As the crisis involving the Israelis and Palestinians deepens after the October 7 Hamas attack, we might pause to examine how the state of Israel was created in the first place. At the current juncture, as World War III looms on the horizon, as massacres are currently being perpetrated by Israel against the civilian population of Gaza, with a death toll exceeding 9,000, of which over 4,000 are children, and as a Western armada is gathering in the eastern Mediterranean, it is befitting to review journalist Alison Weir’s book Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel. The book was published in 2014, is packed with often hard-to-access details, and is masterfully documented. Alison Weir is also head of a group she has founded: If Americans Knew.
Alison Weir’s book is crucially important in considering ways to gain a broader perspective in order to defuse the situation. It is also of keen interest with respect to the larger potential conflict, where U.S. political leaders are again trotting out the phrase, “Axis of Evil,” this time to describe the nations of Russia, China, and Iran. (Sometimes North Korea is tossed in for good measure.) It’s Iran, of course, that U.S. leaders are identifying as an alleged sponsor of the resistance groups in and around Palestine, including Hamas.
Following are what I view as the main points from Alison Weir’s book. My own interspersed editorial comments are in italics. Page numbers are given in parentheses only for quotations from the book.
Origin of Zionism in the U.S.Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel begins by explaining that support for Zionism, defined as the desire for creation of a Jewish national state somewhere in the world, goes back in U.S. history to the late 1880s, around the time that the Zionist Movement was becoming prominent in Europe. By the 1910s, there were thousands of U.S. adherents, though many Jews opposed Zionism as not in the interests of the Jewish people and certain to result in antagonism toward them. Probably a majority of Jews in the U.S. had never even heard of Zionism and/or were happy to have assimilated into American society. In fact, there was nothing that could even be viewed remotely as an “anti-Semitism problem” in the U.S. at this time.
Role of U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Louis Brandeis and Creation of the Parushim. Still, some very powerful people became Zionists, including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, whose main disciple was future Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. Brandeis formed a secret organization called the Parushim, whose sole purpose was to bring about the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. This Zionist organization required an oath that appeared to give life and death power over its sworn members.
“Parushim,” also spelled “Purushim,” is the Hebrew word from which the name “Pharisees” is derived, meaning “separatists.” From the Pharisees came Rabbinical Judaism and the idea that, “We should not assimilate or acculturate at all.” (prezi.com) I would note that Alison Weir’s book did not aim at giving an account of the deeper motivations of the Zionist movement, other than its claim to be a reaction to European “anti-Semitism.” For more depth, I would recommend a careful reading of the classic The Controversy of Zion by British journalist Douglas Reed (1895-1976).
Justice Louis Brandeis was close to Wall Street banker Jacob Schiff. Brandeis was also closely involved with the creation of the Federal Reserve System, as was Schiff, though Brandeis’s involvement in political issues was largely behind the scenes.
The Federal Reserve, I would add, was largely a project of the U.S. Money Trust and the British/European Rothschilds. The Rothschilds were also heavily involved in Zionism and in the creation and support of the Zionist state. The fact that Zionism was sponsored by some incredibly rich people might cause us to ask to what extent financial rewards played a role in the rapid conversion of many Jews and non-Jews to Zionism during this period. For information on creation of the Federal Reserve, see my own book, Our Country, Then and Now (Clarity Press, 2023).
Collaboration Between the Parushim and Great Britain. Justice Louis Brandeis’s Parushim worked closely with Zionists in Great Britain, including travel back and forth, to persuade the British government to designate Palestine as a future Jewish homeland. This was after Zionist leaders had rejected such locations as Kenya. Thus was created a “contract” between Britain and the Parushim that if the British would generate what became the Balfour Declaration, the U.S. Zionists would endeavor to assure U.S. entrance into World War I against Germany on the side of Britain. This contract was fulfilled by both parties, though, as in the U.S., many British Jews opposed Zionism for similar reasons—as a threat to Jewish assimilation.
The Balfour Declaration specified that it should be “clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” (p.97) At the time, non-Jewish communities made up 92 percent of the population of Palestine.
Zionism and the Failure to Make Peace with the Ottoman Empire. World War I begin in 1914. By 1915-1916, the Ottoman Empire, which was allied with Germany but not at war against the U.S., offered to make a separate peace with the U.S. The Ottomans had also offered to allow the Jews of Europe to live at peace anywhere in their empire. The U.S. sent a delegation to negotiate this separate peace, but Brandeis informed the British Zionists that the delegation was on its way. The British Zionists then send their leader, Chaim Weizmann, to intercept the U.S. delegation at Gibraltar, where he prevailed on it to call off the negotiations. The reason was that the British were going to lay claim to Palestine after the war as a homeland for the Jews, so they wanted to assure that Palestine was going to be available for British control. The British design was to break up the Ottoman Empire, not leave it intact through a separate U.S.-instigated peace.
Warnings Against the Zionist Project. Diplomats within the U.S. State Department both in Washington, D.C., and in the Middle East were aware of and warned against the Zionist project, arguing that a million Palestinians would be displaced or made virtual servants/slaves of the invaders.
World War I. In 1917 the U.S. entered the war on the side of Britain, per the Zionist agreement, and Germany was defeated, along with the Ottomans. Britain also signed a secret agreement with France by which it would get control of Palestine after the war. Control was implemented through the vehicle of a British Mandate approved by the League of Nations.
During this period, antagonism against Jews had begun to grow within U.S. society, partly in reaction to perceptions that Jews controlled the banks and other financial institutions. “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” had also appeared. While claimed to be a forgery from Czarist Russia, the Protocols received credence and publicity from Henry Ford and others.
Germany was aware that the Zionists had contributed to the defeat of Germany in WWI. This contributed to the anti-Jewish attitudes of Germans after the war and was a factor in the later Nazi anti-Jewish policies.
During WWI, the Parushim gave the FBI a list of Americans who were opponents to Zionism or the war. Many of these people were arrested and sent to prison. Through all of this, Brandeis was directing matters from behind the scenes. He was arguably the most powerful person in the U.S., but his political activities were secret or carried out through proxies.
At the end of WWI, President Woodrow Wilson sent a commission to Palestine to investigate the situation. Known as the King-Crane Commission, its report “recommended against the Zionist position of unlimited immigration of Jews to make Palestine a distinctly Jewish state.” The report stated that “the Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine,” that “armed force would be required to accomplish this,” and that “the project for making Palestine distinctly a Jewish commonwealth should be given up.” The report of the King-Crane Commission “was suppressed.” (p.25)
Zionism After World War I. Between the two world wars, a growing number of U.S. Zionists worked to further the project for the creation of Israel. In Germany, the Zionists supported the rise of the Nazis, as this would lead to German Jews wanting to emigrate to Palestine. In Iraq, where the Jewish leaders did not support Zionism, Iraqi Jews were attacked, even murdered, to force them to emigrate to Palestine. Without arousing the anxiety of Jews around the world that they were unsafe in their homelands, Zionist planners believed there would not be enough Jewish settlers to create a Zionist state and force the Palestinians out.
Opponents of Zionism in the U.S. diplomatic service were threatened with having their careers destroyed if they did not support the claims that Jews in foreign countries were suffering discrimination so should want to move to Palestine. The Zionists worked to limit immigration opportunities for Jews elsewhere than Palestine, including the U.S. The Zionists opposed measures by the British government to limit the number of Jews who could enter Palestine.
Collaboration Between the Zionists and Nazis. Building on work by author Hannah Arendt, Edwin Black wrote The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine. Click Here According to author Tom Segev, “Arendt stated that many Jews would have survived ‘had their leaders not helped the Nazis organize the concentration of Jews in the ghettos, their deportation to the east, and their transport to the death camps.’” (p.146) This was called the “Haavara Agreement.”
The famous 1930s Jewish boycott of German products may have been instigated by Zionists to promote anti-Jewish sentiment leading to more desire among Jews to emigrate to Palestine. Other Zionists made claims that persecuted Jews were prone to becoming revolutionary communists for the same purpose.
Zionist Activities Between the World Wars. In the U.S. during the 1920s and 1930s, Zionist leaders muffled talk of a Jewish state in Palestine and focused on creating new institutions there as altruistic enterprises. An example was Hebrew University, opening in Jerusalem in 1925. Zionist leaders complained that most U.S. Jews saw themselves first and foremost as American citizens. Organizations like the American Zionist Emergency Council and the United Jewish Appeal were founded to generate funding and support. Donations to the United Jewish Appeal in 1948 was four times that of the American Red Cross. Pro-Zionist publicity and lobbying efforts were unleashed across the U.S. Some Jews, like the American Council for Judaism, still opposed Zionism as inimical to real Jewish interests. The ACJ opposed the Zionists’ “anti-Semitic racialist lie that Jews the world over were a separate, national body.” (p.152)
Zionist advocacy in the U.S. had powerful political adherents. New York Congressman Emanuel Celler told President Harry Truman, “We’ll run you out of town,” if he did not support the program. Senator Jacob Javits said, “We’ll fight to the death and make a Jewish state in Palestine if it’s the last thing that we do.” (p.38) Zionist propaganda included funding of best-selling pro-Zionist books by non-Jews. Zionists such as wealthy Wall Street lawyer Samuel Untermyer began to interject “dispensationalist” ideas of “Christian Zionism” into the discourse through sponsorship of the “Scofield Reference Bible.” (Untermyer was also a leading backer of the Federal Reserve and advocate of the worldwide Jewish boycott of Germany.)
Today, as we all know, “Christian Zionism” among “evangelicals” is part of the bedrock support of the Israel Lobby. Leading evangelical ministers like Jerry Falwell received large donations from Zionist supporters. An entire “dispensationalist” mythology involving the “Rapture,” etc., has been constructed and promoted to justify the political union between this group of American religionists and the most extreme factions of Israeli politics led today by such figures as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Though Netanyahu has surfaced this mad mythology to cover Israeli genocide in Gaza, the topic is not covered in detail in Alison Weir’s book, so will not be dealt with further here.
Protestant Support of Zionism. By the 1930s, U.S. Zionists were trying to organize American Protestants in their support. By the end of WWII the Christian Council on Palestine had grown to 3,000 members and the American Palestine Committee to 6,500. The appeal to Protestants was based on generating sympathy for refugees, though no mention was made of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians becoming refugees due to the Zionist takeover. During the Israeli war of independence in 1947-1949, Christian churches and institutions in Palestine were assaulted by the Zionists along with the Palestinians.
Beginnings of Terrorism and U.N. Partition of Palestine. In Palestine in the 1930s and 1940s, the Zionists tried to buy Palestinian land but few inhabitants wished to sell. The Zionists then began to organize terrorist forces to drive them out. These terrorist groups also targeted British government officials, as Palestine was still a British Mandate. Author Alison Weir cites a statement by David ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, that suggests this was at least part of what started today’s worldwide phenomenon of terrorism.
