Apologies and compensation are simply not good enough for the victims of drone attacks
By Yvonne Ridley | MEMO | September 20, 2021
Palestine Action is, as its name implies, involved in direct action against some of the arms trade’s most deadly production lines, notably Israel’s Elbit Systems. Since it burst onto the scene, quite a few members have been arrested at some of Elbit’s ten known factories and offices in Britain.
Elbit Systems is Israel’s largest arms company; it makes deadly “unmanned aerial vehicles”, known as drones. Palestine Action’s trademark calling card is deep red paint; it has used gallons since last year, symbolising the blood of innocents spilled in drone strikes.
Recently, the group has expanded its brief from targeting weapons factories to spraying the tented entrance of Britain’s biggest arms fair — DSEI at London’s ExCel Centre — to remind those seeking to buy weapons of the bloodshed caused by the products marketed within. Key exhibitors such as Elbit Systems, Raytheon, BAE Systems, and Lockheed Martin use arms fairs to market their deadly technology and products to governments from around the world. Perhaps they should be the focus of police interest rather than members of Palestine Action.

Palestine Action activists dyed security tent blood red and threw red and green flares on the Excel exhibition centre in London – Sunday, Sept 12, 2021 [VX Photo/ Vudi Xhymshiti]
Like many others, I am sick and tired of half-hearted apologies from the armed forces which use (or misuse) their weaponry. There’s nothing “smart” about a precision-guided missile which kills innocent civilians as — and I hate this term — collateral damage. There is no such thing as a clinical kill, a point agreed by several protest groups which have criticised the arms fair for its role in enabling the destructive US-UK war in Afghanistan over the past twenty years.
According to US policy, attacks by drones are not to go ahead if there is a probability that innocent civilians will be killed or injured. As we found out a few days ago, the US doesn’t really have a clue who it’s blowing up. Call me naïve, but it seems that the only certain thing when a drone takes to the air is, that innocent civilians will die, whether they’re Afghani, Iraqi, Pakistani, Yemeni, Syrian, or Palestinian.
Drone attacks were much favoured by Barack Obama who joked about their efficiency. One news story illustrated how much he ordered their use by pointing out that it would take the former US president more than three years to get through them all if he apologised to one innocent person a day. Human rights groups have demanded transparency from all US presidents since the Bush administration launched its drone wars, but there remains very little clarity on the number of civilians killed.
I’ve suspected this for many years. After the most recent US apology for killing civilians, I had a sense of déjà vu. In April 2003, I travelled solo to Paktika in Afghanistan after hearing rumours of an atrocity against innocent civilians in a district called Bermal. All eyes were focused on Iraq so even though I got the story, it was difficult to find someone to publish it. There’s only so much injustice against the people of Asia and the Middle East that the media is prepared to broadcast or publish.
While I was investigating the atrocity in southern Afghanistan, a senior US army officer was also in the district with hush money to keep Afghan villagers quiet. He did not want people talking to me in case I found out that America had killed eleven children in another deadly blunder.
The Pentagon had claimed that it destroyed a Taliban stronghold when, in fact, US forces had destroyed a house. The grieving mother — Sawara was her name —lost all of her nine children in the attack. She was like an empty shell when I finally spoke to her.
She and her husband Mawes Khan had put their children to bed in the family home they shared with his brother Sardar, and his wife and their seven children. By morning, the corpses of eleven brothers, sisters, and cousins lay in a neat row in the courtyard. The Americans realised the full extent of their mistake and gave the family the equivalent of £6,350 and an apology.
That happened two years into the war when the number of dead Afghan civilians was not deemed important enough to register. How much compensation will the Americans pay to Zemari Ahmadi after wiping out ten members of his family, including eight children? The admission of guilt and an apology were only forthcoming because the world’s media was in Kabul on the day of the attack and had access to the scene of devastation as well as eyewitnesses and survivors to interview.
