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Christopher Steele, author of the infamous ‘Trump pee-tape’ dossier, stands by his ludicrous claims in a fawning ABC interview

By Michael McCaffrey | RT | October 18, 2021

Former MI6 man Christipher Steele is the subject of an obscenely vapid ABC documentary, with a contemptible interview by George Stephanopoulos that’s so deferential it’s like watching a first date that should be an interrogation.

Just as MI6 super spy James Bond is back in theatres with No Time to Die, former MI6 agent Christopher Steele is back in the spotlight with the story that refuses to die, in an ABC ‘documentary’ titled Out of the Shadows: The Man Behind the Steele Dossier, now streaming on Hulu.

Steele came to fame as the shadowy force behind the Steele Dossier, the document which was the spark that lit the Trump-Russia collusion fire that was doused in gasoline by obsessive partisan media coverage and numerous, spurious government investigations for the last five years. The dossier claimed that then-candidate Trump was “colluding with Moscow” and that those devious Russians had “kompromat” on Trump in the golden form of a “pee tape.”

Steele’s “coming out of the shadows” consists of him sitting down with George Stephanopoulos and having a cuddle session on fancy sofas in a posh apartment.

Stephanopoulos is the perfect choice for the softball interview since he and Steele have a lot in common – they’ve both worked for the Clintons. Stephanopoulos as adviser to President Bill Clinton and Steele as de facto dirt-finder for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

ABC tried to stretch the excruciatingly thin gruel of this supposed ‘interview’ into an hour-long documentary by adding talking heads from their own newsroom. They failed, as the end result is a one-hour show that is hilariously shallow and vapid, even by ABC News standards.

Out of the Shadows spends considerably more time rehashing the “history” of Russia, Vladimir Putin and Trump than it does actually talking to Steele. Russia is deemed “a rogue state virus spreading westward with its villainy,” Putin a “KGB killer,” and Trump a “threat to American democracy.” In other words, it’s standard establishment media talking points.

Steele’s background is somewhat explored, but being the ever-diligent super spy that he is, Steele never explicitly states that he worked for MI6. I guess he doesn’t want to blow his cover.

What Steele actually says in this interview is of strikingly minimal impact. Thanks to Stephanopoulos’ anti-journalistic, anti-adversarial, deferential approach, no new ground is broken.

It’s well-known that Steele didn’t just compile the dossier, he actively pushed it to media outlets, in effect working to try and scupper Trump’s election campaign. The fact that he was ostensibly working for Democrats at the time certainly makes it appear as if he was a part of a wider disinformation/interference operation, but of course that’s a topic Stephanopoulos whistles past in this patty-cake chat.

Steele admits to no wrongdoing or error, despite the U.S. intelligence agencies “eviscerating” his findings after thorough investigation, and the FBI labelling him “untrustworthy.”

The issue of the “sources” Steele uses doesn’t get the attention it deserves either, as it’s reported that he only used one “key collector,” but Steele is quick to make clear it was “one collector” but not “one source.” That seems like a distinction without a difference.

As the documentary reports, that one collector was not a person in Moscow, but actually someone in Washington DC whose name is not revealed. The Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz reported this person claimed that the information being given to Steele was “word of mouth and hearsay.” In other words, Steele was acting less as an intelligence expert seeking truth with his dossier than he was being a gossip columnist spreading rumor and innuendo.

Steele’s declaration, “I stand by the work we did, the sources we had, and the professionalism we applied to it,” is as devoid of substance as the rest of the interview.

The most damning aspect comes toward the end, and even that is soft pedaled, when Stephanopoulos asks Steele about both the dossier’s allegation that Trump counsel Michael Cohen went to Prague to meet with Russian intelligence and about the pee tape.

Cohen denies a Prague meeting ever took place, and since he has now flipped against Trump, one would assume he’s telling the truth. But Steele’s resolve remains, as he conjures up a wild scenario where Cohen is still lying because he wants to avoid being charged with treason.

Stephanopoulos, of course, lets this utter lunacy pass almost without notice. He could’ve asked Steele how exactly Cohen got to Prague, since his passport shows no travel to the Czech Republic. Or pressed Steele to provide details or at least a passable explanation for how that meeting could possibly have taken place? But he didn’t, he just smiled and continued playing footsie with Steele.

The ‘pee tape’ is the most salacious accusation in the dossier, and despite it never surfacing and no evidence it exists, Steele still stands by the claim…sort of. He says that the tape “probably does” exist but that he wouldn’t “put 100% certainty on it.”

When Stephanopoulos asks why the tape hasn’t come out, Steele replies that “it hasn’t needed to be released…because I think the Russians felt they’d got pretty good value out of Donald Trump when he was president.”

Look, I loathe Trump, always have and always will, but this sounds like the ravings of someone deeply infected with a ferocious case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, which is maybe why he is still taken seriously by the equally afflicted establishment media.

The more you know about Steele, the more readily apparent it becomes that he’s an absolute charlatan and bullshit artist masquerading as a serious intelligence expert. He’s no James Bond, he’s not even George Smiley. He’s more like a cross between Mr. Bean and Inspector Clouseau, who should, like this vacant and vacuous interview/documentary, be relentlessly ridiculed and righteously disrespected.

October 20, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Film Review | , , , | Leave a comment

Propaganda, Character Assassination & the Campaign Against Prof David Miller

By Dr Piers Robinson | OffGuardian | October 19, 2021

On October 1st 2021, the University of Bristol decided to buckle in the face of a near 3 year-long pro-Israel lobby campaign and fire Professor David Miller.

I have worked with David for many years now, co-published work on the theory of propaganda, researched and written about the UK FCO propaganda operation (ongoing) that has sought to overthrow the Syrian government, and developed the fledgling Organisation for Propaganda Studies.

David was, is, and will continue to be, a major intellectual force with respect to our understanding of propaganda, and his integrity, particularly in relation to the Israel-Palestine issue, is now cemented in history. He became a voice for the Palestinians, highlighting the ways in which propaganda has worked in order to simultaneously suppress public understanding of the nefarious actions of the Israeli government against them and erase awareness of their plight.

Inevitably and predictably he became an essential target for the pro-Israel lobby and the implementation of a remarkably sustained and aggressive campaign designed to falsely smear him as ‘anti-Semitic’ and have him fired.

I also have a relationship with the University of Bristol. I studied for my MSc in International Relations back in 1996-97 (funded by the Economic and Social Research Council [ESRC]) and continued in 1997 to undertake a PhD (also ESRC funded) under the supervision of Professor Eric Herring. I left at the end of the 2nd year of the PhD to take up my first full-time academic post at the University of Liverpool, School of Politics and Communication Studies. My PhD was awarded in 2000 from the University of Bristol.

Smear campaigns and character assassination are a core feature of contemporary propaganda and our ‘democratic’ landscape. There is even an academic Handbook on the tactic, titled The Routledge Handbook of Character Assassination and Reputation Management, whilst US investigative journalist Sharyl Atkinson has provided a powerful account detailing how legitimate political views are stifled through nefarious attempts to destroy reputations.

I have witnessed this tactic first hand through my experience researching propaganda and the war on Syria.

For the ‘thought crime’ of questioning and researching UK government-linked ‘influence operations’ in that war, in particular the controversy over the OPCW (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) and the alleged chemical weapon attack in Douma 2018, myself and other colleagues (including David), have been subjected to aggressive and continuous smearing some of which is documented here.

Even when OPCW whistleblower scientists emerged and corroborated what we had been saying, those attacking us have simply continued with accusations of our being ‘conspiracy theorists’, ‘war crime deniers’ and agents of ‘disinformation’. That smear campaign also now incorporates OPCW whistleblowers with attempts to blacken their reputations.

What we see today is not completely new and David’s experience is not an isolated one.

In an earlier era, scientists such as Professor Steven Jones were smeared and pushed from their positions when raising perfectly objective, evidence-based and rational questions regarding 9/11. Chemist and laboratory director Kevin Ryan was fired for blowing the whistle on his own company which had obfuscated evidence related to the building collapses that occurred on 9/11.

To this day, and as Dr David Hughes has recently detailed in an academic journal, mainstream academia continues to self-censor and avoid substantial analysis of 9/11.

Today, with Covid-19, we now appear to be seeing an unprecedented level of attacks on academics who have raised what are, again, perfectly objective, evidence-based and rational questions regarding the efficacy of lockdowns and the drive toward coerced/mandated injections.

High profile and leading academics such as Sunetra Gupta (University of Oxford) and even Professor Robert Malone, inventor of mRNA technology used in the current Covid-19 injection, have had to battle concerted drives to discredit them, with, for example, Gupta being accused of being a ‘conspiracy theorist’.

Professor Sucharit Bhakdi, an early critic of lockdown, has been accused of anti-Semitism in what appears to be a wildly ill-founded and crude attempt to discredit his expertise.

The assault on professional autonomy appears to be accelerating rapidly with Professor Robert Malone declaring in October 2021 that:

[p]hysicians who speak out are being actively hunted via medical boards and the press. They are trying to delegitimize and pick us off one by one…This is happening globally.”

Something is indeed ‘rotten in the state of Denmark’.

In David’s case we have seen how powerful actors, in this case the pro-Israel lobby and the Israeli government, have worked to organize and influence in order to build sufficient pressure on the University of Bristol so that they would take the extreme step of firing him.

The campaign has been huge and drawn upon both mainstream media and celebrity influencers, as well as student bodies, in order to relentlessly misrepresent his work as anti-Semitic when, in truth, David’s views and work are based on a clear commitment against racism and discrimination.

It is worth noting that an independent report from a QC, commissioned by the University of Bristol, concluded that Professor Miller’s comments did not constitute unlawful speech and had also explicitly determined his remarks were not anti-Semitic. And, in all of this controversy, the progressive destruction of the Palestinian people and the illegal actions of the state of Israel government continue unabated.

Of course, it is this wider issue that those attacking David most want us all to forget. By allowing itself to play along with a nefarious campaign to smear and cancel David, the University of Bristol has become an important element in what are widely acknowledged to be crimes and atrocities. In doing so the University has clearly placed itself on the wrong side of history.

Smear campaigns and character assassination, then, are nothing new; but they are now intensified to the point that academics such as David are being fired, and high-profile scientists even from the medical sciences are targeted. Freedom of speech and freedom of expression cannot flourish in this environment and nor can academia, especially when rational debate is being supplanted with propaganda and politicized science.

Our ability to evaluate, debate, and speak truth to power are being fundamentally undermined and, along with that, so is any pretence that we live in a functioning democracy. That the University of Bristol has become an active participant in these nefarious processes should be a source of shame for all those who work there. For sure, the memories of my time there are forever tarnished and I will never again think fondly of my postgraduate days at Bristol nor speak in positive terms about the institution.

David’s experience is part of a wider process across democracies whereby power has sought to wrestle control of both professional classes and publics. We will now see, in the coming years, who will prevail.

Trust in institutions, whether government, mainstream media or academia, is likely to decline and rapidly so. And we are now living in an era when there are unprecedented opportunities for the development of new institutions in which freedom of expression and speaking truth to power are cherished, promoted and protected.

The vibrant independent media scene and increasingly discredited mainstream media are good examples of these dynamics although, as Glen Greenwald explains here, there is a concerted drive by political power and corporate media to regain control; I doubt they will ever succeed.

The pro-Israel lobby and the University of Bristol might think that they have secured a major victory in their campaign to silence critical debate on Israel, but they will not have the last word and, certainly, they will not have succeeded in silencing Professor Miller nor putting a stop to his essential work.

Despite the personal loss, and unlike the University of Bristol, Professor Miller will emerge stronger and more influential than ever.

A petition in support of Professor Miller can be signed here.

Dr Piers Robinson is co-Director of the Organisation for Propaganda Studies, convenor of the Working Group on Syria, Media and Propaganda and associated researcher with the Working Group on Propaganda and the 9/11 ‘Global War on Terror.

October 19, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Health Secretary to Force Fluoridated Water on Entire Country

By Dr. Joseph Mercola | October 19, 2021

In 2019, 97% of countries in Western Europe were not adding fluoride to their water.1 While a handful use fluoridated salt, the majority do not. Yet, despite the lack of fluoridated water or salt in their diets, the rates of tooth decay have declined significantly in all the countries.2

In September 2021, Great Britain’s health secretary Sajid Javid announced he would be adding fluoride to all public water supplies,3 forcing citizens to consume the neurotoxin. The statement came in conjunction with approval by the United Kingdom’s chief medical officers from England, Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland.4

Paradoxically, his announcement comes one year after a consumers’ group in the U.S. filed a federal lawsuit challenging water fluoridation that supplies 200 million U.S. citizens. The suit was brought against the Environmental Protection Agency and would require water utilities to stop fluoridation.5

Fluoride is a naturally-occurring mineral in water and soil that scientists in the 1940s found might help prevent tooth decay.6 Water fluoridation began in the U.S. in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1945 and other Michigan communities and then states adopted the practice in the years that followed.

Ninety-six percent of the fluoride7 used in U.S. water systems comes from apatite ore, the source of phosphate fertilizers. While the mineral’s composition also includes “high concentrations” of hydroxide, fluoride and chloride, the CDC calls the addition of this neurotoxic chemical “one of public health’s greatest success stories.”8 Yet, this “great success story” originates with highly toxic by-products in the production of fertilizer.9

The production process involves mixing the apatite with sulfuric acid derived from molten sulfur, which the American Water Works Association describes as “a waste product from cleaning petroleum feedstock.”10

Once the toxic vapors are converted to a dangerous liquid waste, it is transported from fertilizer factories to water reservoirs where it is added to drinking water.11 However, unlike pharmaceutical grade fluoride in toothpaste, this is “an untreated industrial waste product, one that contains trace elements of arsenic and lead.”12

Unfortunately, not many are aware of the effects fluoride has as a cradle-to-grave neurotoxin or the origin of the waste product added to the water supply. Although there has been some pushback against the proposal in the U.K.,13 Javid “is understood to be keen to press ahead with adding the mineral to the water supply and will gain powers to do so across England under laws going through parliament.”14

Despite Evidence of Danger, UK to Force Fluoridation

In a concerted effort to convince the public to accept the proposal, the U.K.’s chief medical officers came out together endorsing water fluoridation across the U.K. countries.15 In an effort to make it look like adding fluoride to the water is a benefit to U.K. citizens’ health, they added the proposal to legislation called “The Health and Care bill,”16 which is set to go before the MPs, which will then give Javid the authority needed to order fluoridation.17

In response to this, three British scientists sent a public letter to Great Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson. In the press release published from the U.K Freedom from Fluoride Alliance they write,18 “This is not a good time for the British government to mislead the public on the dangers posed by the practice of water fluoridation.”

The scientists believe that the statements from the chief medical officers from the four U.K. countries extol the weak benefits of fluoridation, but ignore stronger evidence that fluoride is a developmental neurotoxin. According to the scientists,19

“The dental lobby has controlled this debate for far too long. You can repair a damaged tooth but early damage to the brain (especially during fetal development and infancy) cannot be repaired or reversed.

This is so serious for the future of our country that the matter should not be resolved by the kind of ‘sleight of hand’ used by those who wrote the script for the CMOs’ statement.”

In their statement20 there are two short paragraphs that deal with the risk of fluoridation, which the scientists refer to as “sleight of hand.” Within the paragraphs, the CMOs do not mention the numerous studies demonstrating neurotoxicity and do not mention the lawsuit against the U.S. EPA. These points were made in their open letter to the prime minister in which they said they:21

“… sincerely hope that your health advisers will acknowledge the strong scientific evidence of fluoride’s neurotoxicity (and other ill health effects) and put the health of our people above promoting what appears to be a well-intended but clearly outdated practice of water fluoridation.

This would not be the first time that a well-entrenched medical or dental practice has had to give way to advances in scientific understanding of unexpected side effects.”

However, as reported in The Times,22 “Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, has dismissed safety concerns over the compounds, saying there is no evidence that it causes cancer and that claims about health risks are ‘exaggerated and unevidenced’.”

Strong Evidence Fluoride Is Neurotoxic

One of the first studies demonstrating fluoride has an adverse effect on children’s IQ was originally published in 1989 in the Chinese Journal of Control of Endemic Diseases. Since then, the Fluoride Action Network23 has recorded dozens of studies that have analyzed the relationship between IQ and fluoride.

Of these, 70 human studies and 60 animal studies have demonstrated an association between exposure and a reduction in learning or memory capacity. The human studies had children and adult participants that provide compelling evidence of damage. The Fluoride Action Network also published an analysis of the challenges associated with the studies that did not find an association.24

Some of the strongest studies demonstrating an association were published in 2019 and 2020. The claims made by proponents of fluoridation that there is only “one or two studies” finding harm, or that they are only from areas with naturally high fluoride levels, are no longer relevant. The scientific evidence can now be considered overwhelming and undeniable. The studies include:

Green 2019 — published in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s journal on Pediatrics.25 It reported substantial IQ loss in Canadian children from prenatal exposure to fluoride from water fluoridation.26

Riddell 2019 — published in Environment International.27 It found a shocking 284% increase in the prevalence of ADHD among children in fluoridated communities in Canada compared to nonfluoridated ones.28

Till 2020 — published in Environment International.29 It reported that children who were bottle-fed in Canadian fluoridated communities lost up to 8.8 IQ points compared to those in nonfluoridated communities.30

Uyghurturk 2020 — published in Environmental Health,31 It found that pregnant women in fluoridated communities in California had significantly higher levels of fluoride in their urine than those in nonfluoridated communities. The levels found in their urine were the same as those found to lower children’s IQ in past studies.32,33

Malin 2019 — published in Environmental Health.34 It linked a doubling of symptoms indicative of sleep apnea in adolescents in the U.S. to levels of fluoride in the drinking water. The link between fluoride and sleep disturbances may be through fluoride’s effect on the pineal gland.35

Malin 2019 — published in Environment International.36 It reported that exposure to fluoridated water led to a reduction in kidney and liver function among adolescents in the U.S. and suggested those with poorer kidney or liver function may absorb more fluoride bodies. The National Institutes of Health funded this study.37

The level of evidence that fluoride is neurotoxic now far exceeds the evidence that was in place when lead was banned from gasoline. A recent review by Danish scientist, Harvard professor and neurotoxicity expert Dr. Philippe Grandjean also concluded that:38

“… there is little doubt that developmental neurotoxicity is a serious risk associated with elevated fluoride exposure, whether due to community water fluoridation, natural fluoride release from soil minerals, or tea consumption, especially when the exposure occurs during early development.

Given that developmental neurotoxicity is considered to cause permanent adverse effects, the next generation’s brain health presents a crucial issue in the risk-benefit assessment for fluoride exposure.”

Fluoride Is an Endocrine Disrupter That Affects the Brain

Evidence shows that fluoride as an endocrine disrupter affects both sleep and the brain. It contributes to the rising rate of children and adults with attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD). One study39 published in 2015 demonstrated that children with higher rates of medically diagnosed ADHD resided in states where there was a greater proportion of people consuming fluoridated water.

In 2006, the National Resource Council of the National Academies labeled fluoride an endocrine disruptor.40 According to the National Institutes of Health in 2014,41 “Research shows that endocrine disruptors may pose the greatest risk during prenatal and early postnatal development when organ and neural systems are forming.” The NIH has since removed that statement from their website.42

Exposure to fluoride is also linked to thyroid disease,43 which in turn contributes to heart disease, obesity, depression and other health problems. Fluoride has an adverse effect on sleep patterns. One study44 found chronic low-level exposure altered sleep patterns in adolescents aged 16 to 19.

They found fluoride levels of .52 mg per liter was associated with a 1.97 times higher likelihood of sleep apnea at least once per week. This level is lower than the current recommendation of 0.7 mg/L.45

The researchers theorized46 that the accumulation of fluoride in the pineal gland may affect sleep patterns. Additionally, the researchers wrote that in adults, fluoride concentrations in the pineal gland correlate with calcification, which in turn is associated with a decrease in melatonin production, lower sleep time and lower REM sleep percentage.

Health and Human Services Lowers Level of Fluoride in 2015

In 2010, a study47 published in the Journal of the American Dental Association concluded that there was an association between fluorosis and children’s teeth and intake from infant formula and other dietary sources. They wrote:

“Results suggest that prevalence of mild dental fluorosis could be reduced by avoiding ingestion of large quantities of fluoride from reconstituted powdered concentrate infant formula and fluoridated dentifrice.”

The CDC also followed suit in 2010, warning that mixing powdered or liquid infant formula with fluoridated water could increase the chance of a child developing enamel fluorosis.48 These recommendations have since been deleted.49

However, your teeth are the window to your bones, and when you see damage to your teeth you must ask the question: What kind of damage to your bones is occurring?

In April 2015, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services admitted the fluoride levels they had been promoting damaged children’s teeth.50 Major dental fluorosis was apparent in 41% of teenagers,51 which includes white spots, yellow coloring or pitted enamel.

Despite levels of fluoride that were high enough to cause fluorosis, the CDC52 also reported that 42% of children and adolescents ages 6 to 19 years and 90% of adults had cavities in their permanent teeth. Although some health experts continue to promote fluoride as protection against cavities, it’s apparently not doing the job.

Instead of completely removing fluoride from the water to protect bone health in 2015, the HHS announced they would simply reduce the level of fluoride in the water to minimize “the risk of cosmetic fluorosis in the general population.”53 To stress the idea that fluorosis is solely a cosmetic issue negates the potential risk to bone health.

By 2020, the American Dental Association was fully on board with fluoridating water in the U.S. In a letter54 to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, they noted their members agreed that the 2018 edition of Fluoridation Facts, the ADA’s resource on community water fluoridation, answered questions on the relationship between consumption and lowered intelligence or behavioral disorders.

Choosing to blatantly ignore all the studies showing fluoride is a dangerous neurotoxin, they stated, “The evidence from individual studies and systematic reviews does not support claims of a causal relationship.”55 Additionally, they urged that the National Toxicology Program Monograph on Fluoride Exposure and Neurodevelopmental and Cognitive Health should move its classification of fluoride from a “presumed” neurotoxin to an “unknown” neurotoxin.

Their justification for this was to claim:56 “There is not a wide body of literature examining fluoride as a potential neurotoxin.” In other words, 70 human and 60 animal studies were not enough to “support claims of a causal relationship” and is not a “wide body of literature examining fluoride as a potential neurotoxin.”

Help End the Practice of Water Fluoridation

What might be assumed from statements made by politicians and experts, is there is a greater concern over tooth decay than there is over loss of intelligence, brain health in adults and children and damage done through endocrine disruption.

For citizens in the U.K., a petition has been initiated in Parliament recommending that instead of adding fluoride to compel the entire nation to ingest a neurotoxin, “it would be better if people brush their teeth with toothpaste daily and monitor intake of sugar.”57

U.K. citizens can sign the petition at this link. If it reaches 100,000 signatures, Parliament must consider it for debate. For those who live in an area with fluoridated water, you can protect your health by filtering the water supply.

Because fluoride is a very small molecule, it’s difficult to filter once added, but reverse osmosis filtration can be effective.58 Clean pure water is a prerequisite for optimal health; thus, the only real solution is to stop the practice of artificial water fluoridation.

Sources and References

October 19, 2021 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Lockdown: Where Did ‘The Science’ Come From?

By Noah Carl  • The Daily Sceptic • October 19, 2021

In a previous post, I looked at where ‘The Science’ of community masking came from. Here I’ll do the same thing for lockdowns.

As many lockdown sceptics (including myself) have noted, lockdowns represent a radical departure from conventional forms of pandemic management. There is no evidence that, before 2020, they were considered an effective way to deal with influenza pandemics.

In a 2006 paper, four leading scientists (including Donald Henderson, who led the effort to eradicate smallpox) examined measures for controlling pandemic influenza. Regarding “large-scale quarantine”, they wrote, “The negative consequences… are so extreme” that this measure “should be eliminated from serious consideration”.

Likewise, a WHO report published mere months before the COVID-19 pandemic classified “quarantine of exposed individuals” as “not recommended under any circumstances”. The report noted that “there is no obvious rationale for this measure”.

And we all know what the U.K.’s own ‘Pandemic Preparedness Strategy’ said, namely: “It will not be possible to halt the spread of a new pandemic influenza virus, and it would be a waste of public health resources and capacity to attempt to do so.”

As an additional exercise, I searched the pandemic preparedness plans of all the English-speaking Western countries (U.K.IrelandU.S.CanadaAustralia and New Zealand) for mentions of ‘lockdown’, ‘lock-down’ ‘lock down’ or ‘curfew’.

Only ‘curfew’ was mentioned, and only once – in Ireland’s plan. The relevant sentence was: “Mandatory quarantine and curfews are not considered necessary.” None of the lockdown strings were mentioned in any of the countries’ plans.

So where did ‘The Science’ of controlling Covid using lockdowns come from? As everyone knows, China implemented the first lockdown (of Hubei province) in January of 2020. Yet it wasn’t until March that lockdowns became part of ‘The Science’.

As this chart taken from the paper by David Rozado shows, major Western media outlets did not start mentioning ‘lockdown’ frequently until March:

And this chart confirms that worldwide Google search interest for ‘lockdown’ was essentially nil until 8th March 2020:

So what happened in early March? Well, Italy was the first Western country to lock down – on 9th March last year. And as Michael Senger argues, its decision appears to have been prompted by the WHO’s report of 24th February, which gave a glowing evaluation of China’s lockdown. (Senger’s piece is well worth reading.)

Other Western countries then followed suit. The next most important event, following Italy’s decision to lock down, was the publication of a report by Neil Ferguson’s team on 16th March.

This report has been described as the “catalyst for policy reversal”. Up until then, the U.K. had been more or less following its pandemic preparedness plan. As late as March 5th, Chris Whitty told the Health and Social Care Committee that “what we’re very keen to do is minimise social and economic disruption”.

Although other, similar reports had already been published, the analysis by Neil Ferguson’s team was seen as particularly authoritative. According to the New York Times, the report “also influenced the White House to strengthen its measures”.

On March 17th, Neil Ferguson and his colleagues held a press conference after returning from Downing Street. They confirmed that Britain would be adopting a new strategy. “The aim is not to slow the rate of growth of cases but actually pull the epidemic into reverse,” Ferguson said.

As to why the U.K. was changing tack, Ferguson noted, “We have had bad news from Italy and from early experience in UK hospitals”. However, subsequent revelations suggest that “bad news” was less important than the shifting of the Overton window.

In an interview with the Times published in December last year, Ferguson noted that “people’s sense of what is possible in terms of control changed quite dramatically between January and March”. Referring to China’s lockdown, he elaborated, “We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought… And then Italy did it. And we realised we could”.

After China’s initial response in Hubei, it took two months for lockdowns to go from ‘unprecedented’ to ‘unavoidable’. They received two major doses of intellectual credibility: first from the WHO, and then from Neil Ferguson’s team. Italy set the all-important precedent for Western countries.

As to whether one should trust ‘The Science’ on lockdowns, a reasonable answer would be, ‘Do you mean the pre or the post-Covid science?’

October 19, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

UK lawmakers use MP murder to call for social media ID verification system

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | October 18, 2021

Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker of UK Parliament’s House of Commons, has supported initiatives to remove anonymity from internet users, linking threatening messages received by politicians online with their general safety, particularly in light of last week’s fatal stabbing of an MP.

Hoyle’s comments came in the wake of the murder of Conservative member of parliament David Amess, that is treated as potentially a terrorist incident, while the suspect’s motives are thought to be linked with Islamist extremism.

The suspect, a British citizen of Somali origins, was several years ago referred to the voluntary Prevent scheme that is devised as a way to combat risk of terrorist radicalization. It’s unknown at this time if the suspect had previously targeted his victim on social media, and why the connection is being made.

But several high ranked officials, including Hoyle and Home Secretary Priti Patel, are using the deadly incident to explore ways to provide better protection to MPs, and one of the things they’re coming up with is stripping online users of their anonymity.

UK media say that Hoyle revealed he received a message from an “offshore account” that a bomb would be put under his car. He criticized tech companies as not doing enough and hinted that he was in favor of new legislation that would make it possible to track people on the internet if they are believed to be sending threats.

Patel, on the other hand, wants social media accounts to be linked to real world identities, and mentioned the controversial upcoming Online Harms Bill, that those behind it say will reduce racism and threats on the internet, while critics fear it may jeopardize free expression in the process.

Under the bill, tech companies could be ordered to pay up to £18 million or 10 percent of annual global turnover in fines, while their executives would be held criminally liable in some cases.

Patel said that it was difficult to remove posts from social media that are found to be offensive or threatening, and suggested unmasking users was a way to tackle the problem.

“Major platforms have to take faster action when councilors and MPs report the kind of behavior that would be illegal in the real world,” said Conservative MP David Warman, adding, “that starts with accepting that anonymity provides cover for language that would never be used to anybody’s face.”

October 18, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

The UK’s National “Crisis”: Age-Adjusted Mortality Is at 2008 Levels

By Mark Avis – Mises Wire – 10/13/2021

All over the world, populations have been locked up, have become fearful, and none of it can be justified. Looking at the UK, the overall death rate for 2020 is not unprecedented, and some of the increase in the death rate is likely the result of an incomprehensibly bad covid policy.

Sometimes, a dam breaks, and reality intrudes on media and political narratives. Just such a break is the publication of the mortality rate for England and Wales by the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS). The report can be found here. The content that is of greatest interest is the total mortality and mortality rates over time. Below is figure 1 from the report. A red line has been added to give a sense of where mortality was in 2020 compared with the past. The figure shows mortality rates with no adjustments.

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What is readily apparent is that there is, indeed, a jump in the mortality rate. However, if comparing the mortality rate with that of 1992, for example, we can see that it is not that high. In addition, the ONS provides a far more useful chart that shows age-standardized mortality rates. The report includes this discussion of the age-standardized statistics: “Age-standardised mortality rates (ASMRs) are a better measure of mortality than the number of deaths, as they account for the population size and age structure.” This is figure 3 from the report:

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The exact figures for 2020 are 1,236.7 males and 894.2 females.

For comparison, the mortality rates for 2009 are the closest: 1,229.7 males and 886.6 females.

As can be seen from the ONS statistics above, the mortality rate is very slightly higher than in 2009 and is lower than in 2008.

No reference or academic study is needed to point out that there was no health crisis in the UK in either 2008 nor 2009. Indeed, these were considered perfectly normal years. This is very worrying data if considered in relation to the pandemic response. There have been many criticisms of the most extreme measures such as lockdowns, but even these critiques have been predicated on the belief that the pandemic was going to result in massive increases in mortality. According to the ONS data, no such massive increase took place. Instead, there was an uptick leading to 2008–09 mortality rates.

Unfortunately, this is not the whole story. At the start of the UK’s response to the pandemic, the government ordered the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) to make room in hospitals by removing anyone from a hospital that could be removed. The policy was called COVID-19 Hospital Discharge Service Requirements (C19HDSR) and the policy document can be found here. The subtitle of the report is ‘Why Not Home, Why Not Today?’ and this captures the spirit of the policy. It details the conditions under which patients should be discharged and the roles of the various actors in the policy.

The first point of note in the C19HDSR is that it does not refer to testing requirements for covid before discharge. Annex A provides the conditions under which patients should not be discharged and being covid positive is not included in the criteria. The policy document states that care homes should be filled with discharged patients. There is even an additional document for patients to read when going into aged care (see here). There is no reference to requirements for testing before release into aged care homes.

Although the NHS bureaucracy denied that significant numbers of covid-positive patients were being discharged under C19HDSR without covid testing, this was later shown to be untrue in a later study by Healthwatch and the British Red Cross (see here). The study researchers surveyed and interviewed 590 patients discharged under C19HDSR, and included whether the patients were tested for covid before discharge and whether they received their results before discharge. The two figures below show the figures from their research (from pp. 28–29):

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Although the figures are from a sample of only 590 patients, they indicate that, at the very least, large numbers of patients were being forcibly discharged from hospitals without anyone knowing their covid status. The UK hospital ward system would be an ideal environment for the transmission of covid, with large numbers of people living close together in communal wards. At present, there is no further data on how many patients were discharged into aged care homes who were covid positive. However, given the data from Healthwatch and the British Red Cross, it would be reasonable to say that there must have been very many. In consideration that aged care homes are filled with the most covid-vulnerable populations, and involve considerable degrees of communal living, the policy likely very significantly contributed to the overall mortality rate in 2020.

When considering the ONS age-adjusted mortality statistics in conjunction with the policy of C19HDSR, it should be apparent that there is a big problem with the way that  covid has been characterized, at the very least in the UK. It is not possible to say how much of the uptick in mortality was government policy related, but this adds a further significant question mark about the narrative surrounding the lethality of covid.

As stated, this is just the case of the UK in 2020. Nevertheless, this is a modern Western country that is supposed to have been hard-hit by covid in 2020. There is no reason to believe that it is some special outlier.

The implications of this data are very difficult. Even for individuals that may be very cynical about government, the data suggests that governments have acted in the most extraordinary ways based on what can only be called a hysteria. This hysteria has, across much of the Western world, seen unprecedented losses of basic rights, convulsions in healthcare systems with potentially terrible long-term results, disruption of education, and misery, loneliness, and mental health problems. As for the negative economic consequences, they will be with everyone for years to come. The effects are macro and micro, for example, the massive extension of government borrowing, printing money, and the decimation of small businesses.

If the data from the UK is broadly representative, the only way to sum up what has taken place, and is still taking place, is that the world is experiencing the first-ever global hysteria. After all, 2008 was a perfectly normal year.

Mark Avis is an academic in a New Zealand university and writes on the culture wars, politics, geopolitics, and economics at his website markavis.org.

October 18, 2021 Posted by | Deception, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

British propaganda campaign incited mass slaughter of communists in Indonesia in 1960s, declassified papers reveal

RT | October 17, 2021

British spies played a part in the mass murder of Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) members in the 1960s, urging locals, including army generals, to “cut out” the “communist cancer,” declassified papers have revealed.

The Indonesian Army’s brutal clampdown on the PKI in 1965 and 1966 is considered to be one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century. Between 500,000 and three million supporters of the Communist Party were slaughtered, according to various estimations.

Declassified Foreign Office documents, which were recently released by Britain’s National Archives and seen by The Guardian newspaper, indicate that the UK isn’t without fault in those shocking events.

The British Foreign Office had always denied the country’s involvement in the brutal clampdown on those blamed of communist links in Indonesia.

But it turns out that London focused its propaganda machine on the founding Indonesian President Sukarno and his communist backers over the leader’s stern opposition to the Federation of Malaya, which the UK thought should unite its former colonies in the region.

Tensions between the PKI and the Indonesian military had been mounting since the early 1960s, with the president struggling to balance the rivaling forces. The army-sponsored massacre of communists began after a failed coup attempt by the supporters of Sukarno within the army ranks on October 1, 1965.

Several months before that, a team of specialists from the Foreign Office’s Information Research Department (IRD) had already been deployed in Singapore to produce black propaganda to undermine Sukarno’s rule, according to The Guardian. The failed coup only made it easier for the propagandists to influence their intended audience, which included anti-communist politicians and Indonesian army generals.

The propaganda was shared through an Indonesian-language newsletter, which was said to have been the work of Indonesian immigrants, but was actually issued by British specialists in Singapore. Within a year, some 28,000 copies of the newsletter had been published. The UK also funded a radio station, which Malaysians had been broadcasting into Indonesia.

Shortly after the massacre of the communists by the military began, the British-produced newsletter called for “the PKI and all communist organisations” to “be eliminated.” It claimed that Indonesia will remain in peril “as long as the communist leaders are at large and their rank and file are allowed to go unpunished.”

“Procrastination and half-hearted measures can only lead to… our ultimate and complete destruction,” the authors of the pamphlet warned their readers.

The killings allegedly intensified across the Indonesian archipelago in the weeks following the publication of the newsletter, with The Guardian insisting that “there can be little doubt that British diplomats became aware of what was happening.” The UK spies in the region had all the means to intercept Indonesian government communications and monitor the movement of its military, according to the paper.

One of the newsletters, released during the clampdown on the communists, had praised “the fighting services and the police” for “doing an excellent job.” The British propagandists compared the PKI to Adolf Hitler and Genghis Khan in the pamphlet, and insisted that “the work started by the army must be carried on and intensified.”

Moreover, a letter from Norman Reddaway, one of the leading propagandists working in Singapore, to the British ambassador in Jakarta revealed the UK’s strategy “to conceal the fact that the butcheries have taken place with the encouragement of the generals.” He wrote that such an approach should’ve been taken in the hope that the generals would “do us better than the old gang.”

The Foreign Office experts and Indonesian generals were “singing in harmony,” Reddaway insisted in another declassified document. He also celebrated the British propaganda for being able to abolish Sukarno’s opposition to the Federation of Malaya project at “minimal cost” and within just half-a-year.

What Reddaway described as “the old gang” was completely crushed by the bloody events of the mid-1960s. President Sukarno was arrested in 1967 and died three years later under house arrest.

He was overthrown by General Suharto, who had been leading the Indonesian Army. Suharto then ruled Indonesia until 1998, enjoying political and economic support from the West. Transparency International (TI) labeled him the most corrupt politician in modern history in 2004, claiming that he embezzled between $15 billion and $35 billion during his time in office.

Documents that were declassified in the US in 2017 revealed that Washington also not only had “detailed knowledge” of the massacre of communists in Indonesia, but provided “active support” for those actions.

A Yale University study described the slaughter ordered by Suharto as an “absolutely essential cleaning out,” detailing the killing of from “50 to 100 PKI members” every night by civilian anti-communist groups with the “blessing” of the military.

October 17, 2021 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Infection Rate in Vaccinated People in Their 40s Now More Than DOUBLE the Rate in Unvaccinated, PHE Data Shows

Vaccine Effectiveness Hits Minus-109%

By Will Jones • The Daily Sceptic • October 15, 2021

In the latest Vaccine Surveillance report from Public Health England (PHE) the infection rate in double-vaccinated people in their 40s went above 100% higher than in the unvaccinated for the first time, reaching 109%. This translates to an unadjusted vaccine effectiveness of minus-109%.

Vaccine effectiveness continues to drop fast in all over-18s (see chart at top), hitting minus-85% for those in their 50s, minus-88% for those in their 60s and minus-79% for those in their 70s. (For definitions and discussion of limitations see here.)

Vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation and death continues to hold up in all age groups, though with some signs of decline, particularly among older people.

There is still nothing from Government sources acknowledging this failure of the vaccines against infection, its implications for policy and analysing what might be behind it.

October 16, 2021 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Switching Renewable Subsidies To Gas Will Make Little Difference

By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | October 14, 2021

It is not only the UK that is thinking of switching green levies from electricity to gas.

But this analysis inadvertently highlights why the whole idea is so ludicrous:

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In the UK, consumer prices for electricity are five times more expensive than for gas. It is a disincentive to adopt electric heat pumps. To make things harder, 23% of the electricity price comes from climate and social levies. It’s just 2% for gas. No wonder the UK continues to install about 1.7 million gas boilers a year. Jan Rosenow and Richard Lowes at RAP call for changes that will incentivise customers to buy heat pumps while having a minimal effect on their total bill or the revenues raised, according to their calculations. One way is to simply move the levies from electricity to gas. The Netherlands and Germany are planning to do just that. Sweden has done it for decades. But such changes require serious policy reform and may face political barriers. Much simpler would be to minimise taxes on the electricity consumed by a heat pump, as Denmark started doing this January. Despite heat pump sales rising, without a drastic change it’s difficult to see how the UK will reach its target of 600,000 new heat pumps per year – it’s only in the tens of thousands now.

Every year households in the UK install about 1.7 million gas boilers. In May, the Heating and Hotwater Industry Council reported that 2021 looks to be a record year for gas boiler sales, with year-to-date sales up 41 per cent from 2020. So far, low-carbon heating occupies a small — although growing — niche in the heating market.

One important factor supporting a booming boiler market is quite simple: Gas is cheap and electricity is expensive. Residential electricity prices per kilowatt hour are currently around five times higher than gas prices. This means that switching to a heat pump, even with an efficiency of 300 per cent, does not offer bill savings for customers on a standard tariff.

This is partly a political choice. Legacy policy costs drive part of the difference in price. Most of levy-funded energy and climate policies, which make up 23% of the total household bill, are presently paid for through electricity bills. In the UK, these legacy costs include charges for policies such as feed-in tariffs, the Energy Company Obligation, Contracts for Difference, the Renewables Obligation and the Warm Home Discount.

https://energypost.eu/redesigning-uk-electricity-taxes-to-boost-heat-pump-sales/

For a start, let’s get away from the misleading use of the term, levies and taxes, which are intended to distract attention from the truth.

Apart from the tiny Warm Homes Discount, all of these added costs are SUBSIDIES for renewable electricity. It is therefore perfectly logical that they should be included in the cost of electricity, so that the price reflects the cost of generation.

There is no logic in adding the cost of subsidies to the price of gas any more than adding them to the price of food or petrol.

In any event, the switch will make little difference to the relative cost of heat pumps. Subsidies currently cost domestic customers about 2.5p/KWh, a total of £2.6bn a year. This brings the electricity price up from 12.5p to 15.0p/KWh. (These figures are probably out of date now, but the comparison remains the same)

Annual domestic gas consumption is 300 TWh, so £2.6bn would equate to 0.9p/KWh, increasing gas prices from 2.5p to 3.4p/KWh.

In other words, electricity will still cost nearly four times as much as gas. With heat pumps working at 300% efficiency, that still means they will be more expensive to run.

In any event, the reason why barely anybody wants heat pumps has nothing to do with the running cost, as people have no idea what they cost to run. It is the fact that they will have to fork out £10,000 plus to install one, not to mention the cost and hassle of insulation and replacing radiators.

There is, however, one fatal flaw in the argument employed by the authors of this study. They claim that switching the subsidies to gas is a zero cost option. It may be in the short run, but eventually, when nobody uses gas anymore, the subsidies will have to revert to being added onto electricity bills.

Under that scenario, homeowners will have paid out £20000 for heat pumps, but will still have to pay the cost of subsidies on their electricity bills. In other words, a double whammy.

October 16, 2021 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

Insulate Britain is in bed with the establishment

It’s no surprise that one of its activists is married to a TfL boss

Picture by: Twitter / LBC.
By Ben Pile – spiked – October 13, 2021

The tabloids have had a field day with the revelation that an Insulate Britain activist is married to a director of Transport for London (TfL). Cathy Eastburn of Insulate Britain has been busy trying to bring transport to a standstill. She has been arrested four times for acts such as blocking roads and gluing her hands to a train. Meanwhile, her husband, Benedict Plowden, is in charge of ‘getting London moving after the pandemic’.

The press is finally starting to realise that Britain’s green road-blockers are drawn from the upper echelons of society. The rag-tag crusties of Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain might present themselves as the political establishment’s opponents, but they have always been its bedfellows. Literally, in this case.

Not every green activist is married to a public-sector executive on £170,000 per year. But most do come from households that bring home many times the average family income. They come from a class of people for whom it is relatively easy to take activist sabbaticals. They can afford to pause their vegan yogurt-weaving workshops and take to the streets whenever it takes their fancy.

The class make-up of the green movement helps to explain why the police and courts have so much difficulty bringing an end to the disruption these activists cause. Were these protests populated by the lower orders, they would be cleared from the roads without hesitation. Those engaged in the protests would be charged, sentenced and put behind bars in short order. But the police and the courts are reluctant to use their powers against retired doctors, vicars and the grandchild of a baronet.

Green protesting has become a hobby of the leisured classes, drawing ‘nice’ people to it who present well in court. Their legal teams have the resources of billionaire-backed NGOs. Celebrity scientists fly across the Atlantic to give evidence in their defence. MPs and journalists intervene, declaring it a travesty that such well-meaning people are being tried as criminals. Of course there is no equivalent sympathy for the ordinary people whose lives are being disrupted and who are prevented from working.

Ordinary people need to be able to get to work. Society needs them to get to work. That’s why the police and the courts are usually expected to facilitate this. Benedict Plowden’s job at TfL is supposed to facilitate this, too. Yet Plowden, like his wife, has a long history of trying to stop people from getting from A to B.

Before joining TfL on a hefty salary, Plowden was director of the anti-car Pedestrians Association, which was later renamed Living Streets. It styles itself as ‘the UK charity for everyday walking’.

In fact, plenty of one-time anti-road anarchists from the 1990s have somehow made it as well-paid suits in the 2020s. Green activists have been turned from Swampies into civil-service bosses, instituting elite green ideology within our institutions. Plowden and Eastburn’s marriage, then, is not quite so bizarre as it seems.

TfL may not quite be signed up to every Extinction Rebellion pledge. But despite being in charge of keeping London moving, it is forever designing new policies to prevent Londoners from driving anywhere. Green ideology comes ahead of the transport needs of Londoners.

There is little difference between the street-level green activist and the establishment environmentalist – and not just because they sometimes snuggle up together at night. We might expect important public officials to serve the public’s needs and wants but, like the green activists on the streets, they are more interested in constraining us.

Ben Pile blogs at Climate Resistance.

October 16, 2021 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | | Leave a comment

Taliban say special forces to provide security for Shia mosques

Press TV – October 16, 2021

The Taliban say their forces will be tasked with providing security at Shia mosques in in the southern city of Kandahar, in the wake of a “brutal attack” on Friday prayers, which killed at least 60 worshippers.

The head of Kandahar’s police, Maulvi Mehmood, said on Saturday that Shia mosques had so far been guarded by local volunteer forces with special permission to carry weapons. But after the Friday attack on the Bibi Fatima mosque, the Taliban would take charge of its protection.

“Unfortunately, they could not protect this area and in future we will assign special security guards for the protection of mosques and Madrasas,” Mehmood said. He made the remarks as hundreds of people gathered on Saturday to bury the victims of the Friday bomb attack.

According to religious authorities, the toll from the bombing had reached 60. Health officials say the casualties could rise further as “some of the wounded are in a critical condition and we are trying to transfer them to Kabul.”

The massacre came just a week after another Shia mosque in Afghanistan’s northern city of Kunduz was targeted in a bombing during Friday prayers, leaving at least 150 people dead and over 200 others injured.

Both tragedies were claimed by a local affiliate of the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group, which has a long history of attacking Afghanistan’s Shia minority.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the killings as a “despicable attack” and demanded those using violence to restrict Afghans’ religious freedom be brought to justice.

The Friday attack was the fourth since the Taliban took power in mid-August. The Taliban first ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, when the United States invaded the country and toppled the Taliban-run government on the pretext of fighting terrorism following the September 11 attacks in the US.

Political commentator Edward Corrigan told Press on Friday that “somebody is trying to provoke a sectarian war between the Shias and the Sunnis.”

“Who is going to benefit from that is the ultimate question,” Corrigan asked. “There is evidence that the British, the Americans, and the Israelis have been setting up bombs trying to provoke a conflict between the Shias and the Sunnis.” He further noted that US occupation of Afghanistan as well as the messy withdrawal of foreign troops from the country in August was clearly a big part of the problems that the Afghans are facing now.

October 16, 2021 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment