit the industry”.

In real terms, this ultimately means reducing the number of pigs, chickens and cows by about thirty per cent.

That’s what is being protested here – a deliberate shrinking of the farming sector, impacting the livelihood of thousands of farmers, and the food supply of literally hundreds of millions of people.

THE BIG PICTURE

While the scheme is allegedly about limiting nitrogen and ammonia emissions from urine and manure it’s hard not to see this in the broader context of the ongoing created food crisis.

The Netherlands produces a massive food surplus and is one of the largest exporters of meat in the world and THE largest in Europe. Reducing its output by a third could have huge implications for the global food supply, especially in Western Europe.

Perhaps more troubling is how this could act as a precedent.

This isn’t the first “pay farmers not to farm” scheme launched in the last year – both the UK and US have put such schemes in place – but a government paying to reduce it’s own meat production? That is a first.

That it is (allegedly) being done to “protect the environment” makes it a big warning sign for the future. Denmark, Belgium and Germany are already considering similar policies.

The Western world seems to be enthusiastically embracing quasi-suicidal policies.

I mean, paying farmers to reduce the amount of food they produce… while (notionally) threatened with war… in the midst of a recession… facing record inflation as the cost of living spirals.

Does that really make any sense?

That’s almost as crazy as refusing new oil and gas leases while the cost of petrol is going up.

Indeed, in a world beset by a shortage of fertiliser due to sanctions against Russia and Belarus, it would seem almost mad to complain about a manure surplus, let alone try to reduce it.

We’re well past the point where any of this could be considered accidental, aren’t we?

Put it this way – if the collective governments of the Western world were trying to impoverish and starve their own citizens, what exactly would they be doing differently?

July 2, 2022 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , , , | Leave a comment

UK cautioned about military aid to Ukraine

Samizdat | July 2, 2022

Scottish and Welsh ministers have said the British government took their budget funds for military aid to Ukraine, voicing concerns that it could set a precedent. The Treasury has told Scotland and Wales to contribute to a £1 billion ($1.2 billion) weapons package or have their budgets reduced.

Scottish Finance Secretary Kate Forbes said on Wednesday that Scotland agreed to provide the £65 million ($78.7 million) funding but only “on this occasion”. She cautioned that “this must not be seen as any kind of precedent,” while Welsh Finance Minister Rebecca Evans said she had been forced to set aside £30 million ($36.3 million) intended for “devolved areas like health and education”.

Devolved areas of the UK are controlled by ministers in the national parliaments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Evans said it was “not right” to use their funds for military aid and defense, a non-devolved spending area. At the same time, she added that Wales will continue to provide humanitarian support for Ukrainians arriving in the country every day seeking refuge from the conflict.

The Scottish government said the money would be used to help fund “sophisticated air defense systems and thousands of pieces of vital kit for Ukrainian soldiers” in order to assist Kiev in fighting off Russia’s military offensive. Scotland has previously independently provided £4 million ($4.8 million) in basic humanitarian aid – health, water and sanitation and shelter – for Ukrainian refugees.

According to Welsh Education Minister Jeremy Miles, there was “no consultation” on the question of military aid, although a UK government spokesperson told the BBC it was incorrect “to say the Welsh government was not consulted… they were consulted and agreed to make a contribution.”

Simon Clarke, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, asked the devolved administrations to contribute to a £1 billion fund to supply Ukraine with state-of-the-art equipment by either directly handing over the money from their budgets or by accepting a reduction from block grants they receive from Westminster.

The UK Treasury “strongly disagreed” with the Scottish minister’s characterization of the aid request, saying that various government departments had been urged to contribute through their underspend. It also refuted claims that the move constitutes a precedent for raiding devolved budgets for reserved spending areas. “This is a response to an extraordinary crisis”, the spokesperson was quoted as saying by The Daily Telegraph.

The British media has described the request as highly unusual, as such spending usually comes from Westminster.

The UK has been one of the strongest backers of Ukraine since the start of the Russian offensive four months ago. This week it promised to provide an additional £1 billion ($1.2 billion) to support the Ukrainian Armed Forces, taking the overall military aid given to Kiev to £2.3 billion ($2.8 billion).The package includes various types of weaponry, including M270 Multiple Launch rocket systems, light anti-tank weapons and armored vehicles.