The media in Washington was briefed about how an unnamed ISIS-Khorasan fighter had been in a vehicle with an associate at the time of the strike, which was carried out by an MQ-9 Reaper drone. Captain Bill Urban, spokesman for US Central Command, assured journalists that the military had used specially chosen precision munitions in order to minimise civilian casualties. In essence, the compliant media was being fed propaganda packed with deceptive euphemisms.
The drone attack on the eve of the departure of the last US troops had come three days after Isis-Khorisan terrorists killed dozens of Afghan civilians, nearly 30 Taliban soldiers, and thirteen members of the US military in a suicide bombing at the gates of Kabul Airport. Civilians always suffer when the US rushes in to wreak revenge.
This week we heard US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin apologise for a “horrible mistake” after he admitted: “We now know that there was no connection between Mr Ahmadi and Isis-Khorasan, that his activities on that day were completely harmless and not at all related to the imminent threat we believed we faced, and that Mr Ahmadi was just as innocent a victim as were the others tragically killed.”
Compare this with the narrative pushed out on 29 August when the US military claimed triumphantly to have taken out ISIS terrorists and that there had been “significant secondary explosions from the vehicle”, suggesting that explosives were on board. Journalists were told that there were “no indications” of civilian casualties. As I said, America would have got away with the lies had there not been so many foreign journalists on the ground.
It emerged that Zemari Ahmadi is an engineer for aid group Nutrition and Education International. He was observed placing large water bottles or jugs into the back of his white car. US intelligence (surely a contradiction in terms) interpreted this as an ISIS-K member packing explosives into a vehicle for another suicide mission.
It is time for the world to accept that there’s no such thing as a surgical strike and that unmanned drones are among the worst weapons for producing civilian casualties. It would, therefore, make more sense to listen to groups like Palestine Action rather than deploy deadly weapons which have a track record of killing innocent people.
The theme of the DSEI fair at the ExCel Centre was “Integrated Response to Future Threats”, with a focus on drone warfare and surveillance technology. Palestine Action says that this will mean a greater role for drones in British policing as the government enters new procurement and training contracts with the likes of Elbit Systems. According to the activists’ press release, the London fair and a similar exhibition in Liverpool “serve a similar purpose of normalising these firms’ operations and providing an open market for the exchange of the weapons of war. Palestine Action is calling for the cancellation of both events and the ceasing of these firms’ operations on British soil, failing which direct action will continue and will escalate.”
Drone strikes outside the declared war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq are the province of the CIA and the secretive US Joint Special Operations Command. Various US administrations have treated them as official secrets. In the absence of justice for the families of those killed accidentally and/or targeted in drone strikes, civil disobedience and resistance is thus the duty of all reasonable people in war zones like Palestine, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, and elsewhere.
It is easy for governments to demonise dead civilians as “terrorists” because most are killed in remote areas where the absence of justice or journalists makes it easier for the authorities to bury their mistakes. With governments prepared to lie or twist the facts, weapons manufacturers should be careful about those to whom they sell their arms, or be ready to be accused of complicity in war crimes.
We now suspect that the Palestinian children killed while playing on a beach in Gaza in 2014 were hit by an Israeli drone strike. The manufacturers are surely just as complicit as the Israeli soldiers who targeted young boys. Again, had journalists not been in an adjacent hotel when the strike took place, Israel might have got away with insulting everyone’s intelligence by claiming that Hamas “terrorists” were on active duty that day.
These are the sort of crimes that British police officers should be investigating, instead of arresting the people who draw attention to international war crimes and criminal negligence which led to the killing of Palestine’s 9-year-old Ismayil Bahar, 10-year-old Aed Bahar, 10-year-old Zacharia Bahar, and 11-year-old Muhammed Bahar on that Gaza beach; the Ahmadi family in Kabul earlier this month; and the Khan’s eleven children in Bermal in 2003, as well as the tens of thousands of others in-between. The law of universal jurisdiction exists to allow states to prosecute those responsible for international crimes committed elsewhere. The fact that few, if any such prosecutions go ahead, signals a degree of complicity at the highest levels of governments and judiciaries.
