Big Brother Watch launched the Ministry of Truth report in the House of Commons last night. Speakers included David Davis MP, Gavin Millar KC, Julia Hartley-Brewer and Prof. Carl Heneghan.
Last summer, we worked with Big Brother Watch to determine the extent of the Government’s spying activities. As a result, Carl sent Freedom of Information requests to the Rapid Response Unit and the Counter Disinformation Unit (see the report for context).
The Rapid Response Unit (RRU) is part of the Cabinet Office and was tasked with “tackling a range of harmful narratives online” during the pandemic, “from purported ‘experts’ issuing dangerous misinformation to criminal fraudsters running phishing scams”.
The Counter Disinformation Unit (CDU) was tasked to monitor what it deems to be disinformation and flag content to social media companies, sitting inside the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
We’ve previously written about “Censorships and their Antidotes in Covid Times“, pointing out that “academic and journalistic freedom requires individuals to pursue knowledge wherever it may lead without undue or unreasonable interference”.
In our article “Dissenters“, we learnt from Isabel Oakeshott that attacks were partly orchestrated by Hancock, who harnessed the full power of the state to silence ‘dissenters’.
This latest Big Brother Watch report, and the information obtained in Freedom of Information requests, shows the Government was spying on many individuals, including us.
All along, the Government was taking covert action to shout down what it considered was misinformation and disinformation: the Government thought it owned the truth. It didn’t like criticism of modelling and lockdown policies, particularly pointing out the collateral harms, any opposition to Covid passes, vaccine passports and evidence underpinning the vaccines.
So far, we have faced multiple complaints to our university, been censored on Facebook and Twitter and had Government ministers set up websites to discredit us. Furthermore, we faced academic attacks more akin to witch hunts, attempts by the Guardian to paint us as agents of disinformation, and the BBC largely ghosting us from 2021 onwards. Indeed, a Conservative MP who tried to humiliate us through his website was dubbed “witchfinder-general” by the Times. On the way, we lost several friends silenced by the stress of the attacks, the intimidation and the online cheerleaders who sought to close down the dissenters.
Apparently, the Government also used an Army Intelligence Unit called 77th Brigade, almost certainly a cover name for spooks who did some of the spying. If this is real and they are or were serving in HM Forces, they need reminding that obeying an unlawful order is no defence.
All for seeking evidence-based answers to policies enacted on a few people’s opinions, models or very poor quality evidence.
But now we find some of the attacks, the censorship and the smears might have been orchestrated at the heart of the Government through its active surveillance. With this latest revelation, the concerted nature of the attacks makes sense.
While speaking out, we have the right to keep working and hold on to academic posts that we have held for a long time and are qualified to hold. Specifically on respiratory viruses epidemiology and interventions to ameliorate their effects, a field in which we have scores of publications and 50 years of combined work experience.
We have the right not to be harassed, trolled or defamed for advocating viral challenge studies on humans, which, with due ethical safeguards, have been going on since Edward Jenner’s time. The right to investigate how a virus transmits and how interventions might prevent its transmission – to challenge the dogma. Finally, the right to lead productive lives devoid of intimidation to ourselves and our family and colleagues.
Somehow in all this, Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights was forgotten, which protects the right to freedom of speech. As was Academic Freedom: the legal right “to question and test received wisdom and to put forward new ideas and controversial or unpopular opinions without placing themselves in jeopardy of losing their jobs or the privileges they may have”.
One of the key elements of an evidence-based approach is you’ll obtain the truth in the end. Many of the supported policy interventions, with the benefit of hindsight, now seem absurd. However, how many have been harmed in the battle to obtain the truth?
The Government’s experts and advisers claimed certainty when it didn’t exist; creating policies overnight, Government retrospectively used poor-quality evidence to justify the actions; it over-relied on modellers, opinions and poor science – in doing so, it had to defend itself with covert surveillance operations.
Most, if not all, of the main players setting the pandemic policies have moved on – some to better, more lucrative things. Yet, academics and journalists should be empowered to investigate and report on Government activities in the public interest. We are aware that many academics wanted to speak out but were scared off by the intimidation and the threats: the silencing of science is not in the best interests of a functioning democratic society.
The Government lost its way, as did many. In the frenzied fear of the pandemic, they forgot to follow the evidence. Society is all the better for those who seek to challenge the status quo and speak out. We salute those that did.
Dr. Carl Heneghan is the Oxford Professor of Evidence Based Medicine and Dr. Tom Jefferson is an epidemiologist based in Rome who works with Professor Heneghan on the Cochrane Collaboration. This article was first published on their Substack blog, Trust The Evidence, which you can subscribe to here.
