America & some of its so-called ‘democratic’ allies have turned ‘liberal-totalitarian’: Russia’s top spy
By Jonny Tickle | RT | June 24, 2021
The US and some other Western nations held up as “models of liberal democracy” are rapidly turning into totalitarian regimes reminiscent of the Soviet Union, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service has claimed.
Speaking on Thursday at the Moscow Conference on International Security, Sergey Naryshkin claimed that there are “almost all signs of a totalitarian dictatorship” in some Western countries, including a “monopoly on the media,” the “police nature of the state,” and the “irremovability of oligarchic elites.”
“It is astonishing to see how the West is trying to divide our diverse world into two completely artificial camps – a supposedly democratic one and a supposedly authoritarian one,” Naryshkin said, noting Russia, China, and Iran have been placed into the second camp, along with NATO ally Turkey and, on some issues, EU member state Poland.
“The US and other so-called models of liberal democracy seem not to notice that they themselves are rapidly turning into a liberal-totalitarian regime,” the chief spook said.
According to Naryshkin, the West’s imposition of ideological attitudes is somewhat reminiscent of the history of the late Soviet Union, in that it doesn’t even believe the values it tries to project abroad.
However, the head spy pointed to the US-Russia summit in Switzerland earlier this month as a potential turning point, noting that he hopes the West will be able to use “the spirit of Geneva to try to build a safer and fairer world.”
Naryshkin’s belief that the West is attempting to split the world into ‘democratic’ and ‘authoritarian’ echoes a statement made by Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu at the same conference on Wednesday.
“Today, a new trend is coming to the fore,” Shoygu said. “The formation of global coalitions, the division of the world into ‘friends’ and ‘strangers.’”
Johnson’s govt taken to court by theatre bosses to force release of Covid-19 trial data
RT | June 24, 2021
A group of concert and theatre bosses led by Andrew Lloyd Webber has launched legal action against the British government in a bid to force it to publish data from a trial assessing the safety of indoor events during the pandemic.
The concert managers and theatre producers are demanding that the government provide data from its Events Research Programme – a trial assessing the safety of indoor events – so that they can plan to finally reopen their institutions.
In a statement on Thursday, they said the government had “refused to publish the results from the first phase of the Events Research Programme, despite saying that it would do so on numerous occasions.”
The statement adds that, in addition to not publishing the data from the trial, the government has not provided any form of insurance scheme to safeguard the industry against any further delays following 15 months of closures due to Covid curbs.
The entertainment bosses claim that, according to the government, the trial has been a huge success, which in turn has contributed to the increasing frustration within the entertainment sector concerning the industry’s continuing dormant state.
Pilot events under the programme, which the industry participated in, included the BRIT Awards at the O2 Arena, an outdoor festival event in Liverpool for 5,000 people, a snooker tournament at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, and the Download festival for 10,000 people last weekend.
The reopening of the theatre industry in England has been pushed back from its anticipated late June date until July 19, following the spread of the more infectious Delta variant.
Speaking later on Thursday, a spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the government had made £2 billion available via a major arts funding package. He added that the government understands “the necessary delay to step four is challenging for live events.”
The impresarios note in their statement that live entertainment and theatre generate £11.25 billion for the UK economy each year, supporting just under one million jobs.
The Uyghur Tribunal: Inciting Hatred Against China
By Christopher Black – New Eastern Outlook – 22.06.2021
The fascists are very active these days and one of the proofs of this dark shadow looming over the world is the recent so-called “peoples’ tribunal” put on in London over three days in early June. Otherwise called the “Uyghur Tribunal,” it is headed by Sir Geoffrey Nice, Q.C, the Machiavellian British barrister, knighted by the Queen for his services to Britain, who became notorious for trying to frame-up Yugoslavia’s President Milosevic at the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal.
This new ‘tribunal’ follows on the China Tribunal also headed by Nice and also based in London, which focused on fabricated allegations of forced organ trafficking by China. This second tribunal focuses on fabricated allegations against China concerning the treatment of Uyghurs in the Chinese province of Xinjiang. The allegations before both of these ‘tribunals’ have one objective; to slander the Communist Party of China and to undermine China as a developing and sovereign nation.
The ‘tribunal’ is part of the propaganda matrix being constructed by NATO, led by the USA and UK, which has the objective of manipulating people’s minds to generate hatred and hostility towards China to, at the least, hinder its trade and development, at worst, to prepare the minds of people for war. In that sense this ‘tribunal’ is nothing less than a part of the preparation for war, and can be seen, under international criminal law, as part of a conspiracy to engage in the supreme war crime, the crime of aggression.
