UK govt gave contract to IT firm that is ‘openly plotting’ to turn vaccine passports into a national ID card
RT | June 21, 2021
The British government has been accused of aiming to covertly implement a national ID programme, after it partnered with a company that has advocated turning vaccine passports into a multi-purpose document.
Entrust, an IT firm that bills itself as a “global leader in identities, payments, and data protection,” was awarded a contract by the Department of Health and Social Care last month to work on the UK’s Covid-19 vaccine certificate system. The company was given £250,000 ($346,000) to provide cloud-computing services for the government’s Covid-status certification scheme, iNews reported. The contract is due to expire in March 2022, but the government has the option of extending it for an additional year.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock stated last month that proof of vaccination will be “necessary” for international travel, and in recent weeks reports have emerged claiming that the UK government may require the document of people attending sporting events or other large gatherings.
Judging from Entrust’s own stance on the issue, it’s possible that the government may have even more ambitious plans for the digital certificate. In a February blog post published on the company’s website, Jann Markey, Entrust’s product marketing director, argued that the advent of the vaccine passports could be used as an opportunity to roll out a national ID as part of “the infrastructure of the new normal.”
“Consider a national ID strategy: With the infrastructure and investment necessary to ensure a viable vaccine passport, why not redeploy this effort into a national citizen ID programme that can be used for multiple purposes including the secure delivery of government services, secure cross-border travel, and documentation of vaccination,” the blog, which explores vaccine passports in the “post-pandemic world,” states.
Notably, the US-based company has already helped Albania, Ghana and Malaysia deploy national ID systems, iNews said.
Entrust’s partnership with the UK government has already raised alarm among civil liberties organisations and lawmakers.
Tory MP David Davis, a member of the anti-lockdown Covid Recovery Group, demanded an explanation from the government. He told iNews that it was “extraordinary” that the health department could ink deals with such companies without first getting permission from Parliament, adding that it was particularly worrying that a contract could be given to a firm “with this sinister attitude to surveillance of citizens.”
Former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith echoed similar displeasure, claiming that the contract contradicts the “stated position of the government” and should be nixed.
Big Brother Watch, a privacy and civil liberties group, said the Entrust contract represents an attempt by the government to issue ID cards “by the backdoor.”
“The fact that the government has done a deal with Entrust, a company which is openly plotting a route from vaccine passports to digital identity cards, only underlines what a serious threat Covid passes would be to our civil liberties and our privacy,” the organisation’s head of research, Jake Hurfurt, warned.
A health department spokesperson insisted that the NHS app used to certify vaccination status will not be used as a national ID system, describing the scheme as a “simple and secure means” to allow for international travel. Entrust declined to comment when contacted by iNews.
Fear Is Contagious and Used to Control You
By Dr. Joseph Mercola | June 18, 2021
Governments are using fear to control and manipulate their citizens. That has now been admitted by members of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behavior (SPI-B), a subcommittee that advises the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) in the U.K. And they should know, because they advocated for it, and now say it was a regrettable mistake. As reported by The Telegraph, May 14, 2021:1
“Scientists on a committee that encouraged the use of fear to control people’s behavior during the COVID pandemic have admitted its work was ‘unethical’ and ‘totalitarian.’ Members of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behavior (SPI-B) expressed regret about the tactics in a new book about the role of psychology in the Government’s COVID-19 response.
SPI-B warned in March last year that ministers needed to increase ‘the perceived level of personal threat’ from COVID-19 because ‘a substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened.’
Gavin Morgan, a psychologist on the team, said: ‘Clearly, using fear as a means of control is not ethical. Using fear smacks of totalitarianism. It’s not an ethical stance for any modern government. By nature I am an optimistic person, but all this has given me a more pessimistic view of people.’”
Psychological Warfare Is Real
The Telegraph quotes several of the SPI-B members, all of whom are also quoted in the newly released book, “A State of Fear: How the UK Government Weaponised Fear During the Covid-19 Pandemic,” written by Laura Dodsworth:2
“One SPI-B scientist told Ms Dodsworth: ‘In March [2020] the Government was very worried about compliance and they thought people wouldn’t want to be locked down. There were discussions about fear being needed to encourage compliance, and decisions were made about how to ramp up the fear. The way we have used fear is dystopian.
The use of fear has definitely been ethically questionable. It’s been like a weird experiment. Ultimately, it backfired because people became too scared’ …
One warned that ‘people use the pandemic to grab power and drive through things that wouldn’t happen otherwise … We have to be very careful about the authoritarianism that is creeping in’ …
Another member of SPI-B said they were ‘stunned by the weaponization of behavioral psychology’ during the pandemic, and that ‘psychologists didn’t seem to notice when it stopped being altruistic and became manipulative. They have too much power and it intoxicates them.’
Steve Baker, the deputy chairman of the COVID Recovery Group of Tory MPs, said: ‘If it is true that the state took the decision to terrify the public to get compliance with rules, that raises extremely serious questions about the type of society we want to become. If we’re being really honest, do I fear that government policy today is playing into the roots of totalitarianism? Yes, of course it is.’”
The Manufacture of Fear
For nearly a year and a half, governments around the world, with few exceptions, have fed their citizens a steady diet of frightening news. For months on end, you couldn’t turn on the television without facing a tickertape detailing the number of hospitalizations and deaths.
Even when it became clear that people weren’t really dying in excessive numbers, the mainstream media fed us continuous updates on the growing number of “cases,” without ever putting such figures into context or explaining that the vast majority were false positives.
Information that would have balanced out the bad news — such as recovery rates and just how many so-called “cases” actually weren’t, because they never had a single symptom — were censored and suppressed.
They also refused to put any of the data into context, such as reviewing whether the death toll actually differed significantly from previous years. Instead, each new case was treated as an emergency and a sign of catastrophic doom.
Don’t Be Confused — Contradiction Is a Warfare Tactic
Aside from the barrage of bad-news-only data — which, by the way, was heavily manipulated in a variety of ways — fear and anxiety are also generated by keeping you confused. According to Dodsworth, giving out contradictory recommendations and vague instructions is being done intentionally, to keep you psychologically vulnerable.
“When you create a state of confusion, people become ever more reliant on the messaging. Instead of feeling confident about making decisions, they end up waiting for instructions from the Government,” she said in a May 20, 2021, interview on the Planet Normal podcast.3
An example provided by Dodsworth are the pandemic measures implemented over Christmas 2020:
“Family Christmases were on, then off, then back on, then off again. You have got someone tightening the screw, then loosening the screw, then tightening it again. It’s like a torture scenario.”
But that’s not all. As explained by psychiatrist Dr. Peter Breggin, by layering confusion and uncertainty on top of fear, you can bring an individual to a state in which they can no longer think rationally. Once driven into an illogical state, they are easily manipulated. I have no doubt driving people into a state where logic and reason no longer registers is the whole point behind much of the conflicting information we’re given.
The Fear Factory
In her book, Dodsworth details a number of branches of the British government that are using psychological warfare methods in their interaction with the public. In addition to the SPI-B, there’s the:4
•Behavioral Insights team, the so-called “nudge unit,” a semi-independent government body that applies “behavioral insights to inform policy, improve public services and deliver positive results for people and communities.”5 This team also advises foreign nations.
•Home Office’s Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU), which is part of the U.K.’s Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism, advises front groups disguised as public “grassroots” organizations on how to “covertly engineer the thoughts of people.”
•Rapid Response Unit, launched in 2018, operates across the British Cabinet Office and the Prime Minister’s office (colloquially known as “Number 10” as in the physical address, 10 Downing Street in London) to “counter misinformation and disinformation.” They also work with the National Security Communications Team during crises to ensure “official information” gets maximum visibility.6
•Counter Disinformation Cell, which is part of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Both monitor social media and combat “fake news” about science in general and COVID-19 in particular, with “fake news” being anything that contradicts the World Health Organization’s guidance.7
•Government Communications Headquarters (QCHQ), an intelligence and security organization that provides information to the U.K. government and the armed forces. According to Dodsworth, QCHQ personnel, and even members of the 77th Brigade, have been enlisted as so-called sockpuppets and trolls to combat anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown messaging on social media.
According to Dodsworth, there are many others. In her book, she claims at least 10 different government departments in the U.K. are working with “behavioral insights teams” to manipulate the public.
We’re Just Seeing It Now
Importantly, government’s reliance on behavioral psychology didn’t just happen as a result of the pandemic. These tactics have been used for years, for myriad PR purposes, and while the pandemic may be winding down, Dodsworth warns that more and more behavioral scientists are being hired:8
“It’s growing and growing. Right now, I feel we are in a maelstrom of nudge,” she says. “In the past, there have been calls to consult the public on the use of behavioral psychology, and those calls have come from the behavioral scientists themselves. And yet it hasn’t happened. We haven’t yet been consulted on the use of subconscious techniques which effectively strip away our choices …
I fervently hope this book [‘The State of Fear’] is actually going to inspire a much-needed conversation about the use of fear, not just in the epidemic, but the way we use behavioral psychology overall.