Stop Press: Watch Big Brother Watch’s interview with a 77th Brigade whistleblower on YouTube here.
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Thank you Toby for a cracking ‘taster’ into what is becoming an extremely invidious subject. Although I fell out with the Catholic Church many years ago and my anti-stance has hardened these last 2.5 years I remain a Christian and very much support Christian beliefs. I have nothing to say in favour of Islam and it is unquestionably, diametrically opposed, I believe to the Christian way of life. So I agree the undermining of Christianity seems to have been matched by the growth of wokery and the results are bad and getting worse.
The trans / alphabet brigade are very much a minority within a much larger group of people but unfortunately make far too much noise. The vast majority of trans people would I am sure prefer to live quiet lives under the radar.
If the Church went back to basics and ensured the Christian basics were reasserted once more a firmer push back against wokery might commence. Unlikely I know and especially with their current hierarchy.
The wokery infecting our society is evil and unless stopped will grow. It is certainly a nasty element in the push to break apart our society and like all other attacks we must resist and stand up for basic common sense.
“After a brief flurry of feminine freedom towards the end of the last century, once again men are the self-appointed experts on everything female.”. A “brief flurry”?. “towards the end of the last century”?. Not a single word of blame goes to the swivel-eyed loons that are ‘progressive’ women. We’re into the 9th decade of increasingly aggressive feminism and it’s no coincidence that life is becoming increasingly shite. Men must give up their masculinity and women must be more masculine (so few people seem able to see the bizarrely obvious double speak). Where could this campaign possibly end? Men wanting to be women, and women wanting to be men. Suck it up Julie, you’ve got a lot to answer for. Get comfortable in that bed.
Why has she got a lot to answer for?
Look up her previous rants about men. This woman absolutely hates males – hates with a venomous passion. That hatred has consequences – 60+ years of consequences.
Yes, I’m blaming womem like Julie; I’m just saying it out aloud. You sometimes have to dig deep to fnd the roots of a problem.
Well I don’t know anything about her. And I don’t even know if a word exists which is the female equivalent of ‘misogynist’. But I do like men, as long as they aren’t tossers. Women can be complete tossers too. What I will agree with this woman on is her opinion of a man being appointed as “Period dignity officer”. No idea what that job entails but it does sound like something straight from a Babylon Bee skit. I can imagine JP having a lot of fun with that one too.
“Rise of the New Puritans”.
For some time I have been imagining members of this new cult asking (in a “Southern” drawl): “Are you woke? Do you accept woke as your personal…” etc.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…
Four hundred years ago, one could say that the difference between the Catholics and the Protestants was that one set wanted to follow rules, while the other set wanted to think.
The same two sets exist today. Instead of it being Protestants and Catholics, what should it be? Sceptics and Wokesters?
I don’t know. Some Catholics are very sceptical. Have you read The Song Of Bernadette? And some Protestants for that matter are not very sceptical ( the clergy at Durham Cathedral?).
Note that the religious tend to not fall for the wokerati tricks — and the more religious they are the more they’re immune.
Perhaps society needs a religion, and in the absence of any of the traditional theologies people will get suckered into ‘belief’ in whatever is being pushed by the media.
Depends what one means by religious. I tend to consider some of the atheist cults as religious. And by the way, I don’t particularly buy the distinction that the atheist crimes of the 20th century were not in the name of atheism .Even if they were not specifically in its name or about converting the world to atheism, it won’t make much difference to their many victims, but I suppose the likes of Dawkins have to try and distance their religion from these crimes, and I suppose some are bound to buy it. Meanwhile, the maxim that if people cease to believe i n God, they don’t believe in nothing but rather in anything, seems to have a lot of truth in it. Innit? No coincidence that there is a big interest in “the aliens” in post Christian towns in South Wales.
If I say I have no idea about any gods and just want to focus on doing what I believe is the right thing for myself and those I love, what does that make me?
A Christian.
Agnostic I suppose if you don’t claim to know for certain. Nonetheless, there are likely to be other things that you do believe for certain without having seen. These may or may not include “aliens” (as I said), the origin of life, the provenance and age of fossils, whether or not Scottish shrimps are really likely to remain unchanged for 300 million years if molecules to man can allegedly happen in 4,000 million years (according to “the science”), whether T-rex DNA is really likely to survive for millions of years, where matter came from and how much there is and why, what the mind is (atoms arranged in a certain way (which would mean you could theoretically be duplicated and thus one person with two bodies), your own atoms (even though almost all are replaced over a life time), your own DNA (which would mean identical twins were one person with two bodies), or perhaps the dwelling place of the soul), whether the “big bang” is scientific (the universe came from a dot and the dot came from nothing and that idea gets printed in a journal as “science”), how much space, time and matter there is and why (if they are infinite, could anything happen (if so, why isn’t there more than one of me, and if not why not, how much of them is there and why?). why the missing links that Victorian amateur naturalist fretted about remain missing (and what said naturalist would have made of the stunning discoveries of DNA and the mindboggling complexity of the cell), about whether macro-evolution can happen by random chance despite lack of proof and seeming statistical impossibility (amino acids to protein, an eye forming etc.), and why the many natural laws (and many conditions of the unique planet Earth in its unique solar system) just happen to be perfectly calibrated to allow life to exist.
