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They lied about everything else, but believe them about this war

By Frederick Edward | TCW Defending Freedom | March 5, 2022

HOW long until we get reports of people pelting Siberian huskies on the street?

Probably not too long. Already there are videos of Russian food shops being vandalised such as this one in Germany.

A friend who runs a Russian language school in Britain has received threats, including that all Russians should leave the UK. That the school employs mostly Ukrainians and the owner’s wife is from Kiev is neither here nor there when you’re caught up in the latest tide of moral righteousness.

Having forgotten utterly about the preoccupations of yesterday – Covid, Partygate (whatever happened to Sue Gray’s report?) – we are now fully at work with our latest, all-consuming passion. War. Lots of it. Each detonation of a mortar round more titillating than the last. I haven’t seen this much unanimity since the first days of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Do you believe what you read in the media? Plucky Ukrainians, incompetent Russians. After a few days, claims that ‘Russia has lost the war’ abound. Stuck in the mud and stranded without fuel. That wars are rarely decided on the opening day seems lost to a world obsessed with only the present moment. There is plenty more time for Ukraine to fall.

But not without additional, unnecessary bloodshed, all encouraged by our politicians and media. Those wishing to volunteer for Kiev are sent away on a bandwagon of positive vibes and profile pictures with superimposed Ukrainian flags. That they are being sent to a probable death is neither here nor there.

The Russians are evil. The West never puts a foot wrong. Ignore the wars of the past – Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya – we are geopolitically chaste and without sin. That Ukraine is of approximately zero geostrategic interest to us does not matter. The forward march of Western hubris in its institutional form cannot be impeded.

Why would Nato not just say Ukraine will remain a buffer state? That nation’s entry into the alliance was so clearly a red line for the strategists of Moscow, nevertheless we courted its favour, assuming that being on the ‘right side of history’ would be enough. When Russia finally did invade, our ignorance leads us to throw our hands up and scream ‘bully!’ at Putin. I do not care much for Putin, but it is for the birds to assume that the West is entirely without blame.

Having been systematically lied to about every imaginable topic, I cannot simply buy our government’s line. Warrior Truss, whose unfamiliarity with the geography of the area should set alarm bells ringing, solemnly plays her role as a second-rate Thatcher-at-war. Johnson, who until yesterday was on the ropes of various scandals, is recast as a latter-day Churchill.

We’re fighting for democracy and freedom. Fighting for it in a corrupt eastern European state, cleft in two by a linguistic and ethnic fault line, and whose elites have bought the ear of the American President and his family.

We’re fighting it from the high horses of the West, which has just spent two years imprisoning its own citizens and demanding they undergo forced medical procedures. From the same West which would not dare comment on Trudeau’s totalitarian seizure of the bank accounts of those who dared disagree with him, nor on the dictatorial powers used daily in the Antipodes.

Forget all of that. We are the good guys. They are the bad guys. The world is black and white. We are not to blame, not one iota. Cheerlead for war and let the stakes get higher. Assume that Russia’s interests are invalid and to be ignored. We’re back to the gilded age of liberal democracies beating the drum of war.

Whatever you do, don’t look back or think about the recent past. Let your minds be firmly occupied by the indulgent orgy of violence, peddled by the same people who conned you so many times before, and who seek to keep us in a perpetual state of crisis. And certainly, never think about the law of unintended consequences.

March 4, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

Public Health Scotland and the misinterpretation of data

Health Advisory & Recovery Team | March 4, 2022

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive” – Sir Walter Scott

Throughout the last two years Public Health Scotland (PHS) has punched above its weight by providing reliable data that has quantified the impact of the Scottish government’s COVID-19 response on the health of the Scottish population. In particular, it has documented the unprecedented excess death that occurred in summer and autumn 2021, prompting the establishment of an official enquiry as to the cause, and uncovered a spike in September 2021 in the number of stillbirths in Scotland that is currently under investigation.

However, in its report of 14th February 2022, PHS has declared that it will no longer publish data on COVID-19 outcomes (cases, hospitalisations and deaths) classified by vaccination status, a hitherto valuable component of the COVID-19 vaccination surveillance strategy. The reason given for making this change is that ‘PHS is aware of inappropriate use and misinterpretation of the data when taken in isolation without fully understanding the limitations’.

It is certainly true that claims have been made about the deleterious effects of COVID-19 vaccines that go well beyond what can be supported by the data published by PHS. In this case critical appraisal of these unsubstantiated claims, rather than the blanket withdrawal of valuable information, would seem the better antidote to the spread of misinformation.

However, it is important to note that implicit in the decision made by PHS is that the information they provide is above reproach, both in terms of inappropriate use and misrepresentation of the data to which they alone are privy. To investigate whether PHS analysis is indeed above reproach, we can look in a little detail at the way in which they have presented the information on COVID-19 outcomes by vaccination status in their last report of February 2022. We will concentrate on the analysis of death with COVID-19 by vaccination status, unvaccinated or booster, found in Table 15, using the data for week 29 January – 04 February 2022. The relevant data from that table is reproduced below:

No. of Deaths Population Age Standardised Mortality Rate per 100,000 with 95% confidence intervals
Unvaccinated 13 1,524,406 10.95 (3.40 – 18.50)
Booster 73 3,229,938 1.50 (1.15 – 1.85)

A superficial inspection of this table would suggest to the casual reader that the death rate with COVID-19 in those who have received a booster is far lower than that suffered by those who are unvaccinated when the difference in age distributions of the booster and unvaccinated populations are taken into account. Indeed, PHS draw the conclusion that ‘the death rate in individuals that received a booster or 3rd dose of a COVID-19 vaccine was between 4.6 and 9.5 times lower than individuals who are unvaccinated or have only received one or two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine’. Let us look in detail at how the data were treated to arrive at this conclusion, and ask whether this very strong affirmation of the benefits of the booster can be substantiated.

We first look at the way in which the two populations that we are comparing, unvaccinated and booster, are defined. For this we turn to Appendix 6 of the report. Here we learn that the unvaccinated population is not, as we might have assumed, those that have never been vaccinated. Instead, it also includes all those individuals who have received a first vaccine, but for whom the time since vaccination is less than 22 days. Thus, if any deaths occur within the 21 days post first vaccine, these deaths will be attributed to the unvaccinated category. This misattribution may have significant consequences because deaths from adverse vaccination reactions principally occur shortly after vaccination. This idiosyncratic classification of the unvaccinated artificially, and misleadingly, inflates the death rate in the unvaccinated population. Would it not have been better to classify the unvaccinated as those never receiving a vaccine, to preclude the introduction of such bias against the unvaccinated into the analysis?

Turning to the boosted population we find that this is not defined as the number of individuals who have received a booster, but rather the number that have received a booster at least 14 days prior to the reporting period. Therefore, if deaths of boosted individuals occur within the first 14 days of this vaccination, they will not be counted as booster deaths, but as a 2-dose death. The mortality rates given are also dependent on the size of the vaccinated population. If the addition of boostered individuals is a continuous process then, depending on accounting, the last two week cohort added to the boostered population may effectively be excluded from contributing to deaths, while the unvaccinated population during the same time period will not. PHS’s redefinition of the booster population again serves to artificially and misleadingly reduce the reported rate of deaths in the PHS booster population relative to the unvaccinated population. Would it not have been better to classify the booster population simply as those who have received a booster shot, and avoided the inevitable bias in favour of the boosted population that is introduced by the PHS redefinition?