By the start of the 1947-1949 war, Jews made up 30 percent of the Palestinian population but owned only 6-7 percent of the land. In 1947, Britain turned its Palestine Mandate over to the U.N. A General Assembly resolution to partition gave the Zionists 55 percent of the land of Palestine. The U.S. State Department opposed the partition plan as against the wishes of local people and in violation of U.S. interests and of democratic principles. Officials warned that partition “would guarantee that the Palestine problem would be permanent and still more complicated in the future.” (p.45) Officials said the proposal was for “a theocratic racial state” that discriminated “on grounds of religion and race.” (p.45) The leading anti-Zionist Department of State official, Loy Henderson, was exiled by his superiors to a post as ambassador to Nepal.
U.S. Government Opposition to Zionism. Nevertheless, virtually the entire U.S. executive branch was opposed to a Jewish state in Palestine. Statements and reports were made by a 1946 commission headed by Ambassador Henry F. Grady, the CIA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson. A 1948 report of the Joint Chiefs of Staff stated that, “The Zionist strategy will seek to involve [the U.S.] in a continuously widening and deepening series of operations intended to secure maximum Jewish objectives.” (p.47)
Jewish leaders were well aware that U.N. partitioning of Palestine was temporary and that over time, the Jewish state would expand to absorb the entire region. The concept of “Eretz Israel” was formulated, whereby the Zionist state would encompass Transjordan, as well as parts of Lebanon and Syria. Zionists also had begun using U.S. antagonism toward the Soviet Union as an argument for creation of a pro-Western Jewish state. This hearkened back to the early days of Zionism, when Zionist leaders characterized their proposed state as a bulwark of British influence in the Middle East; i.e., as an extension of British colonialism and geopolitics.
Today, pro-Zionists make the argument that Israel is an outpost of benign “Judeo-Christian” influence in the Middle East, as they try to arouse antagonism toward the one billion Muslims in the world in a purported “clash of civilizations.” Such attitudes became prominent in U.S. politics during the “War on Terror” of the Bush/Cheney administration that continues today through U.S. labeling of anti-Zionist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah as “terrorist” organizations. This is despite the historical fact cited above that it was the Zionists who introduced terrorism into the Middle East.
U.S. Recognition of Israel and the Role of President Truman. The U.S. was the first country to recognize Israel as an independent state when on May 14, 1948, President Harry Truman issued a statement of recognition following Israel’s proclamation of independence on the same date. Truman’s main motivation was believed at the time, and still is today, the winning of Jewish support in the presidential election that year. His decision was strongly opposed by Secretary of State George Marshall, Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, the CIA and National Security Council, and top State Department official George Kennan. Intelligence agent Kermit Roosevelt wrote: “The present course of world crisis will increasingly force upon Americans the realization that their national interests and those of the proposed Jewish state in Palestine are going to conflict.” (p.51) Contrary to the belief that U.S. oil interests promoted the Zionist project, officials argued that U.S. ability to access Middle Eastern resources would be adversely affected. Truman also had pro-Zionist insiders at high levels of his administration.
Author Alison Weir points out that bribery also played a part. “Gore Vidal wrote: ‘Sometime in the late 1950s, that world-class gossip and occasional historian, John F. Kennedy, told me how, in 1948, Harry S. Truman had been pretty much abandoned by everyone when he came to run for president. Then an American Zionist brought him two million dollars in cash, in a suitcase, aboard his whistle-stop campaign train. ‘That’s why our recognition of Israel was rushed through so fast.’” (p.167) Jewish businessman Abraham Feinberg explained his raising of cash for Truman in an oral history interview published by the Truman Library in 1973. The CIA also discovered Feinberg’s illegal gun-running to Zionist groups.
I may be the first writer to point out that Truman’s action in accepting bribes, if discovered, could have been seen and treated as an impeachable offense.
Zionist Takeover of Palestine. At the time of Israel’s proclamation of independence and immediate U.S. recognition, the U.N. resolution of partition had been passed, with war ensuing between Zionist and Arab forces. The U.N. General Assembly adopted the partition plan by 33 votes to 13 with 10 abstentions, with many nations subjected to intense Zionist lobbying and threats. For instance, “Financier and longtime presidential adviser Bernard Baruch told France it would lose U.S. aid if it voted against partition.” (p.55) A Swedish U.N. mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte, was killed by Zionist assassins. To this day, no accepted legal authority for the U.N. in its partitioning of Palestine has ever been demonstrated. In other words, it was likely an extra-legal action in response to Zionist lobbying.
Though sporadic violence between Jews and Palestinian Arabs had taken place over the previous two decades, the Zionists committed wholesale massacres of Palestinians after the U.N. resolution for partition. By the end of Israel’s war of independence in 1948, over 750,000 Palestinians had been expelled from Zionist-controlled territory. Israeli historian Tom Segev wrote: “Israel was born of terror, war, and revolution, and its creation required a measure of fanaticism and cruelty.” (p.58) Today this is called in Arabic the “Nakba”—“catastrophe.”
The most well-known massacre took place at the village of Deir Yessin in April 1948, before any Arab armies had joined the fight. There, 254 villagers were murdered in cold blood. The heads of two militias present at Deir Yessin, Irgun and the Stern Gang, were Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, both of whom later became prime ministers of Israel. The Irgun bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on July 22, 1947, killing 86. The Stern Gang also solicited aid from the Axis powers during WWII.
Zionist Front Organizations in the U.S. During the 1930s and 1940s, the Zionists created a number of front organizations to raise money used to finance militant activities in Palestine. After WWII, the U.S. maintained an arms embargo against Israel and the Middle East. Foremost among the sponsors of the front organizations intended to skirt the embargo was Irgun. One group, the Jewish Army of Stateless and Palestinians Jews, claimed it was formed to fight the Nazis in Europe, but was intended instead to fight the British and Arabs in Palestine. These groups espoused such radical ideologies as the idea that “non-Jews are the embodiment of Satan, and that the world was created solely for Jews.” (p.67) Another group, headed by Orthodox Rabbi Baruch Korff, hatched a plot to blow up the British foreign office in London that was exposed in the New York Herald Tribune. Through political influence, U.S. charges against Korff were dropped. Later he “became a close friend and fervent supporter of President Richard Nixon, who called him ‘my rabbi.’” (p.71) Nixon’s support for Israel manifested in the gigantic airlift of military supplies that helped save Israel from defeat in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Another major organization raising money for sending arms to the Zionists in Palestine was the Sonneborn Institute. Between 1939 and May 1948, the Jewish Agency for Israel was also active, raising the equivalent today of $3.5 billion.
Zionism and Organized Crime. Financial backers of Israeli independence included members of organized crime, including Meyer Lansky, head of the Jewish Mafia in the U.S. In an April 19, 2018 article in Tablet (tabletmag.com) entitled “Gangsters for Zion: Yom Ha’atzmaut: How Jewish mobsters helped Israel gain its independence. Robert Rockaway wrote: “In 1945, the Jewish Agency, the pre-state Israeli government headed by David Ben-Gurion, created a vast clandestine arms-purchasing-and-smuggling network throughout the United States. The operation was placed under the aegis of the Haganah, the underground forerunner of the Israel Defense Forces, and involved hundreds of Americans from every walk of life. They included millionaires, rabbinical students, scrap-metal merchants, ex-GIs, college students, longshoremen, industrialists, chemists, engineers, Protestants and Catholics, as well as Jews. One group, who remained anonymous and rarely talked about, were men who were tough, streetwise, unafraid, and had access to ready cash: Jewish gangsters.” Rockaway, a professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University, also wrote that through their control of U.S. ports, the Jewish mob arranged for arms deliveries to Israel aboard vessels flying the flag of Panama.
Recruiting Jews to Relocate to Palestine. “Zionist cadres infiltrated displaced persons’ camps that had been set up to house refugees displaced during WWII. These infiltrators tried secretly to funnel people to Palestine. When it turned out that most didn’t want to go to Palestine, they worked to convince them—sometimes by force.” (p.74) Another recruiting source was Jewish foster children in Christian homes. The Zionists claimed to be the sole representative of all the world’s Jews in order to legitimize efforts to divert war survivors to Israel, not to countries like the U.S. to which many preferred to go. “After a voluntary recruitment drive netted less than 0.3 percent of the DP [displaced persons] population, a compulsory draft was implemented.” (p.79) Some draftees were required to fight in Palestine in the Zionist war of independence. Meanwhile, the secretive Sieff group was formed in Washington, D.C., to carry out back channel lobbying for the Zionist project. The group was protected by such powerful individuals as Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., and the aforementioned financier and presidential adviser Bernard Baruch.
Fate of the Palestinian Refugees. Three-quarters of a million Palestinian refugees fled to neighboring regions in a gigantic humanitarian disaster. A 1948 State Department report stated “The total direct relief offered…by the Israeli government to date consists of 500 cases of oranges.” (p.83) The value of land confiscated by the Zionists amounted to $5.2 trillion in today’s dollars. Christians also suffered as “numerous convents, hospices, seminaries, and churches were either destroyed or cleared of their Christian owners and custodians.” (p.83) Efforts by U.S. government officials to withhold aid to the Israeli government due to the refugee crisis were overruled by President Truman.
Zionism and the media. Even as early as WWI, the Zionists exerted almost complete control over the U.S. press. This included placing pro-Zionist articles in prestigious newspapers like The New York Times. In 1953, author Alfred Lilienthal wrote: “The capture of the American press by Jewish nationalism was, in fact, incredibly complete. Magazines as well as newspapers, in news stories as well as editorial columns, gave primarily the Zionist views of events before, during, and after partition.” (p.86) Zionist coercion extended to withdrawal of advertising, cancellation of subscriptions, and blacklisting of journalists and authors, even those offering a mere trace of sympathy toward the displaced Palestinians. Particularly emotional in their support of Zionism were the journals the Nation and the New Republic. An example of how the Zionists could destroy an author’s career was the attack on then-famous journalist Dorothy Thompson after “she began to speak about Palestinian refugees, narrated a documentary about their plight, and condemned Jewish terrorism. (p.92)
We all know that the complete slanting of U.S. media coverage toward Zionism and Israel dominates news reporting at all levels and across the ideological spectrum, from the top newspapers and networks to what is left of small town journalism. This includes so-called “independent” outlets like Breitbart. The start of this bias began, perhaps not coincidentally, during the time before WWI when the newsrooms of U.S. newspapers were taken over by propagandists sympathetic to the Federal Reserve System and the Money Trust. Today, of course, we have the internet, which has begun to make inroads into the control of the news by pro-establishment media corporations and Deep State censors. Internet outlets also must be cautious, however, so are often reduced to the role of “limited hangouts,” reporting only selected stories that protest particularly egregious Israeli offenses, but never the “big picture.”
In conclusion we can say that, as Alison Weir’s book makes clear, it was largely American Zionists who financed and enabled the violent takeover of Palestine and who thereby share responsibility over the past three-quarters of a century for the atrocities committed against a diverse population whose forebears had been living in peace and rooted in the region for millenniums. This population also inhabited the holy city of Jerusalem, sacred to the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religions.