It’s not just a genie that has been let out the bottle. It’s like we’ve unleashed a Hydra and you can keep chopping its head off, but they keep employing more of these behavioral scientists throughout different government departments. It’s very much how the Government now does business. It’s the business of fear …
I think ultimately people don’t want to be manipulated. People don’t enjoy being hoodwinked and they don’t want to live in a state of fear. We maybe need to be a bit bolder about standing up more quickly when something is not right.”
An Essential Journey
My experience of international travel in Covid times
By Joanna Sharp | OffGuardian | June 19, 2021
I had not planned to travel abroad this year, especially after the UK government’s announcement in early 2021 that foreign holidays were forbidden. Even heading towards the airport with an intent to go on a foreign holiday could result in a £5000 fine or imprisonment! Surreal.
Where we live in London under a flight path to Heathrow, we notice that although there are fewer flights, they have not ceased completely. So how do people travel? It’s not something I have thought about.
One day at the end of April I receive a message that my elderly father’s condition is critical. Within an hour I am looking at flights back home in Eastern Europe and checking the UK government travel ‘advice’ webpages.
I say ‘advice’ but that word belongs to the past. Today, ‘command’ might be more appropriate. According to the government, only “essential” international travel is permitted for named valid reasons; ‘medical and compassionate’ is the category which applies to me.
I wonder whose compassion this is a reference to: mine, for wanting to be with my sick father, or the government’s for including this as a possibility. Reassured that I can go, it is now a question of buying the plane tickets, checking in and packing, right? Not quite.
WADING THROUGH THE RED TAPE
Since holiday travel has effectively been banned, the government created intricate webpages full of information on what is and what is not allowed, where citizens cannot travel, and if they must, what documents they need to prepare. So complicated travel advice alone has become that the webpage now includes a step by step flowchart with endless links within each step to be followed.
Getting through this information would take at least a day. It’s like a cross between a maze and a vortex. I soon understand that I cannot buy my tickets until I have uploaded the right Covid related paperwork onto the airline website!
First, I need to fill a Declaration for International Travel (since the 17th May it is no longer required) which asks for personal details including my date of birth, passport number, home address and destination.
The key question is the reason for international travel – and in the actual online questions, the phrase is: ‘What is your excuse for travel?’ My excuse? What kind of language is that? Am I asking a teacher to let me leave the classroom? Am I asked to explain why I haven’t done my homework?
That really shocks me, although I have already noticed my own reaction to the very idea that I need permission to leave the country, as if I was back in Eastern Europe before 1989…I read the following declaration and tick the right box out of the given options.
I hereby declare that my reason for being outside my home to travel internationally is for:
– Work
– Volunteering
– Education
– Medical or compassionate reasons
– Funeral
– Ending a temporary visit (non-UK resident)
– Allowing access to parents with children who do not live in the same country
– Other reasonable excuse – please specify
Next, I am required to sign to ‘certify that the information I have provided is true. I understand that if I provide false or misleading information, I may be issued with a fixed penalty notice and/or a direction to return home or be arrested’.
So, by signing this, and I have no choice not to if I want to get my ticket, I have given the UK authorities permission to arrest of fine me should my excuse to travel turn out to be incorrect. What if my father is not that ill, then what?
But of course, that is not enough. I now need to provide evidence of my father’s illness. How do you do that when the whole of the world is still in lockdown; imagine having to get a doctor’s note on demand. I am still just trying to get a ticket.
I want to travel tomorrow morning, my sister-in-law tells me, Dad is given a couple of days. I ask my brother to send me an email confirming the family crisis, he does that within an hour. He is also trying to copy the notes from my father’s last doctor’s visit and the most recent diagnosis.
Then, still before I buy a return ticket, I need to get a kit of two Covid tests which I will need to take upon return to UK. Another link takes me on to a list of government-approved Covid test providers. A whole list of them, each can be accessed via a separate link. I try a few. They average around £200 each. The cheapest ones are £99 but are sold out.
Why can’t I see any free NHS ones? The ones given out like sweets in schools and local pharmacies? Why are these not available? Why could I not just pick a free one at the airport?
But of course, there is no to answer these questions, I am desperate to leave so agree to this, too. No test, no flight. So, I order one of these almost £200 test kits, get an email confirming the order, upload all the documents and finally I can complete the purchase of my tickets which, as usual, turn out not so low cost after all.
I check in. My boarding card (lucky I had just bought a printer the previous week) says at the top of the page ‘Covid Documentation Uploaded’. So, now I have the boarding card and a pile of printed pages which presumably I will need to show at UK border control in order to prove my excuse for leaving the country is legitimate.
Finally, I download and fill in the compulsory Passenger Locator Form for the destination country that will enable the system to track and trace me. It is nearly bedtime and I now need to pack.
ON THE GO
My husband drives me to Stansted in the middle of the night. An early morning flight, no public transport available but at least it’s quiet and there is no traffic. The airport is still closed; a group of families with young children are waiting for the door to open.
These are not holidaymakers breaking the law to get some forbidden fun. No idea where they are travelling but they look like they are going home somewhere south, southeast perhaps? Turkey, Bulgaria or Ukraine? No idea but they do look like part of the globalised chain of workforce escaping poverty and perhaps the lockdown has pushed them to return. Better to be jobless and poor in your own village. The weather tends to be better and the environment less hostile.
Finally, the doors open. I push the scarf up over my face, my hand clutching a plastic folder with a wad of documents allowing me to leave. It is quiet, no waiting. I go through security, passport control seems non-existent, shops still closed so nothing to stop for. I wonder at which point someone will ask me to see the papers. Ask me what my excuse for leaving is. Strangely, that never happens. I am almost disappointed. I spent about four hours sorting out all that paperwork the night before and now this is not even checked!
Immediately I catch myself: why am I disappointed? Because no one will give me the all-clear? Have I been conditioned to want to be waved through the green light already?
Perhaps that is how normalising oppression works. But of course, there is no need to check, the documents have been uploaded and recorded somewhere and someone now knows everything about me, my plans, my reason (“excuse”) for leaving the country. Or perhaps the intimate details of my family crisis; my father’s terminal illness and my attempt to get to him before it’s too late have now just been converted into big data slushing around the corpo-government’s control AI machine, and turned into useful predictions.
I guess this type of authoritarianism does not even need stern looks from border control officials, no need to divulge private dramas in public. Hours of stress of getting the documents turned into a discreet but vital small print on my boarding card; the only visible proof that my travel is acceptable to the corpo-state. It is all so neat, tidy, hi-tech and invisible that we can just pretend that all is just normal.
After all, the airport trimmings look all the same; with adverts, duty-free shopping, same old queues at departure gates and same safety drills on the plane, down to the irritating Ryanair voice thanking us for choosing to fly with them (no one chooses to fly with Ryanair, just like no one chooses to go to the dentist, you do it because you have to and you hope it won’t be too unpleasant).
We can pretend nothing has changed. Except the masks on faces, of course. Slow drinking and eating is my solution. During the flight many noses protrude against the regulations, of course. People do need to breathe.
We land on time. I send a message to my father, anxious, hoping he is still there. He is not responding. I am worried. From the tarmac I can see the arrivals hall is full. There is no way of entering so the crowd from my plane stops outside and waits in the drizzle. I wonder why that is. Is that Brexit or is it that people’s papers are now checked after all?
The queue moves very slowly, twenty minutes after landing I send my father another message saying that I’m still waiting for border control. I have no idea why this is so slow; each person seems to spend a good few minutes at the control desk. Finally, an hour and a half after landing I get into the taxi. As the driver pulls away, I notice a long queue of passengers outside the arrivals hall waiting to get a Covid test. I arrive home and find my father hanging on.
MY FATHER’S ILLNESS
There is a twist to this story. My father had been treated for cancer but has been still doing quite well and had been planning to spend the summer away from his flat, in the countryside. His sudden deterioration was unexpected for me but I have not had time to think of reasons. I only learnt of this yesterday. But now I am in the flat, taking my shoes off when my brother drops the bombshell: ‘you know, Dad took the vaccine’.
I am shocked. He told me he was not going to, because he found the registration process too difficult, so he decided to stop trying. I was relieved; I had been persuading him that he should not, that being immunocompromised, his system might not cope. I told him what I knew and what I worried about. My brother tells me another family member helped organize his jab and took him there. Jesus. But I am to pretend I don’t know about it; Dad asked my brother not to tell me.
So, I learn that the day after the Pfizer jab he started to feel weak, and within ten days he was prescribed blood thinning injections, a daily drip and he became bedbound. My brother has hired a hospital-style bed and an oxygen machine, set them up in father’s bedroom and organized a private nurse for daily visits. Dad had not wanted to go to hospital: he believed that hospitals were overrun by contagious Covid patients and that going to hospital would mean certain death under a ventilator.