Moscow has repeatedly warned against supplies of weapons to Ukraine from the US, UK and other allied nations, saying it will only prolong the fighting, while increasing the risk of a direct military confrontation between Russia and the West.

The concerns over devolved budget funds being used by the UK government came as Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced on Tuesday a target date of October 19, 2023 for a second referendum on independence from the UK.

July 2, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Sanctions can be perceived as casus belli – Medvedev

Samizdat – June 30, 2022

Unilateral sanctions can be perceived as an “act of international aggression” and invoke Russia’s right to self-defense, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has warned.

Speaking at the 10th International legal forum in Saint Petersburg, Medvedev blasted the “cynical practice of unilateral restrictive measures against Russia, the illegality of which has been repeatedly emphasized at all levels.”

This practice is “somewhat akin to a declaration of economic war, as our opponents themselves say,” he added.

“Under certain circumstances, such hostile steps can be perceived as an act of international aggression. And even as a casus belli. In response to them, the state has the right to individual and collective self-defense.”

However, Moscow still holds “weak hope” that the West will abandon its “vicious practices” and “repent of its own stupidity,” Medvedev stated. “It is our hope that our former Western partners will have the courage to admit their strategic miscalculations, which, according to the UN itself, have affected more than 1.5 billion people and provoked a surge in global inflation, food shortages, and the growth of poverty,” he said.

Should such hopes not materialize, Russia “will live” on its own without the West, the ex-president explained. “Today’s world is not at all limited to the borders of Western countries,” he said.

Over the past few years, Russia has repeatedly been subjected to assorted sanctions by the US and its allies. The sanctions pressure began to grow exponentially after Moscow launched its large-scale military operation in neighboring Ukraine in late February. Since then, Russia has been hit by several waves of restrictions, ultimately becoming the most-sanctioned country in the world.

Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, designed to give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The protocols, brokered by Germany and France, were first signed in 2014. Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has since admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and “create powerful armed forces.”

June 30, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Vladimir Putin comments on Boris Johnson’s remarks

Samizdat | June 29, 2022

Speaking to journalists in Turkmenistan on Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to questions about several recent remarks from British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. During the latest G7 summit, the UK leader joked that his allies should take their clothes off for the photoshoot – to show that they are “tougher than Putin.”

“I don’t know how they wanted to undress, waist-high or not, but I think it would be a disgusting sight either way,” the Russian president quipped. “Everything should be harmoniously developed in a person, both the body and the soul. However, in order for everything to be harmonious, one has to abandon excessive drinking and break other bad habits, start exercising, take up a sport.”

Johnson’s another recent remark suggested that what he described as a “macho war of invasion” in Ukraine would not happen “if Putin was a woman, which he obviously isn’t.”

The Russian leader responded: “I just want to remind you about the events of modern history, when Margaret Thatcher made a decision to launch military action against Argentina over the Falkland Islands. Here’s a woman, deciding to launch military action. Where are the Falkland Islands and where is Britain? And this was dictated by nothing but imperial ambitions.”

“So coming from an acting British Prime Minister, this is not exactly a correct remark in regards to what is happening today.”

June 30, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Guardian Pushes for Return of Masks, Mass Testing and Quarantine

BY WILL JONES | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | JUNE 28 2022

Here we go again. It’s the middle of summer and the leading opinion piece in the Guardian today calls for the return of restrictions in response to rising infections and hospitalisations. In a piece introduced with, “a few small changes would make a big difference to millions of vulnerable people”, journalist Frances Ryan writes:

If you’re reading this in the U.K., odds are that by now you’ve had coronavirus: seven in 10 of us have watched the dreaded red line appear. You may have been stuck in bed with it twice or even three times by now; by April 2022, England alone had recorded almost 900,000 reinfections. When the public asked to “return to normal”, I’m not sure a regular hacking cough was what they had in mind.

Almost 900,000 reinfections? How will 1.6% of the population have coped with getting another cold?

