The Disease Models Were Tested and Failed, Massively
By Phillip W. Magness | AIER | March 19, 2021
One year ago this week the world embraced a lockdown strategy premised on the epidemiology modeling of Imperial College-London (ICL). In a March 16, 2020 report by physicist and computer modeler Neil Ferguson, the ICL team predicted catastrophic death tolls in the United Kingdom and United States unless both countries adopted an aggressive policy response of mandating social distancing, school and business closures, and ultimately sheltering in place.
Ferguson’s model presented a range of scenarios under increasingly restrictive nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). Under its “worst case” or “do nothing” model 2.2 million Americans would die, as would 510,000 people in Great Britain, with the peak daily death rate hitting somewhere around late May or June. At the same time, the ICL team promised salvation from the coronavirus if only governments would listen to and adopt its technocratic recommendations. Time was of the essence to act, so President Donald Trump and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson both listened. And so began the first year of “two weeks to flatten the curve.”
It took a little over a month before we saw conclusive evidence that something was greatly amiss with the ICL model’s underlying assumptions. A team of researchers from Uppsala University in Sweden adapted Ferguson’s work to their country and ran the projections, getting similarly catastrophic results. Over 90,000 people would die by summer from Covid-19 if Sweden did not enter immediate lockdown. Sweden never locked down though. By May it was clear that the Uppsala adaptation of ICL’s model was off by an order of magnitude. A year later, Sweden has fared no worse than the average European lockdown country, and significantly better than the UK, which acted on Ferguson’s advice.
Pressed on this unexpected result, ICL tried to distance itself from the Swedish adaptation of its model in May. The records from the March 21st supercomputer run of the Uppsala team’s projections belie that assertion, linking directly to Ferguson’s March 16th report as the framework for its modeling design. But no matter – the ICL team’s own publications would soon succumb to a real-time testing against actual data.
A second ICL report, attempting to model the reopening of the United States from lockdowns, wildly exaggerated the death tolls that were expected to follow. By July, this model too had failed to even minimally correspond to observed reality. ICL attempted to save face by publishing an absurd exercise in circular reasoning in the journal Nature where they invoked the unrealized projections of their own model to supposedly “prove” multiple millions of lives had been saved by the lockdowns. That study soon failed basic robustness checks when the ICL team’s suite of models were applied to different geographies.
Another team of Swedish researchers then noticed oddities in the ICL team’s coding, suggesting they had modified a key line to bring data from their own comparative analysis of Sweden into sync with other European countries under lockdown after the models did not align. A published derivative of this discovery showed that ICL’s own attempts to validate the effectiveness of its lockdown strategies does not withstand empirical scrutiny.
Finally, in November, another team of researchers from the United States compared a related ICL team model for a broader swath of countries against five other international models of the pandemic, examining the performance of each against observed deaths. Their results contain a stunning indictment: “The Imperial model had larger errors, about 5-fold higher than other models by six weeks. This appears to be largely driven by the aforementioned tendency to overestimate mortality.”
The verdict is in. Imperial College’s Covid-19 modeling has an abysmal track record – a characteristic it unfortunately shares with Ferguson’s prior attempts to model mad cow disease, swine flu, avian flu, and countless other pathogens.
After a year of model-driven lockdowns, we may also look back to the original March 16, 2020 report to see yet another failure of its predictive ability. Recall that this is the model that fueled the alarmist rush to shut everything down last March, all to avert a 2.2 million death toll that would presumably peak around June.
(Source: Imperial College Report #9, March 16, 2020)
As noted above, the 2.2 million figure for the US (and corresponding 510,000 figure in Britain) were “worst case” scenarios in which the pandemic ran its course. According to the underlying theory of the ICL model, these catastrophic totals could be reduced by the adoption of NPIs – the escalating suite of social distancing measures, business and school closures, and ultimately full lockdowns that we observed in practice over the last year.
Aside from its 2.2 million worst case scenario, ICL offered no specific projections for how its proposed mitigation measures would work in the United States. Ferguson did however tell the New York Times on March 20, 2020 that a “best case” American scenario would still yield “about 1.1 million deaths,” giving us a glimpse of what he believed to be possible under NPI mitigation. The March 16th report similarly “predict[ed] there would still be in the order of…1.1-1.2 million in the US” under the most optimistic mitigation strategy, barring a large increase in hospital ICU bed capacity.
By contrast, ICL did publish an extensive table showing the results of its model run for Britain over a group of four increasingly stringent NPI scenarios. These range from the “worst case” projection with half a million deaths (the figures vary depending on assumptions about the virus’s reproduction rate) to a more stringent model where four NPIs (public school closures, case isolation, home quarantine, and social distancing) are simultaneously enacted. The results are depicted below.
(Source: Imperial College Report #9, March 16, 2020)
Note that the UK enacted policies based on all four measures recommended by the March 16th report, as well as an even more stringently enforced general lockdown on three separate occasions. After one year of following and expanding upon the Imperial College strategy, an unusual result appears in the data: not only have the UK’s numbers come up far short of Ferguson’s most alarmist scenario (depicted in the first column), but the UK has actually done much worse than the other NPI mitigation models in the ICL report.
As of the 1-year anniversary, the UK had a little over 125,000 confirmed Covid-19 deaths. By implication, the UK death toll has exceeded the mildest of the other three NPI scenarios from the ICL model (column 2) and blown past its heavier NPI recommendations (columns 3 and 4), even while operating under a more stringent set of lockdowns than ICL originally contemplated.
The implications are clear. While Ferguson wildly exaggerated the “worst case” scenario for the UK, he also severely overestimated the effectiveness of NPIs at controlling the pandemic.
By building its policy response around the Imperial College model, the UK government delivered the worst of both worlds. It imposed some of the most severe and long-lasting lockdowns in the world based on the premise that NPIs would work as Ferguson’s team predicted, and that such actions were needed to avert a catastrophe. Except the lockdowns did not work as intended, and the UK also ended up with an abnormally high death count compared to other countries – including locales that did not lock down, or that reopened earlier and for longer periods than the UK.
Why were the Ferguson/ICL predictions so far off base on both ends? The answer likely derives from two central flaws in their model design.
First, Ferguson adapted the model directly from a 2006 influenza pandemic model that he published in the journal Nature. As with the March 16th Covid report, this study aimed to predict the spread of a virus across the general population, subject to a suite of increasingly stringent NPI countermeasures. As the second-to-last paragraph of the study reveals though, it only modeled general population spread. In doing so, the authors acknowledged that “Lack of data prevent us from reliably modelling transmission in the important contexts of residential institutions (for example, care homes, prisons) and health care settings.”
With Covid-19 however, nursing homes have emerged as one of the greatest vulnerabilities in the pandemic. In many locales, nursing home deaths alone account for almost half of all Covid-19 fatalities despite housing only a tiny fraction of the population. While the latest nursing home figures for the UK are as of yet hard to come by, reports from last year suggest they are not only a large share of the country’s Covid-19 deaths but also severely undercounted in official records. Using a preliminary count from last year, the UK had one of the worst nursing home shielding ratios in Europe – a measure that compares a country’s death toll in its care facilities to the general population. The ICL projections likely missed this problem entirely due to a defect in the 2006 model it was built upon.
Second, Ferguson’s model severely overstated the effectiveness of NPIs at mitigating general population spread. Part of the appeal of the ICL report from last March came from its succinct portrayal of the available policy options and their claimed effects. The modelers presented political leaders with a menu of escalating measures to adopt with mathematical precision, each linked to an associated projection of its effectiveness at staving off the pandemic. All the politicians had to do was select from the menu and implement the prescribed course.
Except it wasn’t that simple in practice. ICL’s recommended NPI measures baked assumptions about their own effectiveness into the model. In reality, most of these assumptions had never been tested or even minimally quantified. As a key chart from the March 16th report illustrates, the supposed effect of each NPI was little more than a guesstimate – a set of nice, round numbers that purported to show the change in social interactions after its adoption.
A 2019 report by the World Health Organization (WHO) warned of the flimsy empirical basis for epidemiology models such as the one developed by ICL. “Simulation models provide a weak level of evidence,” the report noted, and lacked randomized controlled trials to test their assumptions. The same report designated mass quarantine measures – what we now know of as lockdowns – as “Not Recommended” due to lack of evidence for their effectiveness. Summarizing this literature, which included the same 2006 influenza model that Ferguson adapted to Covid-19, the WHO concluded: “Most of the currently available evidence on the effectiveness of quarantine on influenza control was drawn from simulation studies, which have a low strength of evidence.”
The UK’s experience under the ICL model therefore demonstrates not only Ferguson’s propensity toward wildly alarmist disease forecasting – it also illustrates the abject failure of lockdowns and related NPI measures to mitigate the pandemic. As a revealing point of comparison, the UK’s population-adjusted daily death toll under lockdowns has been consistently higher than no-lockdown Sweden for most of the pandemic, despite both countries following a nearly identical pattern of timing in both the first and second waves.
The relevant question, then, is not whether the UK failed to lock down stringently enough, but whether lockdowns offer any meaningful benefit whatsoever in mitigating the pandemic. A growing body of empirical data strongly suggests they do not.
The repeated failures of the Ferguson/ICL model point to a scientific error at the heart of the theory behind lockdowns and similar NPIs. They assume, without evidence, that their prescriptive approach is correct, and that it may be implemented by sheer will as one might achieve by clicking a check-box in a Sim City-style video game. After a year of real-time testing, it is now abundantly clear that this video game approach to pandemic management ranks among the most catastrophic public health policy failures in the last century.
Phil Magness is a Senior Research Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research. He is the author of numerous works on economic history, taxation, economic inequality, the history of slavery, and education policy in the United States.
Hancock Is Terrified That Under-50’s Will Refuse Covid Vaccine
By Richie Allen | March 18, 2021
It’s a bit of a mystery. Speaking from Downing Street last night, UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock said that the under-50’s would have to wait a bit longer for their covid vaccine. He blamed production issues. The manufacturers said there are no issues. What’s going on?
A leaked letter suggested that the NHS is expecting a significant reduction in supply for a month from March 29. The letter said that local vaccination centres have been told not to make any new bookings from the end of this month.
This means that the under-50’s will have to wait until at least May, to get their first dose. Hancock said the country was still “on track” to hit vaccination targets to take England out of lockdown.
A fall in provision from AstraZeneca is being blamed for the shortage. Last night, the firm moved quickly to refute the claim. The company insisted that its UK supply chain was not experiencing disruption.
A spokesman said: “Our UK domestic supply chain is not experiencing any disruption and there is no impact on our delivery schedule.” Someone is lying.
I bet the government is anticipating widespread refusal among the under-50’s. I’ve been speculating for some time now, that the roll-out hasn’t been as successful as the government would have us believe.
I believe that they were largely successful in persuading OAP’s to have a jab, but began running into problems as they moved down the age groups.
Younger people are far more likely to refuse the vaccine or choose to wait and see if it causes harm. And it is causing harm. Unless you’ve been on Planet Mars for the last fortnight, you’ll have heard of the blood clotting.
The majority of under-50’s have Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts. They’ll be aware of reports that the vaccines are killing people, although it’s not known on what scale. But it’s happening.
And they’ll also be aware that 200,000 NHS workers have indicated that they will decline the jab. That was covered by mainstream media. Taking all this into account, my guess is that Matt Hancock is lying when he says that “supply is bumpy.”
He’s terrified that us under-50’s won’t be rolling up our sleeves. And why would we? Why would we need an experimental drug for an illness that most of us have never had, or may have had and didn’t even know about it?
I believe the government has bought itself a month, to try and figure out what to do. If it opens the door to booking under-50’s for their jabs and there is widespread refusal as I’ve suggested, the media will cover it, even if reluctantly.
Expect the dangling of more carrots in the weeks to come. We’ll hear a lot of talk about holidays and outdoor music festivals tied in with green passports or whatever name they give them. That’s their ace card.
At some stage though, they’ll have to go for it and open the doors to the young. What happens next will be fascinating.
Are Doctors Failing To Record Bad Reactions To Covid Jabs?
Conservative Woman | March 16, 2021
This article was written by ‘a frontline NHS consultant’.
I HAVE just logged on to enter a patient with a fatal flare-up of malignant melanoma (originally diagnosed and surgically excised in 2014) manifesting as a suspected stroke with unilateral arm paralysis at the end of February, exactly one month after the patient’s first dose of the AstraZeneca coronavirus jab. This is the sixth Yellow Card report I have made in a month.
It seems entirely plausible to me, from a biological perspective, that natural tumour-suppressing activity of our lymphatic cells (NK cells and various classes of T Cell) could be temporarily suppressed by the surge of spike protein induced by the vaccine. As this is a new class of drug, which was rushed to market at breakneck speed, it is my clinical instinct that we should err on the side of over-caution as regards reporting observational anomalies or potential adverse reactions. With this week’s news that Denmark and other countries have suspended the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, this approach seems even more sensible.
As a doctor with more than three decades of experience, this observational practice defines a long tradition of proper science.
But just how accurate and usable is the adverse event Yellow Card reporting system in the UK? Given the highly experimental nature of the Covid-19 vaccine, was due diligence given to making sure those rolling it out, and indeed those receiving it, were well versed in this system of reporting?
I have noticed that young doctors I work with are rather perversely trained not to respond to their instincts and clinical observations. The strict and immovable hierarchy within the NHS quickly instructs them that in this environment, the squeaky wheel definitely does not get the grease. It may find itself rolled out of the door, never to return. Working in a sector with only one potential employer, viz the NHS, this is not a risk many young medics would be prepared to take.
Using the MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) reporting system for adverse effects following the vaccine is a shockingly unlikely thing to happen among hospital doctors where I work. From many discussions I have had over the years, I know that this is also the case in various hospitals where colleagues work. None have had any training in using the online system and many seem surprised to learn of its existence.
The net result is that many adverse events do not get reported by medics. Most are not even noticed. There is no tradition of timelining the appearance of a problem and remarking any possible connection to the vaccine. Because the mantra ‘vaccines are safe’ is so embedded, both societally and medically, most in the medical fraternity struggle to envisage that a vaccine could have deleterious effects past the first 15 minutes of being injected. There is a collective spirit of self-censorship with respect to the Covid-jabs in particular. It is disquieting to say the least.
Members of the public, as well as healthcare professionals, are free to lodge a Yellow Card event at this site. Has every person getting the jab received clear instructions on how to do this? Did every individual really receive the information necessary to give informed consent? In a world where patient safety was the primary objective, this would be a bare minimum for an entirely novel medical product, particularly when being rolled out to millions of people at once. Were care home managers educated on the reporting system and trained in observing changes and possible symptoms? From enquiries made to care home managers, it seems this did not happen.
It is also possible to lodge an event on behalf of a relative you care for, or for an elderly relative who cannot perhaps navigate the labyrinthine online reporting system. When making the report, you can register so that any future reporting you do may be accessible by putting in your email and password to bring up the reporting system. However, you may lodge a report without doing this.
The online form is poorly designed. I know numerous computer-literate clinical colleagues who find it time-consuming and cumbersome. For something as simple as a headache one has to choose from 50 different types of headache. For insulin, 20 types. Such systems need to be simple and slick to avoid further unnecessary blocks for busy medics.
The issues cited above are reflected in the fact that adverse effects have been reported for only 0.3 per cent of Pfizer vaccinations and 0.5 per cent of AstraZeneca vaccinations. In their phase 1 and 2 trials, adverse events were reported at least 100 times more often (Pfizer 84 per cent pain, 63 per cent fatigue; AstraZeneca 50 per cent moderate symptoms). With these kind of percentages slipping through the cracks, it seems that the entire reporting system is in dire need of an overhaul.
Surprise, Surprise – MP’s and Scientific Advisors are heavily invested in Vaccine Industry
The Daily Expose | March 8, 2021
The UK Government is on a mission to vaccinate the entire population of the UK with an experimental gene therapy. Their supposed reasoning is to protect us all against a “deadly” virus. But that just isn’t the case, the resulting disease statistically kills only 0.2% of those it infects and the majority of those deaths are aged over 85 and have underlying health conditions.
So the question remains, ‘Why does the Government and it’s scientific advisors so desperately want to vaccinate every man, woman and child in the United Kingdom?’.
Well The Daily Expose investigated by following the money, and this is what we found…
In April 2020, the ‘Chief Scientific Advisor’ to the UK Government – Sir Patrick Vallance was placed in charge of the new ‘Vaccine Taskforce’. The aim of this taskforce was to “drive forward, expedite and co-ordinate efforts to research and then produce a coronavirus vaccine.”
So isn’t it interesting how by July 2020 the UK Government signed a contract with GlaxoSmithKline to secure 60 million doses of an untested, experimental “vaccine” treatment that was still being developed to combat SARS-CoV-2? Interesting because the chief scientific advisor and head of the ‘Vaccine Taskforce’ has £600,000 worth of shares in the pharmaceutical giant, GlaxoSmithKline.
Sir Patrick, who has had huge influence in dictating the Government’s response to the alleged SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, has over 43,111 shares in the company. But the conflict of interest doesn’t end there. Sir Patrick Vallance used to be the president of GlaxoSmithKline.
He joined the company in May 2006 as ‘Head of Drug Discovery’, going on to become Senior Vice President of Medicines Discovery and Development, before finally becoming President in 2006.
When the pompous Health Secretary, Matt Hancock found out about this he said “Well, I didn’t know about it until I read it in the newspapers,”. Pushed on whether he thought he should have been informed as Health Secretary, he replied: “No, not particularly”.
Sir Patrick Vallance
Just recently, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer for England – Jonathan Van Tam said that it was “perfectly possible” a “Covid” vaccine could be licensed for children by the end of the year. Stating that he believes “most of the major manufacturers are beginning to turn their attention “to licensing vaccines for under-18’s”.
But we’ve been repeatedly told that children are at no risk to the Covid-19 disease, so why on earth do we need to vaccinate them?
Well Professor Van Tam’s career history can possibly clarify why he is so eager to see children vaccinated against a disease they supposedly don’t suffer from.
Van Tam joined the pharmaceutical industry in 1997 as an associate director at SmithKline Beecham. He then went on to become Head of Medical Affairs at Roche in April 2001, before joining Aventis Pasteur MSD in February 2002 as the UK medical director.
In 2010 he became an advisor to the World Health Organisation, during the over exaggerated H5N1 influenza pandemic. His advice was to roll out a mass vaccination programme to combat the H5N1 influenza virus, and that advice was followed. But guess who manufactured the H5N1 influenza vaccines and made billions of pounds? SmithKline Beecham and Roche, two pharmaceutical giants that Van Tam worked for.
So do you think Van Tam wants to vaccinate children for the good of their health? Against a disease we’ve been told they don’t suffer from. Or do you think he wants to vaccinate children in order to make billions for the companies he serves?
Professor Jonathan Van Tam
That’s two of the main influencers on UK Government policy so far who have major ties to the pharmaceutical giants, with both Vallance and Van Tam having ties to GlaxoSmithKline, and Van Tam also have ties to pharmaceutical company ‘Roche’. Well there’s another man who has had great influence on the Government’s “Covid” strategy, and he also has major shares in ‘Roche’.
His name is Sir John Irving Bell, and he is a Canadian immunologist and geneticist. Sir Bell also had a role in the ‘Vaccine Taskforce’ alongside Sir Patrick, but there’s another role he held that is of particular interest to our investigation.
Sir John Irving Bell has worked as an adviser to the Department of Health and Social Care since 2017, and headed the ‘National Covid Testing Scientific Advisor Panel. He also chaired the Government’s new test approvals group, which assesses virus diagnostic tests. One of the tests assessed and approved, back in May 2020, was an antibody test. The manufacturer of this antibody test being the pharmaceutical giant ‘Roche’. So it must just be a coincidence that Professor Van Tam has ties to the firm, and Sir John Irving Bell has shares amounting to £773,000 in Roche?
£13.5 million of the British taxpayer’s money was spent on these antibody tests but Public Health England later declared they were “unreliable”.
Sir John Irving Bell
Which brings us to the elected members of parliament who are voted in to serve the people of the United Kingdom. The one’s who have had the final say on the policy to combat the alleged Covid-19 pandemic.
The Health Secretary – Matt Hancock received a £10,000 donation for his leadership campaign in 2019 from Wol Kolade, the head of Livingbridge private equity firm. This firm owns Vanguard Healthcare, which provides mobile facilities such as operating theaters and wards. We wonder if Vanguard had anything to do with the Nightingale hospitals that were erected, never used and dismantled at a cost of half-a-billion pounds?
Mr Hancock has also awarded a contract to the tune of £5.5 million of taxpayer’s money to a family friend for the provision of mobile testing units. The contract was awarded to EMS Healthcare, which is run by an Iain Johnston – the former business partner of Shirley and Robert Carter, Hancock’s mother and stepfather.
Matt Hancock pictured with Wendy Maisey
Education secretary Gavin Williamson received £3000 from St Philips Care Caledonia Ltd in November 2019, while Waveney MP Peter Aldous registered a donation of £2000 to the General Election Fighting Fund from Althea Healthcare Properties.
Mike Freer, MP for Finchley and Golders Green, registered a £10,000 donation in January from Advinia Health Care, which operates care homes.
Steve Brine , MP for Winchester, who is listed as an event speaker for Sigma pharmaceuticals company, receiving £1667 a month for up to 16 hours of “speeches, networking and Q&A sessions”. He is also a strategic adviser to Remedium Partners, a healthcare recruitment firm, working on an “ad-hoc basis” at a rate of £800 a day. Brine states in the register he consulted ACoBA about both of the appointments.
Finally we come to the Vaccine Deployment Minister, Nadhim Zahawi. Mr Zahawi’s wife, Lana Saib is the owner and director of ‘Warren Medical Limited’, which was incorporated under the name ‘Zahawi Warren Limited’ on the 10th June 2020. The company has another two directors named Ahmad Shanshal and Jaafar Shanshal – who are the sons of Nadhim Zahawi. It is not clear what this newly formed company currently does in the healthcare sector but we’re sure the vaccine roll out will have something to do with it.
Nadhim Zawahi
We could go on forever as the corruption doesn’t end there. But perhaps we’ll save Professors Neil Ferguson and Chris Whitty for another day.
The question was ‘Why does the Government and it’s scientific advisors so desperately want to vaccinate every man, woman and child in the United Kingdom?‘.
We think we’ve just answered it for you.
The AstraZeneca Vaccine Is NOT Safe. None Of Them Are.
By Richie Allen | March 15, 2021
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon have both declared that the AstraZeneca coronavirus jab is “safe” and “working well.” Johnson and Sturgeon are liars. Both of them have blood on their hands.
Speaking this lunchtime, Johnson urged people to “keep coming forward” to have their vaccine despite significant and growing evidence that the AstraZeneca jab is causing serious harm.
Today, Germany joined Ireland, The Netherlands, Denmark, Bulgaria, Norway, Italy, Estonia, Luxembourg and Iceland in suspending the AZ vaccine. Evidence is emerging that it is causing blood clotting and heart failure in recipients.
Bulgarian Health Minister Kostadin Angelov said that a 57 year-old woman died of heart failure less than a day after having the AZ jab.
Italy began a new lockdown today and German ICU doctors are warning that the country needs to return to lockdown because of a rise in cases and hospitalisations.
I don’t believe them. I think they are using the threat of more lockdowns to pressurise the public into taking the vaccines. I speculated weeks ago, that governments had already encountered resistance and that uptake was slowing down as the jabs were being offered to younger age groups.
News that the vaccines are killing people will do nothing to convince the doubters. The suits at AZ and Pfizer have told their lackeys in Academia to get on TV and warn of more lockdowns unless uptake is close to 90 per cent.
All of these vaccines have already proven to be potentially deadly. Tens of thousands of injuries have been reported through the UK government’s yellow card reporting system.
VAERS, the US monitoring system for vaccine injuries has been similarly overwhelmed. However, you may not know this, because the media has been told not to breathe a word of it.
Video evidence of ‘massacre’ by UK special forces in Afghanistan mysteriously VANISHES
RT | March 14, 2021
Video allegedly showing a “rogue” SAS unit committing war crimes in Afghanistan has supposedly disappeared, as an investigation into the squad’s alleged “massacres” has been plagued by missing evidence and silence from witnesses.
Saifullah Yar was just 19 when his family were shot dead in an SAS raid on their Afghan village in 2011. When British military investigators flew to Kabul in 2017 to investigate the raid, he told them he was handcuffed and led away from his father, brother and two male cousins. He heard two sustained bursts of gunfire, and when the Brits departed, his relatives were dead, their bodies riddled with bullets.
Video footage of the raid was apparently captured by US air support overhead, but according to a new Sunday Times report, American authorities mysteriously lost the footage, and were unable to provide it to a British court, where Saifullah has brought a judicial review into the fatal raid.
The mysterious disappearance isn’t the first time that key evidence from the raid has gone missing, or been intentionally hidden. The Royal MIlitary Police (RMP) investigators’ 2017 visit to Kabul was one of their last tasks in a three-and-a-half year probe into allegations of war crimes against the SAS unit, during which they found that the British operators doctored mission reports to implicate Afghan special forces in similar killings, dozens of which took place between 2011 and 2013.
The investigators interviewed 42 soldiers who said they were unable to remember the mission. Court documents reported on by the Times stated that a judge termed this a case of “collective amnesia.” The weapons used in the raid on Saifullah’s village were destroyed the same year the RMP opened its investigation.
However, evidence against the SAS troops has piled up. Investigators found that British 5.56mm bullets, rather than the 7.62mm rounds used by the Afghan commandos, were used to kill the victims. Additionally, they examined reports that weapons were planted on the bodies of these victims, in order to justify the killings later.
The reports that followed the 2011 raid on Saifullah’s village stated that his family were killed when they reached for weapons as the SAS searched their property. These reports were met with skepticism by senior commanders, who in a chain of emails seen by the British court, described the raid as “the latest massacre,” and expressed disbelief at the idea of four overpowered prisoners reaching for hidden grenades and rifles during the raid.
“And finally they shot a guy who was hiding in a bush who had a grenade in his hands. You couldn’t MAKE IT UP!,” one senior noncommissioned officer wrote.
The British government closed down the investigation in late 2017 without prosecuting a single case. The same year, another wide-ranging investigation into alleged war crimes, the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT), was shut down, also without prosecuting a case.
With the SAS typically exempt from parliamentary oversight, the courts are now Saifullah’s best hope of finding justice. “Our client is seeking a fresh investigation into the deaths of his loved ones and he wants to find out whether their deaths were part of a pattern of unlawful killings of Afghan civilians,” his lawyer, Tessa Gregory, told the Sunday Times.
Education Secretary Sued Over “Unlawful” Facemask Guidance
By Richie Allen | March 13, 2021
The Telegraph is reporting this morning that Education Secretary Gavin Williamson is facing a legal challenge on the guidance that children should wear face coverings in classes.
Lawyers acting for the National Deaf Children’s Society (NDCS) have sent a Letter Before Action to Williamson claiming that the guidance is unlawful and must be changed.
According to the The Telegraph :
Gavin Williamson has been sent a Letter before Action by lawyers acting for the National Deaf Children’s Society (NDCS) who say the guidance is “unlawful” and must be urgently changed.
It comes amid rising pressure on the Government over its latest guidance on masks, which says they should be worn by secondary school pupils in lessons as well as anywhere indoors at school where it is not possible to socially distance.
The NDCS say that face masks create a “wholly avoidable additional barrier” to learning and social interaction for deaf children who need to be able to see the faces of their peers and teachers in order to lip read.
Last Autumn, when asked about facemasks in classrooms, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said; “You can’t teach with face coverings and you can’t expect people to learn with face coverings.” Johnson didn’t change his mind. The fact is, he’s not in charge. SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) is running the show.
A few dozen scientists, most of whom have strong ties to Bill Gates and his subsidiaries The WHO, GAVI and CEPI, are calling the shots now. It was a bloodless coup and it happened almost a year ago to the day. SAGE mission is to vaccinate every man woman and child in the country.
Covid restrictions and guidelines were never about keeping people safe. They were designed to pressure us into taking big pharma’s experimental mRNA medicine. The Pandemic is a hoax. That should be apparent to everyone now.
UK Labour candidate trained with Israeli army: Report
Izzy Lenga helped to oust former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn
Press TV – March 13, 2021
A British Labour Party candidate for the party’s this year election has reportedly been trained with the Israeli military forces.
Izzy Lenga, an officer in the Jewish Labour Movement, is running for the party’s new National Women’s Committee, as a right-wing candidate.
The movement worked for years to oust the party’s former leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Corbyn, well known for his support of the Palestinian cause, has repeatedly been described by pro-Israeli lobbies in Britain as a threat to the life of Jews in the country.
The US-based Electronic Intifada — an online publication covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — released a photo of her wearing an Israeli army uniform, wrapped in an Israeli flag and carrying an assault rifle.
Lenga once “proudly” displayed the photo on social media networks, said the report.
Citing Israeli experts Dena Shunra and Daniel Shunra, the website said that the uniform and epaulets seen in the photo suggest that Lenga took part in Marva, a paramilitary course overseen by the Israeli army.
The Marva program provides weapons and training, Zionist political indoctrination and visits to military bases.
It also recruits Jewish people aged 18-25, from around the world, offering them incentives to become Israeli settlers, in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Many participants in the course have stayed in Israel, claiming citizenship and joining the military.
In 2015, Lenga became an officer with the campus society in Birmingham, which is affiliated to the Union of Jewish Students (UJS).
At the same time, she was also elected to the leadership committee of the UJS.
Israel has stepped up its settlement expansion in the occupied territories in defiance of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334.
The UN Security Council has condemned Israel’s settlement activities in the occupied territories in several resolutions.
More than 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem al-Quds.
Palestinians want the West Bank as part of a future independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem al-Quds as its capital.
Canada refusing to prosecute Israeli soldier
In a related development, a rights organization called on Canada to take action against Israeli military over a shooting incident in 2015.
Photographer Rehab Nazzal was shot while photographing by a “skunk” truck, a non-lethal weapon used by Israeli troops that sprays chemicals with a strong sewage smell for crowd control.
No actions have been taken by Canada “to protest this incident,” Canadians for Justice and Peace said in a tweet earlier this week.
“This callous inaction is shocking and must be corrected,” it added.
Nazzal said at the time of the incident that she “would take shelter every few meters to avoid the tear gas and the ‘Skunk’ army truck that was spraying sewage chemical liquid on the protesters and the surrounding neighborhoods.”
“When I stopped by a corner of one of the shops, and while taking some photographs, I was suddenly shot in the leg,” she said.
“The last image I photographed shows a sniper hiding on the ground near the entrance to one of the city’s hotels,” said Nazzal who was later recovered from the bullet wound.
BBC secrets: Leaked files show UK state media engaged in anti-Moscow information warfare ops in E. Europe
By Kit Klarenberg RT | March 11, 2021
New documents raise serious questions about how well-deserved British state broadcaster BBC’s ‘unimpeachable’ reputation is, and also what impact its relationship with the UK government has on its supposedly ‘impartial’ output.
Within a tranche of secret UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) papers, recently leaked by hacktivist collective Anonymous, are files indicating that BBC Media Action (BBCMA) – the outlets ‘charitable’ arm – plays a central role in Whitehall-funded and directed psyops initiatives targeted at Russia.
American journalist Max Blumenthal has comprehensively exposed how, at the FCDO’s behest, BBCMA covertly cultivated Russian journalists, established influence networks within and outside Russia, and promoted pro-Whitehall, anti-Moscow propaganda in Russian-speaking areas.
However, the newly released files reveal BBCMA also offered to lead a dedicated FCDO program, named ‘Independent Media in Eastern Partnership Countries’ and targeted at Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. This endeavor forms part of a wider £100 million ($138.9 million) effort waged by London to demonize, destabilize and isolate Russia, at home and abroad.
A Whitehall tender indicates that under the auspices of the project, set to cost a staggering £9 million ($12.5 million) from 2018 to 2021, participating contractors are charged with crafting “innovative… media interventions” targeting individuals throughout the region, via “radio, independent social media channels, and traditional outlets.”
Further detail was offered by FCDO Counter Disinformation & Media Development (CDMD) chief Andy Pryce at a June 2018 meeting with prospective suppliers.
He made it clear that the effort’s ultimate goal was to “weaken the Russian state’s influence,” via the co-option of journalists and media organizations in target countries via funding, training, and surreptitious production of anti-Russian, pro-Western content. “Girls on HBO… but in Ukraine” was, bizarrely, one suggested example of such activity.
In response, BBCMA submitted extensive proposals, in conjunction with Thomson Reuters Foundation (TRF), the global newswire’s “non-profit” wing, and since-collapsed veteran FCDO contractor Aktis Strategy.
The project was to be managed and coordinated directly by BBCMA from BBC Broadcasting House headquarters in London, with local support provided by Reuters newswire offices in Kiev and Tbilisi, and Ukraine’s Independent Association of Broadcasters.
A dedicated board, comprised of representatives of the contractors involved, the FCDO’s CDMD program, and British embassies in the target countries, would also meet privately every quarter to discuss the operation’s progress. Publicly, Whitehall’s funding and direction of the vast project was intended to be completely hidden.
The consortium boasted of having an existing “strong profile” in Eastern Partnership countries, and conducting “broad consultations” with a number of major news outlets, media organizations and journalists in the region in advance of its pitch.
For example, the National Public Broadcasting Company of Ukraine (UA:PBC) had been approached and offered “essential support,” aimed at “improving its existing programs” and “developing new and innovative formats for factual and non-news programs.”
BBCMA was moreover said to be “already” working on building the capacity of Kiev-based Hromadske TV, and wished to use the FCDO program to extend this assistance to “co-productions” and “building support to Hromadske Radio.”
Launched with initial funding from the American and Dutch embassies in Ukraine, Hromadske began broadcasting in November 2013 on the very day Viktor Yanukovich’s administration suspended preparations for the signing of an association agreement with the European Union, and went on to extensively cover the resultant Euromaidan protests, which eventually unseated the government the next year.
It subsequently received support from Pierre Omidyar, billionaire founder of The Intercept, who bankrolled a number of opposition groups in the country prior to the coup. In July 2014, Hromadske anchor Danylo Yanevsky abruptly terminated an interview with a Human Rights Watch representative after she consistently refused to blame Russia for civilian casualties in the Donbas conflict, despite his repeated demands.
Beyond dedicated news platforms, the consortium also pledged to enlist “local” and “hyperlocal” media outlets, as well as “freelancer journalists,” bloggers and “vloggers” for its information warfare efforts.
BBCMA argued “journalism education” locally would be a “long-term investment” – in other words, the identification, cultivation, and grooming of a network of reporters in the countries who could be relied upon to take the Whitehall line in future.
As such, the organization sought to establish a journalism training center in Gagauzia, Moldova in collaboration with NGO Media birlii – Uniunia. The autonomous region, bordered by Ukraine’s Odessa Oblast, was said to be home to “six TV companies, four radio stations, six newspapers and five web portals” potentially ripe for influence and infiltration by BBCMA – and in turn, the FCDO.
In Georgia, BBCMA visited the offices of Adjara TV “to discuss training priorities and possible co-productions.” The station was reportedly interested in developing “youth programming,” which represented “a gap in the market” in the country.
In June 2020, Georgia’s Coalition for Media Advocacy slammed Adjara for its “persecution” of “outspoken journalists expressing dissenting opinions,” after it fired newsroom chief Shorena Glonti.
Strikingly, the Coalition is funded by US regime-change agency, the National Endowment for Democracy, which supports numerous anti-Moscow initiatives worldwide. Perhaps Glonti had been too well-trained in “weakening the Russian state” for the broadcaster’s liking.
The consortium furthermore proposed to tutor and support “independent” online Georgian news outlets, including Batumelebi, iFact, Liberali, Monitor, Netgazeti, and Reginfo.
Estonia’s Digital Communications Network – financed by the US State Department – would be central to these efforts, offering lessons in “building online audiences, innovative business models and reaching out to breakaway regions susceptible to Kremlin narratives.”
The importance of “target audiences in breakaway regions” is outlined in another file, which explicitly states that the consortium would work closely with “independent outlets in proximity of non-government-controlled areas of Donbas in Ukraine, Transnistria in Moldova and Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia.”
This undertaking aimed to counter the output of “separatist” media, and thus manipulate “hard-to-reach audiences,” which was “critical to achieving the project’s objectives.”
Any and all support covertly provided under the program was to be thoroughly intimate indeed, with “mentors” from the consortium “embedded” in target organizations, in order to provide “bespoke support across editorial, production and wider management systems and processes as well as on the co-production of content.”
These “mentors” include current and former BBC journalists.
“Our ability to recruit talented and experienced BBC staff is a great asset which will be harnessed for this initiative,” BBCMA promised.
These individuals may have been central to program efforts, if BBCMA’s pitch to the FCDO was accepted. For instance, UA:PBC was said to be “very interested” in receiving help from BBCMA to develop a “new debate show” and “discussion programming” to “enable audiences to think critically about the process and choices,” “counter disinformation” and “dispel rumors.”
Lofty objectives indeed, although commitments to nurturing analytical skills, thinking and debunking propaganda ring rather hollow when one considers the station’s output was perceived to be so overwhelmingly biased in favor of the government, opposition candidate Volodymyr Zelensky boycotted the channel’s official election debate during the 2019 presidential election.
BBCMA also proposed to establish an “independent” news platform in Ukraine, “timed for the run up to the 2019 election,” which would publish “vetted news content” freely syndicated to local and national media.
If the approach in Kiev was “successful,” the consortium would replicate the exercise in Georgia for the country’s 2020 election. Strikingly, the proposal brags of TRF’s experience establishing such platforms elsewhere, for example “the award-winning Aswat Masriya” in Egypt.
Other leaked files indicate the endeavor, founded after the 2011 revolution in Cairo, was secretly funded by the FCDO to the tune of £2 million ($2.8 million) over six years, and run out of Reuters’ Egyptian offices.
Over its lifespan, Aswat Masriya “became Egypt’s leading independent local media organization” and one of the most-visited websites in the country, providing news in English and Arabic, which was syndicated widely the world over. Its true, clandestine purpose seems to have been granting London a degree of narrative control over news coverage as events unfolded in the country, during its difficult and ultimately ill-fated transition to democracy.
That BBCMA likewise intended to use news coverage to influence politics in Eastern Partnership countries is amply underlined in the newly leaked files, with the organization pledging to “encourage” local news outlets to meet with “local stakeholders,” including lawmakers and community leaders, in order to “cement the media as a key governance actor.”
The organization furthermore sought to “foster a debate” in target nations, by producing wide-ranging analysis of the media environment therein. Its “long track record” of comparable efforts in “diverse” countries, including those “experiencing Arab uprisings,” had allegedly “shifted government policy.”
One objective of these lobbying efforts was achieving “a more enabling operating environment” for “independent” media in the target countries – i.e. ensuring regulations in the region were suitably conducive to and protective of the FCDO’s secret army of information warfare agents, to allow them to prosper for the duration of the consortium’s three-year offensive, and “post intervention.”
It’s not yet clear if BBCMA was successful in its pitch, and if so, which BBC journalists contributed to the program and as a result are implicated directly in cloak-and-dagger attempts to shape politics and perceptions in Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine for London’s benefit.
It’s also unknown whether their commitment to fulfilling the FCDO’s objective of undermining Moscow, and furthering Whitehall’s interests, truly ends when they return to their day jobs as “objective,” “neutral” purveyors of news.
As BBCMA boasts in its pitch, the BBC is “well-known and highly regarded” in the Eastern Partnership countries, and provides “millions of viewers, listeners and online users in the region with world-class news on a daily basis.” At the very least, the leaked files make clear that neither the British state broadcaster, nor its FCDO paymasters, has any qualms about exploiting that standing and perceived credibility for malign ends.
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.
Doctors & Scientists Write to European Medicines Agency Warning of COVID-19 Vaccine Dangers
Press release from the Doctors for Covid Ethics campaign
A group of scientists and doctors has today issued an open letter calling on the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to answer urgent safety questions regarding COVID-19 vaccines, or withdraw the vaccines’ authorisation.
The letter describes serious potential consequences of COVID-19 vaccine technology, warning of possible autoimmune reactions, blood clotting abnormalities, stroke and internal bleeding, “including in the brain, spinal cord and heart”.
The authors request evidence that each medical danger outlined “was excluded in pre-clinical animal models with all three vaccines prior to their approval for use in humans by the EMA.”
“Should all such evidence not be available”, the authors write, “we demand that approval for use of the gene-based vaccines be withdrawn until all the above issues have been properly addressed by the exercise of due diligence by the EMA.”
The letter is addressed to Emer Cooke, Executive Director of the EMA, and was sent on Monday 1 March 2021. The letter was copied to the President of the Council of Europe and the President of the European Commission.
It states:
We are supportive in principle of the use of new medical interventions.” However, “there are serious concerns, including but not confined to those outlined above, that the approval of the COVID-19 vaccines by the EMA was premature and reckless, and that the administration of the vaccines constituted and still does constitute ‘human experimentation’, which was and still is in violation of the Nuremberg Code.”
You can read the full letter here.
In a public statement the group said:
No sooner did we deliver our letter than the Norwegian Medicines Agency warned that COVID-19 vaccines may be too risky for use in the frail elderly, the very group these vaccines are designed to protect. We would add that, by virtue of the mechanisms of action of the vaccines, to stimulate the production of spike protein, which has adverse pathophysiological properties, there may also be vulnerable people who are not old and already ill.
New data shows that vaccine side effects are three times as common in those who have previously been infected with coronavirus, for example. None of the vaccines have undergone clinical testing for more than a few months, which is simply too short for establishing safety and efficacy.
Therefore, as a starting point, we believe it is important to enumerate and evaluate all deaths which have occurred within 28 days of vaccination, and to compare the clinical pictures with those who have not been vaccinated.
More broadly, with respect to the development of COVID-19 vaccines, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has stated in their Resolution 2361, on 27th January 2021, that member states must ensure all COVID-19 vaccines are supported by high quality trials that are sound and conducted in an ethical manner.
EMA officials, and other regulatory bodies in EU countries, are bound by these criteria. They should be made aware that they may be violating Resolution 2361 by applying medical products still in phase 3 studies.
Under Resolution 2361, member states must also inform citizens that vaccination is NOT mandatory and ensure that no one is politically, socially, or otherwise pressured to become vaccinated. States are further required to ensure that no one is discriminated against for not receiving the vaccine.
The letter comes as a petition against UK Government plans for vaccine passports passed 270,000 signatures, more than double that required to compel consideration for debate by MPs. The petition will be debated in the UK Parliament on 15th March 2021.
For comment contact Professor Sucharit Bhakdi MD, or Associate Professor Michael Palmer MD
Doctors and scientists can sign the open letter by sending their name, qualifications, areas of expertise and country of practice to: Doctors4CovidEthics@protonmail.com.
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From the Archives
Jewish Guilt is the Discourse of The Goyim
By Gilad Atzmon | April 24, 2018
For quite some time the British have accepted that British Jewish organizations have hijacked the political discourse. As has happened in other Western countries, the British political establishment has engaged is a relentless rant against antisemitsm. Sometime the focus drifts for a day or two. An alleged ‘Russian nerve gas attack’ provided a 48 hour pause. Occasionally we bomb Arabs in the name of ‘human intervention’ only to realize a day or two later that we have, once again, followed a premeditated foreign agenda. But, somehow, we always return to the antisemitism debate, as if our media and politicians are a herd of flies gravitating to a pile of poop. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- BEN-GVIR: “ALL OF LEBANON MUST BURN” — w/ Mouin Rabbani
- There Are No Budget Constraints In New York City: “Coastal Resiliency” Edition
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- Citizens Around the World Demand Israel’s Expulsion From the United Nations
- ‘Israel not party to US-Iran talks, will continue full operations in Lebanon,’ Israeli far-right minister says
- Two killed in brazen Israeli ceasefire violation in southern Lebanon
- Which Country Is the Big Loser from the Ramadan War?
- Israeli Intel Whistleblower: Israel Ended Clinton Iran Deal With Epstein Blackmail
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- UN: Israel Continues to Commit Genocide and Other Atrocity Crimes by Deliberately Targeting Palestinian Children
- Bari Weiss, Free-Speech Fraud & Zionism Promoter, Would Rather Deport Than Debate
- ‘Doctor of the Poor’: Israeli Occupation Arrests Prominent Palestinian Physician
- Search for Your Church (and see if it has been targeted by the Israeli gov’t)
- Mark Levin Flying to Israel as Netanyahu Reportedly Seeks to ‘Leverage’ Levin to Trash Trump’s Iran Deal
- Watch: Zionist Brags about Israel’s Power to Get the World to Do What Israel Wants
- In Gaza, another senseless death on what should have been a joyous day – Daily Update
- The Republican & Democratic Politicians Trying to Scuttle Iran Agreement
- Israel’s continued targeting of civilians in Lebanon renders ceasefire meaningless
- U.S. intelligence warns Israel is likely to undermine Iran peace deal, officials say
- No Tricks Zone
- 3 New Studies Find Increasing Trends In Solar Radiation Since The 1980s – Easily Explaining Warming
- THE TRANSCEIVER PARADOX: Why Organoid Intelligence (OI) Could Become Our Ultimate Alien Predator
- German Wind Turbines Face Regulatory Shutdown Due To Excessive Noise
- New Study: Chile’s Relative Sea Level Was 3.2 Meters Higher Than Today During The Mid-Holocene
- Beyond The Pitch: Why FIFA’s World Cup Is One Of Humanity’s Best Investments
- Climate Alarmists Now Using Natural Phenomena To Support Their Claims
- New Study: Significant CO2 Fluxes From Non-Volcanic Sources Are Largely Neglected In Carbon Budgets
- Women Climate Scientists Being Harassed, Insulted By Skeptics, Claims Berkeley Earth Researcher
- Germany’s Longterm Spring Climate Data Show “No Climate Trend”
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Aletho News 