Luckily (I never thought I would say this), unlike the UK, this ex-communist country never managed to build up its own national health service to a level able to deliver comprehensive care, so a secondary private sector filling the gaps exists and is not beyond the means of many people. So here he is, in his own bedroom and getting care at home.
He is happy to see me but asks me not to touch him. I feel sad, guessing he might worry I am bringing contagion. That hurts. I pretend I know nothing about the jab. Later, much later, I remember this moment and think that, he might have wanted to protect me. He knew the jab made him ill and he worried he was fighting vaccine induced-Covid and did not want to give it to me.
He never told me about the vaccine, I never told him I knew.
Sunset in Quaratine
QUARANTINE ONE: THE APP
The day after arriving I receive a text message telling me I am now under statute of law obliged to download a particular app and use it during my 10-day home quarantine. I start the download but can’t complete it. Something is stuck and I have no idea how to fix it. I try for a while and then abandon it. I spend most of the time caring for my father who now slips in and out of consciousness.
The next morning I get a phone call but it stops ringing before I have time to answer it. The following day the same happens. I realise this is the local track and trace. They ring but don’t wait for me to answer. Their call is logged, the box gets ticked but the robot or a human cannot be bothered to do the job properly. Actually, it must be a human as a robot would not give up. Good. The tyranny will fail due to human error or sheer laziness.
I don’t know what possessed me but somehow, I manage to complete installing the Quarantine App. The system springs into action. I get a message from the app that I must take a selfie within the next 30 minutes and submit it. I take a selfie from the app which gives me as many times as I like to choose the best shot. I choose the worst shot.
Of course, there is a way to cheat: after doing my selfie I could leave the phone at home and go out for a walk. Trouble is, the selfie demand comes at a different time each day, usually towards the end of the day. But I have no reason to go anywhere, really, I have come here to be with him, and his condition continues to be critical. And at some point, during this journey I decided that I would do everything by the book, just to see what the new normal travel feels and looks like, and what exactly they want us to experience.
Well, here I am, in a 10-day quarantine in a flat with my dying father. We are lucky. I have my brother to get the shopping in and kind neighbours ready to help. We are lucky my father is at home. What would be the point of coming here all this way, only to be stuck in quarantine if he was in a hospital with no visitors allowed? So, all in all, we are lucky.
DIFFICULT DAYS
Days go by, my father’s condition improves a little, I am his nurse, and of course I touch him – he stopped protesting as soon as he needed a glass of water; I continue to take my selfies. We talk, I read to him, feed him, then he sleeps. He dies two days after my quarantine ends. That is good timing.
There is a lot to do now, and I will not be breaking the law trying to organize the funeral… I remember my favourite literature lesson at school when we debated who was right: Creon or Antigone. Even then, I was in team Antigone.
A doctor arrives to certify death. She is nice and takes her time. Talks a little. Does not look like a corporate bot. She is sitting at a coffee table doing the paperwork. For the cause of death, she writes ‘Thrombosis’. I ponder for a bit and then hesitatingly say: ‘Did you know he was vaccinated?’.
Her face changes and she asks: ‘No, when?’ We tell her, ‘Four weeks ago, exactly’.
‘I am not allowed to say anything,’ she says, ‘but I can tell you I have seen a lot lately. A lot!’ We try to encourage her to talk more but she is cautious. I just ask her: ‘Why would a person on cancer treatment be given a vaccine? Surely that had not been done before?’ She looks at me and says: ‘Because they want to vaccinate us all.’ So, she knows.
This kind of conversation would have been typical in the days of strict communist authoritarianism before 1989. You never knew whom you could trust so you just dropped hints and checked for people’s response. In those days careless talk was dangerous, and I am too young to remember the worst times: the Stalinist years when children were encouraged to denounce their parents; many were imprisoned, tortured and killed.
Now the threat is only a loss of income and public humiliation and yet the new order based on lies, fraud and corrupt science is already in place. Everyone is just doing their job. A perfect example of Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil in which those, following orders in this elaborate house of cards, often do not even know their active contribution to harm inflicted on others. They do not realise because they refuse to look and to know. They stopped taking responsibility for their individual part in the whole.
There is a small group of doctors in the country who are challenging the official narrative, attempt to offer treatment for Covid patients and warn against the untested ‘vaccines’, particularly now that governments want to jab children. Their voices are censored, the people get smeared, ridiculed and shamed by the professional licensing medical body. The modern-day governance in Western democracies!
TRAVELLING HOME
As the funeral preparations get underway, I need to organise my return travel. I check the UK government website again. Travelling from an ‘amber’ coded country, I must test negative for Covid within 72 hours prior to departure. Tricky when the flight is on Monday afternoon.
I start to search for UK government-approved tests available in the city. Only a handful provide the specified UK approved antigen test with results in English. They are also open only in the mornings so if I test on Friday morning, I might be testing a few hours too early to fit within the 72 hours.
After hours of online searching, I find one that looks almost right. I pay the equivalent of £35 online and am told to come on the day, without an appointment. The laboratory website provides useful advice, how to prepare for the test. I learn that I should not brush my teeth or use mouthwash on the morning of test. So now I know what to do.
I arrive at the testing centre early, having heard that queues can be quite long. It is, and it is in the street. The lab’s waiting room only allows three people at a time so the rest stand outside. After about an hour it is my turn. I am allowed inside the surgery.
On the right, by the door, a masked man sitting at a desk behind a glass screen is checking my name and the type of test I have purchased. Then, a young tall, man in full white hazmat suit, his face covered, and in protective glasses ushers me to sit on a chair and tip my head backwards.
This is my first Covid test ever and I am terrified. I have rehearsed telling them how sensitive my face feels and asking not to go deep but there is no eye contact, no talk trying to help me feel comfortable, no attempt to put me at ease. He just tells me to tip my head back far.
I just manage to ask him to go into the left nostril as my right one is not straight. He happily obliges and shoves the long stick into my nostril. As soon as the tip enters my nose I feel shock, a feeling of something unnatural, wrong and threatening happening. The area he just touched is too soft, sensitive and the sensation so unfamiliar I involuntarily, and to my own shock, find myself pushing the man’s arm away. He moves back and looks at me, his body language (there is no face available) disapproves of my behaviour.
I say, please don’t go that deep, you already have some but he insists, tells me not to defend myself and does it again. And again, that feeling that a part of me which is vulnerable and should not be touched, gets scraped. He gets his sample and nods for me to go. I am frozen in that chair, unable to move for what seems like a while. I have tears in my eyes, and I am alone with two hazmat wearing robots. No word is uttered as I leave.
I get my negative result within hours. I recover with an old friend. By then I have a splitting headache and my left nostril is moist with a slight leak. The headache lasts for a couple of days but the leak persists for at least ten.
I arrive at the airport early because I have difficulties completing the UK Passenger Locator Form which UK needs from all passengers. I pass through a manned gate with an automatic wrist temperature check. The airport is unusually quiet, and the staff help me identify the problem which stops me from completing the form. The reference number for the double Covid test needed for the Passenger Locator Form is wrong. I ring home and ask my husband to read the reference number off the Covid test kit. Surely it has arrived now. It hasn’t. It looks like the Day 2 and 8 Test I ordered has not been paid for.
I am told I need to buy a new kit if I want to get this flight. I do as I’m told. No form, no flight. I stand next to the luggage drop off counter feeling sweats, and with my hands shaking I battle the website on my phone. Again, all the ‘cheap’ ones are sold out and somehow, at the last minute I manage to make a purchase for £180, get an email, a reference number, complete the form and have my luggage accepted.
I hurry to my gate and make it just in time as passengers are starting to board. I slow down to join the Ryanair herd waiting on the tarmac for the aircraft to be processed before we are told we can travel.
The pavement is marked with lines at 2-meter intervals. Two men behind me are joking loudly that we must stand on the lines correctly, otherwise the virus will jump on us. I turn and smile (no mask, we are still outside) and make eye contact with the fellow humans.
QUARANTINE TWO: TRACK AND TRACE
Back home in London, the following day I get my first out of ten phone calls from Track and Trace. Each time a different voice reads the same script.
I am contacting you on behalf of the NHS Test and Trace as you have recently travelled into the UK from abroad. Are you happy to continue in English?”
No idea what would happen if I said ‘no’.
Before we proceed, I need to make you aware that this call will be recorded for training and quality improvement purposes and should just take a few minutes of your time. I can confirm I have completed the necessary data security training and all information you provide today will be stored securely. NHS Test and Trace may need to share your details with other organisations including the Home Office, and further information on data security and privacy can be found on http://www.gov.uk/coronavirus. Sharing information in the call today means you consent for it to be stored in the ways I have described. Are you happy to proceed with the call?”
I wish I could say, no, I am not. Once or twice I ask how long the data is going to be stored. The caller is not sure and advises me to find this out from the government website. The call proceeds with them checking my year of birth. Then they ask if I have opted into a ‘test to release’ – I frankly don’t even know it is my option, so I say ‘no’.
I later learn that the Test to Release scheme does not replace the compulsory Day 2 and 8 test. The ten-day quarantine can be shortened to 5 days by ‘opting into’ Test to Release for an additional £99. I realise they ask this question to advertise another product!
Can you confirm that you are quarantining at the address you provided on the passenger locator form and will continue to do so for ten days starting on the day after you arrive in the UK.”
So, again, I confirm, yes. What would happen if I said no?
As part of the Covid 19 response you are legally required to take the test on Day 2 and Day 8 and a failure to do so may result in prosecution.”
That answers my previous question…
Has your test arrived? And have you taken or do you intend to take your test?”
Yes.
Then I am asked if I got my test from the NHS or from a private provider. I am confused as I had no option to get an NHS test and I tell the caller. They seem happy with my answer and continue:
If your Day 2 test is positive confirming Covid 19, you do not need to take another test on Day 8.”
I think, on one occasion, I ask how I am expected to post the test if I am not allowed to leave the house. Of course, the assumption is there is someone else in the house, and if I still have difficulties, again, the go-to place is another NHS number. Amazing what they can do these days; they can even pick up your mail for you!
The call continues:
If you develop any of the three coronavirus symptoms which are: a new continuous cough, a high temperature, or a loss or change to your sense of taste or smell, please visit http://www.gov.uk/coronavirus for further advice. You should not go to the GP, hospital or a pharmacy. If you require medical advice, please ring the NHS on 111 or in an emergency dial 999”.
So here we have the admission of medical malpractice: if I fall ill, I must not seek help from NHS, not even by going to my local pharmacy. I must stay home without help, except of course, if I qualify for 999 ie, a ventilator…
The call continues:
I must advise you that if you test positive for coronavirus or are identified as a close contact of someone who has coronavirus you will be notified by NHS Test and Trace and may be contacted again. Is there anything you would like me to repeat?”
Of course, if someone I sat next to on the (half-empty) plane gets a positive result, my quarantine will stretch to a fortnight or longer! Each time, the call ends with a friendly, youthful, ‘have a great day’. All those who have called me are young voices, all kinds of accents, probably desperate for any job in the current climate. They are trained to stick to the script and any departure from it by my questions seems to trip them up.
And most of them probably think they are doing something socially useful and valuable.
THE QUARANTINE DIY TESTS
The one I have purchased in haste at the airport is a kit with two PCR tests to be administered at home on Day 2 and Day 8. The instructions tell me that the test is run at less than a 30-cycle value threshold.
The first thing to say about the swab is that it is long. It looks like a cotton bud used for everyday use, but on closer inspection it is different. The stick itself is about 12 cm long, that’s 6”, and designed to break off after the sample is collected and put into a small tube provided. The tip itself is 2 cm long, quite thin and covered in almost translucent spiky bristles protruding outwards. It looks a bit like a miniature harsh brush designed to scratch the delicate tissue inside the mouth and nose.
I am told to swab the back of the throat for 3-5 seconds over the posterior pharynx and tonsillar areas but to avoid tongue, teeth and the sides of the mouth. Then I am told to insert the same swab to each nostril about 2 cm deep and to rotate it for 3-5 seconds each time.
The form which I have to complete for each test is yet another mandated opportunity for the corpo-government to harvest my personal data, to store it for as long as it sees fit, yet, as is often the case in abusive relationships I have to (I repeat:) I have to give my consent for all this to happen, and even consent for my possible positive test result which may include my personal details: name, date of birth, gender, home address, telephone number, occupation, place of work, ethnicity and the fact that I have tested positive for Covid 19 to be communicated to Public Health England. Luckily, both of my test results are negative.
Eleven days after arrival in the UK my quarantine is officially over. It takes me a couple of days before I venture outside, I detect a bit of agoraphobia. In the last six weeks I spent twenty days in house arrest. They say it takes six weeks to develop a new habit.
POSTSCRIPTUM
I doubt very much I will travel internationally any time soon. Not planning to take the experimental Covid jab and so will not be enjoying the privilege of freedom promised to those with the vaccine passport. At the time of writing, it is no longer illegal to leave England but the elaborate hoops and the red tape remain and the government website reminds us that “to protect public health in the UK and the vaccine rollout, you should not travel to countries or territories on the red or amber lists”.
The ‘red and amber’ lists cover most countries of the world and returning from an amber list country will involve three or four tests which could come to £240-£340 per person plus the time spent completing all the online forms.
As to the red list countries; even a short spell there ends in an expensive £1750 per person prison-like stay at an airport hotel, as can be seen here.
So whilst not forbidden, even essential travel has been made into a series of expensive, degrading and time-consuming obstacles. Vaccine passports are being rolled out precisely to convince people they will magically bring freedom back to their lives. Do they not realise, that once they have their passports, the vaccine will need regular boosters?
Those still asleep; trusting the governments and the mainstream media think that easy travel is only temporarily put on hold but once the pandemic is ‘under control’, things will get back to the way they used to be. They do not realise the plan is to make travel an exclusive and rare event beyond reach of ordinary people.
This is done to us not just by the predatory elite class. Disappointingly, the pro-lockdown left continues to cheer these restrictions on and dismiss people’s desire and need to travel, as undeserved indulgence or middle-class privilege (interestingly, unrestricted travel around Europe was, until so recently, one of the main reasons for their fierce anti-Brexit position. What happened to their cherished principle of freedom of movement?). They could not be further from the truth.
They forget that, according to official migration data for the end of 2019, the UK is home to 6.2 million people – that is 9% of the total population – who have the nationality of a different country! And that data does not even include naturalised UK citizens like me, first-generation settled migrants who have close relatives all over the world and that unrestricted travel is an essential means to family life, something which is protected by Human Rights Act 1998.
The irony for those like myself, who grew up in communist Eastern Europe, is that freedom of movement, so taken for granted in the West, the right to travel and to have your own passport at home at all times is what we did not have then. The state set limits on where ‘citizens’, treated like its property, could travel.
For many who experienced those times, even as children, a return to state-mandated travel restrictions will feel like going back into tyranny.
As for my own journey: I will never forgive those responsible and all those lockdown fanatics for stealing my Dad’s, and so many other elderly people’s, last year by locking them up in the prison of fear and isolation, and then for pushing them to take the dangerous experimental jab which – for so many – was the last straw in their already weakened bodies.
Nerd immunity is the way forward
By Andy Lambeth | The Conservative Woman | June 19, 2021
WE learnt on Monday that lockdown restrictions are being extended for one more month. Like millions of others up and down the country I was shocked and quite deflated by this depressing news. However, having had time to reflect, I feel certain that there is a very cunning plan behind Boris Johnson’s seemingly pointless and cowardly dithering. You may disagree and be of the opinion that if someone looks and sounds like a pathetic, spineless, lying nincompoop then he is indeed a pathetic, spineless, lying nincompoop. It’s a fair point, but please hear me out on this one.
People are still very frightened. They have been queuing up in their thousands to get vaccinated and now eighty per cent of the population has had at least one jab. But this still is not enough to make us feel safe, hence the substantial support for vaccine passports and now child vaccination. Face masks are still everywhere. Not only do we see masks where they are a legal requirement but also on the high street and in the park. Many people are wearing them in their cars and on their bicycles. The other day I saw my neighbour wearing one in his back garden. The really worrying thing is that he was in his swimming pool at the time. Recent polls suggest that eighty per cent of people are completely behind Covid restrictions and a large majority want them to continue until we are all completely safe from the virus. There is genuine fear amongst people everywhere and there is a very good reason for this: They have all become nerds.
This pandemic of nerdishness has completely beleaguered this once brave nation of ours. We have become a society of hopeless, wretched supernerds. We put on our nerdy masks to go to the pub, where we check in with our nerdy apps and clean our hands with nerdy hand sanitiser. When inside we greet our friends with a nerdy elbow rub. We take our nerdy mask off to sit down and socialise and then we put it on again to go to the loo. Our level of nerdishness makes Mr Bean look like James Bond. Many of us who find all of this weird do it anyway because we are too nerdy to realise nothing will happen to us if we refuse. Nerdishness has become ingrained into our psyche and our British way of life.
Mr Johnson is faced with the impossible task of putting an end to all this strange behaviour. He cannot simply say the virus has disappeared, because no one would believe him. On the other hand it would be political suicide for him to admit that the whole thing was an overreaction in the first place. His only option is to give people the opportunity, one by one, to come to that realisation themselves and to develop the confidence to start acting like normal people. In other words we need to develop nerd immunity. This cannot be achieved by the government lifting restrictions: it can only be achieved by them doing the very opposite and pushing our patience and tolerance to its limits. Johnson must therefore ensure that we all have continued exposure to never-ending, ridiculous coronavirus regulations until we build up a natural resistance to it and stop acting like frightened little nerds.
So how does the human body actually develop nerd immunity? I put this question to Professor Dai Ifyougettit, Head of Immunology at Cardiff University Hospital. The professor recounted the story of Kevin, one of the volunteers in his clinical study group, who has fully recovered from being a nerd. When this all started back in March 2020, like many people Kevin thought the pandemic was just as deadly as the Spanish flu of 1918. However, increased exposure to Covid news conferences on the BBC made Kevin start to wonder if things were being exaggerated. As restrictions became more ludicrous and unnecessary Kevin began to start questioning things. The official narrative just didn’t add up and even David Icke began to make a bit more sense than Matt Hancock. ‘I hadn’t become a Covid denier or a conspiracy theorist as such,’ Kevin said, ‘but I had serious doubts about what the Government was telling us.’
Professor Ifyougettit explained how Kevin’s change in perception was the body’s immune system doing its job. To protect him from nerdishness Kevin’s internal defences had forced him to do something that did not come naturally: critical thinking. Some individuals may have major concerns about the adverse side effects of critical thinking and are therefore hesitant. However, if we are to achieve nerd immunity we will all have to be more open to thinking critically. Just one application of critical thinking would be enough to give someone sixty per cent nerd immunity but another one a few weeks later would give up to ninety per cent. After that, critical thinking boosters might be needed. I asked the professor if a stronger dose of critical thinking would offer complete protection from nerdishness. ‘No, it is important to get the dose exactly right,’ he said. ‘Too much critical thinking can cause adverse side effects, such as making you even nerdier.’
Many people are asking why the situation is so different in the US. In particular, states such as Florida and Texas have already made excellent progress with their levels of nerd immunity. I questioned one of the epidemiologists working with the Government advisory body NERDTAG (New and Emerging Really Dorkish Threats Advisory Group). She told me it is likely that progress in some American states has been possible due to pre-existing levels of immunity against nerdishness. On average Americans are a little less nerdy than Brits so they may have had some protection already. She said that the estimated level of nerd immunity in the UK is currently standing at about ten per cent but this has to rise to at least fifty per cent if we are ever to return to normal.
Clearly we have some way to go and so Boris Johnson is doing exactly the right thing in having us on for a little longer until the penny drops. If restrictions are simply lifted at this stage we are under serious threat of a third wave of nerdishness. This would be utterly disastrous for both the country and the Government. Mr Johnson really has no choice but to remain in lockdown and continue his Simple Simon routine until all age groups have been given the opportunity and the incentive to think critically about their nerdish compliance.
Of course some people might argue that although this is a clever and pragmatic strategy there is a hefty price to pay for it. UK debt is over two trillion pounds already and it is rising all the time. More financial compensation will be necessary for any continuation of lockdown measures and so we will undoubtedly need to borrow even more money. However, anyone who knows anything about getting into debt will tell you what you need to do when you cannot afford to pay off what you owe. You borrow more. Then you keep borrowing more and more until paying it back is absolutely inconceivable. That is the only way you can get your debt written off.
So we’re in this for the long haul. There are no easy solutions and we are all going to have to grin and bear it. But don’t despair because if we go through enough pain, nerd immunity will be the light at the end of the tunnel.
NHS Doctor: Matt Hancock is “Not Fit for Public Office and Needs to be Removed Before He Inflicts Further Harm”
By Will Jones • Lockdown Sceptics • June 18, 2021
NHS GP Dr Helen Westwood, a member of HART, has written a letter to her MP Sir Graham Brady expressing her concerns about the possible Government plans for mandatory vaccination of healthcare workers and others. She previously wrote to him at the end of April and received a reply from Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi that we published on Lockdown Sceptics offering the paper-thin reassurance that the U.K. “currently operates a system of informed consent for vaccinations”. “Why does he need to use the word ‘currently’?” she asked. “Are there plans for mandatory vaccination in future?” There were indeed, and she is not impressed – to the point of calling for Health Secretary Matt Hancock to be shown the door before he does any more damage. Here is her letter in full.
Dear Sir Graham,
I refer to my earlier correspondence dated March 2nd and April 26th regarding the concerns I have about the COVID-19 vaccination program.
I am grateful to you for raising these concerns with the Minister for COVID-19 Vaccine Deployment. Sadly Mr Zahawi seems to be either unwilling or unable to respond to my questions. Perhaps he is just delaying until the vaccine rollout has reached the whole adult population as it is due to imminently.
Mr Zahawi said in his letter to you that “the UK currently operates a system of informed consent for vaccinations”. Clearly the current proposals to make vaccinations compulsory for care home workers and possibly frontline NHS workers is completely counter to this. If a medical intervention is mandated for one group in society why not others? What about visitors to care homes? Delivery drivers? Shop workers? The list will go on and on.
I would like to draw your attention again to Article 6 of the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights. It states that “any preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic medical intervention is only to be carried out with the prior, free and informed consent of the person concerned, based on adequate information. The consent should, where appropriate, be express and may be withdrawn by the person concerned at any time and for any reason without disadvantage or prejudice”. If an individual is being coerced into undergoing vaccination, through fear of losing their livelihood, then they are not giving “free and informed consent”. In effect, the person administering the vaccine in such circumstances is committing the criminal offence of Assault and Battery. We know that the pharmaceutical companies have been granted legal indemnity by the Government but what indemnity does the vaccinator have in this situation?
In my opinion to ask anyone to undergo a medical intervention for the benefit of others is profoundly unethical. Population immunity, achieved through high vaccine take-up, is a by-product rather than the primary reason for immunising an individual. This ethical problem is particularly pertinent to the arguments given for rolling the program out to children, but is also relevant to the majority of healthy working-age adults. The mortality risk from COVID-19 in this cohort is lower than that for seasonal influenza. People are being persuaded to have these vaccines to protect society at large. Why is nobody in Government paying attention to the significant morbidity and mortality being reported on the Yellow Card system in relation to the administration of the vaccines? Young healthy people are being exposed to risks, both known and unknown, in taking these vaccines yet have little to gain in terms of personal benefit. Dr Tess Lawrie wrote an open letter to MHRA Chief Executive Dr June Raine saying that “the MHRA now has more than enough evidence on the Yellow Card system to declare the COVID-19 vaccines unsafe for use in humans”. At the very least we should be pausing to review the data before coercing young care home workers into having this vaccine when the results of the phase 3 trials are not yet known or understood.
In my discussions with patients who have undergone vaccination I have come to realise that many are unaware that these vaccines do not yet have full marketing authorisation. Sadly, the vaccine trials have now been compromised by being unblinded and control arm participants being offered the active drug. Given that these vaccines are still in their experimental phase, surely point 1 of the Nuremberg code applies: the voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. How is this in any way compatible with mandatory vaccination?
According to Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister referred to Matt Hancock as “fucking hopeless”. Having heard the Health Secretary say that there is a “material difference” in the duty of care owed by the state to those who have not yet been offered the vaccine compared to those that have not taken up the offer of vaccination, I would go as far as to say he is dangerous and a menace. He is not fit for public office and needs to be removed from his post before he inflicts further harm on the people of this country. The GMC’s Good Medical Practice guidance states that Doctors must “treat patients and colleagues fairly and without discrimination“. I do not think there is an exception to this based on vaccination status. Similarly the NHS constitution says that “the NHS provides a comprehensive service, available to all” and that staff has a “duty not to discriminate against patients or staff and to adhere to…human rights legislation”. With regard to patients it says “you have the right to accept or refuse treatment that is offered to you, and not to be given any…treatment unless you have given valid consent”. Perhaps the Health Secretary ought to familiarise himself with these documents.
Having read my comments you will not be surprised to learn that I still do not intend to take this vaccine currently. I refuse to be bullied into undergoing a medical intervention against my will. It is against everything I would advocate for my patients. With record waiting lists in the NHS it would seem to me to be unwise to risk losing a proportion of the workforce by forging ahead with plans for making COVID-19 vaccination compulsory.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Helen Westwood
A glimpse inside the UK’s “quarantine hotels”
OffGuardian | June 16, 2021
A short video was recently brought to our attention on twitter. It shows a man and woman (off-camera) pulling up to a chainlink fence around a concrete yard and engaging in a brief conversation with a man on the other side.
The man is one of several dozen people walking in slow, counter-clockwise circuits around what appears to be an un-used car park. He’s polite to the strangers, discussing how tight security is, how many guards there are on each floor, and how often they’re allowed outside for this “exercise”.
At that point a security guard comes up and tells the man he’s not allowed to talk through the fence, and a brief argument ensues. The guard tells the people in the car that they cannot talk to anyone inside the facility without permission from “the office”. After moments of insisting the guard desists, likely to report the incident to his supervisor.
The couple in the car and the stranger behind the fence part on friendly terms, with the man remarking that he paid seventeen-hundred and fifty pounds to stay there.
Because this isn’t a prison or detention facility, it’s a “quarantine hotel”.
You can watch the video here:
[NOTE: This is a re-upload, with some discussion, from the channel Hugo Talks Some More. The original we have been unable to find, it was likely taken down. (If you’re aware of a copy of the original, or who filmed it, do let us know. We’d like to credit the people who did the filming.]
The quarantine hotels have been in the mainstream media before, with the reporting focusing on them being expensive, having terrible food and being dull. But this little clip offers something worse than that – a little glimpse of the dehumanising nature of detention. The mission-creep of arbitrary rules, enforced to the letter by people either too ignorant to know better or willingly malign, is an oft-repeated motif in human history. It never bodes well.
It’s telling to contrast (as Hugo does at the end of the video) the grey building – with its grey fence and grey yard full of people milling in grey circles – with the recent G7 summit in Cornwall.
Not the official photos of the G7, of course, because those are all neatly staged and social distanced, but the leaked photos of the G7 barbecue.
Quarantine “hotel”:
G7 barbecue:
Quarantine “hotel”:
G7 barbecue:
Notice the lack of social distancing. Observe the absence of masks (except for the lowly servants, naturally). And, of course, not one of them had to pay to be there at all. In fact, we literally paid them a salary to do it – and then paid for the catering, alcohol and accommodation too.
Do these “world leaders” look like people in the middle of a life-threatening pandemic to you? Do they look like people that honestly believe they have a chance of catching a terrible disease?
As one of our editors wrote last summer:
When the people giving us these orders do not follow them themselves, they are not showing themselves to be “hypocrites”. They are showing themselves to be liars. They are admitting they don’t really believe what they’re saying.
Clearly, the rules of the “new normal” only apply to ordinary people. And that’s as sure a sign as any that it’s not now – and never was – really about “protecting” anyone. It was always about control.
Hancock: “We Have No Duty Of Care At All To Vaccine Refuseniks!”
By Richie Allen | June 16, 2021
Speaking in the House of Commons this afternoon, Health Secretary Matt Hancock suggested that people who refuse a covid-19 jab, will be refused treatment on the NHS.
Hancock was responding to a question from Tory MP Liam Fox about the vaccine status of those currently receiving hospital treatment for the so-called Delta variant.
Hancock said:
“I think that there is a material difference between the states responsibility to offer the vaccine to all adults and the duty that we have when somebody has not been offered the vaccine is greater than the duty we have when we have offered a vaccine but somebody has chosen not to take it up. And there is a material difference between those two situations.”
Hancock’s colleague Andrea Leadsom interjected and said:
“Can I take (it) one step further? If I choose not to say, not to have a yellow fever jab when I am going to a place that suffers yellow fever, the government of the United Kingdom takes no interest whatsoever in my illness status. So when my right honourable friend says that he has less of a duty, surely what he means is that he has no duty at all. It is for people to take up the vaccine.”
Hancock replied:
“Up to a point and the point is should you take that as an absolute principle, then there is a challenge, should there be an overwhelming demand on the NHS that would impact on others. And of course with a communicable disease, there is an impact on others in terms of spreading the disease so we do have to have an eye to that.
That’s why I phrased it as I did. But in terms of the argument that my right honourable friend is putting, I think she and I concur in the broad thrust of the case being made.”
Nobody in the chamber batted an eyelid. The Secretary of State for Health said that those who refuse a covid-19 vaccine, might be left to die if they contract a respiratory infection and the NHS is otherwise engaged, presumably treating those with vaccine injuries. Welcome to dystopia.
Perspex Screens Installed to Stop COVID May Have Actually Increased Its Spread
Al Seib / Contributor via Getty Images
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | June 16, 2021
A leaked Whitehall document seen by Politico suggests that perspex screens installed to stop the transmission of COVID-19 may actually have increased its spread.
Businesses and schools were told by the government to install the screens as a condition of re-opening after the first lockdown and they were widely used by ‘essential’ shops throughout the entire period.
Politico’s Alex Wickham writes that the perspex screens could be about to be scrapped given new information the government has received on their efficacy.
“Ministers are also being advised that those perspex screens that have appeared in some offices and restaurants are unlikely to have any benefit in terms of preventing transmission,” states the report.
“Problems include them not being positioned correctly, with the possibility that they actually increase the risk of transmission by blocking airflow. Therefore there is clear guidance to ministers that these perspex screens should be scrapped.”
Despite the report, government ministers say there is no plan to change advice on installing the screens in businesses.
What other COVID-19 measures put in place to fight the spread of the virus have been utterly useless or actually made it worse?
A study on the effectiveness of face masks involving 6,000 participants in Denmark found “there was no statistically significant difference between those who wore masks and those who did not when it came to being infected by Covid-19.”
UK Already Planning to Extend Lockdown Before First Extension Even Announced
SOPA Images via Getty Image
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | June 14, 2021
Having first mooted a 2 week delay to lifting lockdown which will today likely become a 4 week delay, government ministers in the UK are already suggesting the lockdown could continue beyond July.
The country was supposed to exit all lockdown restrictions on June 21st, dubbed “freedom day” by the media.
However, Prime Minister Boris Johnson will today announce a four week extension to the restrictions, meaning that Brits had more freedom in July 2020 compared to now despite the vast majority of “vulnerable” people having received the vaccine.
But there’s absolutely no guarantee the lockdown will end next month.
The same advisers who admitted using “mind control” and “totalitarian” fear tactics to terrify the British public into compliance are still fearmongering about the Indian variant of the virus in a bid to prolong restrictions for months longer.
By delaying the lifting of lockdown until September, a “third wave” of COVID will then be pushed into autumn/winter, meaning the narrative that the NHS will be “overwhelmed” can be trotted out once again.
Then it becomes “just one more lockdown to save Christmas” (the same thing Brits were told last Christmas) and around we go over and over again.
Health Minister Ed Argar said today that “it is of course possible” that yet another delay will be needed beyond July 19 due to the “Indian variant.”
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab also acknowledged that there was no “absolute guarantee” that restrictions would be lifted on July 19.
As we highlighted last week, former Communist Party member and current government adviser Susan Michie says that mask mandates and social distancing should continue “forever” and that people should adopt such behaviour just as they did with wearing seatbelts.
A doctor who argued that the UK’s COVID-19 lockdown should remain in place indefinitely also revealed his true thoughts by letting slip the comment, “sadly, it can’t be forever.”
Jessica Ashooh: The Taming of Reddit and the National Security State Plant Tabbed to Do It
How and why did a hawkish young mandarin hothoused at elite universities and in the halls of state power end up an executive at an anarchic messageboard site with an anti-establishment reputation?
Photo | Graphic by Antonio Cabrera
By Alan Macleod | MintPress News | June 11, 2021
Reddit is one of the world’s most influential news and social media platforms. The website attracted over 1.2 billion visits in April 2021 alone, making it the United States’ eighth most visited site, ahead of other leviathans like Twitter, Instagram and eBay. Now majority-owned by a much larger corporate publishing empire, Reddit is also far ahead of more established news sites, garnering three times the numbers of Fox News and five times those of The New York Times.
That is why it was so surprising that so little was made of the company’s decision to appoint foreign policy hawk Jessica Ashooh to the position of Director of Policy in 2017, at which time it was also the eight most visited site in the U.S. Ashooh, who had been a Middle East foreign policy wonk at NATO’s think tank the Atlantic Council, was appointed at around the same time that the Senate Select Intelligence Committee was demanding more control over the popular website, on the grounds that it was being used to spread disinformation. In her role as Director of Policy, she oversees all government relations and public policy for the company, in addition to managing content, product and advertising. Yet a Google search for “Jessica Ashooh Reddit” filtered between late 2016 and early 2017 (after she was appointed) elicits zero relevant results, meaning not one media outlet even mentioned the questionable appointment.
This is all the more hair-raising, given her resume as a high state official — all of which raises serious questions about the extent of collaboration between Silicon Valley and the national security state.
A hawk’s talons on Syria
The Atlantic Council is the de-facto brains of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and takes funding from the military alliance, as well as from the U.S. government, the U.S. military, Middle Eastern dictatorships, other Western governments, big tech companies, and weapons manufacturers. Its board of directors has been and continues to be a who’s who of high U.S. statespeople like Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, as well as senior military commanders such as retired generals Wesley Clark, David Petraeus, H.R. McMaster, James “Mad Dog” Mattis, the late Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, and Admiral James Stavridis. At least seven former CIA directors are also on the board. As such, the council chooses to represent both political wings of the national security state.
Ashooh’s LinkedIn resume epitomizes the troubling relantionship between think tanks and big tech.
Between 2015 and 2017, Ashooh was Deputy Director of the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Strategy Task Force, working directly with and under Madeline Albright and Stephen Hadley. This is particularly noteworthy, given both these individuals’ roles in the region. As Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, Albright oversaw the Iraq sanctions and the Oil for Food Program, denounced as “genocide” by the successive United Nations diplomats charged with carrying them out. In an infamous interview with 60 Minutes, Albright casually brushed off a question about her role in the killing of half a million children, stating “the price is worth it.” Meanwhile, Hadley was deputy or senior national security advisor to the government of George W. Bush throughout the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions, surely the greatest crimes against humanity thus far in the 21st century.
Ashooh appears to be as hawkish as her bosses. Her particular area of expertise is the war in Syria, regarding which she has been among the most belligerent voices, constantly calling for more American intervention to overthrow the government of Bashar al-Assad. In a 2015 interview with Al Jazeera, she praised the U.K. government’s decision to bomb the country, claiming that the British public was “coming around” to the idea of war. A shocked interviewer asked “how will the British airstrikes [on] Syria… make the British public any safer?” Ashooh replied that it was “generally a positive decision” because “it goes a long way in improving international consensus on the way forward on Syria,” although she lamented that there wouldn’t be “much improvement in the situation without ground troops.” There will be “no political solution without a military element,” she predicted, essentially making the pitch for war.
Ashooh has also constantly praised and supported Syria’s opposition forces. In 2016, she said that she was very happy that “fighters on the ground from a number of key factions” were uniting against the “Assad regime.” She condemned Russia for claiming these opposition forces were members of terrorist groups like Al-Nusra, Jaysh al-Islam or ISIS, insisting that these were “moderate” rebels.
Of course, the idea that there was still any measurable distance between “moderate” rebels and outright militant jihadists by 2016 was hard to maintain. Even The Washington Post by this time was admitting as much, noting that so-called moderates were now so “intermingled” with al-Nusra that it was difficult to tell them apart.
Nevertheless, the New Hampshire native took to the pages of The New York Times to demand that the U.S. arm the opposition. Of course, it was already doing so, the CIA spending $1 billion per year fielding rebel mercenary armies in the conflict — with one in every 15 dollars the agency spent going to this endeavor. All of this Ashooh surely knew, yet she maintained that the West must continue to “jack up the price” of Russia defending Assad. “As long as [Assad] remains in power and remains the figurehead of the Syrian government… this conflict won’t end,” she said, laying out her regime-change-or-bust position. Just weeks before unexpectedly taking over at Reddit, Ashooh seemed to still be in full foreign-policy-hawk mode, condemning Obama in the pages of The Washington Post for his apparent softness on Syria and demanding that Trump “restore U.S. credibility” by “order[ing] targeted, punitive strikes against the Assad regime.”
Ashooh attends British Polo Day at Abu Dhabi’s Ghantoot Racing and Polo Club. Photo | Ahlan
Dirty war, dirty warrior
Ashooh is actually even more involved in the Syrian conflict than one might realize from her hawkish opinions alone. Between 2011 and 2015, she worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the United Arab Emirates, in her own words, “[p]rovid[ing] senior decision makers with policy analysis and strategic advice, with a particular focus on Syria.”
At that time the UAE was using its enormous financial clout to arm and fund a myriad of jihadist groups attempting to overthow the secular strongman Assad and establish some kind of Islamic state. Far from a conspiracy theory, this comes straight from the horse’s mouth, as then-Vice President Joe Biden revealed in a Q&A session in 2014. The future president frankly stated:
The Saudis, the Emiratis, what were they doing?… They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad, except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra and al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world. “
Under pressure, he later apologized for his loose lips.
MintPress News asked the Emirati Ministry of Foreign Affairs to comment on precisely what Ashooh’s role was, but they failed to respond.
Ashooh is pictured during her time as a “consultant” in Iraqi Kurdistan. Photo | Academyalumni
Ashooh herself appears to have been a relatively major player in the Syrian Civil War. In her previously mentioned Washington Post article, she notes that her boss was a former Emirati Air Force General and that she was flown to Istanbul in 2013 to attend an emergency meeting with leaders of the Syrian opposition, as well as ambassadors from unnamed Arab and Western states, in order to plan a response to a reported chemical weapons attack and to help the U.S. “coordinate with the Syrian opposition.”
At the same time as she was advising the nation on Middle Eastern affairs, the UAE was widely accused of flying ISIS and al-Qaeda leaders into Yemen to help them intensify the Saudi-led onslaught on the impoverished nation and of smuggling U.S.-made weaponry — including small arms, TOW missiles and Oshkosh fighting vehicles — to the jihadist groups. While Ashooh’s writing is careful to maintain a distinction between the “moderate” rebels she supports and the fundamentalist radicals she does not, it certainly is noteworthy that the entities she worked for consistently seem to end up in league with the most regressive forces in the region. MintPress also reached out to Reddit for comment on why they appointed Ashooh, given her past history, and on the wider phenomenon of government penetration of social media. The company initially promised to issue a response to the inquiry but has not followed through with it.
Opposing some dictatorships, supporting others
Regime change is on the table for more than just one Middle Eastern nation. In a 2017 paper for the Center for the National Interest — a think tank established by former Republican President Richard Nixon and the “Godfather of Neoconservatism,” Irving Kristol — Ashooh explores the different options for forcing regime change in Iran, but concludes that overthrowing the “odious regime” is an impossible task right now, and criticizes the idea as a quixotic dream.
Nevertheless, she is far from an Iran dove. An Atlantic Council report she co-wrote insists that “Iranian interference in the Arab world must be deterred,” and that “America’s friends and partners must be reassured that the U.S. opposes Iranian hegemony and will work with them to prevent it.”
Ashooh’s commitment to fighting against Middle Eastern dictatorships might seem more principled if she did not appear so enamored of the least democratic one of them all. In 2016, she accompanied Albright and Hadley to Saudi Arabia and praised the monarchy’s dynamic leadership on the economy and its nurturing of a new generation. “It was really really exciting to see that level of energy and the level of government support for these young people who were interested in shaping their own futures… it was just wonderful,” she said. In an article about her experience for business news website Market Watch, she waxed lyrical about how forward-thinking the Saudi government is and how the country has become “a hub for the dynamic and positive change that is swelling up throughout the region.” Presumably, this excludes Yemen, a nation they were bombing relentlessly. In a 2020 interview, Ashooh revealed that her dream job would be U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. One of her earliest comments on her public Reddit page (made before she began working there) is deflecting the Kingdom from criticism of its dreadful treatment of women.
As part of the Atlantic Council, Ashooh was tasked with envisaging a new Middle East for the 21st century. Given her output, it seems that she advocates for a transition towards a more privatized, free-market economic setup, not completely unlike the shock therapy tried in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s. “We have to “encourage states to make the reforms that move economies from state-based to ones that support entrepreneurship, because the age of state-based economies is over,” she said at a talk at New York University in 2015, adding:
You’ve got to move to support entrepreneurship in the region and let people take advantage of the natural industrial tendencies of people in the Middle East. My God, if you’ve ever been to a Turkish bazaar or a market in Cairo you know that these countries are perfectly capable of having functioning market economies. But the state has gotten in the way.
Ashooh’s LinkedIn profile also notes that in 2010, she worked as an advisor to the Iraqi Ministry of Planning “on a variety of strategic and economic development issues,” but does not go into any more detail about what those issues were. A further biography merely states that her consultancy agency “provid[ed] strategic and management consulting services to the Ministry of Planning of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Northern Iraq.” Unsurprisingly, the organization has links to the U.S. military; the agency’s lead partner being a former Army captain.
Think Tankie
Ashooh comes from a relatively prominent New Hampshire family of Lebanese descent, the most notable of which is probably her uncle Richard. Richard Ashooh was Donald Trump’s Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration and a former executive at weapons manufacturer BAE Systems. Unlike her uncle, Jessica appears to lean more Democratic, having donated money to a number of local politicians, as well as to anti-Trump Republican groups aimed at convincing them to vote blue, such as Right Side PAC and the now infamous Lincoln Project. However, she also appears to have great respect for many Republicans, having written her doctoral thesis at Oxford University on the Middle East policy of the George W. Bush administration. She also stated that the person she would have most liked to have met was 41st President George Bush Senior, describing him as possessing “incredible amounts of strategy, finesse and restraint.” Thus, her political views appear to be exactly in the center of the neoliberal “blob” in Washington.
Ashooh also worked for the right-wing think tank the CATO Institute and is a Term Member of the more Democratic-aligned Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The CFR’s term member program is intended to, in its own words, “cultivate the next generation of foreign policy leaders.”
Surveillance Valley
How and why, then, did a hawkish young mandarin hothoused at elite universities and in the halls of state power end up an executive at an anarchic messageboard site with an anti-establishment reputation? Virtually everyone else in senior roles at Reddit has relevant backgrounds in marketing or tech, having worked with comparable companies such as Yelp, Expedia and Snapchat.
Tom Secker — a journalist, podcaster and researcher who runs SpyCulture.com, an online archive about government involvement in the entertainment industry — was deeply skeptical. “That someone whose entire career has been in international relations and foreign affairs is now the senior policy wonk at Reddit is simply bizarre. Given her ties to the CFR, Atlantic Council and the like, it’s downright suspicious,” Secker told MintPress.
Underneath the surface, however, the Atlantic Council has been rapidly expanding its influence and control over big social media companies. In 2018, it announced that it would be partnering with Facebook to promote trustworthy sources and derank, demote and even delete low quality or fake news, thus effectively curating what the platform’s 2.85 billion worldwide users see in their news feeds. But the effect of recent algorithmic changes has been to throttle alternative media traffic in favor of establishment sources such as CNN, Fox News and The New York Times. Even such more mainstream liberal sites as Mother Jones have seen their numbers crater. Facebook later admitted that they were directly targeting Mother Jones because of its left-leaning content, raising the question that if such a middle-of-the-road liberal outlet was being penalized, wasn’t the collapse in traffic to more radical publications surely deliberate? Given the Atlantic Council’s funding and the identities of those on its board, their control over social media is tantamount to state censorship on a global level.
Earlier this year, Facebook also hired NATO press officer Ben Nimmo to be its intelligence chief, in another move that dismayed free-speech advocates. In the past, Nimmo has identified a Welsh pensioner and an internationally known Ukranian pianist as Russian bots, raising more questions about the suitability of the Atlantic Council to be an arbiter of truth online.
The Facebook-Atlantic Council link mirrors that of Microsoft with NewsGuard, a new piece of software purportedly trying to fight fake news by placing either green shields or red warning logos, corresponding to an outlet’s credibility, beside all links in its browser, Microsoft Edge — this credibility being decided entirely by NewsGuard itself. Newsguard pushed Microsoft to install the software on all its products as standard. Again, however, NewsGuard’s system rated establishment websites like Fox News and CNN as trustworthy but independent media as suspect. And again, a glance at its advisory board makes it clear that this is a state operation. Those in key positions included George W. Bush’s Secretary of Homeland Security and former NSA and CIA Director General Michael Hayden; ex-White House Communications Director Don Baer; and former Secretary General of NATO Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Worse still, NewsGuard is also linked to a PR agency employed in whitewashing the Saudi government’s human-rights record and its role in the carnage in Yemen.
Twitter, too, has some extremely troubling links with state power. In 2019 Gordon MacMillan, a senior Twitter executive responsible for the Middle East region, was outed as an active duty officer in the British Army’s 77th Brigade, a unit dedicated to online operations and psychological warfare. Far from causing a scandal, only one major U.S. outlet even mentioned the story, and the journalist in question resigned from the profession weeks later, claiming the existence of a network of top-down state censors who quash stories that threaten the power and prestige of the national security state. To this day, MacMillan remains in his post at Twitter, strongly suggesting the social media company knew of his role before he was hired.
Over the past few years, Twitter, Reddit and Facebook have announced the deletion of hundreds of thousands of accounts linked to sources in Russia, Iran, China and other enemy states, often on the recommendation of Western governments or state-sponsored intelligence organizations. However, they never seem willing or able to find any manipulation of their platforms by Western governments. Thus, the upshot of this has been to slowly dissuade critics of Western foreign policy from using their services.
“The mainstream media-politik establishment has managed to get a hold over Twitter, Facebook and Instagram — shadow-banning and downrating posts considered ‘Russian propaganda’ or whatever other excuse they use to marginalize perspectives and content outside of the mainstream,” Secker told MintPress. “Audiences for this sort of content are increasingly pissed off and alienated by the major social media sites.”
Increasingly, unwelcome political voices are either brushed off by centrist pundits as repeating Russian talking points or smeared as being amplified by Kremlin-based bot farms. The popularity of movements on the left like Black Lives Matter or the Bernie Sanders’ campaign were written off as partially linked to Russia, while others suggested that the January 6 insurrection in Washington was essentially a Russian operation.
The irony is that many of the wildest accusations against Putin that have fed this climate of suspicion began life in Atlantic Council documents. For example, the organization has published a series of studies that suggest that virtually every European political party challenging the neoliberal status quo in some way — from Labour and UKIP in the U.K. to Syriza and Golden Dawn in Greece and PODEMOS and Vox in Spain — are secretly controlled by Russia, functioning as the “Kremlin’s Trojan Horses,” in its words.
The Atlantic Council is also deeply intertwined with a U.K. government-funded organization called the Integrity Initiative, something that purports to be a group defending democracy from disinformation. However, in practice, it appears to be doing the opposite: planting disinformation about politicians’ supposed links to Russia in order to undermine them. The Integrity Initiative is a government-backed cluster of journalists who operate in unison to conduct propaganda blitzes on unsuspecting publics. In 2018, it launched a successful operation to prevent Colonel Pedro Baños being appointed Spain’s head of national security. Considering Baños too soft on Russia for the Atlantic Council and other hawks’ liking, the initiative sprung into action, creating a storm of protest that led to another individual being chosen.
Reddit actually played a key role in a 2019 propaganda blitz against anti-war Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. A few days before the U.K.’s general election, Corbyn promoted documents leaked on the platform that showed that Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson was negotiating with American companies, putting much of the country’s National Health Service up for sale. With just days to go before polls opened, it could have proved a game changer. Reddit quickly came to Johnson’s rescue, however, asserting that the documents were part of a Russian disinformation campaign. The story in the pliant British press switched from “Boris Johnson is selling off the NHS” to “Corbyn promotes Russian disinfo,” thus greasing the skids for an easy victory for the hardline anti-Russia Conservative Party, an outcome the hawks at the Atlantic Council were no doubt relieved by, given Corbyn’s open skepticism about war, empire and nuclear weapons. The veracity of the documents was not challenged.
For a while…
Founded in 2005, Reddit has grown to become one of the world’s largest and most influential websites. However, it began life as an anarchistic messageboard whose culture was profoundly libertarian and anti-establishment. For years, the company’s administrators took a near free speech absolutist position. Aaron Swartz, Reddit’s co-founder, was an open source hacktivist and even attempted to download and publish the entirety of academic publisher Jstor’s library. When authorities got wind of what he was doing, they threatened him with 40 years in prison, an action that caused him to take his own life in 2013.
Reddit’s own position on free information and free speech was often so extreme it caused huge controversy. The site became the internet’s largest source of child pornography. It was only after CNN began reporting on it to a nationwide audience that things began to change. Other, grossly offensive communities like /r/BeatingWomen and /r/CoonTown were also protected.
Nevertheless, the culture established by anarchistic tech bros remained for some years, with the site resembling darker corners of the internet like 4Chan and 8Chan as much as more family-friendly mainstream social media like Facebook.
Ashooh’s arrival in 2017 coincided with a new era in the site’s history. Gone were the days of protecting communities that would bring in bad publicity. Her team quickly brought in a new content policy and began to delete communities that violated it. Last year, she oversaw the banning of over 2,000 communities in a single day, including /r/The_Donald, the main Donald Trump subreddit, and /r/ChapoTrapHouse, the most active left-wing community. These decisions have helped the money flow in; since 2017 revenue has more than tripled.
However, what has been lost across the internet is the liberatory potential of these technologies. In the 1990s and 2000s, many predicted that the internet would usher in a new era of egalitarianism and genuine democracy, helping even to reduce barriers and tensions between nations. For a while, the new medium allowed political actors to challenge the status quo and gain huge followings quickly. Alternative media was easily outperforming legacy media, and challenging the status quo when it came to news. Seeing that, the reaction since 2016 has been swift, as the elite have moved to retighten their grip over the means of communication. Ashooh’s jump from national security state official to Reddit Director of Policy is just one more point of reference on that chart.
Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles.
1,295 DEAD in UK Following COVID Bioweapon Shots – Italy Halts AstraZeneca Shots After Teen Dies
By Brian Shilhavy | Health Impact News | June 11, 2021
The UK Government’s reporting system for COVID vaccine adverse reactions from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency released their latest report yesterday, June 10, 2021.
The report covers data collected from December 9, 2020, through June 2, 2021, for the three experimental COVID “vaccines” currently in use in the U.K. from Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Moderna.
They report a total of 1,295 deaths and 922,596 injuries recorded following the experimental COVID injections.
Here are the breakdowns from the three shots:
- AstraZeneca: 863 deaths and 717,250 injuries. (Source.)
- Pfizer- BioNTech: 406 deaths and 193,768 injuries. (Source.)
- Moderna: 3 deaths and 9243 injuries. (Source.)
- Unspecified COVID-19 injections: 22 deaths and 2335 injuries. (Source.)
Meanwhile, Italy announced today that it was halting use of the AstraZeneca injections for people under the age of 60, following the death of a teenager who died from blood clots.
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Israel’s recurring use of terror on civilians
By Bob Finch | January 26, 2009
Insanely disproportionate use of violence against unarmed civilians… continue
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