Ryan continues:

It is an odd situation. Last week, Covid infections were reported to have soared by 43%, while hospitalisation from the virus rose by 23%. An estimated 1.7 million people in the U.K. tested positive over those seven days. Two million of us now have long Covid, with about two in five of those – or 826,000 people – having symptoms for at least a year.

What Ryan fails to mention is that Long Covid studies frequently find small to negligible numbers of additional symptoms compared to a control group, meaning the quoted figure is unlikely to be an accurate picture of the real impact of COVID-19.

Ryan again:

Back in February, Johnson said the Government had created a plan to start “living with Covid”, but what it really did was form a plan to catch and spread Covid. After all coronavirus prevention measures were dropped on April 1st – from the legal obligation to isolate if you had Covid, to the end of most free testing – the public were left wide open to mass infection. Even hospitals were told by ministers to ditch mask mandates, though some worried trusts have defied the rules and kept them. That all precautions were pulled back just when most people’s vaccine immunity was beginning to fade, and the virus was evolving to be more transmissible, gives a hint at how little logic ministers applied.

Since Ryan accepts that vaccine protection wanes, she evidently intends restrictions, sorry, precautions to continue indefinitely. Indeed, the plummeting of the infection fatality rate makes no difference to her argument, as “excessive focus” has been placed on deaths, she says.

One of the biggest problems facing Britain’s attempts to quell the virus is that this Government doesn’t really want to. There is hope – the number of people dying from Covid has reduced since its peak – but excessive focus on this has long hidden the fact that loss of life has never been the only thing that matters: how many people are infected with the virus matters too. A strategy that lets the virus rip through the population increases the risk we all face, be it from surges, new dangerous variants, or in developing long Covid. Fundamentally, it means accepting a reality where it is deemed normal for many of us to be (possibly severely) sick, from a virus whose long-term effects – and the effects of repeated reinfection – we still know little about.

Once again, the plight of the vulnerable is deployed to justify indefinite restrictions on everyone – a logic which would destroy most freedoms given the opportunity, as we have seen in the last two and a half years.

There will be few greater casualties though than the 3.7 million clinically extremely vulnerable people, especially the 500,000 who are immunocompromised and can’t get much or any benefit from a booster jab. Trying to avoid the virus in a country that has forgone all safety measures means risking your life when you pop to the shops. Ministers who are content for repeated coronavirus infection to just become part of British life are content for isolation to be part of clinically vulnerable people’s.

What does Ryan propose? The reinstatement of free lateral flow tests – as though there isn’t an economic crisis on, and we haven’t spent enough over-testing ourselves for colds; the return of the legal requirement to isolate for those with a positive test – a measure extremely disruptive to education, employment, health care and everything else; and financial help such as sick pay for those isolating – more magical money. Plus more of the vaccines she has acknowledged don’t work for long.

And, inevitably, masks: “Wearing masks in busy and enclosed spaces again is the right thing to do; just under half of Britons (48%) reported wearing a face covering when outside their home last month, down from about 95% during the January Omicron wave.”

From a sceptical point of view, it’s depressing that nearly half of people still say they’re wearing a mask – though since far fewer than half the people I see out and about are actually wearing a mask, this poll probably reveals more about the biases of polls (and what people say to them) than the reality on the ground.

Then Ryan lays it on thick:

Unless we wish to sign up to getting repeatedly sick for the foreseeable future, and to the risk of long-term disability from long Covid, we are going to have to bring back low-effort protective measures to curb it. A recent public health campaign in Ireland, which encourages people to think of clinically vulnerable people in their daily interactions, shows how easy it is to do things differently.

Former Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van-Tam recently said the rise in infections was nothing to worry about and that even he had stopped wearing his face mask. But will he think again now, if respectable opinion starts to shift in the direction Frances Ryan and others would like?

Let’s hope this is just an anomalous op-ed and not the start of a trend. After all, if this is what they’re saying in June, what will they be saying in December?

June 29, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Climate Change Committee Warns Government Must Go Further To Limit Warming

By Richie Allen | June 29, 2022

The UK government’s official advisers on climate change have warned that much more needs to be done to persuade people to fly less and eat less meat in order to meet climate targets.

The Climate Change Committee (CCC) says that unless policies are radically improved, the UK won’t achieve its target to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

According to The BBC:

The committee is an independent body advising on climate policy. This report is an annual review of progress to MPs.

It does praise ministers on two issues: it says the government’s renewable energy programme will save people £125 a year on bills by 2030.

And it congratulates ministers on promoting electric cars – even though it says more charge points and more electric vans are needed…

The committee agrees that carbon-cutting policies are now in place for most sectors of the economy – but it says there’s “scant evidence” that these goals will be delivered.

And it warns that ministers need a back-up plan, including measures they may prefer to avoid such as asking the public to change behaviour by eating less meat and flying less.

The chairman, Lord Deben, told BBC News that recent climate extremes were “very, very worrying”. He continued: “The public should be proud of the UK setting best targets but I’m very worried that there’s no convincing programme for delivering policies.

“I’m seriously worried that we are not moving fast enough to avert real catastrophe.”

Legendary Australian Geologist Ian Plimer has just published a new book entitled “Green Murder.” I’ve just finished reading it. I wish every man, woman and child on Earth had a copy to hand.

In the book, Professor Plimer forensically annihilates the claim that man-made Co2 is responsible for global warming.

He warns us that ludicrous net zero policies will result in ruined economies, the destruction of the global food chain, permanent travel restrictions, the death of civil liberties and worldwide unemployment.

Each and every claim in his book is backed up by peer-reviewed evidence, yet you’ll never hear Ian Plimer on the BBC.

June 29, 2022 Posted by | Book Review, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

WHO Recommends New Gates-Funded Polio Vaccine to Address Vaccine-Derived Polio Outbreak in U.K.

By Megan Redshaw | The Defender | June 27, 2022

Health officials in the U.K. this month identified the country’s first polio outbreak in 40 years, and believe the outbreak was caused by a strain of polio found in the oral polio vaccine.

Health officials in Britain warned parents on June 22 to ensure their children have been vaccinated against polio after multiple closely related versions of the virus that cause the disease were found in sewage water at the London Beckton Sewage Treatment Works — the largest water treatment plant in the U.K.

“The Global Polio Laboratory Network has confirmed the isolation of type 2 vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV2) from environmental samples in London, United Kingdom, which were detected as part of ongoing disease surveillance,” the World Health Organization (WHO) states on its website.

The U.K. Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said it believes the virus was “vaccine-derived,” meaning it came from someone who received the live polio vaccine. That person then passed the virus to individuals in London, who shed the virus into their feces.

The viruses’ genetic sequences suggest “there has been some spread between closely linked individuals in north and east London,” the UKHSA said.

The virus was isolated from environmental samples collected between February and May, and no related cases of paralysis have been detected, the WHO said. “Additional sewage samples collected upstream from the main waste-water treatment plant’s inlet are being analyzed.”

People vaccinated with the live oral polio vaccine (OPV) shed traces of the virus in their stool — which eventually end up in sewage wastewater, NPR reported. Scientists believe a person brought the virus into London and then spread it to others who were unvaccinated.

“We are urgently investigating to better understand the extent of this transmission,” Vanessa Saliba, an epidemiologist who consults for the UKHSA, said in the statement.

The risk to the general public is thought to be “extremely low” but the agency encourages anyone not fully vaccinated to receive a polio vaccine.

WHO approves Gates’ oral polio vaccine for emergency use

The WHO on Nov. 13, 2020, granted Emergency Use Listing (EUL) to a new novel oral polio vaccine called nOPV2, designed to treat the type of polio outbreak occurring in the U.K.

Based on the WHO’s review of data and research available on nOPV2, the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) recommended Gates’ nOPV2 become the “vaccine of choice” for responding to type 2 polio outbreaks caused by OPV.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided 100% of the funding for the development and clinical trials of the vaccine.

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) states on its website:

“The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has funded all development and clinical trials of nOPV2 to date, working closely with GPEI partners throughout the process to ensure resources are going toward a tool that could prove critical to helping end all forms of polio.

“Based on promising data from clinical trials, and the public health emergency that cVDPV2 [vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2] constitutes, the Foundation is funding at-risk production of 160 million doses of nOPV2 to ensure it can be deployed immediately following the issuance of WHO’s interim Emergency Use Listing (EUL) recommendation for use.”

“The emergency use listing, or EUL, is the first of its kind for a vaccine” designed to “pave the way for potential listing of COVID-19 vaccines,” the WHO said on its website.

On December 31, 2020, the WHO issued its first EUL listing for a COVID-19 vaccine. According to the WHO, the agency granted the listing for the Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine.

The EUL is a regulatory pathway that allows the WHO — whose second-largest financial donor is the Gates Foundation — to distribute an unlicensed product for a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern,” which the organization claims polio has been since 2014.

The EUL allows vaccines and medicines to be made available more quickly to address health emergencies, without long-term phase 3 data, and is the same mechanism used for distribution of Zika, Ebola and COVID-19 vaccines.

According to the WHO, in “very rare cases,” the administration of OPV results in vaccine-associated paralytic polio associated with a “reversion of the vaccine strains to the more neurovirulent profile of wild poliovirus.”

In addition to causing vaccine-associated paralytic polio, vaccine strains have the capacity to cause disease of the nervous system and to transmit from person to person resulting in infectious poliomyelitis.

Based on the WHO’s review of data and research available on nOPV2, the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) recommended Gates’ nOPV2 become the “vaccine of choice” for responding to type 2 polio outbreaks caused by OPV.

According to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), the nOPV2 was developed to address vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 outbreaks, which “can emerge when the weakened strain of the vaccine virus circulates in under-immunized populations and, with time, can genetically revert into a form that causes paralysis.”

In other words, “under-immunized” populations — not the OPV — are to blame for the vaccine-related polio strains.

In an email to The Defender, Dr. Brian Hooker, Ph.D., P.E., Children’s Health Defense chief scientific officer and professor of biology at Simpson University said:

“Once again, Big Pharma, fueled by the Gates Foundation, has created a huge problem that only they can solve. The introduction of the new OPV in the U.K. has predictably led to polio virus in the sewage (i.e., where poliovirus propagates) and now the “only solution” is to inject U.K. citizens with the nPOV2 to prevent the spread of OPV-induced polio. If this isn’t a scam, I don’t know what is!”

The U.K.’s Medicines and Regulatory Health Products Agency (MHRA) on June 17 said in a tweet: “An exciting new global study, co-authored by our lead scientist Javier Martin, shows that new polio vaccine nOPV2 is an effective tool in reducing the risk of Vaccine-Derived Polio Viruses.“

The tweet linked to a study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advocating for the use of Gates’ nOPV2 vaccine.

Between the launch of nOPV2 in March 2021 and late May 2022,  more than 350 million doses had been administered across 18 countries.

The GPEI confirmed, as of May 30, 16 other countries are “ready to use nOPV2” and an additional 17 are in the midst of preparations.

WHO, GPEI and other organizations pushing Gates-funded vaccine

According to UNICEF, the GPEI is a public-private partnership led by national governments with six core partners: Rotary International, the WHO, the CDC, UNICEF, the Gates Foundation and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.

The Gates Foundation, in addition to funding the nPOV2 vaccine, GPEI and the WHO, also funds Rotary International, UNICEF, Gavi and the CDC Foundation.

The entity in charge of monitoring vaccine adverse events following administraton of nPOV2  is the WHO’s own Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety (GACVS).

“The GACVS Sub-Committee on nOPV2 Safety will advise WHO and its Member States on safety outcomes following the use of initially pre-licensed type 2 novel oral poliovirus vaccine, during the EUL period, prior to the availability of Phase III clinical trial results,” according to GPEI.

In essence, the Gates Foundation funded the creation, development and clinical trials for the new nPOV2 polio vaccine, funds the organizations that administered millions of doses to be given under EUL without any long-term data, funds the organizations implementing its roll-out and surveillance and funds the entity monitoring adverse events associated with nPOV2’s use.

The Gates Foundation is also a funder of NPR and NPR’s blog, which have published numerous articles on VDPV2 and paved the way for Gates’ nPOV2 vaccine as the solution.

Oral polio v. inactivated polio vaccines

According to the WHO, the original OPV uses a mixture of “live attenuated poliovirus strains of each of the three serotypes,” selected for their ability to mimic the immune system’s response following infection with wild polioviruses, but with a reduced chance of spreading to the central nervous system.