The book also makes it clear that people can oppose Zionism—the forceful establishment of a Jewish national state in Palestine—without being anti-Jewish or “anti-Semitic.” Of course, most of the indigenous people of Palestine are “Semites” in ethnicity and language. Also, the most forceful opponents of the original Zionist movement in Great Britain, the U.S., and possibly other nations, have been, and still are, Jews themselves who had successfully assimilated into their host cultures. Examples are the Hassidic Jews of Brooklyn, N.Y., and Jews in Iran who refuse to support Israel.
Many more volumes could or should be written about U.S. enabling of Israel and Zionism and about Israel’s and Zionism’s interference in internal U.S. affairs. I would include an examination of Israel’s possible participation in the JFK/RFK assassinations and the 9/11 attacks, U.S. acquiescence in Israel’s nuclear weapons program, Israel’s links with the Neocons who control today’s U.S. foreign policy, and today’s courting of World War III against more than half the world’s countries, starting with Israel’s nemesis, Iran. Will the U.S. stumble into WWIII because of its pro-Zionist captivity?
Copyright 2023 by Richard C. Cook. Comments are welcome and will be read at monetaryreform@gmail.com.
Richard C. Cook is a retired U.S. federal analyst who served with the U.S. Civil Service Commission, FDA, the Carter White House, NASA, and the U.S. Treasury. As a whistleblower at the time of the Challenger disaster, he broke the story of the flawed O-ring joints that destroyed the Shuttle. After serving at Treasury, he exposed the disastrous flaws of a monetary system controlled by private finance in his book We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform. As an adviser to the American Monetary Institute and while working with Congressman Dennis Kucinich, he advocated the replacement of the Federal Reserve System with a genuine national currency. His latest book is Our Country, Then and Now (Clarity Press, 2023).
“Every human enterprise must serve life, must seek to enrich existence on earth, lest man become enslaved where he seeks to establish his dominion!” Bô Yin Râ (Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken, 1876-1943), Translation by Posthumus Projects Amsterdam, 2014.
Britain’s two main political parties each made an example this week of an MP brave enough to break ranks and call for an end to the mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.
The ruling Conservative party sacked Paul Bristow MP from his government post after he wrote to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak: “A permanent ceasefire would save lives and allow for a continued column of humanitarian aid [to] reach the people who need it the most.”
Labour withdrew the whip from Andy McDonald MP, effectively kicking him out of the parliamentary party. McDonald had said at a rally against the killing in Gaza: “We won’t rest until we have justice, until all people, Israelis and Palestinians, between the river and the sea can live in peaceful liberty.”
This should be a moment of great moral clarity for all of us.
It is shameful enough that both major British political parties – in what is effectively a two-horse race – back to the hilt Israel’s mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians through weeks of indiscriminate bombing.
It is shameful enough that both parties term this “self-defence”, giving Israel licence for as long as it wants to carry on murdering civilians, including killing by its rain of bombs a Palestinian child every few minutes.
It is shameful enough that both parties want to continue arming Israel, meaning British weapons are helping to blow up entire Palestinian families.
It is shameful enough that both parties enthusiastically support Israel’s genocidal policy of starving 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza of food, water, medicines and the power needed to keep hospitals running, as well as destroying infrastructure essential to the maintenance of life.
It is shameful enough that both parties have refused to raise their voices in protest at the ethnic cleansing of 1 million Palestinians from northern Gaza – for some of them a third expulsion in their lifetime by Israel – into what was supposedly a ‘safe zone’ that Israel is bombing just as aggressively as the ‘evacuation zone’.
All of that is shameful enough. But now we are supposed to swallow a further moral outrage. That neither party will tolerate even the mildest dissent from this licence for depravity.
Neither party will allow a solitary MP to say “Not in my name”.
Neither party will permit an MP to represent the large majority in Britain that is appalled by the tidal wave of blood being spilt in Gaza and wants it to end through a ceasefire.
This is moment of great moral clarity. We see who leads us, and what they value. And it is not life. It is not humanity.
Hard on the heels of his excess deaths debate last Tuesday, the admirably energetic and purposeful Andrew Bridgen MP has been granted leave to bring in a Parliamentary Sovereignty (Referendums) Bill under the Ten Minute rule (which allows a backbench MP to make his or her case for a new Bill in a speech lasting up to ten minutes).
The purpose of this Bill is ‘to prohibit Ministers of the Crown from making or implementing any legal instrument which is not consistent with the sovereignty of the United Kingdom Parliament, unless it has been approved by a referendum; and for connected purposes’. It is directly relevant to the sweeping powers which the World Health Organization’s Pandemic Treaty threatens to grab from us.
(The second reading of this Bill, set for November 24th, is crucial. Supporters should put massive pressure on their MPs to attend, and include in their emails, the powers the Treaty will give the WHO over us).
You can watch Mr Bridgen delivering his succinct but detailed explanation for why we need such a Bill here:
Here is the full text from Hansard:
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to prohibit Ministers of the Crown from making or implementing any legal instrument which is not consistent with the sovereignty of the United Kingdom Parliament, unless it has been approved by a referendum; and for connected purposes.
This Bill does what it says on the tin. The point of it is to uphold the integrity and sovereignty of this great House and this great nation. It would, for example, prevent a future Government from overturning the democratic will of the British people by taking us back into the European Union without consulting the public in a referendum. Indeed, it would stop the Government from taking us into any union without public consent, and it would move power closer to the people.
However, the Bill would also stop something that threatens the people of our great nation right now. It would stop the Government from blindly accepting the World Health Organization’s amendments to the International Health Regulations and the so-called Post-Pandemic Agreement, which they appear intent on doing without even consulting this House, never mind the public. The Government signed up to the WHO pandemic preparedness treaty negotiations without a single word being uttered in Government time. The only time we have even mentioned it in this Parliament was on 17 April this year in a Westminster Hall debate forced by over 156,000 members of the public signing a petition. A further petition to reject the amendments to the IHR has closed, having reached over 116,000 signatures, but no time has yet been allocated for a debate.
Those two instruments, if followed, will control how future Governments can prepare and respond to emergencies. In my view, that would amount to making this House redundant. If allowed to progress, that treaty and the amendments to the IHR will fundamentally change the relationship between citizen and state, moving away from a parliamentary democracy that has been the envy of the world for centuries to an autocratic dictatorship led by the unelected and unaccountable director general of the WHO. That same organisation has been accused of undue Chinese influence, as well as of severely mismanaging and covering up the spread and origin of covid-19. That same organisation is mostly funded by commercial and private interests and has diplomatic immunity for its employees and families. What could possibly go wrong?
My North West Leicestershire constituents voted to leave the European Union in 2016—indeed, I campaigned for it, too—but they did not vote in their tens of thousands to leave the EU only to be subjected to an even more autocratic and unaccountable body that takes sovereignty away from this House and from our people. We voted to leave the European Union to take back control, not to give it away to the WHO or anybody else. We are all elected by our constituents to represent them and speak on their behalf, so when it comes to the matter of their sovereignty and protecting their freedoms and rights, surely it is our responsibility to defend those rights and privileges. We are custodians of that power and sovereignty only for a brief period, after which it must be returned intact to the people at the next election, so that they can again decide who will represent them for the next parliamentary period.
When it comes to giving sovereignty away, that decision must always go back to the people, and it requires a referendum. The people should decide whether they wish to give their sovereignty away, and, in this case, whether they want the director general of the WHO controlling their life, rather than the Government of the day. To give those powers away would be nothing short of a dereliction of our duties.
The WHO would like to paint a picture of the treaty and the amendments being all about nation states working together in harmony to fight deadly pathogens, when they are in fact a power grab by an unaccountable elite. They do not want a debate on that; they would quite happily see it passed through the back door without a word being mentioned. That is not my idea of an open parliamentary democracy. The director general of the WHO will have the ability to call a public health emergency of international concern—the acronym is PHEIC, Madam Deputy Speaker—and take absolute powers to control the lives of all citizens of our sovereign nation. That is a power grab not just in this nation, but in all nations around the globe who sign up.
The new powers that the WHO will gain include the freedom to declare a pandemic—or even the potential for a pandemic—at which point all decision-making powers fall under the control of the WHO. The powers would also include the ability to call an emergency owing to human pathogens, animal pathogens, a perceived environmental threat or even the risk of any of the above; and the freedom to impose lockdown restrictions on all individuals in member states and make vaccinations or other medications mandatory, such as vaccines made in 100 days by skipping human trials and shaving safety and efficacy testing down to the bare bones. Furthermore, the WHO would seek power on the right to specify the use of certain medications in medical emergencies, and ban others—to decide healthcare for every person, with local doctors being forced to follow WHO edicts. The power to require a global health passport to be carried would also be given to those unelected bureaucrats in Geneva. Nations would be required to surveil and censor the press and social media so that no dissenting voices can be heard. The removal of the clause relating to human rights is unforgivable.
The recommendations that the WHO issued during the covid-19 pandemic were exactly that: recommendations. They were advisory, and it was up to sovereign Governments and sovereign Parliaments to implement or ignore them—Sweden bravely and successfully chose to ignore them. This treaty would make the WHO’s recommendations mandatory without a debate in this House or, indeed, any other elected Chamber of nations that sign up to these flawed agreements.
As George Santayana said, those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. I have some severe worries that the lessons of the last pandemic have not been learned by the WHO itself, as it will not even have a review of its recommendations during the pandemic, so sure is it that its advice was absolutely perfect—when, in fact, we know from independently conducted reviews that it was a litany of disasters, lockdowns, mandatory experimental vaccines and masks, all of which caused our population and economy huge harm. We are in danger of giving this organisation even more powers to overreach itself and repeat those catastrophic mistakes.
Do we really want a repeat of the measures recommended by the WHO that resulted in £400 billion on the national debt, which has caused ravaging inflation, not to mention the huge NHS waiting lists, one million young people in need of mental health support and the damage to our children’s education and development? That begs the question, why on earth would anyone be willing to give away our sovereignty without consulting this House or the people? That is something I am not content with, and I suspect many colleagues here today share my concerns—or perhaps some of them think, rather like those who were deciding the regulations at the last pandemic, that the rules would not apply to them. I can assure hon. and right hon. Members that they will.
The very democracy that we have taken for granted all our lives is now under threat, but it is not under threat from invading armies hailing from hostile nations. No, our democracy is under threat due to the apparent corruption and decay of our own Government institutions, which are allowing this power grab to happen. Members in this Chamber should never forget that we are the servants of the people, not their masters, and the servants should never sell out their masters.
In my opinion, anyone who supports either of these WHO instruments—I refuse to call one of them an agreement, because I have not agreed to it, and neither have the people of North West Leicestershire; indeed, I think the majority of my constituents would never agree to these instruments—and any Member of this Parliament who would hand over these powers to a such discredited organisation as the WHO does not deserve a seat in this Chamber or any elected Assembly around the world.
In conclusion, to even contemplate giving away these sorts of powers to this sort of body, which affect not just the democratic rights but the human rights of every single man, woman and child in our nation, without a referendum would be quite simply catastrophic. People have said that this would lead to one world government. In fact, it is rather worse; it will be a one world dictatorship. Signing up to this treaty and binding ourselves to the WHO without a single debate on it, a single vote on it or asking the general public what they think would make being a member of the European Union look like a democratic paradise by comparison. That is why we need this Bill. I am aware that, with the looming prospect of Prorogation, even if the House supports my motion today, the Bill will fall in a few days’ time. However, as the phrase goes, I will be back.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Andrew Bridgen and Mr Philip Hollobone present the Bill.
Andrew Bridgen accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 24 November, and to be printed (Bill 377).
The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic was unprecedented in most of our lifetimes. Not since the Second World War has anything had such a major and widespread negative impact on humanity.
In early 2020, the world was alerted to a novel coronavirus causing severe pneumonia in Wuhan, China. Initially, I was not overly concerned, as the previous coronavirus outbreaks in the last 20 years (Sars and Mers), although with reported high lethality, had been largely restricted to geographic regions. In fact, I had travelled to China towards the end of Sars in 2003 and recall being held up following an internal flight while the authorities checked travellers’ temperatures. Fortunately, I was released and allowed on my way once they were satisfied I had no signs of infection.
However, I became very concerned once the new disease hit north Italy, with media reports of hospitals being overwhelmed. There was no known proven treatment, and later, when it afflicted New York City, sadly 88% of those ventilated died.
In Guernsey, the CCA promptly convened. Although I don’t have any intimate knowledge of their discussions, I suspect the modelling from Neil Ferguson at ICL, which suggested that as many as 500,000 people could die in the UK if no action was taken, had a great influence on their decision making, and as a result the Bailiwick entered a full lockdown on 25 March 2020 – the day after the UK.
Guernsey’s Strategic Pandemic Influenza Plan, having only just been drafted in January 2020, has no mention of lockdowns. Although this was expecting influenza, that type of virus can potentially cause an even more fatal disease, such as that which occurred in 1918. No doubt the CCA were put in a difficult position, potentially having to face something much worse than ever envisioned.
In addition, Guernsey is geographically isolated and has limited healthcare resources, such as personnel and hospital/ICU beds, so deviating from a pre-determined strategy to quarantine the island while the threat could be fully evaluated was a reasonable initial approach.
Lockdowns went from ‘two weeks to flatten the curve’ to extended periods of months or more. Doing nothing was clearly not an option, however the prolonged closure of society brings with it undeniable collateral damage, including mental health problems, delayed diagnoses of serious diseases such as cancer, and a significant economic burden. Those who were able to work from home were less affected by the latter, but those with manual jobs were prohibited from working and earning. This resulted in significant cost – with most of the States’ pandemic expenditure of nearly £100m. spent on income and business support. Although Guernsey was able to return to relatively normal life on-island with fewer restrictions than the UK, travel was far from normal, requiring up to 14 days of quarantine for those arriving on the island. It could never be a long-term solution to essentially be cut off from the rest of the world.
So, was there any alternative strategy? Professor John Ioannidis of Stanford had published early on that the infection fatality rate was around 0.2%, and later found it was under 0.1% for those under 70 years of age. Increasing age beyond this was well documented to be the single greatest risk factor for severe Covid-19 and hospitalisation/death, and people with conditions such as obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure were also at higher risk.
In October 2020, three professors of medicine (Sunetra Gupta of Oxford, Martin Kulldorff of Yale and Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford) suggested a different approach; the Great Barrington Declaration – targeted protection of the vulnerable, while allowing the rest of society to continue relatively normally. Would this have been a better strategy?
Mandated non-pharmaceutical interventions were later brought in. These included masking, social distancing, and hand-washing. Early on, a number of health officials stated there was no recommendation for masks in the community, yet later this advice was reversed, despite a Danish randomised study and later a Cochrane review concluding there was little or no evidence for mask effectiveness.
The advice was also inconsistent – one would have to enter a pub or restaurant wearing a mask but could sit for hours without one. Social distancing may have reduced spread by larger exhaled droplets, but spread by aerosols (smaller particles), which can remain in the air for longer periods, was under-appreciated.
The strategy had become one of varying restrictions while waiting on the proposed solution – a vaccine. Several pharmaceutical companies produced candidates which quickly entered trials. In late 2020 results of these were published from three companies, all claiming efficacy rates over 90%, albeit these were relative risk reductions. They were proposed to be safe, although there was no medium- or long-term data.
The mass vaccination programme started in late December 2020, beginning with the elderly, the most vulnerable and front-line healthcare workers. Undoubtedly Covid-19 could be a severe and fatal disease, so on a risk-benefit analysis, offering such an investigational therapy to those at risk could be justified. However, they were subsequently offered to younger and younger age groups. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation met and decided there was insufficient benefit to offer them to 12-15-year-olds. Despite this the chief medical officers in the UK decided they should be, and soon after Guernsey followed suit (then later offered them to children as young as five years old). This was especially perplexing given that it was a disease of negligible risk to children and there was a known risk of myocarditis (heart muscle inflammation), especially in teenage males. A study analysing the original trial data reported an overall serious adverse event rate of one in 800.
Although the vaccines were never mandated, there was coercion to take them. I frequently heard that individuals were only taking them in order to travel. While some of this was outside Guernsey’s control, local people who had not taken the vaccines were subject to isolation requirements on-island. At the same time visitors and tourists who had taken them could enter without any restriction or testing. There were some studies at the time showing similar viral loads in people whether vaccinated or not, suggesting limited impact on infection and transmission. Real world data supports this. The last figures published by the States on 28 March 2023 shows over 95% of reported cases of Covid-19 had taken at least a primary course of vaccines. In addition, a recent Cleveland Clinic study suggested that with cumulative doses, one was more likely to get Covid.
Even if the vaccines were proven to reduce infections and transmission, would it have been ethically right to impose conditions on those who had chosen not to have them?
So how effective are the vaccines at preventing death? Data just released by the ONS shows that between 1 April 2021 and 31 May 2023 in England there were 8,850 deaths involving Covid-19 in the unvaccinated and 52,000 deaths in the vaccinated. Between January and May 2023, 95% of deaths were in the vaccinated.
Is the widespread use of a vaccine that does not significantly impact on infection and transmission helping to promote variants?
Why wasn’t a more holistic strategy adopted, such as promoting weight loss, exercise and maintaining a sufficient level of vitamin D? Deficiency of the latter was correlated with worse outcomes in several studies, while being a safe and inexpensive intervention.
Repurposed drugs with an established safety profile such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin were vilified. Both are inexpensive drugs known to work on more than one condition. The data from human studies remains mixed (and fraudulent negative data was published in the Lancet on the former), but at the same time expensive drugs such as remdesivir were approved – it didn’t reduce mortality in hospitalised patients and increased the risk of kidney failure, at a cost of £2,000 per course.
An inexpensive pharmaceutical intervention that did become proven for severe Covid-19 were corticosteroids – showing a significant reduction in mortality in patients requiring oxygen or ventilatory support. Unfortunately, the WHO had recommended against them from the outset of the pandemic. Dr Pierre Kory went before the US Senate in May 2020 to testify on their use, based on existing published data on acute respiratory distress syndrome and reports from doctors using them as being a ‘game changer’. Two months later, they were adopted as a standard of care when Oxford published the results of their recovery trial.
Data from the Greffe shows there was no increased mortality in 2020 and 2021, yet Guernsey experienced the most deaths for at least a decade in 2022. This echoes similar excess ongoing mortality in the UK and multiple other countries. What is this due to?
The States’ recent Covid Review was a missed opportunity to properly evaluate the response to the pandemic.
I ask, how much of the disruption to our lives was due to the virus, and how much from the response to it?
Was it all proportionate, and what should we learn for the future?
Why is the current Labour leader in complete lock step with the ruling Tory party, with unfettered support for Israel’s war crimes in occupied Palestine?
The leader of the Labour Party is just as much a hostage as any of the Israelis held by Hamas. Only in his case he wasn’t kidnapped: he delivered himself, bound and gagged, to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Netanyahu.
Keir Starmer, basking in media acclaim just a week ago after yet another spectacular by-election win for his party, is now probably the most reviled politician in Britain, a pretty contested field.
This turnabout has come about because over the last three years Starmer has staked his all on extirpating from the Labour Party all traces of his allegedly anti-semitic Hamas-friendly predecessor Jeremy Corbyn and his barbaric followers (does this kind of operation sound familiar?). He has been largely successful in this endeavour and earned in consequence the favour of important elites well represented in the media. In so doing, however, he has made himself a hostage to fortune, or more specifically to the behaviour of Israel.
Starmer could not afford to let daylight over Israel emerge between himself and Rishi Sunak, otherwise all his good work shoring up his credentials as scourge of the Labour anti-semites could start to crumble. This was fine as long as even the Arabs seemed to be ditching the Palestinians by making their separate Abraham Accords with Israel.
But what if it all blew up in the faces of the architects of these Accords and Israel turned out to be behaving barbarically? Well, Starmer is now finding out. Following as he thought the Sunak line, in a notorious radio interview he stated as clearly as he ever states anything (that is, not very much) that Israel had the right to withhold food, water, electricity and fuel from starving Gazans. Desperate backtracking failed to stem the avalanche of protest that followed, mainly from representatives of the Muslim community. Labour councillors started resigning.
Starmer compounded his error by failing to support calls for a ceasefire, just as British TV screens were filling with horrific pictures of Palestinian children being pulled bloodied from rubble. The trickle of resignations at local level became a flood and panicking senior Labour figures started to distance themselves from him. That many of them depend on Muslim votes to get re-elected has of course nothing to do with this welcome if tardy appreciation that genocide is, well, overdoing it a bit.
Starmer is in a massive bind. If he caves in to pressure and starts to let daylight emerge between himself and Sunak he will immediately be assailed from all sides for being the treacherous, cynical, unprincipled flip flopper he is, if not as an actual anti-semite. And if he stands firm he will gain poisonous praise from the Right and not much else.
Meanwhile Sunak is having a ball at Starmer’s (and Gaza’s) expense. However outrageous Sunak’s pro-Israeli stance he knows Starmer can only distance himself at his peril and the longer this goes on the more Starmer impales himself on this hook of his own foolish making. At a stroke Starmer has lost millions of potential votes, even if he now zigzags, while Sunak’s fortunes, a moment ago worth less than Sam Bankman-Fried’s investments in crypto, rise correspondingly. And with Netanyahu promising that his Gaza campaign is going to be long, hard and painful (for Gazans) the hostages, including Starmer, look set for a lengthy ordeal.
Rarely will a comeuppance have been more richly deserved. By cynically sacrificing Palestinians to his own electoral calculus Starmer has brought the rubble from his crumbling edifice of a Middle East policy cascading down on his own head.
Eventually of course public opinion will force Sunak to change course. Even if Starmer beats him to it the shift will come too late to rescue his reputation. Whatever he does from now on Starmer will be remembered by many as the man who condoned the vilest Israeli war crimes.
His party if it has any sense will ditch him for someone with slightly less filthy hands before voters have a chance to express their revulsion at Tories and Labour both by not voting at all.
Of all the crass misappropriations of scientific principles during the pandemic, none did more harm than the corruption of the ‘precautionary principle’ — the notion that an action or an intervention is justified only once one is clear that the benefits exceed the harms and that, as one sociologist put it, “you have looked very hard for the harms”.
That principle came to be almost wholly inverted in the context of the pandemic: an intervention seemingly could be justified on the ‘precautionary’ basis that if it might have any beneficial effect in slowing the course of the pandemic, it would be worthwhile. This justified indiscriminate measures ranging from universal masking, mass testing (including of young children), 14-day isolated quarantines and even lockdown itself for entire healthy populations, on the basis that even though the evidence base was often weak or non-existent, the intervention just might achieve something, and opened the door to a slew of harms impacting almost all cohorts of the British population.
It was to be hoped that a core task for the Covid Inquiry in this key Module 2 would have been a dispassionate objective assessment of whether the costs (financial costs, direct harms, probable indirect harms, risk of unquantified future harms) of the Government’s population-wide interventions outweighed possible benefits. So, it was deeply disappointing last week to see not only key witnesses but the inquiry Chair herself repeat the same dangerous misconception of the precautionary principle.
In one of the most jaw-dropping interjections of the inquiry to date, Baroness Hallett revealed a prejudgement that if masking people could have had even the slightest of benefits, and seemingly without even contemplating that risks and known harms might need to be weighed too, she pressed Sir Peter Horby, an esteemed epidemiologist at Oxford University, who had indicated that he believed universal masking was not a straightforward decision: “I’m sorry, I’m not following, Sir Peter. If there’s a possible benefit, what’s the downside?”
Coming from the independent Chair of a public inquiry, this is an astonishing comment. It betrays a presumption, or at the very least a predisposition, to accept that it was better to act than not to act — the reverse of the precautionary principle. When a comment such as this, from the Chair of the Inquiry, goes unchallenged, it risks anchoring the entire frame of reference for the inquiry’s interrogation of this critical topic. In our view it was a surprising and serious error of judgement for an experienced Court of Appeal judge.
What made Baroness Hallett feel this to be an appropriate thing to think, let alone say out loud? We suggest the issue lies in the fact that the Chair and the official counsel to the inquiry seem already to have the storyline of the pandemic wrapped up.
The inquiry’s counsel has been at pains to paint a picture of the country facing an almost existential threat from the virus. From the outset, counsel has framed his questioning on the basis that it was indisputable a “highly dangerous fatal viral outbreak was surely coming”, and “by February this viral, severe pandemic, this viral pathogenic outbreak is coming, and it can’t be stopped”. Even hardened lawyers and epidemiologists, it has seemed, were bunkering down because “the virus was coming, it was a fatal pathogenic disease”.
And, with the precautionary principle inverted in the collective mind of this inquiry, almost anything the Government then did against that backdrop was justified.
With preference…
Worse still, it is now starkly evident that the witnesses whose opinions and perspectives support that proposition are being overtly praised and pedestaled, while those whose opinions and perspectives might cast doubt are treated with prejudice and hostility.
For those witnesses who were part of the ‘home team’ — Government-appointed advisers, and those who have already publicly ascribed to the inquiry’s apparently favoured storyline — impeccable credentials and impartiality have been assumed.
Sir Jeremy Farrar, for example, former Director of the Wellcome Trust, member of SAGE and currently Chief Scientist at the WHO gave oral evidence to the inquiry in June. One can almost picture counsel for the inquiry scattering rose petals as he sums up Farrar’s illustrious credentials:
You trained, I believe, in medicine, with postgraduate training in London, Chichester, Edinburgh, Melbourne, Oxford and San Francisco. You have a DPhil PhD from the University of Oxford. You were a director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Institute at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam from 1996 to 2013. From 2013 you were Director of the Wellcome Trust, and from May 2023 have you been the Chief Scientist at the World Health Organisation? Have you throughout your professional career served as a chair on a multitude of advisory bodies, for governments and global organisations? Have you received a plethora of honours from a number of governments, institutes and entities?
Farrar is then treated to counsel’s softest underarm bowls and allowed to give unchallenged testimony in favour of an intervention-heavy approach to pandemic management: “when you have the countermeasures you’re talking about, diagnostic tests, treatment and vaccines, together they create a Swiss cheese model of what our public health is”.
Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London, and chief architect of the dramatic scientific modelling on which the global lockdown response was predicated, was warmly welcomed to the witness box by counsel last week “as a world leading specialist in this field”, and was later thanked profusely for his hard work by Baroness Hallett: “Thank you very much for all the work that you did during the pandemic.”
Gushing perhaps, but nothing compared to the farewell given to SAGE modeller Professor John Edmunds, who had been affirmed upfront by counsel as, “a de facto expert in epidemiology”, and one of “a number of brilliant scientists and advisers who assisted the Government and the country in the remarkable way that you did”. At the end of his evidence, Baroness Hallett delivered the eulogy:
Thank you very much indeed. If I may say so, professor, I think you were unduly harsh on yourself this morning. You had a job, and you described it yourself, your job was to provide expert advice to the policy and decision-makers, and if the system is working properly that advice is relayed to them, then they consider advice coming from other quarters about economics and social consequences and the like. I’m not sure you could have done more than you did, consistent with your role at the time, but you obviously did as much as you felt was appropriate. So I’m really grateful to you, I’m sure we all are.
This is a far departure from the rigorous testing of credentials and potential conflicts that one could expect as an expert witness in any court proceedings, and of the studious impartiality of the presiding judge. It is certainly far short of what the public should rightly expect for an exercise set to spend over £55m on lawyers alone.
None of these witnesses were asked whether their senior positions within organisations that rely on very valuable relationships with global pharmaceutical groups and private pharma-focused organisations could have had any bearing on their advice at the time or their evidence to the inquiry now.
Farrar was director of the Wellcome Trust throughout the pandemic. The Wellcome Trust is one of the institutions behind CEPI, a global vaccine development fund created in 2015 which partners with vaccine manufacturers, including Moderna. During the pandemic Farrar frequently and vocally promoted his view that vaccines would be the means for us to exit the pandemic. He is plainly someone whose professional success and credibility has become indelibly attached to the pharmaceutical industry and in particular the use of pharmaceutical interventions in public health, yet counsel and the inquiry Chair seemed uninterested in that colouring of Farrar’s evidence.
Likewise, Ferguson, of Imperial College London was not asked a single question about potential conflicts or risk of bias. Again, the inquiry seemed unaware, or at least uninterested, that a month after Ferguson’s seismic March 2020 paper had concluded that “epidemic suppression is the only viable strategy at the current time” and that “the major challenge of suppression is that this type of intensive intervention package – or something equivalently effective at reducing transmission – will need to be maintained until a vaccine becomes available”, it was reported that Imperial College had received £22.5 million in funding from the U.K. Government for vaccine research and development; and that in that same year, 2020, Imperial received at least $108 million in funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF).
BMGF is a private philanthropic organisation which has been open about its ideological commitment to vaccine-based solutions for global health issues and which itself has very significant financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
… and with prejudice
For witnesses such as Professor Carl Heneghan, Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford University, but not a member of SAGE, and (unhelpfully for the inquiry) not an enthusiastic supporter of lockdowns, the inquiry appeared to have made somewhat less glowing presumptions:
You are a professor of evidence-based medicine at Oxford University. Could you explain what that discipline entails?
Heneghan’s explanation was swiftly followed with a presumptive conclusion as to the strength of his credentials:
As you know, because I think you have been following the inquiry, we have heard this week from a series of academics who have spent, in the main, their professional careers researching, analysing the spread of infectious diseases, developing models, to analyse how such diseases are spread and how they can be controlled, and considering large-scale public health issues relating to pandemic preparedness and so on. You don’t have a comparable type of expertise in this area, do you?
Not satisfied with having attempted his own disparagement of the man, counsel took the opportunity while having Heneghan in the witness box to ask for his perspective on two ‘home team’ scientists having described him in a private discussion as a “fuckwit” (Dame Angela McLean and Professor Edmunds) — to what ends, other than to rattle, rile or embarrass, was not clear. It was the cheapest shot of the inquiry so far.
During Heneghan’s evidence session, and having seemingly felt entirely comfortable to rely on the expert opinions of Farrar, Ferguson, Edmunds et al. — the ‘good guy’ home team scientists — Baroness Hallett gives short shrift to the notion that Professor Heneghan’s opinion might be relied upon. When talking about the broad scope of evidence-based medicine Heneghan explains that “even my opinion” amounts to evidence, Baroness Hallett retorted dismissively: “Not in my world it doesn’t, I’m afraid.”
Spoiler alert
Here’s what the inquiry is going to conclude, after three to seven years and perhaps £200 million: the Government and its official scientific advisers mostly did their best in the face of what they rightly and fairly believed to be the most devastating viral threat the world had ever seen; those scientists gave the best advice they could, and were entitled to assume that the Government was taking account of other factors; if it hadn’t been for Brexit, we would have been better prepared; the Government perhaps could have thought a bit more about the impact of lockdowns on the economy, but ultimately lockdowns were unavoidable; if it had all been done faster and harder, the U.K. might have come out in a better place, clinically and economically; the sacrifices imposed on children, the isolated and those who missed diagnoses and treatments, were regrettable but had to be done (the ‘precautionary principle’); if we could have saved one more person who died of Covid we should have done; the NHS did a superb job in difficult circumstances. Oh, and COVID-19 vaccines saved us so we should devote more public funds to partnerships with heroic pharmaceutical groups and irreproachable public scientists such as Jeremy Farrar at the WHO.
The inquiry is now hopelessly compromised by the partisan and presumptive words of its own Chair and leading lawyers which are setting us up for a doom-loop of catastrophic errors we cannot afford to repeat. It has become an embarrassment to the legal profession and is jeopardising the reputation of the English legal system. Its exorbitant costs already cannot be justified, and there is only worse to come. It should be abandoned.
Britain’s former prime minister Boris Johnson has been hired by the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), a Washington, DC think-tank notoriously bankrolled by the US government, NATO and Western military contractors.
Johnson will be a member of CEPA’s International Leadership Council, described as “a high-level advisory group,” the think-tank announced this week.
According to CEPA’s head Alina Polyakova, Johnson’s “commitment to Ukraine’s victory” makes him an “invaluable addition to this distinguished group of thought leaders,” at what she described as a “pivotal moment for the transatlantic alliance.”
Johnson himself issued a statement about the move, calling the “transatlantic bond” more important than ever, “not just for the freedom and independence of Ukraine but for freedom across the world.”
CEPA describes itself as a “nonprofit, nonpartisan, public policy institution” that is “focused on strengthening the transatlantic alliance.” Among its fellows and experts are former Economist editor and anti-RT crusader Edward Lucas; former US envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker; and former Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves.
The think-tank’s own website lists among its major supporters military-industrial complex companies such as BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin and Leonardo, as well as NATO, the US State Department and the US European Command.
Johnson has been one of the loudest champions of Kiev in the West, infamously torpedoing the peace talks between Ukraine and Russia in April 2022. According to Ukrainian media, Johnson made a surprise visit to Kiev and informed the government that it would lose all support from the West if it made peace with Moscow.
Just three months later, in July, Johnson faced a cabinet revolt over appointing a party official accused of sexual misconduct. He announced his resignation as prime minister and stepped down in September 2022. In June this year, Johnson also resigned as the member of Parliament for Uxbridge & South Ruislip, a post he’d held since 2015, citing the parliamentary investigation into the so-called Partygate scandal related to misconduct during the Covid-19 lockdowns. His next public appearance was a trip to Ukraine in September, where he was received by President Vladimir Zelensky and granted an honorary doctorate from the Lviv National University.
Industrial meat giant Tyson Foods is teaming up with Dutch insect ingredient producer Protix to construct an insect ingredient manufacturing facility in the U.S.
In an announcement last week, Tyson said it is acquiring an ownership stake in Protix, and forming a joint venture to construct “the first at-scale facility of its kind to upcycle food manufacturing byproducts into high-quality insect proteins and lipids which will primarily be used in the pet food, aquaculture, and livestock industries,” Tyson Foods stated.
In a statement, Protix said, “The strategic investment will support the growth of the emerging insect ingredient industry and expand the use of insect ingredient solutions to create more efficient sustainable proteins and lipids for use in the global food system.”
Tyson Foods, Protix and proponents of insect-based foods argue that the production of such food products is more sustainable than rearing conventional livestock.
But food safety experts who spoke with The Defender said companies like Tyson are motivated by financial and other incentives, not sustainability. Citing scientific studies to back their claims, they also questioned the safety of insect ingredients.
“This is not about public health or even environmental health,” Nina Teicholz, science journalist and founder of The Nutrition Coalition, said. “The food industry likes bugs, because producing them involves multiple, patent-protected steps that enable companies to make a profit and control our food sources.”
Dutch journalist Elza van Hamelen, who has investigated Protix, told The Defender, “The takeover and transformation of our food system — toward synthetic lab-grown meat, GMO [genetically modified organism] vertical farming and insect farms — is an attack from many fronts.”
“Venture capital is investing in this, even though there is not a clear business case,” she said. “Governments are setting up ‘ecosystems’ in which government representatives, NGOs [nongovernmental organizations], academia and business join hands to get ‘alternative proteins’ off the ground.”
Science communicator Dr. Kevin Stillwagon, a retired chiropractor and airline pilot who investigates health issues on his Substack page, said, “There are already efforts underway to convince us that the way we raise food for human consumption is harming the environment by using up too much land and water and emitting excess greenhouse gasses.” He added, “They will try to convince us that even by using insects as animal feed, the environmental problem is not going to get solved.”
Howard Vlieger, a member of the board of advisers of GMO/Toxin Free USA, told The Defender that Tyson could leverage its market power and its entry into the insect ingredient market to place further financial pressure on cattle suppliers.
“Tyson is one of just four large companies that livestock producers rely on to market their cattle,” he said. “Tyson could potentially leverage its alternative foods interests against cattle purchases, thus lowering the demand and price for the cattle they buy.”
Tyson’s deal with Protix move marks the latest instance in a recent trend that has seen several prominent food producers, including Cargill, invest in insect ingredient manufacturers.
‘Stomach contents of cattle’ to be used as ‘a viable feed source for insects’
John R. Tyson, chief financial officer of Tyson Foods, told Food Ingredients First his company will use its own “by-products,” including “the stomach contents of processed cattle,” to produce “a viable feed source for insects.”
In Tyson Foods’ press release, Kees Aarts, CEO of Protix, said, “Tyson Foods’ and Protix’s strategic partnership advances our joint work towards creating high-quality, more sustainable protein using innovative technology and solutions. Moreover, we can immediately use their existing byproducts as feedstock for our insects.”
According to CNN, “Byproducts like animal fats, hides and inedible proteins, if not used or reduced, can end up in landfills. In this case, Tyson can send what’s in the stomach of cattle it has processed to a Protix facility, where it’s fed to insects.”
“For the company, creating a larger market for this type of waste can not only reduce waste but offer a larger revenue stream,” CNN reported.
The Tyson Foods statement said, “Protix contributes to a circular food chain by using waste from the food industry as feed for the black soldier fly (BSF). In turn, the insects are processed into valuable nutrients such as proteins and lipids.”
“Protix’s customers use these proteins and lipids as high-quality ingredients for feed and food” while “residual streams from the insects are used as organic fertilizer,” it added.
Aarts told CNN the black soldier fly “can grow on almost every type of food waste and byproduct you can imagine,” while according to Food Ingredients First, the flies “can eat up to twice their body weight daily, which can be used to enable a closed-loop recycling system,” creating a reusable protein source while using less water and land.
When completed, the Tyson Foods-Protix facility will “centre on all aspects of production, from breeding and incubating to the hatching of insect larvae,” Just Food reported, quoting a Tyson Foods spokesperson as saying the two companies are currently looking to “identify” the location where their plant will be constructed.
The joint-venture facility is expected “to be ready for ramping up operations towards the end of 2025,” according to Feed Navigator, which also reported that “The facility’s capacity will be three to four times the output of [Protix’s] existing plant” in The Netherlands. It will be able to produce “up to 70,000 tons of live larvae equivalent annually.”
According to Just Food, the precise size and cost of the minority stake Tyson Foods acquired in Protix has not been disclosed, but according to Feed Navigator, “When asked to disclose how much the U.S. company has invested, a spokesperson for Protix [said] funding from existing backers along with Tyson Foods” totaled $58 million.
Tyson’s insects not headed for human food supply — yet
The companies claim that the insect-based products they will manufacture will not enter the human food supply — for now. Tyson told CNN “Today, we’re focused on more of [an] ingredient application with insect protein than we are a consumer application.”
But a Tyson Foods spokesperson told Just Food that “Human food compositions exist, and Protix is leading the development of high-quality proteins from animal and fish feeds to consumer-level products.”
“While consumer adoption is very low and human-food applications are not the focus of this joint venture, opportunities exist in the long term to create more sustainable protein products,” the Tyson Foods spokesperson added.
Tyson told Food Ingredients First that he views his company as a “catalyst” that can create a more sustainable and equitable food system, and that “Partnerships with those across industries are an important part of that journey, working together to advance our collective sustainability ambitions and transform the global food system.”
According to Stillwagon, inserting insects into the human food supply is the goal of major food producers.
“Livestock and fish that are fed with insect-based proteins and lipids will most definitely enter the human food supply. This may change the taste of these foods to some degree,” he said.
“Also, the fish and livestock may need to be genetically modified so they will grow to sizes necessary for harvesting since they would be consuming something that is not natural to them,” Stillwagon added.
Not ‘adequately tested for safety’
According to CNN, “The meat industry places a large burden on the planet, in part because of the land, water and energy it takes to grow crops that feed the animals we eat,” adding that “Some experts say that reducing the environmental footprint of animal feed can help make the system more sustainable.”
“Making food out of insects is one way to do that: Bugs take up less space and subsist on waste that would otherwise be discarded,” CNN reported.
According to Food Dive, “Insect protein has grown in prominence in recent years with companies debuting cricket-based snacks and powders,” citing claims by cricket ingredient brand Exo that crickets are 20 times more efficient to grow than cattle.
CNN quoted Reza Ovissipour, Ph.D., professor in sustainable food systems at Texas A&M University, who said that flies operate as “mini bioreactors” that can convert animal waste into “the protein or fat from the insects,” which can then be used as animal feed.
“And these mini bioreactors, they are very inexpensive,” he said. “You don’t need to apply that much energy. It’s very sustainable,” he said.
Experts who spoke with The Defender expressed a different view.
“Due to the insect exoskeletons, which humans are not adapted to eat, it’s not clear that this new ‘foodstuff’ is safe for humans — or pets,” Teicholz said. “Insects and bugs have not been adequately tested for safety.”
“We know that meat, eggs and fish are sources of complete, whole proteins that humans (and dogs) have evolved to eat over millions of years,” she added. “We should be trying to figure out how to make these natural proteins more sustainable rather than shift to new, potentially dangerous food sources.”
Along similar lines, Alexis Baden-Mayer, political director for the Organic Consumers Association, said, “We don’t need to replace meat, milk or eggs with anything, we just have to raise animals on pasture. This is incredibly beneficial to the environment, really productive and produces the most nutrient-dense food possible.”
Baden-Mayer also said there are several risks that insects, when consumed as food, pose for human health, noting that insects contain allergens known as chitins and toxins known as mycotoxins — which also cause mold to be toxic to humans.
Stillwagon said insects pose other risks to human health.
“Since allergies to insect proteins, known as entomophagy allergies, have been reported, food producers must label insect-based products accurately to provide allergen information,” he said.
“The second risk is the microbiome and virome of the insect itself,” Stillwagon said. “It is possible that in some people with weakened immune systems, the consumption of bacteria and viruses that are naturally part of the insect could become pathogenic,” he added.
“Chemicals that are used to kill bacteria and viruses during the processing of insects on a massive scale for food may be harmful to humans,” Stillwagon said. “Also, the plants that the insects feed on may have been treated with chemicals like glyphosate or pesticides that will be absorbed into the insects and be consumed by humans.”
A February 2017 article in eBioMedicine, published by The Lancet, states that “Infections with viruses, bacteria and parasites have been recognized for years to be associated with human carcinogenicity.”
And an article published in July in the Nutrients journal stated that “Insect protein is an adequate protein source with promising health benefits” but noted that “further research is needed to fully understand its potential and optimise its inclusion into the human diet.”
WEF, WHO, major banks and investment firms promoting insect-based food
Yet, CNN reports that “interest in insects as ingredients for animal food has been growing” even if it “hasn’t caught on in the mainstream.”
CNN cited a 2021 report by the Netherlands-based Rabobank, claiming that “the demand for insect protein, mainly as an animal feed and pet food ingredient, could reach half a million metric tons by 2030, up from today’s market of approximately 10,000 metric tons.” Rabobank and Rabo Investments are investors in Protix.
A report by Grand View Research says the global insect protein market is expected to expand by an annual compound growth rate of 27.4% by 2028.
Protix says it aims to increase its “global gross revenue to around €1bn [$1.06 billion] by 2035 through international partnerships.”
Tyson Foods has also invested in Future Meat Technologies, another company seeking to develop cultivated meat products.
According to Food Ingredients First, “Earlier this year, Tyson Foods felt the impact of high inflation and low meat demand, which plunged its stocks by 45.36% from a year ago,” leading the company to close two of its U.S. chicken plants in March.
Yet, last year, Tyson Foods invested $355 million in a bacon production facility in Kentucky, “to meet rising retail and foodservice demand for bacon products.”
Other “Big Food” players have also made significant investments in this space, including Cargill, which in 2022, expanded a partnership with Innovafeed for the production of “sustainable” insect-based fertilizer and animal food, from three to 10 years.
ADM (Archer-Daniels-Midland) has also partnered with Innovafeed to commercialize insect protein for pet food sold in the U.S. and for the construction and operation of an insect production facility in Illinois, adjacent to an ADM corn processing complex.
According to van Hamelen, “There is a lot of financial and policy support to get these ‘foods’ off the ground. Corporations are steered towards moving their portfolios into ‘novel foods’ as part of ESG investment rating criteria,” adding that “It may be interesting to review the ownership of these corporations and the agenda they pursue.”
Notably, Vanguard and BlackRock, the world’s two largest institutional investment firms, are also the two top institutional holders of Tyson Foods shares. BlackRock, and its CEO, Larry Fink, have been strong proponents of “sustainable” corporate practices.
Governments have also gotten into the act, van Hamelen told The Defender.
“The legislative framework is being prepared to approve these ‘foods’ as ‘novel food’ — in the EU, U.S. and also at the U.N. [United Nations] level under the Codex Alimentarius,” she said. “In addition, ‘behavioral government’ approaches, a.k.a. social engineering, used to steer people towards alternative protein choices, are part of government policy.”
For instance, in June, the EU authorized yellow mealworm powder to be used in bread, cakes, mashed potatoes, pasta and vegetables, following a novel food application French firm Nutriearth submitted in 2019. According to Food Ingredients First, “Final authorization on this is expected later this year or early 2024.”
In May, the U.K. Edible Insect Association declared that the house cricket was deemed “within the scope of novel foods regime and valid.”
The European Commission has found that consumers are already aware of insects as an ingredient in foods, and has called on food manufacturers to display the Latin names of the insects contained in the food on the packaging for the product.
Baden-Meyer said that companies like Tyson Foods are looking to the future — and to applications of insect-based products going beyond just food.
“As we saw with the COVID-19 vaccines, cells are the new factories. Maybe that’s the bacterial cells used in ‘precision fermentation,’ maybe it’s the cells living within our own bodies,” she said. “Vaccines are first, but I expect all drugs to be delivered via mRNA or DNA ‘gene therapy’ instructions for the cell to produce a protein.”
“Maybe that will be the way ‘food’ will eventually be ‘delivered’ too,” Baden-Meyer said, citing the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s “Living Foundries” program, which seeks to program “the fundamental metabolic processes of biological systems to generate a vast number of complex molecules that are not otherwise accessible.”
Stillwagon identified a danger stemming from insects consuming byproducts of animals that had previously received mRNA vaccines. He said:
“Another danger is the potential use of mRNA encapsulated in lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) as ‘vaccines’ in the animals or insects to try to prevent diseases. The animals would most likely be injected. The insects and aquaculture would ingest them.
“The use of ingested mRNA encapsulated in LNPs has already been investigated in some insects, shrimp and fish. The possibility of these encapsulated mRNA particles entering the human food supply is very real.”
Last month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an amendment ending government funding to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the USDA during fiscal year 2024 for the development of transgenic edible vaccines, that would deliver mRNA “vaccines” through foods such as lettuce.
“My guess is this is what the ‘Great Resetters’ plan to feed us with and make everything else out of, too,” Baden-Meter said, referring to the “Great Reset” promoted by the World Economic Forum (WEF). “Bacteria is the new petroleum, the ‘plastics’ of our generation, but it’s going to take a while to make this shift,” she added.
A 2019 paper by the WEF, “Alternative Proteins,” published as part of the “Meat: the Future” series, says such proteins can meet “the nutritional needs and food demands of a predicted mid‑century population of 10 billion, in a healthy and sustainable manner.”
“The benefits of these products is not sufficient for consumers to adopt them,” the report states. “A much wider set of interventions will be required to accelerate uptake,” including the development of “narratives.”
The report also notes that “it is unlikely that alternative proteins will achieve scale unless use is made of the production and marketing expertise of the traditional protein sector.”
The WEF stated “We need to fundamentally transform our food systems to provide all humanity with affordable, nutritious and healthy food within the limits of nature by 2030,” in accordance with the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Stillwagon said that organizations like the WEF and the World Health Organization (WHO) will seek to sway public opinion in favor of insect consumption.
“The possibility exists for the WHO to declare a climate emergency over this, and force countries to change food production. They will show that insects have been consumed by many cultures in various parts of the world for centuries, opening the door for cultural acceptance in the U.S.,” he said.
“Overcoming the ‘yuck’ factor is a significant challenge, which is why I think a declaration of a climate emergency and promoting the idea that ‘it’s for the common good” will be necessary,” Stillwagon added.
According to van Hamelen, Dutch state entities, including Dutch public investment fund Invest-NL, have invested in Protix, despite official denials from the Dutch government.
A 2021 memorandum of understanding between the Dutch government and the WEF, representative of close ties between the two, foresees the development of a “food innovation hub” in The Netherlands, with agrifood as one of its focus areas.
Last year, Dutch farmers protested government plans to “drastically” reduce nitrogen pollution from livestock farming by buying out or otherwise expropriating farmland.
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
Russia and China have prevented the passage of a US-drafted UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution that had said Israel, which has killed more than 6,500 people as part of its underway war on Gaza, has been acting in “self-defense.”
The draft was put to vote on Wednesday. The United Arab Emirates also voted no, while 10 members voted in favor and Brazil and Mozambique abstained.
Israel launched the devastating war on October 7 after the Gaza Strip-based Palestinian resistance groups staged Operation al-Aqsa Storm, a surprise attack on the occupied territories, in response to the Israeli regime’s intensified crimes against the Palestinian people. The war has killed 6,546 Palestinians, including 2,704 children, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
The Council then voted on a Russian-drafted resolution that had called for a humanitarian ceasefire and urged Tel Aviv to immediately cancel its orders on Palestinian civilians to head into southern Gaza.
Only Russia, China, the UAE, and Gabon voted in favor of the draft, while nine members abstained and the United States and Britain voted no.
A resolution needs at least nine votes and no vetoes by the US, France, Britain, Russia or China to be adopted.
Also on Wednesday, Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the death of thousands of children in the Gaza Strip had not been enough to get the West behind a resolution demanding a ceasefire in the besieged coastal territory.
“This is the most obvious and rather simple thing to do in this situation: Simply to produce a statement, a resolution, a document with a unified call for a ceasefire, settling the situation and so on,” she said in an interview with Sputnik Radio.
“Even these numbers (the fatality count among the Palestinian minors) cannot compel certain political forces in the West to come to their senses and realize what is going on,” Zakharova regretted.
Just Stop Oil funder Dale Vince is pressing ahead with plans to flood British primary schools with environmental and Net Zero societal propaganda. Children aged 11 and under are being taught that they face an unprecedented global climate emergency, with the possibility that the planet is entering a sixth mass extinction. The solution of course is “sustainability” and green energy, a matter that is dear to the heart of multi-millionaire Vince. His ageing onshore wind farm company Ecotricity has collected £110 million in green taxpayer subsidies over the last 20 years, at a time when he has pocketed at least £43 million in various corporate payments.
The Ministry of Eco Education (MEE) was started by Vince in 2021 with the stated aim of “greening up the curriculum”. From an initial base of 15 ‘pioneer’ schools, it is working to scale this up to 1,000. MEE operates by inserting its messaging into all aspects of primary learning including transport, energy, food, nature and society. It aims to “save teachers time”, and it claims to have “rearranged the national curriculum” around what it describes as big questions. MEE also claims to be working with secondary schools to adapt its primary approach to Key Stage 3.
Although few lesson examples are available on the MEE website, it is easy to piece together some of the ideas being taught. A lesson on veganism notes that industrial farming has negative impacts on the planet, but apparently “isn’t just about food”. Most of the sources quoted are little more than promotions for veganism with a link to a Guardian article explaining why vegans don’t eat honey. There does not appear to be any discussion about the wisdom of removing all types of animal protein from the diets of very young children, something that many scientists think should be done only under strict nutritional supervision.
The education leader of MEE is Paul Turner and a video is supplied of him talking to a group of young children in the Ecotricity tent at the Womad festival. Bouncing around a giant globe, he explains that the correct level of carbon dioxide in the planet is the ‘magic’ number of 360 parts per million (ppm). Quite how he is able to point to such a precise – if magical – figure to stop the climate changing is not explained. There are many eminent scientists who think it is a little on the low side for animal and plant life to prosper. Certainly, the children are not told the dinosaurs lived in a world of plant plenty at a time when CO2 levels were much higher. Turner, who is described by MEE as a “radical geographer”, tells the children that we need to “hoover” up all the gas, and on this front Dale is making a contribution.
In fact the current level of CO2 is around 420 ppm and recent increases are believed to have led to a dramatic 14% greening of the planet. Hoover up all this extra CO2 and veganism starts to seem an ‘unsustainable’ option. Remove nitrogen fertiliser from agriculture as many eco-extremists want and the consequent massive reduction in crop yields starts to look like mass famine.
But then it isn’t just about the planet is it? In a paper published by MEE titled ‘Foundations for an Eco Curriculum’, it is said that “we are increasingly recognising that any efforts to tackle climate and ecological emergency must also respond to the structural inequalities inherent in society”. Furthermore, “any eco school curriculum must explore ideas of social structures and processes as much as they do the natural environment, as well as exploring the intersection of ideas such as gender, race and inequality. From a young age, children are aware of injustice and can apply ideas of fairness and the environment.”
In other words, children can be caught young and brainwashed with horrific, largely unsubstantiated tales of climate and ecological collapse – a process they have no intellectual ability to question – and be marched towards a collectivist society where ruling elites remove many personal freedoms and lifestyle choices. Oh, and energy can be provided by useless windmills requiring enormous public subsidies by enlightened philanthropists such as Mr. D. Vince.
Needless to say, MEE is not the only green educational propogandist operating in the U.K. As the Daily Sceptic reported earlier this year, other elite money is pouring into British schools. London-based Climate Science aims to supply free teaching materials, with children encouraged to plot implausible temperatures rises of 11°C, taught that alkaline oceans are ‘acidic’ and write letters to policymakers claiming “our house is on fire” in the style of Greta Thunberg. Among the billionaire backers are Schmidt Futures – the family foundation of former Google boss Eric Schmidt – and the Grantham Institute at Imperial, partly funded by green billionaire investor Jeremy Grantham.
MEE is also involved with the Young Green Briton Challenge, which has also attracted the ambassadorial support of TV activist Chris Packham. The new scheme operates on a Dragons’s Den format with 16 schools competing to win a £1,000 stake for a green project. Recently, Packham gave his backing to eco-protesters breaking the law and suggested that a “radical flank” could attempt to blow up oil refineries. For his part, Vince has given hundreds of thousands of pounds to Just Stop Oil, a group that engages in civil disobedience and criminal damage.
A new campaign to shut down weapons companies in the US and UK over providing arms to the Israeli regime has gained further momentum, expanding across northern America, Europe and Australia.
The campaign, titled Palestine Action, was launched days after Israel waged a large-scale war on Gaza on October 7, which has claimed the lives of thousands of innocent Palestinians, including women and children.
On October 12, the organizers of Palestine Action US took direct action against Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, Elbit Systems at its so-called “Innovation Center” in the US city of Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Activists blockaded Elbit’s main entrance and defaced the building with red paint and graffiti, rebuking Elbit for profiteering from Israeli war crimes against Palestinians.
“Elbit Systems will not conduct business as usual in our city, while their weapons are mass murdering the Palestinian people right now,” the activists said. “What Israel is doing to Palestine is nothing short of a genocide and Elbit has blood on their hands.”
Elbit’s Cambridge office has since then been targeted multiple times, with activists spraying the building with upper-case slogans that read, “ELBIT PROFITS FROM GENOCIDE,” and “WAR CRIMINALS WORK HERE.”
Data in media reports show Elbit supplies 85% of Israel’s military drone fleet, along with bullets, tear gas, land-based equipment, and internationally banned weapons.
“A child is being murdered every 15 minutes in Palestine,” Palestine Action US said on its website. “These bombing attacks not only serve to ethnically cleanse Gaza but will be used by Elbit to market their arms to repressive regimes around the world. By striking Elbit, we disrupt a crucial link in the military apparatus of Western imperialism.”
In a new development on Wednesday, Palestine Action US said the activists protested against Elbit Systems at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston and disrupted the Israeli firm’s recruitment process.
“Elbit Systems, you will not find peace ANYWHERE in Boston. We will keep confronting you wherever you show up. Genocide profiteers are not welcome in our city. We will shut you down,” Palestine Action US said in a post on its X social media account.
Palestine Action US also announced in other posts the expansion of the anti-Israel campaign in other countries.
Palestine Action US has called on the international community to recognize the profound terror and grief Palestinians have been experiencing for generations, and move to put an end to the 75-year-long Israeli genocide “still unfolding before our eyes.”
“As long as we allow Elbit to operate in our communities, every one of us has blood on our hands,” it added.
Israel waged war on Gaza on October 7 after Palestinian resistance groups launched Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, a surprise attack into the occupied territories in response to the occupying regime’s intensified crimes against the Palestinian people.
The Israeli attacks on Gaza have targeted places of gathering, including hospitals, schools, mosques and churches, displacing more than one million in the densely-populated region, which is home to more than 2 million people.
According to the Palestinian health ministry, the Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip has so far killed more than 6,000 people and left over 18,000 others wounded.
Best years of their lives, or society-induced teenage trauma? In the second decade of this century, mainstream media gave much attention to a ‘mental health crisis’ in young people. Children and adolescents were a huge growth area for psychology, psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry. This campaign was interrupted by Covid-19, when concern for the impact of lockdown, social distancing and school closure was overridden by the priority of pandemic control.
Until the turn of the millennium, youth had been a vast untapped potential for Big Pharma. A child starting on antidepressants is a customer for life.
My research at King’s College London showed that the ‘mental health crisis’ was mostly contrived: despite the constant barrage of fearful messages in the mass media, there was no sharp rise in psychiatric admissions or suicides. This was an application of the problem-reaction-solution strategy: people are persuaded of a pressing problem (mental health crisis), provoking a reaction (clamour for something to be done) leading to a solution (expanded surveillance and treatment).
This strategy was blatant with Covid-19. Experimental mRNA vaccines were pumped into arms, with only a steadfast minority refusing the injections which proved neither safe nor effective. The entire industry of vaccination is based on deception. The official story is that deadly diseases of the past, such as poliomyelitis, were eradicated by vaccines. The truth is that the contagious killers which ravaged industrialised society had faded by the mid-twentieth century thanks to sanitation and smaller broods of healthier kids. Mortality plummeted.
The same dubious causality was used in psychiatry. In the 1950s the resident population of mental institutions reached its peak. Although asylums had been renamed hospitals earlier in the century, there was no effective treatment for insanity, and conditions in antiquated and overcrowded wards were shameful. In the 1930s an onslaught of physical interventions (insulin coma therapy, shock treatment and frontal lobotomy) failed to fulfil the promise of heroic medicine.
In the mid-1950s antipsychotic drugs were discovered and for the first time the delusional and behavioural symptoms of schizophrenia could be effectively controlled.
Chlorpromazine (brand name Largactil) had profound impact: wards were calmer, rehabilitation units were created and rows of beds were removed as patients were discharged. The drug revolution led to legislative reform: in England and Wales, the Mental Health Act 1959 required review of all certified patients, and within five years, fewer than a quarter were detained. The signs were so promising that the minister for health Enoch Powell declared in 1961 that the mental hospitals would become obsolete, replaced by care in the community.
Yet the major tranquillisers of chlorpromazine, haloperidol and thioridazine, while transformational, were not the only impetus for the decline in the mental hospital population. It began to fall in 1954, before the brown syrup appeared. As with the vaccination myth, the ‘wonder drugs’ of psychiatry went down in history as a sudden turning point, overlooking the social conditions for change after the Second World War. The anti-psychotic drugs caused problems of their own in debilitating side-effects.
In the 1960s mental health was declared a new frontier for medicine. The message was that mental illness was no different from physical health problems, and deserved the same level of resources. The pharmaceutical industry was keen to destigmatise mental health and change attitudes so that people perceived nervous disorders as common and curable. The drug companies worked with the psychiatric profession to revise and expand the classification of diseases, defining illnesses on the basis of emerging treatment, rather than the other way round.
With the growth of therapy in the US, the drug companies focused on middle-class neuroses and in 1961 Merck distributed 50,000 copies of a book Recognizing the Depressed Patient. As the early classes of antidepressant drugs had toxic effects, doctors prescribed anxiolytics such as Valium, which was doled out in great quantity for neurotic disorders (one of the first was thalidomide, but that’s another story). Valium was notorious for addiction.
In 1987 a new antidepressant entered the market. Prozac was an instant success, heralding the era of mass antidepressant therapy. With direct consumer advertising in the USA, Prozac was described by psychiatrist Peter Kramer as ‘a feminist drug – liberating and empowering’. Kramer hosted a popular health programme on National Public Radio, funded by Eli Lilly, featuring numerous ‘key opinion leaders’ promoting antidepressants as a panacea for life’s ills.
In my experience as a psychiatric nurse, these drugs did not deserve the promise given to patients. I cringe on remembering colleagues spouting the line that the tablets will ‘kick in after about ten days’. Gradually I discovered that treatment was not really evidence-based, but an enterprise controlled by the pharmaceutical industry. I worked for a health informatics company, dealing in pharmacovigilance. It found drug company researchers buying data from a licensed primary care database to show that reported adverse effects of new products such as statins were caused not by the pills but by the disease. Seroxat, an antidepressant, was thus excused blame for suicides: it was their depressive symptoms rather than the drug.
Although naïve at the time, I found the Andrew Wakefield controversy troubling. Much effort went into allaying public concerns about the MMR jab, introduction of which Wakefield and 16 fellow researchers had found correlated with autism and inflammatory bowel disease. If Wakefield was wrong in his assertions, surely science would correct his error with refuting evidence? But he was made a pariah, and booted out by the General Medical Council. A charismatic figure, Wakefield was a danger to Big Pharma because he threatened the lucrative vaccine business.
Years later, I wrote a critical appraisal of antidepressants, drugs now taken by about one in eight adults in the UK and an increasing proportion of teenagers. I submitted a carefully researched review to the only journal likely to consider it. The new British Journal of Mental Health Nursing was edited by Professor Peter Nolan, an Irishman who had worked as a personal aide to the Libyan leader Gaddafi after the revolution. Peter was a true radical, a rarity these days. He agreed with my concern about Big Pharma, but had been forced to take drug company advertising. My article was published but with a lengthy retort by another mental health scholar, who poured scorn on my objective analysis.
What is to be done? The problem-reaction-solution structure of mental health care must be dismantled. Instead of increasingly relying on technology which feeds corporate profits on a false curative premise, care must return to human endeavour.
If they are really antidepressants, why are people taking them for months, years or decades?
Peter Gøtzsche reviewed every randomised mammography screening trial ever conducted for the Cochrane Collaboration. Cochrane’s headline is that, assuming a 15% mortality reduction, one woman in 2000 avoids dying of breast cancer over ten years. Ten are overdiagnosed and treated. Two hundred experience false alarms.
But that headline assumes the reduction. When Gøtzsche looked only at the trials with adequate randomisation — the higher-quality ones — the reduction disappeared. No effect on breast cancer mortality. No effect on all-cause mortality.
This is the Cochrane finding, published in the establishment’s own database of systematic reviews.
No woman being asked to consent to a mammogram this week knows it.
That is why the new Unbekoming paperback exists. … continue
This site is provided as a research and reference tool. Although we make every reasonable effort to ensure that the information and data provided at this site are useful, accurate, and current, we cannot guarantee that the information and data provided here will be error-free. By using this site, you assume all responsibility for and risk arising from your use of and reliance upon the contents of this site.
This site and the information available through it do not, and are not intended to constitute legal advice. Should you require legal advice, you should consult your own attorney.
Nothing within this site or linked to by this site constitutes investment advice or medical advice.
Materials accessible from or added to this site by third parties, such as comments posted, are strictly the responsibility of the third party who added such materials or made them accessible and we neither endorse nor undertake to control, monitor, edit or assume responsibility for any such third-party material.
The posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein.
The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
Fair Use
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more info go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
DMCA Contact
This is information for anyone that wishes to challenge our “fair use” of copyrighted material.
If you are a legal copyright holder or a designated agent for such and you believe that content residing on or accessible through our website infringes a copyright and falls outside the boundaries of “Fair Use”, please send a notice of infringement by contacting atheonews@gmail.com.
We will respond and take necessary action immediately.
If notice is given of an alleged copyright violation we will act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material(s) in question.
All 3rd party material posted on this website is copyright the respective owners / authors. Aletho News makes no claim of copyright on such material.
Copyright 2023 by Richard C. Cook. Comments are welcome and will be read at monetaryreform@gmail.com.
Aletho News 