Notwithstanding the biases introduced by PHS’s redefinition of the populations to be compared, we can now concentrate our attention on the methods they have used to correct for the fact that the age distribution of the unvaccinated is likely to be much younger than that of the boosted population. To begin our explanation, it is helpful to use the raw data provided in table 15 for week 29 January – 04 February 2022 to calculate the individual rate of death with COVID-19 per 100,000 per week without making any adjustment for differences in age distribution. This can be compared with the figures PHS calculated from the data to quantify ‘Age Standardised Mortality Rate per 100,000 per week’.

Unvaccinated Booster
Unadjusted COVID-19 mortality per 100,000 per week 0.85 2.26
Age Standardised Mortality Rate per 100,000 per week 10.95 1.50

The comparison is illuminating and a little worrying. An unadjusted death rate 2.7 times higher in the booster population than in the unvaccinated population has been converted into an age standardised mortality rate that is now 7.3 times higher in the unvaccinated population than in the booster population. To understand what is going on we have to know both how to calculate an Age Standardised Mortality Rate per 100,000 per week, and to understand what this value actually represents.

The Age Standardised Mortality Rate is a measure of the impact, in terms of mortality, on the whole population rather than a particular age group. Rather than calculating a population Age Standardised Mortality Rate based on the age distribution of the Scottish population, Public Health Scotland used the standard WHO age distribution. In this age distribution there is a much lower representation of older people. The consequence is that a very low weight is given to deaths in older age groups and a disproportionately high weighting to deaths in young age groups. In fact, the weighting of a young death can be 10 times higher than for an old death. Through this unjustified weighting a raw mortality rate which was 2.7 times greater in the vaccinated is turned into an age standardised mortality rate which is 7.3 times greater in the unvaccinated.

The age standardised mortality does not relate to individual risk – we may have much higher risk in old age groups individually, but this translates into a very small effect on overall deaths at a population level because the percentage of old people in the population is very low. The point of calculating age standardised mortality is not to compare risks. It is designed to allow comparison of the relative burden of a disease on a population – what proportion of a population will be lost from that population by a particular disease. Its use to somehow correct for differences in age distributions on risk of death is completely inappropriate.

The important thing to note is that what has been calculated is a measure of population impact of COVID-19 in a hypothetical population; what proportion of the population die in this hypothetical population as a consequence of the disease. It is assuredly not a measure of individual mortality risk from COVID-19. As such it is completely inappropriate and misleading to use it to compare the risk of death with COVID 19 between populations of different vaccination status as has been done by PHS. Therefore, their statement that ‘the death rate in individuals that received a booster or 3rd dose of a COVID-19 vaccine was between 4.6 and 9.5 times lower than individuals who are unvaccinated or have only received one or two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine’ is utterly false and misleading and completely unsupported by the data. The simple and transparent way of comparing individual mortality risk would be to use the data in PHS’s possession to estimate individual risk of death for each age category and population, and compare these values within each age category. Rather than compare the whole population, the risk for each age group by vaccination status would provide useful information. UKHSA do provide this data but PHS never have done. The magnitude of the error in using Age Standardised Mortality Rates as a metric calls into question the competence of PHS to analyse and interpret data that are critical to the formulation of Scottish government health policy which directly impacts the wellbeing of literally millions of people.

The final point to make is that in order to receive a booster, an individual must previously have received both a first and a second dose of vaccine. There is a risk of a bias being introduced whereby only survivors, who are by definition less likely to die, are being measured. Therefore, deaths that occurred after first and second vaccinations should be included with deaths after the booster vaccination itself in order to properly assess the overall COVID-19 death rates in the vaccinated population. In other words, the appropriate comparison to make when assessing the effect of booster doses on COVID-19 mortality is between the unvaccinated population and the vaccinated population, where the latter includes anyone who has received any injection.

In conclusion, by announcing that data on COVID-19 outcomes by vaccination status will no longer be provided due to “misrepresentation and misinterpretation of their analyses”, PHS has drawn attention to their own glaring shortcomings in this area. They have been shown to introduce unwarranted bias into their analyses by manipulation of the definitions of vaccination status, and they have used a wholly inappropriate metric to compare the risk of death with COVID-19 among the vaccinated and unvaccinated in the Scottish population.

Truly they are hoisted by their own petard.

March 4, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Western anti-Russian agenda threatens UN’s existence

By Lucas Leiroz | March 4, 2022

Amid the abusive wave of sanctions against Russia due to the special operation in Ukraine, some specific rumors have caught the attention of experts, suggesting that there are plans on the part of the Western states to simply pressure to remove Russia’s permanent seat on the UN Security Council (UNSC). This kind of illegal maneuver is a real coup attempt and could lead to the end of the UN.

Apparently, an effort is under way to diplomatically isolate Moscow and even challenge Russia’s right to a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, alleging that Russia took the seat of the former Soviet Union in 1991 without proper authorization – which in fact is nothing more than a public “justification” to promote such an illegal maneuver.

Currently, there are reports circulating on several websites alleging that Western diplomats, mainly American and British, are starting a research work to investigate whether there is a legal possibility of removing Russia from its position on the UNSC within the current international documents. Obviously, this type of “research” is useless and there is no possibility of carrying out such a maneuver within the limits of public international law. In practice, when reporting that diplomats are investigating this kind of maneuver, it is only possible to conclude that they are somehow conspiring to carry out a coup against Moscow at the United Nations.

This absolutely absurd idea has become a common discourse in the Western media recently. This is due to the fact that the West has become furious with the Russian veto on the American resolution against the operation in Ukraine, voted on at the UNSC last week. Western political analysts began to say that “administrative reform” was needed at the UN to prevent “aggressor nations” from vetoing sanctions against themselves. Shortly thereafter, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelesnky, during one of his online speeches, claimed that Kiev “demands” Russian removal from the Council, strengthening Western discourse.

Quite unexpectedly, diplomats seem to have paid attention to this utterly unrealistic idea suggested by Zelensky and some ideologically fanatical analysts, initiating the current plan, in which Western officials plan to form a legal argument about the “illegitimacy” of the Russian presence on the Council. It is expected that some document will soon emerge containing various distortions and arbitrary interpretations of the norms of international law, just in order to justify the idea of removing Russia.

It is questionable whether the analysts and diplomats involved in this type of maneuver are taking into account all the consequences of this attitude. This irresponsible, illegal, rude and anti-diplomatic act could simply generate the biggest crisis in international relations since the Second World War, directly threatening the stability of global peace.

The very existence of the UN will lose its meaning without the Russian presence in its Security Council, considering the country’s military and nuclear importance. If that happens, the Russian attitude may simply be to abandon the UN, as it will have become a mere pro-Western international organization. China would certainly take the Russian side in this dispute as it would also have its interests affected by the coup in the Security Council. Russia and China would perhaps form a new organization together. And that would be the end of the UN as the regulator of world peace. The UN would have the same end of its predecessor league and this is something that everyone wants to avoid – except the Western officials who are planning the coup against Russia.