In such cases, it is not always the law that is an ass, but the people charged with implementing it and ensuring that justice is seen to be done for people like the Bahar, Ahmadi, and Khan families. Apologies and compensation are simply not good enough.
Surgeon: Jabbing 12 To 15 Year-Olds Is “Dangerous”
By Richie Allen | September 20, 2021
Retired orthopaedic surgeon Professor John Fairclough claimed this morning that jabbing 12 to 15 year-olds is dangerous. He also criticised the government for overruling the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI).
Speaking to Talk Radio’s Julia Hartley-Brewer, Professor Fairclough said:
“I think this is probably… I’ve been in medicine now for five decades. I think this is probably one of the most dangerous efforts that we’ve had in medicine because what we’re doing is we’re in fact overturning the position of medical individuals for political purposes.”
On the issue of informed consent, Fairclough said that it’s unlikely children understand the risks associated with receiving a jab, when SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) members themselves don’t seem to know. Fairclough said:
“Consent is that you are aware of what the consequences of a medical action is. Recently, one of the members of SAGE chose to go on a radio station and be interviewed with three or four young children and actually wasn’t able to give the information which is on the government website and had to Google it.
He also got the rates of inflammation of the heart incorrect and the published international data. So if he cannot actually be aware of the consent issues, then how can a 12 year-old?”
Fairclough was referring to England’s deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van Tam. While fielding questions from youngsters on BBC News recently, Van Tam was caught with his trousers well and truly down when wrongly downplaying the threat of myocarditis. The jellyfish in the presenters chair never called him on it.
Rather than challenge the witchdoctors who currently advise the UK government, the media has deified them. Earlier this year, speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live, presenter Nicky Campbell said: “We all have our favourite scientist now. Isn’t JVT (Van Tam) great?”
I don’t know which is worse, the liars in Bill Gates pocket, or the whores in the media.
Advice for Parents Concerned About the Vaccination of Their Healthy Children

By Michael Curzon | The Daily Sceptic | September 19, 2021
The Covid vaccine roll-out for healthy 12-15 year-olds is due to begin this week, but scientists remain concerned about the likely side effects. Some teachers tell me their schools still aren’t fully aware of the role they are supposed to play – “I can see it becoming a minefield”, said one teacher at a school in Yorkshire – and there seems to be some confusion among parents about the power they hold. Can they withhold their consent for the vaccination of their children or not?
Parents will be sent consent forms but only, it seems, as a formality since children who are deemed ‘competent’ (the assessment of which contains no set of defined questions) will be able to overrule the decisions of their parents anyway. This is of a piece with the Government’s decision to push ahead with its roll-out despite being told by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) that “there is considerable uncertainty regarding the magnitude of the potential harms” of Covid vaccination in healthy teenagers and that – given the small risk Covid poses to healthy 12-15 year-olds – the “margin of benefit… is considered too small”.
The JCVI is “generous” in its assessment, according to an executive at a pharmaceutical company writing for the Daily Sceptic. (He, by the way, believes vaccines are among the “three greatest medical innovations”, so could hardly be labelled “anti-vax”!) Responding to the data, he says there is a “serious enough” risk of children developing myocarditis after vaccination (inflammation of the heart muscle, the long-term consequences of which aren’t fully understood) whereas the benefits of vaccination are “not well quantified” by the JCVI. The body also fails to properly consider the risk of other conditions following vaccination.
Professor Adam Finn sums up the situation by saying the vaccination of children would not – in normal times – have been approved because of the possible risks. He believes that parents are justified in waiting to allow their children to get ‘jabbed’ until these risks are better understood. But therein lies the problem. What – if anything – can parents do to delay the vaccination of their children?
I’ve been trying to find the answer to this question over the past week – and the prospects for concerned parents are fairly bleak.
It’s probably best to start by ruling out protesting, given that schools have been told to call the police if “anti-vaxxers” plan demonstrations outside their gates. (I’m not sure that seeing their parents being dragged away by the police will be great for children’s mental health, which the vaccine roll-out is supposed to protect, but that’s a matter for another article.) One also has to question whether protesting would be worth it even if there wasn’t the risk of arrest.
The main tool in the parent’s armoury seems to be the written – or, perhaps, the spoken – word. You can’t be arrested for telling your local headteacher (either in a letter or at a meeting) that you disagree with your child being vaccinated without your consent (though you might be removed from their Christmas card list). The Yorkshire teacher mentioned above tells me that he gets the impression his school will do all it can to wash its hands of responsibility on this matter, preferring to say that the important decisions (i.e., “who should be vaccinated at school”) will be made by health professionals who use the school site (School Age Immunisation Service (SAIS) officials), not by the school itself. The school would, in this case, be wrong. Lawyers For Liberty (LFL), a group of non-partisan lawyers, made this point quite clear in its recent letter to the heads of regulatory bodies concerned with the protection of children and safety in schools:
If schools are intended to be the ultimate setting for the child vaccination programme, then school leaders will be deemed to have approved the Vaccination against the JCVI Advice. This has a variety of potential legal ramifications for school staff. Certainly many are concerned that there may be a serious safeguarding concern that would not align with the legal duties of schools, as outlined in the Department for Education document “Keeping Children Safe in Education”.
In another letter that LFL has drafted for parents to send to schools (see more details here), heads are given notice of their (and their school’s) potential legal liability on the matter of Covid vaccination.
If a parent communicates to you that their child will not to be included in the vaccination programme or does not provide consent, then that decision must be respected, without any further consequences for the child, including direct or indirect discrimination or coercion. Failure to do so may result in possible legal claims against you personally and for your School.
(It is worth noting here that Government guidelines say if a child gets ill following vaccination and the SAIS team has left the school, the situation should be managed “according to existing policies for pupil sickness in school”. In other words, it will be the responsibility of the school.)
Given the likelihood that schools would sooner “wash their hands” of responsibility on this tricky and confusing matter than face an array of expensive legal challenges (schools could be “vicariously liable for any harm which may come to any child receiving the vaccination whilst in your care leading to financial sanctions between £180,000 to £20 million”, according to LFL), simply presenting (personally or through the LFL letter) the head of your child’s school with the above information could be enough to prevent your child from being vaccinated without your consent. Imagine raising a question about the school’s insurance policy coverage for vaccination on school sites in the case of side effects. Staff are likely to respect your wishes, but it goes without saying that responses will differ from one school to the next.
Perhaps concerned that their words won’t be enough to block the vaccination of their children, some parents have decided to go one step further and keep their children away from school to stop them from being peer-pressured to accept the vaccination, according to the Telegraph. If you do decide to do that, it’s worth bearing in mind that the SAIS providers will likely only set up in your local school for one to two days, depending on the number of students, and that parents will [allegedly] be notified of the specific date(s) beforehand.
Britain’s “Diverse and Reliable” Electricity System
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | September 19, 2021
According to Kwasi Kwarteng, we have a diverse and reliable electricity system:
Well, we used to anyway!
The chart below sums up exactly how we and Europe got into the mess we are now in:
BP Energy Review
Because coal power capacity has been squeezed out of the system, we are now ultra reliant on natural gas when renewables fail to deliver, with the inevitable impact on power prices which we are now seeing.
Meanwhile if the government is serious in getting energy prices back down, I would suggest the following actions should be taken immediately:
- Abolish carbon pricing forthwith
- Support the opening of new oil and gas fields in the North Sea
- Impose an Intermittency Tax on wind and solar farms, so that they carry the full cost of intermittency, instead of the consumer.
- Take action to increase the UK’s natural gas storage capacity
- Abandon all spending plans for Net Zero, allowing money to be returned to taxpayers or energy users.
These actions would have an immediate impact on energy prices, as well as providing longer term energy security at little or no cost to the Exchequer.
This Week in the New Normal #6
This Week in the New Normal | OffGuardian | September 19, 2021
1. IS THE UK HEADING FOR A WINTER BLACK-OUT?
This week it was reported that a fire at a power relay station has damaged a cable running electricity from France to the UK. The cable apparently can’t be fixed until March (although I have yet to see any explanation as to why), which means electricity prices are set to jump up this winter.
Real fire or no, you can be sure the power companies don’t mind the bump in revenue. But is there more to it?
We’re already seeing warnings of potential “blackouts” this winter, as the electrical supply fails to keep up with demand. Power shortages during cold weather could easily cause a heavy spike in the number of elderly or vulnerable people dying over the winter.
Those deaths, as pretty much all deaths are these days, could then be attributed to “Covid”, and used to enforce booster shots or another lockdown… or anything else they want.
Further, it’s conceivable that, just as lockdowns were sold as being good for the environment, any blackouts could be accompanied by news stories talking up the idea of living with less electricity.
Can’t you just picture the Guardian’s opinion section? “In the future rolling blackouts will be the new normal. And that’s a good thing.” or “temporary electricity outages are a small price to pay for healing the earth” and even “Back to nature: How the blackouts forced us outside to reconnect with our planet and our neighbours.”
It’s also possible, of course, that there was no fire, and there will be no blackouts, and that they’re just freaking people out to make them worry and stop them complaining when their electricity prices are hiked for no reason.
2. DOCTORS SHOULD “GIVE PRIORITY” TO VACCINATED PATIENTS
Ruth Marcus, a deputy editor at the Washington Post, has had enough of people pussy-footing around this issue and is going “come right out and say it” – unvaccinated people deserve healthcare less than vaccinated people.
She at least admits this “conflicts radically with accepted medical ethics”, which is completely true but for some reason that doesn’t seem to change her mind:
under ordinary circumstances, I agree with those rules. The lung cancer patient who’s been smoking two packs a day for decades is entitled to the same treatment as the one who never took a puff. The drunk driver who kills a family gets a team doing its utmost to save him
To be clear then – Ruth considers the unvaccinated as morally inferior to a drunk driver who ran over some kids. Which says a lot more about her, than the unvaccinated.
This is one of the feeler pieces. An antennae article, gently feeling the ground to see if it can bear the weight of the agenda coming behind it. It’s setting up the conversation. Because once we’ve established “anti-vaxxers” don’t deserve healthcare, those other people she’s so careful to mention – smokers and drunk drivers – they’re next. Along with the obese, or the clumsy, or the religious, or the politically inconvenient.
If you don’t believe me, just check the comments under the article. The WaPo has one of the most scripted comments sections on the internet, whose usual job is to play the “bad cop” to the author’s “good cop”. And, sure enough, BTL is full of hundreds of supposedly real humans saying the author doesn’t go far enough, and we should ration all kinds of healthcare based on personal choices.
This particular talking point is already being aired on CNN and by late-night talkshow hosts too. Expect it to spread quickly, especially when the flu season starts.
3. THE CAMPAIGN TO DE-FUND INDEPENDENT MEDIA CONTINUES
A Guardian article from today is warning that big companies might be “funding misinformation” through internet advertising. There’s a lot of words there, but you don’t need to read most of them, the agenda is clear from the headline:
Nike and Amazon among brands advertising on Covid conspiracy sites
The article is based on a report from the Bureau of Independent Journalism, which claims to be an “independent” non-profit, but which is funded by an entirely predictable list of billionaires. Seriously, check their “about us” page and play NGO Bingo with their donor list.
According to this “independent” report, internet advertising is too “opaque” and we need to increase the “transparency” of the system so that major companies don’t unintentionally back “misinformation” and only give money to “benign” websites.
This is a continuation of an ongoing campaign to make it harder for any independent content creators to exist. We’ve already seen PayPal team up with the ADL to “Fight Extremism and Protect Marginalized Communities”. You don’t need me to tell you what that means.
It’s not just political either, YouTube demonetises basically everyone for basically anything these days, turning their formerly public platform into a corporate desert devoid of individuality or creativity.
There’s a reason OffG has always resisted putting ads on the site, over the years that decision has cost us a lot of money, but we have our independence and don’t live under threat. For any independent media out there who do rely on advertising income, now might be a good time to develop a plan B.
… More at OffGuardian.
More Evidence Emerges That Long Covid Is A Load Of Bollox
By Richie Allen | September 17, 2021
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has suggested that more than half of those who believe that they have so-called long covid, may just be suffering from normal bouts of ill health.
The ONS looked at 27,000 people who tested positive for covid. Three different methods were used to estimate the prevalence of long covid. One analysis found that 5 per cent reported at least one symptom 12 to 16 weeks after their infection.
But, the ONS found that 3.4 per cent of people who didn’t have covid reported the same long covid symptoms.
According to The Telegraph :
Kevin McConway, emeritus professor of applied statistics at The Open University, said: “That’s not all that much less than the 5.0 per cent for the infected people, which does show that having one or more of these symptoms isn’t uncommon regardless of Covid-19.”
Long Covid symptoms are fever, headache, muscle ache, weakness/tiredness, nausea/vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhoea, sore throat, cough, shortness of breath, loss of taste and loss of smell.
The ONS said however, that these symptoms are common in the general population.
The long covid fairy-tale is coming apart at the seams. Earlier this month, University College London produced a study that concluded that the danger of long covid to children had been wildly exaggerated.
Dr Michael Absoud, honorary reader at the department of women and children’s health at King’s College London told The Telegraph :
“The ONS are to be congratulated for engaging with clinicians and scientists to review their methodology and provide updated estimates on post-Covid symptoms. The ONS first published the approach in April 2021, and reported a 12-week prevalence of long Covid in 14 per cent. This has now been revised down to 3 per cent in the latest estimate.”
The ONS and University College London are to be congratulated for doing their jobs. Long covid was invented to encourage uptake of covid jabs. Covid itself (if it exists) is a mild respiratory illness, dangerous only to the very elderly and those with underlying health conditions.
Knowing that covid itself wasn’t enough to send folks rushing to the jabbatoirs, they needed to come up with something else to convince them that covid was far more serious. Long covid was perfect. They attributed so many common symptoms to it, that anyone at anytime could claim to be suffering from it.
I called it bollox last year. Scientists are calling it bollox today.
35,000 Women Report Period Problems After Covid Jab
By Richie Allen | September 16, 2021
Around 35,000 women have come forward to report irregularities with their menstrual cycle, including abnormal period pain, after they received a covid jab.
Writing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), Dr. Victoria Dale called for an investigation. She lectures on reproductive immunology at Imperial College London.
Incredibly, The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the UK’s drug watchdog, has refused to accept that there is a link between the jabs and menstrual cycle problems.
According to the MHRA:
“The rigorous evaluation completed to date does not support a link between changes to menstrual periods and related symptoms and Covid vaccines.”
According to The Mail Online this morning:
Data on the number of period problems following vaccination was collected from the MHRA’s Yellow Card Scheme, which keeps a record of every case of a potential side effect. But this data is reliant on women coming forward, meaning nearly 35,000 figure could be the tip of the iceberg.
So-called experts were rushed onto UK TV and radio shows this morning to assure the public that even if there is a link between the jabs and period problems, the jabs do not affect fertility.
They’re lying. I am not saying that I know the jabs affect fertility. I do not know that. But equally they cannot know that the jabs do not affect fertility in males or females.
That’s because they have no long-term data on how the jabs affect fertility or anything else for that matter. I really hope this information is getting through to people. The jabs are unnecessary, untried, unsafe and the manufacturers have been indemnified against legal action from anyone injured by their products.
As BoJo prepares Britain for another winter of Covid restrictions, it’s still not enough for the hardliners
By Neil Clark | RT | September 15, 2021
The UK government’s ‘Winter Plan’ for Covid is likely to mean the attempted introduction of vaccine passports and more lockdowns. It’s all a far cry from the freedom we were promised would come with mass vaccination.
Suppose someone had told you back in March 2020, that, 18 months later, despite two-thirds of the population being double-vaccinated, Britain would be facing the prospect of another depressing autumn and winter of Covid restrictions and lockdowns?
Well, there were people back then who warned such things would happen, that life would never be allowed to get back to the ‘old’ normal and that the governing, globalist elite was working to a different plan that had little to do with countering a virus. These people were denounced as ‘conspiracy theorists’ and ‘crackpots’. Yet, after Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s unveiling of yesterday’s ‘Winter Plan’ for England, it seems the ‘conspiracy theorists’ and ‘crackpots’ have got it right once again.
Plan A is learning to live with Covid. But this doesn’t mean living totally normally. There will still be border restrictions. We’ll still be urged – some would say coerced – to get the booster jab and to have our kids vaccinated too (even though, less than a fortnight ago, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation didn’t recommend it). We’ll still be encouraged to wear masks in certain settings.
Yet for all its downsides, life under Plan A is still better than the alternative, Plan B. This “toolkit” includes the return of mandatory masks, and the introduction of jab-only vaccine passports for large events, which could be extended to other gatherings too. And, most revealingly of all, further lockdowns are not ruled out, despite the disastrous impact they have had on both the economy and on society.
Let’s be clear what we are dealing with here: it’s psychological warfare on an industrial scale. The semblance of normality that Plan A gives us can be withdrawn at very short notice and Plan B – or parts of it – will be put into operation if ‘cases’ surge and the NHS comes under “unsustainable pressure.” But the NHS comes under pressure every winter, meaning Plan B is actually Plan A. Plan B is clearly what the government really wants to implement, but Johnson knows that, to keep disgruntled Tory backbenchers on side, he can’t do so straightaway.
Hospitals are nearly always close to capacity in December and January. Inevitably, once the flu/cold season starts up again in October, and with mass testing still in place, we’ll see a rise in ‘cases’, which will then see Johnson reach for his “toolkit.” That will be preceded by the usual doomladen and ludicrously over-the-top predictions from ‘modellers’ and ‘advisers’ of what will happen if the Prime Minister fails to ‘act’.
‘Something must be done!’ will be the cry from those who will lose nothing financially from another lockdown.
In fact, the calls for an immediate return of restrictions have already begun. A headline on the BBC News website reads, “Hospital Covid cases may see big jump, say experts.” The piece refers to how the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) committee modelling “suggested” hospitalisation could reach 2,000 to 7,000 per day next month.
We’ve been here before. Lots of times. Only a few months ago, there were dire predictions from ‘modellers’ and ‘experts’ of what would happen if restrictions were lifted in England in July. A member of Independent SAGE – which is even more hardline than SAGE – said the UK could face cases of more than 100,000 a day if lockdown easing went ahead. Well, lockdown easing did go ahead, and guess what? Cases fell. From 43,910 cases (on a seven-day average) on July 16 to 23,002 by the end of the month.
We’re meant, though, to have the memory of a gnat and to have forgotten how wrong the ‘modellers’ have consistently been, and to be terrified once again by their latest ‘predictions’, which make Private Frazer of 1970s sitcom ‘Dad’s Army’ fame – whose catchphrase was “We’re doomed!” – sound like the world’s greatest optimist.
With all the sensationalist ‘cases set to surge this autumn unless restrictions are re-imposed’ headlines, I expect that, straight after next month’s Tory Party conference – and after the Coronavirus Act has been renewed for another six months – Johnson will reach for his “toolkit” and bring back mandatory masks. Then, a few weeks after that, it’ll be ‘accept jab-only vaccine passports or we’ll have to do another lockdown’.
But hang on a minute… weren’t the vaccines meant to put an end to all of this? “15 million jabs to freedom” was the famous headline in the Daily Mail last 27 December. Yet with 66% of the population double-vaxxed – and around 90% of those deemed the most ‘vulnerable’ having had their jabs – we have more ‘cases’ and deaths with Covid than we did this time last year, when no one was vaccinated. How come?
On ‘Good Morning Britain’, Richard Madeley, a proper ‘old-school’ journalist asked this emperor’s new clothes question to Dr Hilary Jones. Jones struggled to answer and kept muttering about cases being higher this year. But if the vaccines work so well, and so many people have been vaccinated, why are we even talking of having more restrictions this autumn and winter? Either the vaccines work or they don’t. If they work, then there’s no need to discuss restrictions. If they don’t, then why push them?
The government line is we need more jabs and a “toolkit” of restrictions too. More lockdowns as a “last resort,” if cases surge, “to protect the NHS.” And vaccine passports too – without a negative-test or prior-infection option – even though we know the vaccines don’t prevent transmission.
Like the autumn and winter of 2020-21, this coming ‘winter of discontent’, of fear and dread, and restrictions being imposed or re-imposed at a moment’s notice, is meant to be our ‘new normal’. Which means this will only end when people realise it’s never meant to end.
Neil Clark is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and blogger. His award winning blog can be found at http://www.neilclark66.blogspot.com.
BBC chairman calls for crackdown on speech online
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | September 15, 2021
Richard Sharp, BBC Chairman, is likely to back proposals to increase regulation of the world’s largest social networks and platforms to combat “fake news” and “disinformation.”
It is pertinent to ask “urgent questions” about these platforms, since platforms have allowed lies, conspiracy theories, and falsehoods to spread rapidly, the chairman claimed in a speech to the Royal Television Society convention.
Since assuming office in February, Sharp will make his first significant public statement, calling for an update to outdated Communications Act of 2003, calling for a crackdown on speech online.
He continued stating that he wants the BBC “to define itself globally as a pre-eminent purveyor of facts in the disinformation age.”
Sharp also claimed that “The pandemic and ‘infodemic’ that has spread alongside have left us in no doubt of how vulnerable we all are. But it has also suggested that some are more vulnerable than others…. The magnetic draw of conspiracy theories in our societies is getting stronger. And we can no longer pretend it doesn’t have real-life consequences – whether it’s pulling down 5G masts, driving down vaccine take up, or leaving the results of democratic elections in doubt, ” Televisual reported.
Even though the provision of fact-checking services and coordinating efforts between platforms and credible news organizations to detect misinformation is important, Sharp alleged more needed to be done.
“There are urgent questions to be answered about the future media world we want to live in. We need to rethink the regulatory environment in this country – and replace a Communications Act that predates Facebook with one that can deliver on a clear vision,” the chairman said.
“But we also need to look at where the digital world comes up against the fundamental rights, freedoms and privacies we sign up to as societies and individuals. Does the principle of media freedom need to be redefined and re-enshrined for the digital age? Do we need to claim our personal data as a human right, rather than an asset to be bought and sold?”
Javid: “Healthcare Staff Facing Mandatory Covid & Flu Jabs”
By Richie Allen | September 14, 2021
Speaking in the House of Commons this morning, Health Secretary Sajid Javid said that a consultation has been launched over making Covid and flu vaccinations mandatory for front-line healthcare and social care workers in England.
Javid said that while he’s keeping an open mind until he sees the results of the consultation, he believes that:
“It is highly likely that front-line NHS staff and those working in wider social care settings will also have to be vaccinated to protect those around them and this will be an important step in protecting those at greatest risk”.
Tyranny just rolls off the tongues of these fascists doesn’t it? Nobody cares though. There wasn’t so much as a murmur from the Labour Party benches, the so-called party of the working man and woman.
The Health Secretary had just threatened hundreds of thousands of people who work in the nation’s hospitals and care homes, that if they don’t take his medicine, they’ll be out of a job. Not a peep from Labour.
Javid was laying out his plans for tackling covid and flu this Winter. On flu, he said that in the next few weeks we will see the launch of the largest flu vaccination campaign the country has ever seen.
He said that people will also be encouraged to meet outdoors where possible, and try to let in fresh air when meeting indoors.
He also said that people will be encouraged to wear face masks in crowded areas where they can come into contact with others they don’t normally meet. This was greeted by jeers from his Tory colleagues on the backbenches.
I never believed for a moment, that we would ever see the back of the arbitrary measures introduced to tackle covid. I said many times on The Richie Allen Show that we’d be living with these measures and more forever. I hate being right.