My point is that, whilst atheists and agnostics and “nones” might traditionally be considered as non-religious, they may very well be believers, simply arguing on essentially philosophical grounds that their belief is more reasonable than other beliefs (as indeed most people do to be fair).
And I should add that those atheists who place themselves at the centre and effectively make gods of themselves are effectively atheistic satanists (man made god is a key definition of this). Christians on the other hand aspire to love their enemy and do good to those that hate them. This is a very difficult thing, but very commendable (and to be fair, some atheists and agnostics try to do this. Always worth learning from other beliefs as our old friends the Amish have shown us with “vaccines”).
Which athiests make gods of themselves? So now they’re satanists?
And loving your enemy is commendable, doing good to those who hate you?
Sounds like being stuck in an abusive relationship to me and makes somebody a massive mug.
Just more sanctimonious cobblers and further proof that those of us without religion and happy in our lot seem to really rub the devout up the wrong way. The fact we do not feel we are lacking in the slightest and can have a fulfilling existence without subscribing to organized belief systems really gets up some noses doesn’t it?
Loving your enemy= treating them with respect and recognizing their humanity and agency; not snogging them and giving them your wage packet.
What has characterized all the lockdown protests and resistance movements (e.g trucker protests) has been their decency, kindness and good behaviour.
The religious are not, on the whole ‘rubbed up the wrong way’ by atheists. What rubs many of us up the wrong way is the mealy-mouthed caving-in of some of our own leaders -like the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Kudos to the Canadian pastor who roared at the cops who tried to close his church.
Why on earth would you treat your enemy with respect?? What humanity? Surely if they had any they wouldn’t be considered your enemy? No offence but I’m not someone who enjoys being treat like a doormat because I get to polish my halo and earn some brownie points before I reach your pearly gates. Nope. Treat others as you want to be treat yourself. Simple as.
But I do agree with that Bishop, and the pope actually, being utterly disingenuous in their preaching, and the Polish dude totally rocks. Got all the time in the world for people like that. His video went viral for a reason.
It makes you a decent and compassionate human being, and you do not have to belong to any particular club to be one of those. We aren’t living in primitive times where our very life depended on choosing a side.
“We aren’t living in primitive times where our very life depended on choosing a side.”
We have come very close Mogs. In places like Canada, New York, Australia and the others with ‘vaccine” mandates, for many they really did have to pick a side.
I am an Atheist, i.e. I do not believe in God(s), Angels, Archangels, etc.
That is all being an “Atheist” means.
To construe “not believing in God” as “believing in nothing” is illogical.
To construe “not believing in God” as “believing in anything” is merely puerile.
BTW Christian Cults have been murdering each other throughout history.
There’s always the English Divine Liturgy. Mar Mari Emanuel would get me back into a church.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i1QgjDenQ_s
“Note that the religious tend to not fall for the wokerati tricks”
Well that is a mile off the donkey’s nose. I come from a large and committed family of Catholics and unfortunately they have fallen for the scam hook…
Two churches I know well – Catholic and Baptist. C1984 believers up to their eye balls.
There are smaller groups within Christianity standing up to the nonsense (including that Canadian pastor and certain Catholic groups), however it is hard to think of leaders of any of the major Christian denominations who have made a stand, and many of them inspire little (or no) confidence. What I would say is that the Church is better than its leadership at any given time, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I trust Christ, even if I do not trust some Christian leaders so much.
I’m not alone in being both not religious and impervious to woke claptrap. Society “needs” religion like it needs mask mandates or a harnfull novel injection. All examples of completely unnecessary belief systems in order to live as a decent human being in a functional and civilised society.
But what people will use to virtue signal to the max nevertheless.
Ok… Except for “the child-raping of the Catholic Church”. I am aware of the scandals that prompted Ms Burchill to smear the whole Church in this way, but child rape is NOT part of the (Catholic) Christian religion.
“Far safer to kick the Christians instead” indeed.
I think I’ve spotted a typo in “…bullying cults…”