The same tactics are being applied to Russia with all the false allegations being made by the Americans against Russia, allegations that Joe Biden shamefully repeated in his meeting with President Putin in Geneva, as if he was king of the world dressing down a wayward vassal. No wonder that meeting was cut short. Only a fly on the wall can tell us what was really said and happened in Geneva, but who can imagine the Russians sitting there for long having to listen to a lecture on how they should stop doing what they are not doing “or face the consequences.” How can any serious person sit there and not either laugh out loud or become angry at the absurdity of it? But of course that is the spin in the western media, the spin that Biden put on the meeting; that he “talked tough to Putin.” Bluster and lies is the American way.
The bluster and lies continued at the Uyghur tribunal over the three days of “hearings” that took place from June 4 to 7 which were staged as a piece of theatre, even to the extent of the organisers selling tickets to attend. It was all acted out by a company of roaming players who go from one forum to another playing their roles, speaking their lines on cue from a script written by shadowy men and women in shadowy rooms in London and Washington.
Geoffrey Nice not only is chair of the two tribunals dealing with China and persecutor of President Milosevic, he is also a co-author of the Caesar Report on Syria, produced by the NATO backed Centre For Justice and Accountability so-called, another propaganda outfit focused on slandering Syria, along with his friend, former US Ambassador For War Crimes, Stephen Rapp. He seems to be NATO’s ever eager go-to lawyer when they need some propaganda put out to justify their wars
One of Nice’s most notorious crimes in the Milosevic show trial at the ICTY was to deliberately mislead the judges and the world by stating that the Kosovo Field speech made by Milosevic proved Milosevic was for a Greater Serbia. But Milosevic produced the real speech proving that he had said the exact opposite of what Nice claimed, that he had called for inter-ethnic tolerance. Nice was proved to be a liar. But the judges did nothing to him. He was allowed to continue spewing lies day after day throughout that show trial because NATO wanted the show to go on and Nice was their chosen circus ringmaster. So, it is no surprise that he was chosen to be ringmaster of this new propaganda circus.
This ‘tribunal’ claims to be independent. Yet it is neither a “tribunal’ nor independent. It has no legal or other authority. It certainly has no moral authority when we look at its funding and the experts called upon to give their ‘evidence,’ for we see clearly the connections between it, the NATO governments and western financial interests.
Much of its funding comes from the World Uyghur Congress whose affiliations with the CIA and funding by the National Endowment For Democracy are well known. In fact it was the World Uyghur Congress that asked Geoffrey Nice to set up the tribunal, according to him, and it provided the initial funding, so that we see right at the beginning, that the US government, through the CIA and NED, is directly involved with the Nice tribunal. Let us look at some of the others involved.
There is Nick Vetch, an extremely rich British businessman, who is founder and CEO of BigYellow a large UK storage company, which, in turn, has some of its shares owned by US financial companies such as Blackrock Inc, Standard Life Aberdeen, American Financial Group and others. Vetch is also a director of the Global Human Rights Fund, a UK “human rights’ organisation, which appears to provide some funding to the Nice tribunal. He is also a member of Nice’s China Tribunal.
Vetch’s connection to the Fund indicates who is behind his activities since the Global Human Rights Fund in turn gets its funding from the European Union, the Swedish Government, the Ford Foundation, George Soros, The Rockefeller Foundation, and other US corporate-backed foundations. The Chair of the Fund is Chris Canavan, managing director of Lion’s Head Global Partners, formerly Director of Global Policy Development for the Soros Fund, formerly senior official with Goldman Sachs Bank in New York and a lifetime member of the US Council on Foreign Relations.
He who pays the piper calls the tune.
Other members of the ‘tribunal’ are members of the British Establishment, and aside from anti-China credentials seem to be brought in to add some credibility to the proceedings. They include Dame Parveen Kumar, a UK doctor and member of the British Establishment, Ambreeana Manji, UK law professor who once worked for the British Institute in East Africa, Tim Clark, a UK lawyer and senior director of Vetch’s company Big Yellow and who is also an adviser to G3, which claims to be ‘one of the leading international strategic advisory groups’. Based in London, G3 seems to be an intelligence group with murky connections.
The list includes Ramindar Kaur, social anthropologist, writer, and “human rights” activist who is also deeply immersed in the British establishment. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society and head of a number of government studies on UK social issues. There is Dr. David Lynch, a specialist on cancer at University College London, Audrey Osler, Professor of education and human rights, University of Leeds, an advocate of using human rights education to achieve changes in world societies, and Catherine Roe, who began her career as a British diplomat, specialising in multilateral negotiations and who is now a Trustee of the Institute of International Strategic Studies.
Hamid Sabi, is styled as “counsel to the tribunal.” He is a British lawyer, active in the service of the western powers. He is, among other things, a director of Justice For Iran, an organisation accusing Iran of human rights violations, whose recommendations for sanctions against Iranian officials and Press TV are followed by the US and EU and UK governments and who has a history of attacking China.
He is assisted by Aarif Abraham, another UK lawyer, and former lawyer for the NATO tribunal for Yugoslavia, (ICTY) another very anti-China, pro-foreign intervention type who wrote a paper on the Uighurs accusing China of all sorts of crimes. Another assistant is Aldo Samit Borda, a Maltese, but now a lawyer in the UK involved in human rights, who has connections with the British government as he once worked for the Commonwealth Secretariat. The NATO-ICTY connection continues with Marilena Stegbauer, their general assistant, a German, and former intern for the NATO prosecutor at the ICTY, former researcher at Human Rights Institute in the UK, then a writer for The German Diplomat in Germany, who now calls herself a “human rights consultant”.
There is Frankie Vetch, production assistant, son of the Vetch senior, making the tribunal a bit of a Vetch family affair, and Nevenka Tromp, another NATO asset who also worked at the ICTY as a researcher for prosecution in the Milosevic and Karadzic trials. The group is rounded off with Baroness Helena Kennedy, adviser and member of the British House of Lords, Queen’s Counsel, also member of the International Bar Association Institute of Human Rights who in 2020, worked with the Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith and “democracy activist” with Hong Kong Watch, Luke de Pulford, to create the global pressure group the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, in March 2021,
The Coalition for Genocide Response is a supporter of the tribunal. It is the project of John Luke de Pulford mentioned above who is a prominent London establishment anti-communist, anti Chinese Government figure and a supporter of Nathan Law, the Hong Kong fifth columnist working for British interests in Hong Kong, now fled to London. In fact the tribunal has also revealed that it was launched on 3 September 2020, with assistance from the Coalition for Genocide Response that was founded by John Luke de Pulford, the protégé of British journalist turned activist, Benedict Rogers, and Hong Kong Watch functionary, who also has close links to Stand with Hong Kong. Benedict Rogers is the founder of Hong Kong Watch, a notorious propaganda outfit that specializes in churning out fallacies about China. Rogers also has put out false claims about North Korea, works with governments from the UK to Canada and USA and is a leader of the anti-communist Christian Solidarity Worldwide. He states that he introduced Nice to the Uyghurs a couple of years ago. Rogers recently appointed Nice to Hong Kong Watch as a patron, joining the former British governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten. Another of its patrons is Lord David Alton, who is linked with the concocted report on the Hong Kong Police Force, which the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hong Kong, of which he is a vice-chair, produced in 2020.
On Sept 23, 2020, in the House of Lords, Alton asked the British foreign office minister, Lord Ahmad, if the government would “welcome” the initiative to set up the “Uyghur Tribunal”, and “cooperate” with it. The minister did not give a clear reply but the tribunal has since thanked the British government for fast-tracking visas for foreign nationals to attend the tribunal. In view of Alton’s links with Hong Kong Watch, the extent to which it is covertly involved in the tribunal cannot be underestimated as Benedict Rogers is also an adviser to the World Uyghur Congress. The circle of interconnections is complete.
Those are the people behind the tribunal. Some, like Nice, are clearly NATO assets. None of them are independent or objective.
Since this is supposedly a tribunal they had to produce witnesses. These fit into two categories, expert witnesses and witnesses of fact, that is, people who claim to have observed things.
These were duly paraded before the tribunal, one after one, made statements without offering any proof of their claims and then retired with none of them cross-examined on their statements. Their claims were not tested at all; not by the ‘judges’ who are also in fact the “prosecutors” nor by anyone else. Instead the statements were accepted as true without any examination and when the ‘witnesses’ faltered in reading their lines, the ‘judges’ assisted them. This is not the procedure of a trial or even a hearing. It is more closely associated with an Inquisition. Nice and company are not interested in the truth or falsity of the claims being made. Their only interest is in making sure the statements they require to make effective anti-Chinese propaganda are supplied.
The so-called ‘expert witnesses’ included Ethan Guttman, a Senior fellow at the anticommunist “Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, an American organisation funded by the US Congress to “educate people on the evils of communism,” who has made many wild claims about China in particular on allegations of “organ harvesting” and Adrian Zenz, also a fellow at the same anti-communist organisation. His propaganda work is notorious.
It incudes Laura Murphy, trained as a literature scholar, who became a “human rights” professor at the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice, University of Sheffield. Harvard educated, she seems to be a professional witness and has worked for US Government Office of Victims of Crime, and other US government agencies, has put out propaganda on the BBC about “forced labour” in China and received an award for her propaganda work from the US government agency the National Endowment For Humanities, and grants from their National Humanities Centre. She also received grants from the British Academy.
Finally there is Dr. Darren Byler, of the University of Colorado, who is engaged in post doctoral work with the ChinaProject, funded by the Henry Luce Foundation, a famous, anti-communist organisation founded by Henry Luce, and, Nathan Ruser, an Australian researcher with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute who is an expert in satellite data and surveillance who has written a number of anti-Chinese propaganda articles. There are a few others of the same type.
The factual witnesses are a travelling troupe of players many of whom have given statements in other venues, often contradicting their claims at the tribunal. The Chinese government has exposed the lies of several of these witnesses who travel the world as professional witnesses-earning their keep by telling stories which do not bear up under any scrutiny. But none of the witnesses testified under a real oath, none were questioned on the contents of their statements or how they came to the attention of the organisers, apart from being recruited by the World Uyghur Congress.
Having myself experienced how Nice and the other prosecutors at the Yugoslav and Rwanda tribunals got people to be witnesses, and how they coerced them into given false testimony when required makes it impossible to accept any of the statements made by these alleged witnesses with anything less than complete disbelief. Not that it matters in legal terms. Despite Nice spouting platitudes about “reasonable doubt” and “assessing the evidence” we all know what the outcome of the hearings, to be continued in September, will be; the condemnation of China.
So there we have it, another propaganda exercise masquerading as a search for justice and accountability, But it is about time these propagandists be held accountable for their actions, for manufacturing hatred and hostility towards a nation that has brought its people out of the poverty imposed on them by the west during the colonial period and which the west wants to impose again.
At the Nuremberg Trials the Nazi propagandist, Julius Streicher, was hanged for putting out propaganda about Jews and inciting hatred leading to genocide. At the Rwanda Tribunal the members of a radio station were convicted of genocide for allegedly making false reports on events that the prosecutors claimed instigated hatred that led to genocide. Hate speech is proscribed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and other treaties. Is this not what Nice and his players are doing, trying to instigate hatred and hostility to justify war, to justify harming and killing Chinese? Is this not where it all leads? Is this not a crime against humanity? Are not they the real criminals?
Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel Beneath the Clouds.
‘White privilege’ may dominate the debate over underachieving poor white pupils, but it misses the real culprit
By Dr Lisa McKenzie | RT | June 22, 2021
A new report by MPs highlights the neglect of Britain’s ‘forgotten ethnic majority’ – white working-class children – and recommends actions to help them. But it stops short of addressing the root cause.
Six years ago, I was asked to be an expert witness in the House of Commons for the Women and Equalities Select Committee. It was a fact-finding panel in order for the committee to think through class inequality in Britain, and I was more than happy to contribute.
I was one of four witnesses and the only working-class one – the only one in the room who had experienced class prejudice and class inequality and could speak to that – and answer questions such as what does it feel like to be working class in Britain today, and what are the consequences of that? The committee was interested in whether people’s social class should be added to the list of protected characteristics; meaning that being treated differently or being discriminated against because of your class would be against the law.
The list of protected characteristics includes age, disability, race (including colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin), religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.
Yet social class is still not included. It means, in effect, that the working class in Britain can be treated differently and unfairly, and deeply-held class prejudices can be acted upon. This consequent discrimination against working-class people can go unchallenged, be ignored, and remains mostly unseen as if it were normal – which it is, all day and everyday.
Another report out today also addresses social class in Britain, this time commissioned by the House of Commons Education Committee, this time about a particular group they call the ‘forgotten’ and ‘the left behind’ – poor, white, working-class pupils.
Entitled ‘The Forgotten: How white working class pupils have been let down and how to change it,’ the report argues such children are underachieving within the education system, even behind other working- class groups from ethnic minorities. This group – termed the ‘ethnic majority’ – comprises around one million pupils.
The report uses free school meals as the marker of how to define class in the UK. In England, children living in households on income-related benefits (such as universal credit) are eligible for free school meals (FSM), as long as their annual household income does not exceed £7,400 after tax, not including welfare payments.
The British establishment has always made a dog’s dinner of food, no wonder it’s made such a hash over free school meals. It is a very basic and rudimentary measurement, but often used by researchers and academics in order to show a definition of class in Britain. The report notes that poverty cannot fully account for the educational underachievement by the white working-class pupils, arguing that all working-class people of whatever ethnicity are economically disadvantaged and, despite this, it is the white pupils who consistently do worse.
The end game for the report is to look at the numbers going on to university or further education: only 16% of the white FSM cohort do so, compared to 21% of mixed-race FSM pupils and 31.8% of Black/African/Caribbean ones – although the report also notes that these last two groups are more likely to be excluded from school and to drop out of university. And all working-class students are more likely to be found in lower-ranked universities and least likely to be found in elite Russell Group universities.
The report is more than 80 pages long and comprehensive, with over 40 conclusions and recommendations – that address geographic differences, the quality and inequality of primary and secondary education, the lack of decent employment in specific areas, and the failure of blanket investment in students across the country rather than a more targeted approach on specific communities.
Probably the issue that will be most seized-on is the one page that addresses the term ‘white privilege’, a concept which the report argues has been unhelpful to white working-class children and has led to them being neglected. It suspects that, in some cases, it has allowed a lack of empathy and care when looking at this group’s particular disadvantages.
Although most of the report lends itself to looking at geographical inequalities, in particular the London and the South East effect, where all children’s educational attainment has been raised. This area has a culture of investment and success, as opposed to parts of the country that have suffered de-investment for decades – poor, de-industrialised communities, where large warehousing industries have set up as the only work in the area. The sorts of places and people I have written about many times on these pages.
And, of course, there is the obligatory acknowledgement that no one’s identity means that they have certain characteristics that lend themselves to under-attainment – yet the ‘aspiration’ word and the lean-in on working-class culture make an appearance. The familiar turns of phrase that are loaded with class stigma, class prejudice and victim-blaming.
The ‘left behind’ narrative that runs throughout the report has a common theme: that white working-class people are somehow to blame for their predicament because of their backward culture, their Brexity nostalgia for a past where their lives were better without ethnic minorities, and for refusing or being unable to keep up with the rest of the country’s progress. This narrative suggests it is at least some of their own fault. Yet there is nothing in this report which implicates the power relationships between classes and the calamitous effects of that. At the risk of repeating myself over and over again, the British class system is one that unfairly advantages the middle class and, equally and unfairly, disadvantages the working class.
Despite only one page on ‘white privilege,’ the report is undoubtedly going to attract headlines – it is a phrase that causes outrage on both sides of the argument. Lots of political capital will be flexed as the ‘culture warriors’ go out to bat for their own side.
One group will insist that white people are losing out to a politically correct wokeness that values social justice over the ‘facts’ shown in this report and will take it as evidence that ‘white privilege’ does not actually exist – while the other side will rubbish the report, looking for holes and inaccuracies, and will insist that ‘white privilege’ is real and should be recognised and apologised-for by all white people.
These arguments will be played out on social media, almost exclusively by people who have not ever negatively experienced the deep inequalities of the British class system and who are safe in the knowledge that their own children will never be written about and spoken about in this way.
Most of today’s political outrage will come from people who have experienced the British class system, but will not recognise it because of their own middle-class privilege and their own easy access to those unfair advantages that can always be passed off as a result of ‘talent’ and hard work – rather than the in-built advantages they have been given from birth.
I welcome today’s report because it raises the issue of class in Britain, but I hope soon for a different one. One perhaps entitled, ‘The invisible advantages of the middle class,’ with 40 recommendations aimed at stopping and preventing middle-class families gaming the education system, scoping the geographical areas for the ‘right place’ for their children to go to university, to get internships and decent, well-paid jobs, and to play a system that they and their forebears created for themselves.
At the very least this current report should have swayed just a little from the usual platitudinous recommendations of ‘levelling up,’ ‘left behind,’ ‘more aspiration’ and ‘better parenting,’ and added one more key recommendation: that social class should be put on the protected characteristics list, allowing all working-class people to be given the chance to call out and challenge class discrimination on their own terms.
Dr Lisa McKenzie is a working-class academic. She grew up in a coal-mining town in Nottinghamshire and became politicized through the 1984 miners’ strike with her family. At 31, she went to the University of Nottingham and did an undergraduate degree in sociology. Dr McKenzie lectures in sociology at the University of Durham and is the author of ‘Getting By: Estates, Class and Culture in Austerity Britain.’ She’s a political activist, writer and thinker.
Hancock: “Very Significant Flu Vaccine Drive This Winter!”
By Richie Allen | June 22, 2021
Yesterday, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that flu will come out of retirement this Winter. This morning the Health Secretary Matt Hancock said that plans are afoot for a “significant flu vaccination drive this Winter, to protect the NHS.”
Speaking to Times Radio Breakfast, Hancock said:
“We are worried about flu this winter because people’s natural immunity will be lower because we haven’t had any serious flu for 18 months now. We had a difficult winter in 2019, we didn’t have flu at all really this last winter because of the restrictions that were in place for Covid. So, it is something we are worried about.
We are are going to have a very significant flu vaccination drive this autumn – potentially at the same time you might get your Covid booster jab and your flu jab at the same time, we are testing whether that can be done.
We do need to make sure we protect the NHS this coming winter. We have got time to do the preparation for that now, though, and make sure we are as vaccinated as possible, because that is the way to keep people safe.”
Hancock may well go down as the greatest liar in all history. I wonder what do they have on him? Of course flu never disappeared. That’s a double whopper with cheese and bacon. Flu was simply rebranded Covid-19. That’s not to say that I am claiming that Covid-19 doesn’t exist. I’ve never said that. How could I know?
But flu doesn’t just disappear because of social distancing. A cough or a sneeze travels 25 feet remember. Masks are useless. Flu thrives when people stay inside for prolonged periods, in poorly ventilated homes. Those are facts. Flu never went away. People with flu were told that they had covid-19 after submitting themselves for a redundant PCR test.
Winter is going to be fun then. The pressure to take a flu jab and a covid booster will be immense. Will those who submit to the jabs have more freedom over the Winter months? Probably.
While appearing on SKY News this morning, Hancock repeated that vaccines are the only way back to freedom and the only way to protect the NHS. This morning, just as every other morning, the car park next to the vaccination centre in Salford is full.
I run past it every day. Each time I do, my heart sinks.
Schools Warned That Promoting Concept of “White Privilege” is Harming Disadvantaged White Students
While also potentially being a violation of the law
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | June 21, 2021
Schools in the UK have been told by a cross-party committee of MPs that promoting the notion of “white privilege” could breach equality laws while also harming disadvantaged white students.
The committee report found that despite the relentless narrative that “white privilege” is holding back non-white students, white students are actually underperforming.
“In 2019, 17.7 per cent of free school meal eligible white British pupils achieved grade 5 or above in English and maths, compared with 22.5 per cent of all FSM-eligible pupils,” reports Schoolsweek.
The report notes that disadvantaged white children do not have “white privilege,” with MPs “(concerned) about the impact that hearing terms like that presented as fact will have on those children.”
Different language must be used when discussing racial disparities in order “to ensure that young people are not inadvertently being inducted into political movements,” states the report.
The MPs “hope that by highlighting the hardships faced by many white people from disadvantaged backgrounds” their recommendations “may help advance a new way to discuss disadvantage without pitting different groups against each other.”
The report also notes that using terms such as “white privilege” could be a violation of the Equality Act 2010 and only serves to increase racial tension by pitting groups against each other.
“Disadvantaged White children feel anything but privileged when it comes to education,” said Conservative MP, Robert Halfon, adding that there was a desperate need to move away from obsessing over “white privilege” when for most white students, it doesn’t exist.
Education systems in Europe and America are riddled with the cancer that is Critical Race Theory as well as attempts to “decolonise” curriculums, which is a euphemism for making white people feel ashamed of their history.
Despite the fact that “diversity and inclusion” extremists have largely hijacked the education system and weaponized it against white students, the ludicrous narrative that “systemic racism” only impacts non-whites still persists.
Indeed, the only form of acceptable “systemic racism” that still exists in the western world is practiced against white people.
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.
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The Balfour Declaration – A Century of Jewish Power
By Gilad Atzmon | May 17, 2017
This year, Palestinians and their supporters mark the 100th anniversary of The Balfour Declaration, a written statement from the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, to Walter Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, in favour of the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine.
For Palestinians, The Balfour Declaration was the beginning of their plight: a century of ethnic cleansing at the hands of European newcomers who claim Palestine as their historic home. Yet, for some reason, supporters of the Palestinians are desperate to suppress discussion of the motivation for the Balfour Declaration – how and why did it come about? … continue
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