News Round-Up
- “PM set to unveil Covid Winter Plan for England” – The plan will include contingency measures that will come into force if the NHS comes under pressure, reports BBC News.
- “Awaiting a ‘tsunami of Covid’: U.K. lecturers fear students’ return” – Unions are calling for compulsory masks and social distancing as the Government demands face-to-face teaching, reports the Guardian.
- “The Smoking Syringe: Was evidence withheld from ACIP when they recommended the Pfizer-Vaccine?” – “Within the fine print of the evidence presented to ACIP prior to its vote are details that suggest that the vote may have been influenced by possible scientific misconduct,” writes David Wiseman in TrialSite.
- “A Legacy of Corruption in the FDA and Big Pharma” – “Our healthcare system is broken, a fact nobody would have disputed in precovid days,” writes Liam Cosgrove in Mises Institute.
- “Leave Them Kids Alone – The Week in Review” – Michael Curzon, S.D. Wickett and Luke Perry discuss vaccinating children, tax rises and the state’s takeover of parenting in the latest episode of Bournbrook Magazine’s The Week in Review.
- “Just the facts: Coronavirus in Australia by the numbers” – “Australians should be free to go about their lives without the significant burden of extreme wide-ranging restrictions,” writes Luke Massey in the Spectator Australia.
- “French minister charged with ‘endangering lives’ for Covid handling” – Agnes Buzyn has been charged with “endangering the lives of others”, the prosecutor of the Republic’s Court of Justice said, but not for a second possible offence of “failure to stop a disaster”, reports MailOnline.
- “Thousands protest new Turkish vaccine and test rules” – More than 2,000 Turks demonstrated in Istanbul on Saturday against official Covid-related mandates including vaccinations, tests and masks, reports Reuters.
- “Why I’d rather be living in 1962” – “You must wonder how 2021 would look if we had chosen our future more wisely in the years after 1962,” writes Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday.
- “Boomers: the luckiest generation that ever lived” – It’s hard not to pity those born around the millennium, writes Ed West in UnHerd.
- “‘Whatever the lessons of 9/11, they were wasted on us’” – After the attacks there was a sense of solidarity among New Yorkers – I’ve never been so aware of living in history as it was being made, writes Lionel Shriver in the Telegraph.
- “The rise of Taliban Twitter” – Twitter banned Donald Trump – so why won’t it do the same to the Taliban, asks Limor Simhony Philpott in the Spectator.
- “The difference between Boris and Blair is Blair believed what he said” – The Prime Minister’s cynical attempt to ape New Labour’s electoral success has backfired horribly, writes Janet Daley in the Telegraph.
- “The war on Martin Amis” – His response to 9/11 was a quixotic and disastrous battle against Islamism, writes Will Lloyd in UnHerd.
- “Disaster looms unless Conservative party rediscovers what it stands for” – The state is set to default on its obligations to older people if we don’t take action. But that action simply cannot be ever-higher taxes, writes Steve Baker in the Telegraph.
- “There is a strong moral case for low taxes. But the Government has lost sight of it” – What if the National Insurance hike turns out to be a political and societal disaster as well as an economic one, asks Daniel Hannan in the Telegraph.
- “Peter Boghossian: ‘The woke don’t give a reason for their faith. It’s different rules of engagement’” – The academic says social justice orthodoxy forced him out of his university post. It’s coming for Britain next, he tells David Charter in the Times.
- “Does Nicola Sturgeon care more about oil revenue or climate change?” – Sturgeon’s positioning on oil and gas extraction is to sit on the fence as long as possible. But she can’t do so forever, writes John Ferry in the Spectator.
- “False and misleading ‘fact check’ about Connolly, et al., 2021” – Dr. Ronan Connolly and his co-authors have responded to obvious false claims in a supposed ‘fact check’ about their latest paper on how solar variability may be affecting the climate, writes Andy May in Watts Up With That.
- “University clears don of being anti-Islam but then cancels his course” – Bristol University chiefs rejected complaints that human rights expert Steven Greer had expressed “bigoted views” after an investigation – but have still pulled his module from their syllabus, reports the Mail on Sunday.
- “Protests rage on in France” – “For a ninth consecutive week, tens of thousands fill the streets across France, battling tear gas and increasingly heavy-handed police tactics to protest against Macron’s draconian health passport regime,” writes Michael P. Senger on Twitter.
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Another mainstream media hatecrime story turns out to be a likely hate hoax, propagandistically pushed because it suits the mainstream political agenda. Did the anti-lockdown razor story really happen? If you read a story about a shockingly offensive crime or bizarre event in any mainstream outlet, and that story pushes the mainstream agendas (antiracism, promotion of homosexual behaviour, climate alarmism, covid panic, pro-vaccination, pro-immigration, anti-male sexism, undermining traditional sex roles, anti-religion etc) the best heuristic for making a rapid rebuttable judgement about the story is: it’s probably false, and almost certainly would never have been published if it didn’t promote the agenda it promotes. Same for stories that make dissenters from elite dogmas look stupid, like the ivermectin overdosing story highlighted on DS recently. If you give these stories a moment’s credence, more often than not they will have the desired emotionally manipulative impact upon you, and you will most likely have been influenced by a falsehood. Hate Crime Hoaxes Are More Common Than You Think A political scientist found that fewer than 1 in 3 of 346 such allegations was genuine. If you watch, read or listen to the mainstream media, you are being lied to and manipulated. Defund… Read more »
“If you watch, read or listen to the mainstream media, you are being lied to and manipulated.”
I didn’t fall for the covid panic, and I didn’t fall for the Iraq War lies. I attribute my alertness to these establishment lies in large part to having seen the active mass media propagandisation of society on political correctness issues in the late C20th, and having made a choice then to stop watching TV. Since then my underlying positions have not changed much, but my political positions have steadily diverged from the systematically propagandised and deluded majority, and being already alienated from the Official Truth insulated me against the turbocharged conformism imposed by social media more recently.
“Does Fishy Sturgeon care more about oil revenue or ‘climate change’?”.
Would Fishy ever give the Shetlands a referendum on whether they wanted to be part of an independent Scotland? About as likely as China closing all those coal mines.
That headline is particularly stupid and malevolent, even more so than Nicola Ceausescu.
It wrongly presumes fossil fuels cause climate change.
“Protests rage on in France”.
And once again nothing on “Ceefax” about it. They do have an item on a French minister being investigated over his “Covid” response though. Because he said Covid was low risk. Do you get the feeling the BBC have an agenda?
But will the protests in France make any difference? The yellow vests have been protesting for years, and been ignored and dismissed, like almost all resistance to the near complete elite leftist dominance of US sphere culture, politics and societies.
In the end, if politics is rigged against you by elite control of the media/social media that decides elections, and laws and policing are rigged against you by the laws passed by said elites and by judges and police chiefs employed by them, what difference can protesting ever make?
All it does is provide opportunities for demonisation and the further application of security forces against you. See also the US where leftist thuggery is greeted with media apologetics (eg “mostly peaceful” murderous BLM riots), while conservative protest is falsely painted as “insurrection” (eg Capitol protests in January, where an unarmed female protester was executed by a security officer and the media/social media mostly nodded approval).
In the end, as dissent is criminalised and peaceful resistance rendered impossible, the nations are forced towards civil war as the only available resolution.
If Reform UK could actually reform things, they might be worth supporting.
The City of London used to be pretty rigged in favour of an old boys’ network, but under Thatcher, who was vehemently against this, it opened up to people from a wider background (or so I heard), so I’m not giving up on change just yet.
Any party is worth supporting if you feel they represent things you believe in.
When dissenting views are simply not covered by the MSM and/or censored from social media and demonised in ordinary conversation, the physical presence of large numbers of peaceful people, preferably a good cross section of the population, make these views harder to ignore and make those who hold them feel less alone and perhaps more emboldened to express them. Of course, such protests are often not covered in the MSM, or coverage is distorted, but there are few other avenues open.
Dissenters need to organise but their small organisations will be more effective if they find at least some people are fertile ground because those dissenting views have been at least in part normalised through mass protest.
All that’s true, but as I noted, the French yellow vests have been turning out huge numbers (by comparison with most sceptic demos) for years now, and been more or less completely ignored and excluded by the French political and social establishment, because they have no political representation.
Same is true here, more or less.
It will be nice if these dissident movements can support, organise and form political resistance parties to replace the existing corrupt parties of the pseudo-right like our “Conservative” Party, but unless they can do that, protests will achieve nothing, short of outright civil disorder.
True about the yellow vests. I don’t know much about French politics. Is there some crossover between the yellow vest people and their issues and French right wing political parties? Could one argue that their protests sustained ideas shared by the poltical right and helped them electorally?
There are as you know a small handful of anti-lockdown right of centre parties. I suppose they should/could combine, though they would still amount to very little. Laurence Fox allegedly has a big budget, but not sure he knows how to spend it. They all look similar to me, but they’d probably manage to argue to the point where they were unable to merge. Uniting around anti-lockdown, freedom of speech and inalienable rights could be a way forward – not quite a single-issue party, but with a narrower initial platform than others. If the hard core of Tory sceptic MPs left the party, that could give it a shove.
What else can people do though? Even if protest doesn’t achieve anything in the short term, the continued pressure will build. More information about it will leak out to those that need to hear about it and more people will wake up to the fact that their media (well, not ‘their’ exactly) is lying to them. I think it’s our duty to protest against these crimes being committed against us.