Obviously, administrative reform is needed at the UN and until a few days ago there was a consensus on the need to expand the Security Council’s permanent seats, including new emerging states of geopolitical relevance, such as India, Pakistan, Brazil, among others. Trying to reduce the Council is absurd considering that the world is increasingly multipolar. This would be a mere attempt on the part of NATO to carry out a global coup d’état, but instead of controlling the world, it would only bring about the end of the UN.

It is necessary that good sense prevails in the UN, in order for such an illogical project to be promptly rejected, so that the organization survives. The attempt to “cancel” Russia cannot go beyond the limits of international law. It is essential that the main world powers are on the Security Council and that the most important of them have veto power to prevent the interests of one side from prevailing over those of the other. It is this structure that guarantees world peace. It is necessary to increase the permanent seats, giving this right to new world powers, adapting the UN’s structure to the multipolar world. Any attempt to the contrary threatens the very existence of the organization.

Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.

March 4, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

The urgent child vaccine truths the watchdogs won’t listen to

By Kathy Gyngell | TCW Defending Freedom | March 1, 2022

LAST Thursday a group of senior doctors and scientists, alarmed by the Government’s deaf ear to their call for child Covid vaccination to be paused, convened a press conference to set out each and every reason, scientific and ethical, why this is so urgent. That the JCVI went into terrorist lockdown in response to four female doctors delivering yet another letter to its ‘chair’, Professor Wei Shen Lim, prior to a press conference that not one MSM health editor bothered to attend, is a scandal in itself. Far worse is the scandal of ‘guinea pig’ science that ever younger children are being subjected to, risking their health and futures for no need. This is what the press conference presentations, starting today with Dr Ros Jones’s account, make incontrovertibly clear.

Dr Ros Jones

As a retired paediatrician, I signed up for work with the General Medical Council [to assist with the Covid outbreak] back in April 2020; but actually they didn’t need me because what was very obvious early on was that the children’s ward was eerily quiet and they certainly didn’t need retired paediatricians going back to work. So that was a blessing and I went back to retirement. Unfortunately, there have been many other problems for children [arising] from the pandemic management.

It was about a year ago that I first saw advertised, on an evening BBC News, recruitment for a children’s vaccine in Oxford saying they were recruiting children aged five to 15. I was very shocked because at that stage we had no long-term adult safety data at all. I contacted Professor Pollard who was the professor leading the investigation and also, coincidentally, is [joint] chair of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and immunisation [JCVI].

I emailed him. I’ve known him through work, and he replied within the hour, saying: ‘Ooh, hi Ros, you’re quite right, we don’t know it’s safe, that’s why we’re doing the study’. He assured me it was a small pilot study, and if it was effective, then they would be looking to do a properly powered, full-size study. ‘There’s no way children will be receiving this vaccine within the year.’

I thought, Okay, but it was only two months after that that the Pfizer vaccine got its temporary authorisation in the States, and that’s when I wrote my first letter to the Government’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). We had about 60 names on the first letter, I think, and really we got that letter in before the MHRA had authorised [the vaccine for children]. They didn’t reply. They didn’t reply for ten weeks. We got a reply two hours after they had authorised the vaccine for children.

We wrote again, because every time the letters’ replies are just very bland; they don’t answer any of the individual questions that we posed about potential safety for children. They have usually been to say it’s the responsibility of the MHRA. But the MHRA, when they approved temporary authorisation for the 12s to 15s, they only looked at the Pfizer trial data. They did not look at the real world data. They said they haven’t. So they are looking at the data from a drug company that is going to be making all the profits on this.

So I thought I would start today by reminding us of the basics of how drug safety benefit works.

1. When the disease is worse than the cure, that is, when the disease is quite serious and the treatment has minimal side effects, I think we all understand that all drugs and treatments have potential side effects, but as long as the disease is worse than the cure, you’ve got a potentially useful drug.

2. When the disease more or less balances the cure, this is the next level down which is the sort of thing like you might be able to buy over the counter, but the NHS wouldn’t be spending its money on it, but at least it doesn’t do you any harm.

3. When the disease is milder than the cure. Of course, the worst situation is this, the bottom one, and that’s not a situation we want to be in. Now, obviously, [there are] quite a lot of drugs when they’re being developed, that may be discovered during the development phase, and drugs never reach the market. But it’s not uncommon for drugs to get to market where rarer side effects come to light or perhaps delayed side effects that have not been picked up on the original trials. And when that happens, then a drug gets either withdrawn completely or really restricted in its use.

So just a quick example, of course, with the AstraZeneca [vaccine] and the blood clots. At the beginning we were told, ‘Oh no, ten million doses and only ten cases,’ but when you actually looked at it, there was a very strong age stratification and it was then withdrawn for anybody under 40. So that was acting on a signal. But we turn now to Pfizer. And with the Pfizer, what seems to be the problem largely is myocarditis and that is very much age-related. So we’re in a situation where children have the least impact from Covid itself, but they have the most impact from potential side effects, particularly myocarditis.

In the US, 16-to-17-year-olds are the highest group with an incidence of 1 in 9443 for this complication. Israel, they looked a bit more systematically [and] they were the first people to spot this problem. From the moment they noticed it, they sent letters out to all their paediatricians, all their emergency departments, to tell them to look out for this. And they found [it to be] 1 in 6,230. This is young men after their second dose of Pfizer. And it’s interesting because their data – they looked at all age groups, and for the over-30s it was 1 in 72,000. So there’s a tenfold difference in risk if you are over 30 versus under 20. But the Covid risk is tenfold the other way. So your risk-benefit balance has changed by 100-fold by your age. This mantra, ‘safe and effective’, is not fit for purpose.

Hong Kong rolled the vaccine out to children a bit later, by which time they knew about myocarditis and they have just looked systematically from the beginning of the programme, and they, in fact, decided to halt the second dose when they found – for the Hong Kong 12-17s- it was 1 in 2680 getting myocarditis. And that’s just at the stage that here we went from one dose to two doses.

It’s described as mild and it goes away. But there have been child deaths reported in the States. I’ve personally been in Zoom calls with the group of cardiologists from the States who’ve been doing cardiac MRI scans, and they found that 89 per cent of these children, whose symptoms had gone, had significant changes on the scans with swelling and potential scarring of heart muscle. And the JCVI, in the minutes of their meetings last summer, wanted to have six months to follow that up and see what’s happened to those kids over time. But that was overruled, as we know.

You can watch Dr Jones and her colleagues here in a full recording.

The JCVI’s ‘lockdown’ is described here.

March 3, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

The ‘free speech’ West shouldn’t hail Big Tech for gagging Russia

By Frederick Edward | TCW Defending Freedom | March 3, 2022

WHEN I was in China, it was a faff going on some of my favourite websites. Although the censors of Beijing have not yet, to the best of my knowledge, blocked TCW Defending Freedom, anyone sitting in the Middle Kingdom and hoping to get on YouTube, Facebook or Google will be disappointed.

Not long after my departure from that sprawling metropolis, the sneezing bats of Wuhan gave the world a nasty case of the sniffles. But at that time, it was still just about possible to confidently tell your average Chinese interlocutor of the relative freedom of the West.

Yes, we could state, the internet there is free. We do not ban foreign news sources: We believe in the free exchange of information and the battle of ideas. The disinfectant of broad daylight will worm out the idiotic and the unworthy – that kind of stuff.

Of course, it’s getting harder to say with a straight face (years of Trump Derangement Syndrome and Brexit-related hysteria having done so much to destroy residual faith in the media), but it was just about doable.

But as Dr David Starkey so presciently observed, with the arrival of the Chinese virus, we have adopted a Chinese society. An acquaintance sent to me a screenshot of what happened when they tried to access Russia Today’s YouTube channel from within the UK. Instead of getting the usual assortment of Kremlin-approved views, visitors are greeted with the words: ‘This channel is not available in your country’.

Google has taken it upon itself to block Russian state media on YouTube. As ever, this decision has been met with seeming widespread adulation, with everyone keen as mustard for the unchecked juggernaut of Big Tech censorship to thunder on.

As the central nexus of the internet in the modern day, Big Tech firms have all-encompassing power, even able to silence the President of the United States. Yet Google et al are not our elected government and they are accountable to nobody; the outsourcing of political power to Silicon Valley continues uninterrupted.

Many are happy that the channel is banned. These are, perhaps, the same kinds who greeted Big Tech suppression of alternative narratives over the last two years with open arms, combating Covid ‘disinformation’. And, just as the spectre of global pestilence has miraculously disappeared, they find themselves firmly on the bandwagon of war.

Elites across the West have done so much to discredit themselves in recent years. I can no longer see a meaningful difference between the censoriousness of Beijing and the constant efforts of our governments and their rulers in Big Tech to silence dissenting opinion. As I sat in Beijing trying to look at the BBC, circumventing the Great Firewall with a VPN, little did I know I would soon have to do the same in Europe.

‘Democracy dies in darkness’, they like to tell us. Yet, by cutting off access to information that goes against the politically acceptable narrative in the West, our institutions continue to do their best in snuffing out any contrary opinions. Don’t think this is the only example: everything you read and hear from official sources is vetted and filtered.

There is nothing good to see in Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Yet, as self-purported guardians of liberalism and freedom, I can see only double standards in our actions. How can the West claim to be protectors of intellectual and spiritual freedom after what has happened over the last two years? Does everyone, in their manic rush for war, not see what we have become?

March 2, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

The US and NATO have never been sanctioned for starting wars. Why?

By Robert Bridge | RT | March 2, 2022

The West has taken an extreme stance against Russia over its invasion in Ukraine. This reaction exposes a high degree of hypocrisy considering that US-led wars abroad never received the punitive response they deserved.

If the current events in Ukraine have proven anything, it’s that the United States and its transatlantic partners are able to run roughshod across a shell-shocked planet – in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, to name a few of the hotspots – with almost total impunity. Meanwhile, Russia and Vladimir Putin are being portrayed in nearly every mainstream media publication today as the second coming of Nazi Germany for their actions in Ukraine.

First, let’s be clear about something. Hypocrisy and double standards alone do not provide justification for the opening of hostilities by any country. In other words, just because NATO-bloc countries have been tearing a path of wanton destruction around the globe since 2001 without serious consequences, this does not give Russia, or any country, moral license to behave in a similar manner. There must be a convincing reason for a country to authorize the use of force, thereby committing itself to what could be considered ‘a just war’. Thus, the question: Can Russia’s actions today be considered ‘just’ or, at the very least, understandable? I will leave that answer up to the reader’s better judgment, but it would be idle not to consider some important details.

Only to the consumers of mainstream media fast food would it come as a surprise that Moscow has been warning on NATO expansion for well over a decade. In his now-famous speech to the Munich Security Conference in 2007, Vladimir Putin poignantly asked the assembled global powerbrokers point blank,“why is it necessary to put military infrastructure on our borders during this [NATO] expansion? Can someone answer this question?” Later in the speech, he said that expanding military assets smack up to the Russian border “is not connected in any way with the democratic choices of individual states.”

Not only were the Russian leader’s concerns met with the predictable amount of disregard amid the deafening sound of crickets, NATO has gone on to bestow membership on four more countries since that day (Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia). As a thought experiment that even a dolt could conduct, imagine Washington’s reaction if Moscow were building a continuously expanding military bloc in South America, for example.

The real cause for Moscow’s alarm, however, came when the US and NATO began flooding neighboring Ukraine with a dazzling array of sophisticated weaponry amid calls for membership in the military bloc. What on earth could go wrong? In Moscow’s mind, Ukraine was beginning to pose an existential threat to Russia.

In December, Moscow, quickly nearing the end of its patience, delivered draft treaties to the US and NATO, demanding they halt any further military expansion eastwards, including by the accession of Ukraine or any other states. It included the explicit statement that NATO “shall not conduct any military activity on the territory of Ukraine or other states of Eastern Europe, South Caucasus and Central Asia.” Once again, Russia’s proposals were met with arrogance and indifference by Western leaders.

While people will have varying opinions as to the shocking actions that Moscow took next, nobody can say they were not warned. After all, it’s not like Russia woke up on February 24 and suddenly decided it was a wonderful day to start a military operation on the territory of Ukraine. So yes, an argument could be made that Russia had concern for its own security as a justification for its actions. Unfortunately, the same thing may be more difficult to say for the United States and its NATO minions with regards to their belligerent behavior over the course of the last two decades.

Consider the most notorious example, the 2003 invasion of Iraq. This disastrous war, which the Western media hacks have chalked up as an unfortunate ‘intelligence failure’, represents one of the most egregious acts of unprovoked aggression in recent memory. Without delving too deep into the murky details, the United States, having just suffered the [false flag] attacks of 9/11, accused Saddam Hussein of Iraq of harboring weapons of mass destruction. Yet, instead of working in close cooperation with the UN weapons inspectors, who were on the ground in Iraq attempting to verify the claims, the US, together with the UK, Australia, and Poland, launched a ‘shock-and-awe’ bombing campaign against Iraq on March 19, 2003. In a flash, over a million innocent Iraqis suffered death, injury, or displacement by this flagrant violation of international law.

The Center for Public Integrity reported that the Bush administration, in its effort to bolster public support for the impending carnage, made over 900 false statements between 2001 and 2003 about Iraq’s alleged threat to the US and its allies. Yet somehow the Western media, which has become the most rabid proliferator for military aggression bar none, failed to find any flaw in the argument for war – that is, until after the boots and blood were on the ground, of course.

It might be expected, in a more perfect world, that the US and its allies were subjected to some stiff sanctions in the wake of this protracted eight-year ‘mistake’ against innocents. In fact, there were sanctions, just not against the United States. Ironically, the only sanctions that resulted from this crazy military adventure were against France, a NATO member that had declined the invitation, together with Germany, to participate in the Iraqi bloodbath. The global hyper-power is not used to such rejection, especially from its purported friends.

American politicians, self-assured in their Godlike exceptionalism, demanded a boycott of French wine and bottled water due to the French government’s “ungrateful” opposition to war in Iraq. Other agitators for war betrayed their lack of seriousness by insisting that the popular menu item known as ‘French Fries’ be substituted with the name ‘Freedom Fries’ instead. So the lack of French Bordeaux, together with the tedious redrafting of restaurant menus, seems to have been the only real inconveniences the US and NATO suffered for indiscriminately destroying millions of lives.

Now compare this kid gloves approach to the US and its allies to the current situation involving Ukraine, where the scales of justice are clearly weighed down against Russia, and despite its not unreasonable warnings that it was feeling threatened by NATO advances. Whatever a person may think about the conflict now raging between Russia and Ukraine, it cannot be denied that the hypocrisy and double standards being leveled against Russia by its perennial detractors is as shocking as it is predictable.

Aside from the severe sanctioning of Russian individuals and the Russian economy, perhaps best summed up by the French economy minister, who said his country is committed to waging “a total economic and financial war on Russia,” there has been a deeply disturbing effort to silence news and information coming from those Russian sources that might give the Western public the option of seeing Moscow’s motivations. On Tuesday, March 1, YouTube decided to block the channels of RT and Sputnik for all European users, thereby allowing the Western world to seize another chunk of the global narrative.

Considering the way that Russia has been vilified in the ‘empire of lies’, as Vladimir Putin dubbed the land of his politically motivated persecutors, some may believe that Russia deserves the non-stop threats it is now receiving. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. This sort of global grandstanding, which resembles some sort of mindless virtue-signaling campaign now so popular in liberal capitals, aside from unnecessarily inflaming an already volatile situation, assumes that Russia is totally wrong, period.

Such a reckless approach, which leaves no room for debate, no room for discussion, no room for seeing Russia’s side in this extremely complex situation, only guarantees further standoffs, if not full-blown global war, further down the road. Unless the West is actively seeking the outbreak of World War III, it would be advisable to stop the hideous hypocrisy and double standards against Russia and patiently listen to its opinions and version of events (even ones presented by foreign media). It’s not as unbelievable as some people may wish to believe.

Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. He is the author of ‘Midnight in the American Empire,’ How Corporations and Their Political Servants are Destroying the American Dream.

March 2, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Nudge: Ethically Dubious and Ineffective

BY GARY SIDLEY | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | MARCH 1, 2022

More and more people in the US will be wising up to their government’s use of behavioural science – or ‘nudging’ – as a means of increasing compliance with Covid-19 restrictions. These psychological techniques exploit the fact that human beings are almost always on ‘automatic pilot,’ habitually making moment-by-moment decisions without rational thought or conscious reflection.

The use of behavioural science in this way represents a radical departure from the traditional methods – legislation, information provision, rational argument – used by governments to influence the behaviour of their citizens. But why expend all that time and energy when, by contrast, many of the ‘nudges’ delivered are – to various degrees – acting upon the public automatically, below the level of conscious thought and reason?

By going with the grain of how we think and act, the state-employed ‘nudgers’ can covertly shape our behaviour in a direction deemed desirable by the regime of the day – an appealing prospect for any government. The ubiquitous deployment of these behavioural strategies – which frequently rely on inflating emotional distress to change behaviour – raises profound moral questions.

The UK has been an innovator in these methods, but they are now raising widespread disquiet here. In fact serious concerns about our Government’s use of behavioural science were previously raised in relation to other spheres of government activity. In 2019, a Parliamentary report found that the distress evoked in people targeted by behavioural insights in relation to tax collection may, in some instances, have led to victims taking their own lives.

In the Covid-19 era, it appears the behavioural scientists have been given free reign. As a retired consultant clinical psychologist, I – and 39 professionals from the psychology/therapy/mental health sphere – have become so concerned we are calling on the UK Parliament to formally investigate the government’s use of behavioural science. People across the world can glean from the UK experience what may also have been done to them, and what may be next.

The Behavioural Insights Team

The appetite for using covert psychological strategies as a means of changing people’s behaviour was boosted by the emergence of the ‘Behavioural Insights Team’ (BIT) in 2010 as ‘the world’s first government institution dedicated to the application of behavioural science to policy.’ The membership of BIT rapidly expanded from a seven-person unit embedded in the UK Government to a ‘social purpose company’ operating in many countries across the world. A comprehensive account of the psychological techniques recommended by the BIT is provided in the document, MINDSPACE: Influencing behaviour through public policy, where the authors claim that their strategies can achieve ‘low cost, low pain ways of nudging citizens … into new ways of acting by going with the grain of how we think and act.’

Since its inception in 2010, the BIT has been led by Professor David Halpern who is currently the team’s chief executive. Professor Halpern and two other members of the BIT also currently sit on the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), which advises the Government on its Covid-19 communications strategy. Most of the other members of the SPI-B are prominent UK psychologists who have expertise in the deployment of behavioural-science ‘nudge’ techniques.

‘Nudges’ of concern: fear inflation, shaming, peer pressure

The BIT and the SPI-B have encouraged the deployment of many techniques from behavioural science within the UK Government’s Covid-19 communications. However, there are three ‘nudges’ which have evoked most alarm: the exploitation of fear (inflating perceived threat levels), shame (conflating compliance with virtue) and peer pressure (portraying non-compliers as a deviant minority) – or “affect,” “ego” and “norms,” to use the language of the MINDSPACE document.

Affect and Fear

Aware that a frightened population is a compliant one, a strategic decision was made to inflate the fear levels of all the UK people. The minutes of the SPI-B meeting dated the 22nd of March 2020 stated, ‘The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent’ by ‘using hard-hitting emotional messaging.’ Subsequently, in tandem with the UK’s subservient mainstream media, the collective efforts of the BIT and the SPI-B have inflicted a prolonged and concerted scare campaign upon the UK public. The methods used have included:

– Daily statistics displayed without context: the macabre mono focus on showing the number of Covid-19 deaths without mention of mortality from other causes or the fact that, under normal circumstances, around 1,600 people die each day in the UK.

– Recurrent footage of dying patients: images of the acutely unwell in Intensive Care Units.

– Scary slogans: for example, ‘IF YOU GO OUT YOU CAN SPREAD IT, PEOPLE WILL DIE,’ typically accompanied by frightening images of emergency personnel in masks and visors.

Ego and Shame

We all strive to maintain a positive view of ourselves. Utilising this human tendency, behavioural scientists have recommended messaging that equates virtue with adherence to the Covid-19 restrictions and subsequent vaccination campaign. Consequently, following the rules preserves the integrity of our egos while any deviation evokes shame. Examples of these nudges in action include:

– Slogans that shame the non-compliant: for example, ‘STAY HOME, PROTECT THE NHS, SAVE LIVES.’

– TV advertisements: actors tell us, ‘I wear a face covering to protect my mates’ and ‘I make space to protect you.’

– Clap for Careers: the pre-orchestrated weekly ritual, purportedly to show appreciation for NHS staff.

– Ministers telling students not to ‘kill your gran.’

– Shame-evoking adverts: close-up images of acutely unwell hospital patients with the voice-over, ‘Can you look them in the eyes and tell them you’re doing all you can to stop the spread of coronavirus?’

Norms and Peer Pressure

Awareness of the prevalent views and behaviour of our fellow citizens can pressurise us to conform, and knowledge of being in a deviant minority is a source of discomfort. The UK Government repeatedly encouraged peer pressure throughout the Covid-19 crisis to gain the public’s compliance with their escalating restrictions, an approach that – at higher levels of intensity – can morph into scapegoating.

The most straightforward example is how, during interviews with the media, Government ministers often resorted to telling us that the vast majority of people were ‘obeying the rules’ or that almost all of us were conforming.

However, in order to enhance and sustain normative pressure, people need to be able to instantly distinguish the rule breakers from the rule followers; the visibility of face coverings provides this immediate differentiation. The switch to the mandating of masks in community settings in summer 2020, without the emergence of new and robust evidence that they reduce viral transmission, strongly suggests that the mask requirement was introduced primarily as a compliance device to harness normative pressure.

Ethical questions

Compared to a government’s typical tools of persuasion, the covert psychological strategies outlined above differ in both their nature and subconscious mode of action. Consequently, there are three main areas of ethical concern associated with their use: problems with the methods per se; problems with the lack of consent; and problems with the goals to which they are applied.

First, it is highly questionable whether a civilised society should knowingly increase the emotional discomfort of its citizens as a means of gaining their compliance. Government scientists deploying fear, shame, and scapegoating to change minds is an ethically dubious practice that in some respects resembles the tactics used by totalitarian regimes such as China, where the state inflicts pain on a subset of its population in an attempt to eliminate beliefs and behavior they perceive to be deviant.

Another ethical issue associated with these covert psychological techniques relates to their unintended consequences. Shaming and scapegoating have emboldened some people to harass those unable or unwilling to wear a face covering. More disturbingly, the inflated fear levels will have significantly contributed to the many thousands of excess non-Covid deaths that have occurred in people’s homes, the strategically-increased anxieties discouraging many from seeking help for other illnesses.

Furthermore, a lot of older people, rendered housebound by fear, may have died prematurely from loneliness. Those already suffering with obsessive-compulsive problems about contamination, and patients with severe health anxieties, will have had their anguish exacerbated by the campaign of fear. Even now, after all the vulnerable groups in the UK have been offered vaccination, many of our citizens remain tormented by ‘COVID-19 Anxiety Syndrome’), characterised by a disabling combination of fear and maladaptive coping strategies.

Second, a recipient’s consent prior to the delivery of a medical or psychological intervention is a fundamental requirement of a civilised society. Professor David Halpern explicitly recognised the significant ethical dilemmas arising from the use of influencing strategies that impact subconsciously on the country’s citizens. The MINDSPACE document – of which Professor Halpern is a co-author – states that, ‘Policymakers wishing to use these tools … need the approval of the public to do so’ (p74).

More recently, in Professor Halpern’s book, Inside the Nudge Unit, he is even more emphatic about the importance of consent: ‘If Governments … wish to use behavioural insights, they must seek and maintain the permission of the public. Ultimately, you – the public, the citizen – need to decide what the objectives, and limits, of nudging and empirical testing should be’ (p375).

As far as we are aware, no attempt has ever been made to obtain the UK public’s permission to use covert psychological strategies.

Third, the perceived legitimacy of using subconscious ‘nudges’ to influence people may also depend upon the behavioural goals that are being pursued. It may be that a higher proportion of the general public would be comfortable with the government resorting to subconscious nudges to reduce violent crime as compared to the purpose of imposing unprecedented and non-evidenced public-health restrictions. Would UK citizens have agreed to the furtive deployment of fear, shame and peer pressure as a way of levering compliance with lockdowns, mask mandates and vaccination? Maybe they should be asked before the government considers any future imposition of these techniques.

A truly independent and comprehensive evaluation of the ethics of deploying psychological ‘nudges’ – during public health campaigns and in other areas of government – is now urgently required, not only in Britain, but in all countries where these interventions have been used.

Dr Gary Sidley is a retired consultant clinical psychologist who worked in the UK’s National Health Service for over 30 years, a member of HART Group and a founder member of the Smile Free campaign against forced masking.

March 1, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

Russia blames UK FM for elevated nuclear alert

The British foreign secretary made “unacceptable” statements on “clashes” between NATO and Russia

RT | February 28, 2022

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that Russian President Vladimir Putin placed Russia’s deterrence forces – including nuclear weapons – on high alert in response to statements by British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss on potential conflict between NATO and Moscow.

“Statements were made by various representatives at various levels on possible altercations or even collisions and clashes between NATO and Russia,” Peskov told reporters. “We believe that such statements are absolutely unacceptable. I would not call the authors of these statements by name, although it was the British foreign minister.”

Speaking to Sky News on Sunday, Truss said that “if we don’t stop Putin in Ukraine, we are going to see others under threat: the Baltics, Poland, Moldova, and it could end up in a conflict with NATO. We do not want to go there.” Truss did not specify how the UK could “stop” Russia in Ukraine, although the British government has already sent anti-tank weapons and other “lethal aid” to Kiev.

However, a Foreign Office source told the BBC on Monday: “I don’t think anything Liz has said warrants that sort of rhetoric or escalation,” adding that Truss has always spoken of NATO – which was formed with the explicit goal of opposing the Soviet Union – as a “defensive alliance.”

While Putin’s announcement does not signal any intent to use nuclear weapons, it has been received in the West as a reminder of the importance Moscow places on Ukraine, and its determination to keep the country out of NATO. Since the end of the Cold War, successive Russian leaders have consistently opposed the eastward expansion of the alliance, and Moscow considers the idea of a NATO-armed Ukraine on its borders an existential security threat.

In Washington, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki condemned Putin’s decision to raise the alert level, accusing the Russian president of “manufacturing threats that don’t exist in order to justify further aggression.”

Meanwhile in Ukraine, Russia’s operation is still underway, and fighting has taken place in the cities of Kharkov, Mariupol, and on the outskirts of Kiev. Tentative negotiations between Ukrainian and Russian officials took place in Belarus on Monday.

February 28, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

UK Gov’t to make some “Covid Laws” permanent

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | February 28, 2022

Some of the UK’s “temporary” measures intended to help “deal with the pandemic” are going to be added to future legislation and made permament laws by the spring of this year.

Of course, the truth is that many of the “temporary” Covid measures were already permanent.

As we detailed in fact check in the spring of 2020, although defenders claimed the Coronavirus Act was “temporary” and “only for two years”, this was completely untrue.

To quote ourselves…

Section 89 of the Coronavirus Act 2020 details just how many sections and sub-sections are not subject to the expiry clause. As well as all the “conditions” which, if met, would enable Ministers to waive the expiry clause on certain other sections and regulations.

The list is hugely long: Sections 1, 2, 5, 6, 11, 12, 13, 17, 19(11), 21(7), 59-70, 72-74, 75(1) and 76. As well as parts of Schedules 1, 4, 5, 7, 8 and 10 through 13.

These non-temporary measures included section 11, which guarantees legal indemnity for any public sector employee if they kill or injure a patient whilst attempting to treat Covid.

In total, over a quarter of the “temporary measures” were never actually temporary. And now, as Covid segues into war, the government are seeking to add a few more clauses to the non-temporary list.

It’s all detailed in the government’s “Living with Covid” planning document, released last week.

Among the double-think, back-pedalling and revisionism the document claims that the sections 30, 53, 54 and 55 of the Coronoavirus Act have “enabled revolutions in the delivery of public services” and should be made permanent.

They propose a sixth month extension now, while the sections are copied-and-pasted into legislation expected to pass later this year.

Section 30 gave coroners the right to have an inquest without a jury when Covid19 was a suspected cause of death, why they want this to be permanent I can’t see as yet. Except maybe to further erode the ideas behind the Jury system they’ve been attempting to undermine throughout the “pandemic”. Of course, it could also be amended to include any other disease they wish.

That is expected to be passed into law as part of the Judicial Review and Courts Bill.

Sections 53-55, though, empowered the justice system to hold trials over the internet, via audio or video link. Making this permanent has massive implications for human rights moving forward, not to mention leaving the system wide open for abuse and fakery (pre-recordings, deep fakes or other digital manipulation).

These will be added to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

It was a terrible precedent to set, and now its here forever. We did warn you it wouldn’t be “just two years”.

February 28, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

90% Have No Intention Of Buying Electric Cars

By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | February 28, 2022

imageMaybe somebody might explain one day why the AA President, who traditionally was supposed to look after members’ interests is so determined to get rid of the cars that the vast majority of his members want to drive?

Meanwhile, the fact that only 10% plan to buy an electric car by 2027 is a disaster for both the government’s plans, as well as motor manufacturers who who will need to invest billions before then to set up assembly lines and retool. As they will also have to drastically cut back on production of conventional cars at the same time, many drivers will be forced to buy imported cars.

I simply cannot see how the car industry can go from selling 300,000 cars a year, to 3 million in the space of a couple of years.

Also interesting to see that one in five are planning to buy a hybrid, double the number of plug in electrics. Given that all hybrids will be banned by 2035 anyway, this surely is a dead end sector. Why on earth would manufacturers spend billions developing hybrid technology and production lines, when hybrids have no long term future?

February 28, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

UK pushes forward with plans to reduce online anonymity

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | February 27, 2022

The government has added new provisions to the upcoming Online Safety Bill, requiring social media companies to allow users to block anonymous users and block “harmful” content.

The new rules are supposed to fight “abuse” by anonymous users and to give users control over the type of content they see but will have massive implications for free speech in the country.

“Tech firms have a responsibility to stop anonymous trolls polluting their platforms,” said Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport, Nadine Dorries.

“We have listened to calls for us to strengthen our new online safety laws and are announcing new measures to put greater power in the hands of social media users themselves.

“People will now have more control over who can contact them and be able to stop the tidal wave of hate served up to them by rogue algorithms.”

If the bill passes, large social media companies will be required to verify the identity of some users. However, verification will be optional. But, users will also be given the option to block users with unverified accounts.

While some like the Chartered Institute for IT believe ID verification will solve online abuse, others note that there are citizens and journalists under increasingly authoritarian regimes, sexual assault victims, and even those who are going against the status quo who rely on anonymity.

The bill will also require large social media companies to include filters allowing users to block harmful but legal content, such as “racism, health misinformation, and eating disorders.”

Related: The UK’s proposed Online Harms Bill is one of the biggest threats to free speech in the West

February 27, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Vaccination – silencing doctors in the UK

By Dr. Malcolm Kendrick | February 27, 2022

My last blog discussed the possibility that mRNA COVID19 vaccines significantly increase the risk of myocarditis. Following this, a fellow doctor reached out to tell me about what has happened to them. They too, had questioned some aspects of the safety and efficacy of the vaccines.

As a result, they have been sent two threatening letters, which are both of the ‘iron fist in a velvet glove’ variety. I asked their permission to reproduce them here. One is from the General Medical Council (GMC). The other from their responsible officer – I shall explain what this title means a bit further on.

Below is the letter from the GMC:

Dear Dr….

The GMC have received several complaints regarding your recent social media posts.

All doctors have a right to express their personal opinion regarding the Covid-19 vaccine, and while the GMC in no way supports this opinion, we don’t consider your comments are sufficiently strong to open a fitness to practice investigation at this stage.

However, we are referring this matter to your Responsible Office for your reflection through the appraisal process.

We ask that you consider what implications this complaint might have for your practise when you are discussing this with your appraiser. We would also like to remind you of GMC guidance, in particular ‘Doctors’ use of social media, and of the requirement of doctors to act with honesty and integrity to justify the public’s trust in them

What we will do now

We will share the complaint with your responsible officer for them to consider in the wider context of your practice and revalidation.

‘The wider context of your practice and revalidation.’ Which means what, exactly? I sometimes wonder if there a special training scheme where you learn to write creepy and threatening phrases that can later be denied as being creepy and threatening? ‘I was only trying to be nice. They just took it the wrong way.’

‘Your children look charming. However, you may want to consider their continued existence on the planet in the wider context of your practice.’

The GMC, as mentioned before, have the powers to investigate complaints made against doctors in the UK, and impose various punishments (they call them sanctions, which sounds far prettier). Ranging from nothing very much to permanent erasure from the medical performers list.

The latter means that you cannot work as a doctor ever again. Anywhere in the world. The GMC will communicate your erasure to other national statutory bodies, upon request. They do it gladly… and speedily.

On the face of it, in this case, the GMC have decided to do nothing. ‘We don’t consider your comments are sufficiently strong to open a fitness to practice investigation at this stage.’

Jolly good.Nothing to see here, move along. Although they add the rider … ‘at this stage.’ Well, what other stages are left, after deciding to take no action? The … I have changed my mind and I am going to have you guillotined, stage?

However, in reality they have not done nothing – have they dear reader? The GMC have decided to refer the complaint to this doctor’s responsible officer. A responsible officer is a doctor who is ‘responsible’ for ensuring that other doctors working in their area have met the necessary requirement for revalidation.

Revalidation is a five-year cycle whereby a doctor has to meet various requirements. A few hundred hours of medical education, keeping up do date with mandatory training. Carrying out an audit, and a patient satisfaction questionnaire, getting sufficient colleague feedback, and suchlike.

There is also a need to have a yearly appraisal. Which is a meeting with an allocated appraiser, to discuss how things have gone. A look through any complaints about you, work you have done, audits that have been completed, actions to take in the next year to improve your practice – a personal development plan. Release of thumbscrews – or a tightening.

If all this is done successfully, over a five-year period, the responsible officer ‘signs you off’ and you are now able to continue work. If not, you are removed from the performers list, and you cannot work as a doctor until you are successfully re-validated. No-one has ever explained to me how you actually do get revalidated. In fact, there is no system in place for this to happen.

If you manage to fulfil the re-validation cycle, and attend appraisals, in theory there can be no grounds for removal. You cannot actually ‘fail’ an appraisal. You simply have to turn up, and ‘reflect’ on your practice. I have never heard of a responsible officer stepping in to remove a doctor from the performers list any time they so wish.

Bearing all that in mind, here is the follow up letter from the responsible officer.

Dear Dr….

I have today received a communication from the GMC regarding an ‘incident that occurred on social media.’ The GMC have advised that they have reviewed the complaint and that it does not meet the threshold for investigation.

However, I understand that you have been asked to consider what implications this complaint may have for your practise and there is a requirement for you to reflect on this matter at your next appraisal meeting.

As your Responsible Officer I have a statutory duty to ensure that any concern or complaint about your practise is responded to and dealt with appropriately.

I would be grateful if you could let me have your views on this issue, by completing the attached form and returning it as a matter of urgency.

Can you also complete the attached Monitoring of Clinical Practise for your file, please.

Your co-operation with this process is vital in order for us to come to an acceptable resolution as soon as possible, minimising impact to your practice and cost in time and money.

If you have any questions regarding this process, please to contact me to discuss further.

Kind regards

Dr X

Responsible Officer for X region.

I love the ‘Kind regards’ sign off. For this is a letter dripping with unspoken menace. Just to highlight one phrase ‘An incident that occurred on social media…’ An ‘incident’. You mean, someone wrote something that someone didn’t like, they then complained about it. This was not an incident, in the sense that anyone would normally choose to use this word.

[I also note that the GMC spells practice, practice. The responsible officer spells it practise – maybe they need to reflect on their spelling between them].

If you look up the word ‘incident’ on the Cambridge Dictionary it gives an example of its use:

‘A youth was seriously injured in a shooting incident on Saturday night.’1

It does not say. ‘Someone wrote a blog post that upset someone, somewhere, for a bit. But it’s alright now, they are looking at pictures of kittens to recover.’

Words. Words, words, words. They can be used in so many different ways. Their true meaning hidden behind layers of sophistry. But we all know what the word ‘incident’ means in this case. Someone was badly damaged by your actions on that day – do not attempt to deny it, comrade.

Then we move on to the real threat. The responsible officer wants to ensure an acceptable resolution, thus … ‘minimising impact to your practise and cost in time and money.’

What the responsible officer here is saying is that I have the powers to stop you practising medicine in the UK. If I find that your answer to this complaint – which was not strong enough to open a fitness to practice investigation by the GMC – does not satisfy me. Indeed (subtext), I do not actually care what answer you give, I may remove you anyway. This will certainly maximise the impact on this doctor’s ‘practise and cost in time and money’.

If you think this is not what is being threatened. Then ask yourself what else it could mean? There is nothing that needs to be ‘resolved’. A complaint has been made, but the GMC didn’t think it was serious enough to take forward. No patient was harmed, no laws broken … no wrecks and nobody drowned, in fact nothing to laugh at, at all. (small prize for who knows where that came from).

At this point you may have begun to allow the thought to enter your mind that the GMC have quite deliberately handed this complaint down to the responsible officer to carry out the required sentence and execution. Whatever the accused doctor says, the responsible officer can simply respond. ‘Sorry, not satisfied with your answer. I am now going to stop you working – for as long as I wish.’ No hearing, no possibility of review, no accountability. Bosh.

In truth I have always known that responsible officers possess this amazing and unrestrained power. I tried, and failed, to stop this happening years ago – when I was on various British Medical Association (BMA) committees. I found it incredible that the legislation in this area was going to hand over, to one individual, the ability to destroy someone’s career, with no regard to anyone else, or anything else.

Yes, we live in a democracy that has created a form of local tyranny.

Tyranny (noun) def: government by a ruler or small group of people who have unlimited power of the people in their country or state and use it unfairly, and cruelly.

You could say that this situation suits the GMC very well … Very well indeed. Because, you see, the GMC has tried to remove other doctors from the medical register for criticising vaccination. [The medical register is not quite the same thing as the performer’s list, but you need to be on both of them to work as a doctor in the UK].

These punishments were quashed in the High Court. Here from a legal firm that works in this area:

‘On Friday, the High Court handed down a judgment quashing the GMC interim order of conditions previously imposed on a GP, Dr Samuel White, as a result of his actions arising from the pandemic. Dr White came to the GMC’s attention as a result of “spreading misinformation and inaccurate details about the Coronavirus and how it is diagnosed and treated”. His comments have included assertions that the COVID-19 vaccine “inserts a code”, masks do “absolutely nothing” and hydroxychloroquine, budesonide inhalers and ivermectin are “safe and proven treatments”.

The interesting point arising from Dr White’s High Court appeal is the technical point on which he won. The High Court found that the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS – the adjudication wing of the GMC) panel made an error of law in not properly considering the test required by section 12(3) of the Human Rights Act 1998 when deciding whether to impose an interim order.’2

As this company also says:

As time goes on, we’re seeing more fitness to practise cases arising from COVID-19-related activities. We’ve previously posted about the Irish GP interim suspended after describing COVID-19 as a hoax and the first UK nurse struck off by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) as a result of COVID-19 denial activities.

‘COVID denial activities’ – what a deliciously Soviet phrase.

I have to say that I very much enjoyed the lawyers’ assertion that the GMC interim order was quashed on a ‘technical point’. Namely that the GMC had failed to consider the small matter of the Human Rights Act 1998. Riding roughshod over someone’s human rights is now a technical point of law. How quaint.

However, undeterred, the GMC have not been deterred from their vital work in punishing COVID-19 vaccine deniers – to ensure that they can never work again. They have just found another, simpler, far cheaper, and far quicker route to obliterate a doctor’s career. Call the responsible officer. No-one expects the responsible officer.

Who needs time consuming and costly hearings, where you might have to bear in mind the Human Rights act 1998 – and other such woolly liberal nonsense? When you can alert the local ‘tyrant’ to a doctor’s non-comradely Soviet ‘denial’ activities. Sorry, COVID19 ‘denial’ activities.

They will know precisely what to do, and they have the powers to do it. Why on earth did the GMC not think of this of this before? I could have told them about the ridiculous, frightening, and untrammelled powers of a responsible officer, but they never asked me.

Of course, you could argue the following. If the local responsible officer does obliterate someone’s medical career and does this without paying any heed to such things as well, the law, for example, then their actions will be over-turned in court. Well, I certainly hope so, in fact I would expect so. This may act as a deterrent … maybe.

However, during the months, or years, that it takes to get such a case to court, the doctor will be out of work and unable to earn. They will almost certainly end up bankrupt, and their reputation (have been struck off the performers’ list) will lie shattered in the gutter.

As for the responsible officer. Their punishment ‘please don’t do it again,’ would just about cover it. This is very much asymmetric warfare. I can punish you, terribly, but you can do absolutely nothing to me in return.

In the financial world they call this moral hazard. A banker can bankrupt you, and your family, and half the country, making stupid and risky decisions – that will earn them huge short-term bonuses. If, as a result, their bank goes bust, the Government simply bails them out and they keep their job, and their bonus. All gain, no pain.

As a sign off, the responsible officer (washing his hands of any personal responsibility of course) wrote this ‘I have a statutory duty to ensure that any concern or complaint about your practise is responded to and dealt with appropriately.’ Kind regards … Pontius.

However, one thing that has not happened, so far, is to actually take the time and effort to forward a copy of the complaints to the doctor concerned. Still, they must be guilty of something or other. So, it is clearly critical that they respond to these unknown complaints, of some sort or another, in some-way or other. ‘Here is a bottle of whisky, and a revolver…. You know what you must do.’

What a world this has become. I had hoped I would not live to see such a time in this country, but I have.

1: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/incident

2: https://www.brabners.com/blogs/high-court-quashes-doctors-gmc-interim-order-arising-covid-19-activities

February 27, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

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