To achieve the desired immune response, three or more doses of OPV are required spaced out over a period of time.

The U.S. and some western countries use an inactivated (killed) polio vaccine (IPV) developed by Dr. Jonas Salk and first used in 1955.

Scientists claim the inactivated virus poses no risk of spread, although the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting system shows two reported cases of poliomyelitis reported following vaccination with IPV.

The U.S. stopped using OPV in 2000 because it caused paralytic polio.

According to NPR, countries in Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia are experiencing a rise in cases of vaccine-derived polio. These countries mostly use the OPV developed by Albert Sabin and first used in 1961.

Gates’ nOPV2 vaccine  is a modified version of Sabin’s existing OPV vaccine.

“The spread of vaccine-derived polio virus from OPV vaccine in multiple countries throughout Africa and Asia resulted in 1,612 cases of paralytic polio from 2017 through 2020,” Dr. Liz Mumper, pediatrician and former medical director of the Autism Research Institute told The Defender.

“Since these polio virus samples are in wastewater in a developed country, those who have access to clean water should not be at risk,” Mumper said. “However, the media is raising alarms. This is a setback for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.”

According to the CDC, three cases of paralytic polio caused by the OPV vaccine have been reported in the U.S. since the vaccine was discontinued in 2000.

The CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, shows 66 reports of polio following administration of the OPV.

VAERS also shows 14 reported cases of poliomyelitis following vaccination with IPV. Historically, VAERS has been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.

Megan Redshaw is a staff attorney for Children’s Health Defense and a reporter for The Defender.

© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.

June 27, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , | Leave a comment

Why is the government getting into bed with Moderna?

By Kathy Gyngell | TCW Defending Freedom | June 27, 2022

WITH all eyes on the dramatic ‘return of polio’ headlines of last Wednesday and Thursday, a far more significant piece of news was slipped out. It was announced that the Government was partnering with Moderna to open a large research and manufacturing centre in Britain which ‘will develop cutting-edge mRNA vaccines for a wide range of respiratory diseases, including Covid-19 vaccines that can protect against multiple variants, helping to future-proof the UK against potential emerging health threats’.

Lucky NHS patients are to have access to the ‘next generation’ of mRNA vaccines and treatments. ‘The centre will be able to scale up production rapidly in the event of a health emergency, significantly boosting the UK’s ability to respond to future pandemics.’

This worrying press release requires careful reading. It reveals an astonishing gung-ho and uncritical approach to mRNA Covid vaccines in view of their now proven limited or even zero efficacy, and the high rate of recorded adverse events, injuries and deaths associated with them and in particular with the Moderna brand.

It does not tell us how much the Government is investing in this planned ‘mRNA Innovation and Technology Centre’ or where all the money is coming from. From the Centre for Epidemic Preparedness and Innovation (CEPI), the organisation which put up the money for Moderna’s fast-tracked Covid vaccine, that the UK already pays into? Or will some of the billions Moderna has made on the back of their ‘gene therapy’ covid vaccines be invested?

Something was to be gleaned from an interview with the Health Secretary on Wednesday’s BBC Radio 4 PM programme. Evan Davis asked Sajid Javid what Moderna would get in return for their billion-pound investment. ‘Well,’ said Javid, ‘the government’s agreed to buy Moderna’s vaccines, the mRNA ones, for the next decade’. (My italics)

Why on earth would the Government think it right to make such a commitment for new-technology vaccines as yet untested, that we may not need, to a get-rich-quick company that has serious questions to answer about exactly how it created its Covid vaccine so rapidly.

Why, as already touched on, would the government be making such a huge commitment to the producer of the vaccine that gets by far the highest Yellow Card adverse reaction reporting rate in the UK? (The official figures are: Pfizer – 1 in 157 people impacted, AstraZeneca – 1 in 101 people impacted, Moderna – 1 in 43 people impacted.) These represent the immediate risks recipients are exposed to but the technology is so new that there remains a complete absence of understanding of any long-term risks, and apparently no follow-up mechanism to study them.

In this interview we also learnt that it was, in Javid’s words, ‘a huge deal’, and that yes, what Moderna got out of it was a captive and secure market for pretty much whatever vaccines they choose to produce.

‘We all saw during the pandemic the power of vaccines, the difference that they can make. And in particular, with this new technology called mRNA, this platform, we saw how it has literally saved millions of lives during the pandemic. And this technology is transformational. And under this deal, what will be happening is that Moderna will be opening both a global R&D centre here in the UK, carrying out lots of the clinical trials. But also they’ll be building a manufacturing facility here in the UK for vaccines, that will be their largest outside of the United States. So it’s over a . . . well over a billion pounds of investment. It’s a huge vote of confidence in our life sciences industry. But how it matters most of all to me as the Health Secretary is that it will mean that we in the UK, NHS patients, will have guaranteed access to future vaccines and treatments from this exciting mRNA platform. And what that means, it’s more than just Covid or flu, it means that the future sort of health needs in terms of cancer and dementia, cardiovascular disease, you know, these are all things that hold huge potential from this investment’.

When Davis pressed: ‘I’m interested in what they get out of it, because you say obviously our regulators would have to approve any vaccine that we buy from them . . . but we have guaranteed purchases, haven’t we?’ Javid agreed: ‘Yeah, let me explain that. So what we will do is we’ll sign a contract with them which will say, basically, that if you create drugs that our regulator approves and that we actually want for our health system, then we will buy those drugs. And in return what we get in the UK is, is this huge investment and guaranteed access.’

His economic sense appeared to have gone quite astray at this point. What favour Moderna would be doing us if they are to be provided with a promised captive market? Of course we will have ‘guaranteed access’! And why the UK when Europe represents a much bigger market and we no longer have access to the EU single market?

Unfortunately Davis did not ask to whom the £395 million government  investment mentioned in the press release ‘to secure and scale up the UK’s vaccine manufacturing capabilities’ has gone to or goes to. To Moderna?

Looking at the updates to Moderna’s confidentiality agreements released to Axios, they appear to be  trying to diversify into the existing market for childhood vaccines and are gearing up to roll out mRNA vaccines for measles and mumps and perhaps now polio and other viruses.

The very real fear is that the MHRA will follow the US Food and Drug Administration’s approach of rapid rubberstamping for new products deemed to be ‘biosimilar’ to existing products authorised on that ‘platform’. Thus minimal testing will be required, the products will get MHRA approval more easily than traditional vaccines, and our children risk being guinea pigs again. The regulatory safeguards for these products that industry sees as ‘red tape’ have been built up over decades to protect users but are now being set aside. Additionally US pharmaceutical companies have absolute protection under US law for liability for defectively designed children’s vaccines. Will the UK now give them the same indemnities?

Mr Johnson’s and Mr Javid’s shared enthusiasm for this novel technology is in direct conflict with the precautionary principle. Either they have not caught up with or are in denial about the extent of the health issues surrounding mRNA vaccination.

If Johnson’s and Javid’s naivete can be excused, Sir Patrick Vallance, the Government Chief Scientific Adviser, must know better. Yet here he is in the press release cheering on the project: ‘The establishment of the Moderna mRNA Innovation and Technology Centre is great news for the UK’s research and development activities and future capabilities. Rapid cutting-edge vaccines were vital in the response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Developing the next generation of mRNA vaccines will be crucial in boosting our ability to prevent and respond to a wide range of diseases in the future.’

Not so fast, Sir Patrick and Mr Javid. This is not what the latest mRNA vaccine research evidence suggests at all.  A study which summarises the current literature on mRNA and its effects published this month concludes that ‘the many alterations in the vaccine mRNA hide the mRNA from cellular defences and promote a longer biological half-life and high production of spike protein’ causing innate immune suppression. The research paper presents evidence that vaccination induces a profound impairment in type I interferon signalling, which has diverse adverse consequences to human health and says: ‘We believe a comprehensive risk/benefit assessment of the mRNA vaccines questions them as positive contributors to public health.’

The cynic might say that what the next generation of mRNA vaccines will be crucial in is weakening our natural immunity, compromising our ability to combat disease ourselves while subjecting us and the next generation of children with reckless indifference to unknown health risks.

June 27, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »