Boris Johnson plans new “subsidies for the rich”
Global Warming Policy Forum | July 26, 2021
The Global Warming Policy Forum has criticised government plans to force households to subsidise the installation of charging stations for electric vehicles (EV) by raising electricity bills. The plans, the latest plank of the government’s Net Zero agenda were leaked to the media over the weekend.
EVs, which are typically £10,000 more expensive than their petrol equivalents, are mostly bought by wealthy families as second or third cars, while electricity bills are paid by everyone. As GWPF’s Dr Benny Peiser pointed out, this represents a major ethical problem for the Conservative government:
Like so many aspects of the Net Zero project, subsidising EV charging points means the transfer of hundreds of millions of pounds from the poor to the rich. Boris Johnson and his government should be ashamed of themselves for this wicked plan.”
The news of the scheme for the wealthy was closely followed by a warning from the wind energy lobby that subsidies for offshore wind farms will have to continue indefinitely, refuting oft-repeated claims that renewables are close to becoming “subsidy-free”. Dr Peiser said:
It’s quickly becoming clear that the public has been subject to a campaign of deception about the cost of wind power and the entire Net Zero project. Eventually the political establishment is going to pay a terrible price for burdening households with astronomical costs.”
Tory MP: “Tyranny Is Government Controlling Everything You Do!”
By Richie Allen | July 26, 2021
Speaking to Talk Radio’s Julia Hartley-Brewer this morning, Conservative MP Steve Baker asked, “What do people think that tyranny is? It’s this total control over what you do!”
He went on to say that people should write to their MP’s to tell them that they should vote against the introduction of vaccine passports. Baker is the deputy chair of the lockdown-sceptic Covid Recovery Group. He told Brewer this morning:
“…. you really do need to ask what’s going on. I’m pretty clear in my own mind that what it is is the government choosing effectively to coerce young people to get vaccinated.
I would have thought that we could do better surely than threatening vaccine passports. I do think it’s a proper slippery slope this one. We’re now looking at digital ID’s, we’re looking at a social credit system being trialled to get people to deal with obesity.
A central bank digital currency will enable the state to enormously intervene in our lives. And reasonably you can sit back and say wow what is going on with the change in the relationship between the individual and the state? I can see why some people are quite frightened.”
Sadly though, Baker went on to tell Hartley-Brewer that officials mean well. According to Baker, there is no wider agenda and there is no great conspiracy. He believes that the problem lies with good people making bad decisions. Does he know better? I can’t say. I don’t know him.
But this is why people like Baker refuse to come on The Richie Allen Show. I will go further. I will ask the hard questions. Talk Radio is mainstream light. When Brewer asked Baker to tell people what they can do to stop this madness, he said that they should write to their MP’s.
Freedom? We must seize it for ourselves
By Simon Dolan | The Conservative Woman | July 26, 2021
LAST Monday’s long-awaited ‘Freedom Day’ brought with it a theoretical end to most restrictions on social contact. In reality, ‘Freedom Day’ was nothing of the sort.
How free are we really, when ‘freedom’ means being forced to wear masks and use Covid passports for travelling, attending events and even going to the pub? As things stand, I fear we will be trapped in a vicious cycle of restrictions being slightly scaled down only to be ramped back up again. If masks and Covid passes are still to be mandatory, it won’t take much to initiate new lockdowns, and so it continues.
What’s more, the ‘pingdemic’ is wreaking havoc across the country. How ironic that in the week England was finally meant to be free, 750,000 children were sent home from school after coming into contact with a Covid case and another 620,000 members of the public were ‘pinged’ by the NHS app and so forced to isolate at home.
This is devastating, and not only for the individuals affected. With so many people stuck at home, hundreds of businesses have warned of crippling staff shortages, some even having to close owing to employees being forced to isolate.
Train services have been delayed or cancelled, bank branches have closed their doors and there’s talk of food shortages after factories were forced to shut.
For 18 months the public have had their liberties stripped away, so for us to move forward from the pandemic we must be granted some element of personal responsibility and freedom of choice. As usual, the Government is promising one thing, then doing quite the opposite. ‘Freedom Day’ is actually our leaders mandating businesses and organisations to push their agenda of fear instead.
With talks of additional lockdowns already gaining momentum, we cannot give up and must continue to fight for our freedoms. At Keep Britain Free, we will not rest until our rightful liberties are restored.
Met Office Issues First Ever Extreme Heat Warning!
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | July 24, 2021
The Met Office issued its first ever extreme heat warning last Tuesday:
https://news.sky.com/story/uk-weather-met-office-to-issue-first-ever-extreme-heat-warning-amid-sweltering-conditions-across-country-12359242
Now if you’re thinking that this is surely not the first time Britain has had hot weather, you would be right, as the small print (ie the bit nobody ever reads) in the Sky report explains:
In other words, its the first heat warning since 1st June!
I wonder, by the way, whether they will also be issuing “extreme cold warnings” this winter? Surely the Met Office would not be doing this just to scare the public about global warming?
As for this “extreme heat”, the heatwave in England has been pretty run of the mill.
In Central England, there were only five days above 28C, and no day topped 30C, which PHE say is their average threshold for a heatwave, depending on location.
So far this summer, these are the only days above 28C, whereas in 1976 there were seventeen, and sixteen in 1995:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cet_info_mean.html
I gather that GB News were discussing the heatwave earlier this week. One might have hoped they would show a bit of realism, but sadly they appear to be just as gullible as the rest of the media. I am told they started harping on about the hot weather, and the fact that heatwaves last 13 days not 5 days as they used to.
Perhaps somebody should have told them that heatwaves are not caused by carbon dioxide, but by anti-cyclonic weather systems. I am not aware of any mechanism by which carbon dioxide can keep high pressure systems over Britain.
It never ceases to amaze me how grown up people can get themselves into such a tizzy about a few days of sunshine. Meanwhile, we are already back to typical British summer weather, sunshine and showers and average temperatures. No doubt the rest of the summer will carry on the same.
Why is disgraced ex-spy Christopher Steele involved in a controversial group seeking harsh Covid restrictions?
By Kit Klarenberg | RT | July 24, 2021
Christopher Steele, the ex-MI6 spy, is involved in the ‘parent’ organisation called Independent SAGE – a collective that regularly criticizes the UK government for not introducing tougher measures to achieve ‘Zero Covid.’
On July 17, The Daily Telegraph brought to public attention that Independent SAGE, the highly controversial scientist collective advocating for excessively harsh coronavirus restrictions, was the creation of The Citizens, a shadowy campaign organization led by Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr.
In response, Cadwalladr took to Twitter to rubbish the “scoop,” noting that the connection between the two groups had been acknowledged on Independent SAGE’s website for 17 months – which is true, although the scientist collective seems very much keen to downplay it, merely referring to The Citizens as “a small support team” helping with public events and media activities.
This is totally at odds with Cadwalladr’s recently updated Twitter biography, which designates her as “cofounder” of The Citizens, the “parent” of Independent SAGE, and The Citizens’ own Twitter account, which characterizes itself as the “founder and producer” of Independent SAGE.
The reasons for this chasmic discrepancy aren’t certain, although the most glaring oddity at the heart of The Citizens – unacknowledged by The Telegraph, and never before reported upon by the mainstream media – is undoubtedly that former MI6 spy Christopher Steele, author of the utterly discredited Trump-Russia dossier, is seemingly involved in the endeavor in some way.
In a statement, Firstlight Group, which provides “media relations support and consultancy to Independent Sage,” contended that The Citizens “drew on a wide and diverse collection of unpaid advisors before it launched,” of which Steele was just one.
“He has never played any active or other role in the organisation or Independent SAGE,” the PR firm added, although in a followup email Firstlight said Steele was part of a “a network of pro-bono advisors we can call upon as needed,” suggesting he could be drafted in to support The Citizens, and by extension Independent SAGE, at any time in the future. Requests for clarity on what precisely he did for The Citizens pre-launch were simply ignored.
What’s nonetheless clear is that Cadwalladr has long-been a fervent advocate of Steele, and frequently ended up in extremely close quarters with the purportedly former spook, as several photos of the pair together, and screengrabs of Zoom conversations with one another, surely attest.
This relationship has endured despite Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel investigation failing to validate, if not outright disproving, most of the incendiary allegations made in Steele’s dossier alleging co-operation between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the Russian government in 2016.
Steele’s biography on The Citizens’ website even specifically draws attention to his role in producing the dossier – unsurprisingly, no mention is made of declassified FBI documents revealing that, as early as January 2017, it was abundantly clear the dossier was unsubstantiated and unverifiable bunkum, fed to him by a single, dubious source for cash.
Cadwalladr was likewise an enthusiastic proponent of Mueller, to the extent of launching a podcast – Dial M for Mueller – calling for a similar investigation into the June 2016 Brexit referendum in the UK. Despite much initial fanfare, it produced a mere three episodes before abruptly ending, which may be explained by the actual Mueller report being an embarrassing nothingburger.
Steele’s involvement in The Citizens may account for the clear attempts by Independent SAGE to distance itself somewhat from its purported “parent” and “producer.” However, the central if surreptitious role played by The Citizens in the endeavor is quite clear – a crowdfunding campaign for the collective instigated following its June 2020 launch was created by The Citizens, described as Independent Sage’s “partner,” which had been offering “time and skills to help behind the scenes.”
The quietly published official record of a meeting of Independent SAGE’s ‘Behavioural Advisory Group’ that same month is even fishier. It shows that Zack King, representative of Firstlight Group, took a principal role in proceedings, introducing “the work of Independent Sage to date” and leading a dedicated “item” on press relations.
Along the way, King stressed that he, his company and Carole Cadwalladr “handled press issues” and Independent SAGE could use them if and when they wanted to “involve” the media in its activities.
“Zack and Carole work together on press side. Most press relations are undertaken via Zack and his PR firm,” the minutes state.
This excerpt raises serious questions about whether Cadwalladr’s journalistic output and social media postings on the pandemic represent a conflict of interest, given she has repeatedly advocated Independent SAGE’s harsh proposals for dealing with coronavirus. Furthermore, a July 2020 Guardian editorial effusively endorsed Independent SAGE’s ‘zero covid’ strategy, despite the outfit itself acknowledging that the total eradication of a disease has only ever been achieved once in history, in the case of smallpox.
It’s inarguably an extremely strange situation, in which Cadwalladr and Firstlight Group provide “media relations support and consultancy” to Independent SAGE and help “involve” the press in its work, and then Cadwalladr and her employer amplify their sensationalist, unscientific prognostications.
For example, on July 14, ahead of ‘Freedom Day,’ Cadwalladr spoke of her growing “dread” about the UK “sleepwalking into disaster.” Two days earlier, Independent SAGE published an “emergency statement” on the impending removal of pandemic restrictions via The Citizens’ website, calling the move a “terrible mistake” that would “lead to many avoidable deaths and long-term illness.”
This one-two punch is rendered all the more suspect given Cadwalladr’s leading role in The Citizens has only recently been made at all clear. It’s also rather peculiar that she isn’t listed as a director of the operation – perhaps explained by another company she founded not having filed accounts since December 2018, in contravention of its legal obligations.
Then again, Independent SAGE is an extremely shady operation. While unaffiliated to the government, and engaged in attempts to lobby government policy, many of its members are part of the official SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) advisory group itself.
Overwhelmingly, though, Independent SAGE’s membership is comprised of behavioral scientists and clinical psychologists, not epidemiologists or virologists – in other words, not obvious candidates for effectively managing and resolving a public health crisis, but absolutely the kind of people one would enlist to sell certain ideas to the public.
The overlap between membership of SAGE and Independent SAGE membership also means that representatives of both can appear in the media billed as mouthpieces of the former only, and make alarmist, headline-grabbing projections that don’t reflect SAGE’s official position or modelling, without this crucial caveat being acknowledged. Witness Susan Michie stating in June that government-enforced social distancing and mask wearing will have to remain in place forever, contrary to published SAGE wisdom.
Steele’s dodgy dossier gripped journalists’ attention the world over and drove news coverage for months before its exposure as flagrant nonsense. How long it’ll take before Independent SAGE’s dubious prognoses and baseless hysteria is similarly laid bare is anyone’s guess.
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.
Only 1.6% of Schoolchildren Forced to Self-Isolate For 10 Days Went on to Develop Covid
By Toby Young • Daily Sceptic • July 23, 2021
A new study by a team of researchers at Oxford has found that of the one million schoolchildren sent home and forced to self-isolate for 10 days every week last term, 98.4% did not go on to develop Covid. The Telegraph has more.
Forcing hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren to self-isolate because a classmate had Covid was unnecessary as daily testing would have been as effective, an official study suggests.
The results of the study, by the University of Oxford, emerged on the last day of term for most schools, when more than one million pupils are off because of the virus and after months of disruption to education. […]
The team behind the study said the results also offered reassurance for policymakers trying to end the pingdemic because they showed that the virus could be controlled in a less “destructive” way.
It came as the latest figures revealed that up to one million people a week are being asked to isolate in England and Wales, with record numbers being pinged by the NHS app.
The Oxford study found that 98.4 per cent of children who were sent home for 10 days never went on to develop Covid – a result set to anger parents and pupils forced to stay at home needlessly.
For those that can’t get past the Telegraph‘s paywall, BBC News also has the story.
This study complements numerous other studies – such as this one in Sweden – showing that very, very few people are infected with COVID-19 in schools, whether children or staff, and that school closures were completely unnecessary. Bizarrely, the BBC quotes the lead author of the Oxford study describing his findings as “good news” since it means sending a million schoolchildren home every week just in case they have Covid can now be replaced by daily testing, with only those who test positive being sent home. But, of course, it isn’t “news” since we’ve know how pointless the quarantining of healthy schoolchildren is for at least a year. And I suspect parents of school-age children (like me) won’t regard this news as “good”, so much as confirmation of their worst fears, namely, that their children’s sacrifice over the past 16 months has been for nought.
Here is how you do the Big Lie/ CNBC and the 99.5% of deaths in the unvaccinated
By Meryl Nass, MD | July 22, 2021
First CNBC set up the story. It provided facts that actually don’t mean very much but sound frightening. It said the virus is 1,000 times more transmissible than the original. In fact, precisely this strategy was used in the early days of Covid.
The variant is highly contagious, largely because people infected with the delta strain can carry up to 1,000 times more virus in their nasal passages than those infected with the original strain, according to new data.
At the onset of the pandemic, in March 2020, SARS-2 was alleged to be 1,000 times more transmissible than SARS-1. And today, the hot story is that the Delta variant is 1,000 times more transmissible than the original strain of SARS-2. Which would make it 1 million times more transmissible than SARS-1.
But what does that really mean? In the real world, more transmissibility is generally associated with lowered virulence. And that is precisely the case when you compare SARS-1 and SARS-2, and the Delta versus the original Covid strain. Each has considerably less virulence than the earlier coronavirus.
It means the Delta variant might be as transmissible as the flu. And it happens to be the least virulent of the seven variants being evaluated in the UK.
Now that you have gotten everyone’s attention, you throw in some quotes from the CDC Director, who happily obliges with more meaningless drivel:
“The delta variant is more aggressive and much more transmissible than previously circulating strains,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told reporters at a briefing Thursday. “It is one of the most infectious respiratory viruses we know of, and that I have seen in my 20-year career.”
Aggressive sounds pretty bad, but what does it mean? In fact, it has no medical meaning. The claim of high transmissibility is repeated, while nothing else is being said.
How transmissible is flu? CDC states that between 3% and 20% of Americans get the flu each winter, within a brief 3 months. Delta is presumably in the same ballpark.
The stage has been prepared. The CDC Director has opined on the latest horribleness. The audience is nervous and paying full attention.
What comes next appears to be from a reliable source. But in fact, it came out of left field. There is no source. No attribution whatsoever.
CNBC stated:
“In hospitals around the country, 97% of people admitted with Covid symptoms are unvaccinated, and 99.5% of all Covid deaths are also among the unvaccinated.”
The numbers cannot be verified by the press, or by me, or by anyone who does not have an official list of the vaccinated. Most people were vaccinated in mass clinics. The vaccinations are not in their medical records. There are no insurance claims for the vaccine, which was free. While the states and CDC do have those lists, somewhere, CDC has previously claimed it could not match the list of the vaccinated to reported post-vaccination deaths to corroborate and evaluate them.
In the UK, with similar vaccination rates as the US, it was reported that the majority of hospitalizations are occurring in the VACCINATED. This according to Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK’s chief science advisor, who is also known as a member of the Fauci Covid origin cover-up cabal.
According to Reuters, Vallance now says he misspoke.
Vallance earlier said at a news conference with Prime Minister Boris Johnson that 60% of people being admitted to hospital with COVID-19 have had two doses of vaccine.
“Correcting a statistic I gave at the press conference,” Vallance said on Twitter. “About 60% of hospitalisations from COVID are not from double vaccinated people, rather 60% of hospitalisations from COVID are currently from unvaccinated people.”
When the public has no means of verification, the media (as well as government officials) can say anything they please. How does 99.5% sound? There’s nothing stopping you. So why not go for broke? And if there is pushback, just change the numbers tomorrow.
Johnson’s journey from reason to tyranny
By Gary Oliver | The Conservative Woman | July 23, 2021
ACCORDING to his resentful former chief of staff, last October Boris Johnson initially resisted another national lockdown because, as paraphrased by Dominic Cummings, ‘The people dying are essentially all over 80 and we can’t kill the economy just because of people dying over 80.’
Even if the words attributed to Johnson are not verbatim, the sentiment is consistent with the reservations the Prime Minister put in writing at the time, when he questioned the need to reimpose restrictions for ‘Covid fatalities [having] a median age . . . that is above life expectancy’.
Cummings and BBC interviewer Laura Kuenssberg cosily concurred that Johnson’s reluctance to reinstate restraints was an egregious example of him ‘putting his own political interests ahead of people’s lives’. The detractors who decry Johnson for having been insufficiently authoritarian will no doubt agree and accuse him of callous indifference; however, it is difficult to understand how defying the large, loud and influential pro-lockdown lobby would have been in ‘his own political interests’.
Despite his apparent reservations, at the end of October 2020 Johnson did of course succumb to the siren calls and issued a further stay-at-home order – again enraging sceptics for whom lockdowns have been a dementedly disproportionate response and an unconscionable violation of our freedoms.
From the lockdown addicts, there is much confected shock and outrage that last autumn Johnson did not concentrate solely on the coronavirus casualties, but instead wanted to weigh the titanic trade-offs between lives, livelihoods and liberty. From those of us who deplore him being a stooge for scheming scientists and mendacious modellers, there is surprise that the Johnson of October 2020 seemingly was still capable of rational and independent thought, albeit he soon surrendered to the scaremongers.
Nine months on, this week’s pusillanimous performance by Johnson confirms that he has been completely captured by the public health partisans. On what was bogusly billed as ‘freedom day’, it was horrifying to hear the UK Prime Minister announce: ‘I would remind everybody that some of life’s most important pleasures and opportunities are likely to be increasingly dependent on vaccination.’
A chilling prospect, and a dystopia which Johnson warns might only be two months away: ‘By the end of September . . . we’re planning to make full vaccination a condition of entry to nightclubs and other venues where large crowds gather. Proof of a negative test will no longer be enough.’
Some on the Right complacently regard this as an idle threat to pressgang young adults into accepting a vaccination for which they have no need. According to Sarah Knapton, the Telegraph’s Science Editor: ‘It may even teach them a little something about collective responsibility – and in an era of epidemic levels of self-absorption, that can only be a good thing.’
To be clear: this is the science editor – repeat, science editor – of an allegedly conservative newspaper arguing that young people should not only submit to a coerced and unnecessary medical procedure but also be grateful for a lesson in morality.
Knapton should be ashamed of herself, as should Boris Johnson for even suggesting that vaccination status should be a condition of entry to any social gathering. Regardless of whether it is a tactical threat or a repressive promise, from the British Prime Minister it is reprehensible rhetoric.
Leave aside the impracticalities and suspect science which underpins the plan: Conservative MPs should publicly oppose on principle this contemptible plan which Big Brother Watch accurately describes as ‘divisive, discriminatory and wrong’.
Depressingly, most Tories are too lily-livered to resist, and at the time of writing only 42 of the parliamentary party have pledged: ‘We oppose the divisive and discriminatory use of Covid status certification to deny individuals access to general services, businesses or jobs.’
So far Big Brother Watch’s petition against Covid passes has been signed by almost as many LibDem and Labour MPs. Right now, there is more reason to respect signatories Diane Abbot, Richard Burgon and Dawn Butler than the unconcerned and cowardly Conservatives.
British Disinfo Machine Out of Whack: The Guardian’s Trump-Russia ‘Bombshell’ Reeks of Forgery
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 22.07.2021
The Guardian’s latest “bombshell” story about how President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian spies at a closed session of the National Security Council to use “all possible force” to make Donald Trump win in 2016 has not got as much media attention as it was apparently planned.
The article written, by Luke Harding, Dan Sabbagh, and Julian Borger appeared on The Guardian’s website on 15 July at 10:00 GMT. Another op-ed on the matter with a byline containing only Harding and Sabbagh was published on the same day at 17:05 GMT. The news was also advertised in the website’s First Thing section on 15 and 16 July and yet, surprisingly, just a “few Western mainstream media outlets have written or reported on what they were all speculating and salivating about for all four years of the Trump presidency”, notes Mark Sleboda, a US military veteran and international affairs and security analyst.
Still, there’s an obvious explanation why the MSM has not taken the bait: the so-called “leak” smacks of an obvious bunk, according to the analyst, who outlines some obvious discrepancies in The Guardian’s “exposé”:
First, it’s absolutely unclear how the supposed “leaked docs” ended up in The Guardian’s hands: there is no chain of custody or explanation at all.
Second, despite The Guardian’s claims that Western intelligence agencies have had these documents for months, no Western government or intelligence agency, neither the British nor the Americans, has so much as made a comment or peep about it.
Third, almost universally native Russian speakers have noticed and called out numerous incidences of lexical awkwardness and mistakes in the snippets, suggesting that the text was written by a non-native Russian speaker with limited cultural fluency.
Fourth, the Russian National Security Council is a formal political body which is not designed for discussing sensitive clandestine operations.
Fifth, the President’s Expert Directorate headed by economist Vladimir Simonenko – named by The Guardian as the apparent author of the grand design to take over the US elections – in fact deals entirely with domestic matters, including the financing of the president and the presidential administration’s activities, as well as collecting, analysing and preparing materials for the president’s annual addresses.
Sixth, the alleged secret meeting took place in January 2016 when Donald Trump was not even considered as a serious presidential candidate, let alone the Republican nominee.
Seventh, the article is riddled with hedging words and expressions, papers “appear to show”, “documents suggest”, “assessed to be”, etc., as if the authors knew that they were peddling disinformation.
The Guardian report “reeks of disinformation operation”, former Director of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Chris Krebs remarked on 15 July. Krebs echoes another cybersecurity expert, Thomas Rid of John Hopkins University, who listed a series of issues with the “Kremlin leak” in a Twitter thread.
Many more former Western intelligence operatives and experts publicly questioned the documents’ veracity in both media and social media, including Director of Russian Studies at CNA Michael Kofman, former Information Security Specialist for GCHQ Matt Tait, and former US NSC staff Gavin Wilde.
Even Dmitri Alperovitch, a co-founder and former CTO of Crowdstrike, who groundlessly blamed “Russian hackers” for breaching DNC servers back in 2016, has weighed in, dismissing the “leak” as forgery.
What’s Behind the ‘Kremlin Leak’ Story?
On the surface, the “leak” appears to confirm practically every Russiagate fantasy and makes an oblique reference to unspecified “kompromat” on Trump – an apparent reference to ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele’s “dirty dossier” on the then presidential candidate and his campaign, Sleboda points out.
The analyst highlights that one of the authors of The Guardian’s latest exposé – Luke Harding – has long been an ardent adept of the Steele dossier, despite the ex-British spook’s bizarre claims having neither been corroborated nor confirmed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation.
“There seems a likely possibility that these new ‘Kremlin documents’ like the previous Steele dossiers, were fabricated by British intelligence or elements within it, for the same purposes of discrediting Trump and preventing any, even faint, detente in US-Russian relations, whether under Trump or Biden”, suggests Sleboda.
The UK has played a special role in the Trump-Russia story: “There has long been a widely held belief by many because of the prominence of the Steele dossier during the whole Russigate episode that there was a significant degree of the British tail wagging the US political dog”, the analyst says.
Four years ago, Harding claimed that the UK intelligence service GCHQ became aware of “suspicious ‘interactions’ between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents” as early as in 2015, well before their American counterparts. Citing unnamed sources in the UK intelligence community, the journalist presumed that British and EU spies collected information on Trump between late 2015 and summer 2016.
“It is understood that GCHQ was at no point carrying out a targeted operation against Trump or his team or proactively seeking information”, Harding asserted on 13 April 2017. “The alleged conversations were picked up by chance as part of routine surveillance of Russian intelligence assets”.
Furthermore, “[Harding] has previously claimed in The Guardian that British intelligence and Foreign Office was given the Steele dossier before it was sent to the United States and vouched for Steele’s ‘credibility’ in reference to it”, Sleboda remarks.
In 2021 alone, the British media has published a number of articles in support of Steele’s debunked narrative:
· in January, The Guardian ran an outlandish story of Trump being “cultivated” by the Soviet KGB for 40 years;
· in May, The Telegraph broke a story about a “second dossier” written by Steele during Trump’s presidency;
· four days prior to Harding’s “bombshell”, Guardian contributor Charles Kaiser tried to rehabilitate at least part of Steele’s “dirty dossier”, alleging that Trump aide Carter Page may have struck a lucrative deal with Russia’s Rosneft, something that wasn’t confirmed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
The fact that Steele’s story is being kept alive in the British media would seem to indicate that the UK establishment is still backing Steele’s anti-Trump/anti-Russia disinformation campaign, the security analyst believes.
If the “Kremlin documents” were indeed deliberately planted by the UK intelligence elements to target Trump’s potential 2024 election bid as well as US-Russia relations under Biden, this is “an extremely important and dangerous situation”, according to Sleboda.
“It would mean that the British government and/or intelligence have repeatedly conducted active measures to manipulate and interfere in both US domestic elections and foreign policy, destabilising the US political system domestically and putting the entire world at risk by deliberately increasing tensions between the world’s two foremost nuclear armed powers”, he says. “There will likely be no investigation or accountability into this latest Guardian piece of disinformation about Russia in the Western MSM but there most certainly should and desperately needs to be one”.
UK law commission recommends making speech offenses based on “likely psychological harm”
The vague terms used to suppress speech
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim the Net | July 22, 2021
Recommendations unveiled by the UK’s Law Commission are seeking to establish a new offense by criminalizing communications that could cause “likely psychological harms.”
Another offense that is recommended in the document concerns “knowingly false communications.” This is a serious threat to freedom of expression, and a chance for the authorities to get the last word on what is perceived as true and false.
The recommendation defines “harm” as something that causes “serious distress,” while “psychological harm” is also being mentioned. As for defining “serious distress” – the Commission refers to the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.
The proposed reforms are aimed at protecting victims of online abuse, but there are fears that the vague language and prioritizing subjective perception of speech over objective content could have dangerous consequences.
And the fact that identity and characteristics of the recipient of a communication is also given center stage leaves the door wide open for censorship based on identity politics.
Ironically, in presenting and explaining the recommendations, the Commission justifies them as necessary to right precisely the wrongs that critics are now pointing out this type of reform could introduce. Namely, the Commission says that rules that currently define what constitutes for serious crimes from online abuse are “vague” and sometimes interfere with free speech.
“Grossly offensive” and “indecent” are some examples of what the Commission sees as “vague” – and they would instead “clarify” matters by criminalizing “likely psychological harm.”
Earlier drafts of the recommendations even toyed with the idea of criminalizing communications that are perceived as causing “emotional distress.”
And the document’s authors claim that their take on how to better protect people from abuse online will actually protect freedom of expression more effectively. The rationale here is that the proposals would narrow the reach of the criminal law – rather than, as those critical of the whole thing say, set a very low threshold.
The organization’s Criminal Law Commissioner Penney Lewis is quoted as saying that the goal of the recommendations is to prevent “untold harm” that can arise from online behavior, singling out cyberflashing and pile-on harassment.
People found to be “knowingly” posting false communications would face criminal charges if their action is found to have caused “non-trivial emotional, psychological, or physical harm to the likely audience, without a reasonable excuse.”
Keir Starmer Is Self-Isolating Now. I Call Bullshit
By Richie Allen | July 21, 2021
Labour Party leader Keir Starmer has gone home to self-isolate this afternoon. The media has been told that one of his children has tested positive for covid.
According to the BBC:
A statement from his office said one of his children tested positive at lunchtime, but Sir Keir was doing daily tests and tested negative this morning.
Sir Keir was in the House of Commons for PMQs earlier. The PM and chancellor are also self-isolating after contact with the health secretary who tested positive.
This is the fourth time Sir Keir has had to self-isolate since the pandemic began. His spokesman said his family will also be self-isolating.
I’ve no proof whatsoever, but I call bullshit. The media has spent much of the past 48 hours discussing the NHS app and “pingdemic.” Millions of people have been pinged by the app and told to go home and isolate. It’s led to total chaos.
Business owners are tearing their hair out as staff shortages threaten the post-lockdown economic bounce. There are widespread reports that millions of younger people are deleting the app from their phones. Nobody wants to be forced into isolation, especially at this time of year.
The managers of the scamdemic, the entire political class and the media, are horrified that so many are deleting the wretched app. Maybe Johnson, Health Secretary Sajid Javid and Labour leader Keir Starmer have been sent to self-isolate to set an example.
You’d be well within your rights to ask me why. Because chaos is their desired outcome. They want to destroy the economy and cause a shortage of food and other products. They want to bankrupt businesses. They want to bankrupt you. Chaos is the plan.
Ordo Ab Chao. Order out of chaos. All roads lead to The World Economic Forum’s Great Reset. The people will only accept it when their worlds are turned upside-down.
The public is being manipulated 24/7 by the political class and the media working in tandem. They want you in a perpetual state of agitation and confusion. You become even more suggestible while in that low vibrational state.
There’s no covid now. There’s no threat if there ever was one. People should not be taking instructions from their phones to drop everything and rush home to isolate. It’s tyranny. People seem to be wising up to it and ditching the app. It’s about bloody time.
How convenient then, that the PM and the leader of the opposition party should be pinged and sent home, while at the same time the media is attacking anyone who suggests it’s time to move on and get on with our lives.
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Book Review
Alarmist climate science as a textbook example of groupthink
By Paul MacRae | May 1, 2012
… Groupthink was extensively studied by Yale psychologist Irving L. Janis and described in his 1982 book Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes.
Janis was curious about how teams of highly intelligent and motivated people—the “best and the brightest” as David Halberstam called them in his 1972 book of the same name—could have come up with political policy disasters like the Vietnam War, Watergate, Pearl Harbor and the Bay of Pigs. Similarly, in 2008 and 2009, we saw the best and brightest in the world’s financial sphere crash thanks to some incredibly stupid decisions, such as allowing sub-prime mortgages to people on the verge of bankruptcy.
In other words, Janis studied why and how groups of highly intelligent professional bureaucrats and, yes, even scientists, screw up, sometimes disastrously and almost always unnecessarily. The reason, Janis believed, was “groupthink.” He quotes Nietzsche’s observation that “madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups,” and notes that groupthink occurs when “subtle constraints … prevent a [group] member from fully exercising his critical powers and from openly expressing doubts when most others in the group appear to have reached a consensus.”[2]
Janis found that even if the group leader expresses an openness to new ideas, group members value consensus more than critical thinking; groups are thus led astray by excessive “concurrence-seeking behavior.”[3] Therefore, Janis wrote, groupthink is “a model of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”[4]
The groupthink syndrome
The result is what Janis calls “the groupthink syndrome.” This consists of three main categories of symptoms:
1. Overestimate of the group’s power and morality, including “an unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality, inclining the members to ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their actions.” [emphasis added]
2. Closed-mindedness, including a refusal to consider alternative explanations and stereotyped negative views of those who aren’t part of the group’s consensus. The group takes on a “win-lose fighting stance” toward alternative views.[5]
3. Pressure toward uniformity, including “a shared illusion of unanimity concerning judgments conforming to the majority view”; “direct pressure on any member who expresses strong arguments against any of the group’s stereotypes”; and “the emergence of self-appointed mind-guards … who protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions.”[6]
It’s obvious that alarmist climate science—as explicitly and extensively revealed in the Climatic Research Unit’s “Climategate” emails—shares all of these defects of groupthink, including a huge emphasis on maintaining consensus, a sense that because they are saving the world, alarmist climate scientists are beyond the normal moral constraints of scientific honesty (“overestimation of the group’s power and morality”), and vilification of those (“deniers”) who don’t share the consensus. … Read full article
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