I agree. I just think the solution, if there is one short of civil war, can only come from a combination of protest and political organisation and representation.
I think protesting can make a great deal of difference. There is something fundamentally uplifting about attending, and feeling you have a common purpose with thousands of other people.
It’s disruptive in thousands of different ways, which can’t be ignored forever.
When you are faced with few alternatives it’s something you can physically do..I think it’s an extension of speaking the truth…it’s good to do it for its own sake, it doesn’t have to ‘achieve’ anything per se, it just has to exist as an alternative to lies and oppression.
“It’s disruptive in thousands of different ways, which can’t be ignored forever.”
That’s what I’m questioning. Perhaps it can be ignored forever by a sufficiently powerful established elite.
“When you are faced with few alternatives it’s something you can physically do..I think it’s an extension of speaking the truth…it’s good to do it for its own sake, it doesn’t have to ‘achieve’ anything per se, it just has to exist as an alternative to lies and oppression.”
Yes, I agree, up to a point. That’s why I, a lifelong libertarian/conservative, marched in London in 2003 against the Iraq War. One of the biggest protests in history at the time. Achieved basically nothing, confirming my scepticism about protest in general, but I don’t regret having done it.
Optimism of the will, pessimism of the intellect…
Vaccine Passports being dropped?
https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/urgent-the-british-are-dropping-vaccine
“Only 25% of deaths in Britain are among the ‘unvaccinated’ “.
And according to ITV and Worldometer, 71% of UK people have had at least one “vaccine”.
And Worldometer’s data on Gibraltar, Israel, The Seychelles and Romania (and data from U.S. states) strongly suggests that these “vaccines” are ineffective.
They better had drop the idea, anyway. And I hope millions will protest the new apartheid (and do whatever else is necessary) if they don’t. Best news in months if they are dropping it, though it’s coming to something if we’re celebrating the “English” government not committing a serious human rights abuse. And don’t forget, even if these “vaccines” did save some lives, “vaccine” deaths would have to be subtracted from this. And there wouls still be absolutely no case for healthy people taking them, let alone being coerced by the government.
Bozo says vaxports won’t happen.
We know Bozo is a liar.
But let’s keep hoping.
For now, because as lockdown has already been decided on, they don’t need this fight until Spring
Leak to the Sunday Times – not reliable.
We are definitely dropping it but “We will keep it in reserve as an option” if things get bad.
aka going ahead this winter.
‘UK lecturers fear students’ return.’
Tells you all you need to know about Britain’s academics.
They should resign!
Can’t they just ring Sweden and ask them how it’s done?
Oh, the irony!: The crowd on the last night of the proms last night singing Rule Britannia (Britons never,never never will be slaves).
I’m surprised the woke brigade hasn’t jumped on the proms. Never really been of that persuasion myself (promenader) but I have no problem with people wanting to sing these old songs of lost empire.
Lockdown is the only subject Peter Hitchens has been good on.
He has taken on the virtually unique role of conservative social justice hipster, he has no views of his own, he just waits to see what is popular and does the exact opposite.
If he were an adult in 1962, he would want to live in 1903.
He was a Trotskyist as a young man and has not changed in essence.
“The offspring of respectable workers, they dressed neatly, were obedient, and conformed to the stereotypes of the time, with Peter helping Daddy and Jane giving Mummy a hand in the kitchen.’
And I would say this was still very much true of the same estates in the South Midlands and Yorkshire, where I used to go on Sunday mornings, as a student Trotskyist in the 1960s and 1970s, trying in vain to foment revolutionary feeling. I still reckon the sale of council houses and the break-up of these largely happy, peaceful places was one of the worst mistakes we ever made.”
Peter Hitchens: socialist turd.
He was a little too middle class to understand that what he saw was not necessarily peaceful and happy beneath.
I think it is purposeful on his part.
He’s not a defender of liberty on principle, he’s not for anything in particular, as a Trotskyist, he wanted a world that cannot exist. As a conservative social justice hipster, he wants a world that never existed.
Just returned from the Borders motorcycle show in our town of Cleobury Mortimer, Shropshire and glad to report that in a crowd of 300 or so, I saw perhaps 20 masks.
It is an important part of understanding the coronavirus fraud that we also understand how 9/11 was brought about by the “deep state” in order to invade and asset strip the middle east.
These people are remorseless. The AE9/11 truth website is good to start with but it is extremely depressing and frightening to see the chaos and destruction they are prepared to bring about. True evil exists.
https://www.ae911truth.org/news/775-the-censorship-of-spike-lee-s-nyc-epicenters-is-a-tragically-fitting-end-to-the-last-20-years