The vision for a modern state museum in Benin City that meets all the requirements as a new home for the 1,130 Benin bronzes that Germany transferred to Nigeria is for now a thing of the past. The incumbent Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari, announced in a public statement on March 23rd that he had transferred ownership of all Benin artefacts looted from the Royal Palace in 1897 and collected elsewhere in the Benin Empire to the Oba of Benin. He recognises him as the owner and has therefore transferred all associated rights, including storage and administration, to him by means of a presidential decree: “To the exclusion of any other person or institution,” as the Nigerian newspaper This Day quotes the decree.
This applies to all the Benin objects that have already been returned and all the others expected to be returned worldwide; in future, they will have to be handed over directly to the Oba as the original owner. All the artefacts are to be housed at the king’s palace or another location in Benin City or elsewhere, according to the Oba’s discretion, as long as their safety is assured. The Federal Government of Nigeria and the Oba are jointly responsible for the security and protection of the objects. As far as the management of the collections is concerned, this is entirely in the hands of the Oba. He can, at his own discretion, cooperate with national or international institutions regarding the preservation of the objects. There is no longer any talk of travelling exhibitions, loans, public access, scientific international cooperation and exchange.
Denial of history
With this decree, Nigeria’s President, shortly before the end of his term of office – the swearing-in ceremony for the new President, Bola Tinubu, will take place this month – created what at first glance seemed surprising. The current President is transferring Nigeria’s national property – including what had been the national property of Germany until the summer of 2022 – to a private individual or a private, autocratic institution. A public good has thus become private property. The Oba has already officially informed the Dutch ambassador in Nigeria that the Netherlands must also comply with the this ‘law’ (“that is the law”).
What was intended by German politicians as a return of important cultural artefacts to the “Nigerian people” to “heal the wounds of the past” is now instead a gift to a single royal house – one among many royal houses and Sultanates in the Republic of Nigeria. A royal family that, from today’s perspective, also committed horrendous war crimes and crimes against humanity until it was subjugated by the British: notorious wars of aggression over centuries with looting, destruction, massacres, the enslavement of prisoners of war, human sacrifices, and slave trading on a large scale.
The actual Benin bronzes are known to be the direct result of the slave trade because the Europeans paid for the slaves with brass rings that became the raw material for the bronzes. They are now returning to the place where they were created, transformed into valuable works of art and historically ‘cleansed’. As can be seen in publications from around the royal court, on the Internet and even in the Digital Benin database connected to the Rothenbaum Museum in Hamburg, the history of the Kingdom of Benin now consists of a paean to the embellished past in which the bloody excesses are concealed and denied. This is an affront to the descendants of slaves in the United States and the Caribbean.
The return of the bronzes to the “Nigerian people” has ended in a fiasco for German politicians and the museum employees who did their bidding. How careless the wording of the agreement on the transfer of ownership between Germany and Nigeria can now be seen very clearly.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said at the state ceremony in Abuja last December, as she performed the symbolic handover of the Benin artefacts: “We are therefore pleased to fund the construction of an art pavilion at the Edo State Museum and to invite you to exhibit the bronzes there. In addition, we have agreed that some bronzes will go to global travelling exhibitions and some of them will remain on loan in German museums.”
By the “Edo State Museum” she obviously meant the planned Edo Museum of West African Art (EMOWAA), a private initiative of the Legacy Restoration Trust that goes back to the governor of the state of Edo, Godwin Obaseki. The Benin Dialogue Group, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and the Federal Foreign Office have been supporting the construction of this architecturally impressive project for years – although a long-term financing plan for the museum’s operations was never presented – and funded it with four million euros.
The wrong museum
The museum is now under construction. However, some significant changes have been announced on the EMOWAA homepage since the beginning of March. It previously stated that the museum would be “home to the world’s most comprehensive collection of Benin Bronzes”. That sentence is no longer there. The EMOWAA will no longer be what German politicians imagined.
There were other indications that things were not going to plan. In the minutes of the last meeting of the Benin Dialogue Group in Hamburg in March of this year, the EMOWAA was no longer mentioned at all, but the Benin Royal Museum, i.e., the Oba’s private museum, was referred to explicitly. Just a few weeks earlier, the overall political situation looked different: the responsible ministers of both countries were at the official ceremony of the German handover. The royal court was not represented – it obviously hadn’t been invited. So what changed?
The family conflict
Everyone who was interested knew that things had been brewing behind the scenes in Nigeria for a long time and that the expected repatriation of thousands of Benin bronzes had become a bone of political contention. Nigerian newspapers have long been reporting on a “cold war” between the Governor, Godwin Obaseki, and the Oba, Ewuare II. The royal court and right-wing groups supporting it starting making threats and did not rule out physical violence if the Benin bronzes went to EMOWAA instead of the king. However, Obaseki had ambitious plans for the new museum. As governor of the federal state of Edo, he wanted to develop the capital, Benin City, into a cultural centre of West African art. The Benin bronzes would have played a central part in this.
Ironically, the conflict dates back to 1897, when the British conquered the royal city of Benin and deposed the king, as This Day and other newspapers reported in 2019. Agho Obaseki, the grandfather of the current Governor, was given the title of honorary chief by the Oba. The Oba gave Obaseki his daughter in marriage and gifted him 100 slaves. When the Oba was already in exile, according to Nigerian newspaper reports, Obaseki took over the office of Oba from 1897 to 1914 and after the death of the exiled king his eldest son was installed as Oba. The British interfered by appointing Obaseki the new Oba’s chief adviser. This resulted in a power struggle, because Obaseki was considered a collaborator with the British and a traitor to the king. Godwin Obaseki, the current governor, is now accused by royalists of perpetuating this treason. A newspaper headline related to the governor’s EMOWAA initiative read: “Does Obaseki want to be like his grandfather?”
According to the Nigerian media, President Muhammadu Buhari’s decision to hand over all Benin properties to the Oba puts an end to the fight between the two opponents. The decision was also apparently made over the heads of the Nigerian Museums and Monuments Commission (NCMM) and its Director General, Abba Isa Tijani. Why Buhari did not stipulate that all Benin collections should be housed in purely state museums (such as the national museums in Lagos, Benin City and Abuja) is a mystery. Whether the transfer of ownership is legal and what domestic and foreign policy consequences it will have will only become clear once the new Nigerian President has been sworn in.
Museums as state gift repositories
Presidential access to national treasures is nothing new in Nigeria. Just one year after independence, the then Prime Minister A.T. Balewa went to the National Museum in Lagos to select a state gift for the American President John F. Kennedy. Despite protests from the Director in charge, Balewa chose a richly carved 18th-century elephant’s tusk. Such ivory carvings were placed on the bronze memorial heads on the royal altars of Benin. Balewa delivered the tooth on the occasion of his state visit to the United States in 1961. It is now in the JFK Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.
It didn’t stop there. A few years later, in 1973, General Yakubu Gowon, then President, contacted Ekpo Eyo, Director of the Nigerian Department of Antiquities (the forerunner of the NCMM), and announced his visit to the National Museum. He would choose a gift for Queen Elizabeth to bring to her on a state visit. As Barnaby Phillips, author of the book Loot: Britain and the Benin Bronzes, writes, Eyo cleared the most valuable pieces from the exhibition before the General arrived. But he could not prevent the latter from selecting a 17th-century bronze memorial head and presenting it to the Queen in 1973 in gratitude for British support in the Biafra War.
In England, the head, long thought to be a copy, stood on a shelf in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. Only in 2002, on the occasion of an exhibition of state gifts to the Queen in Buckingham Palace, did experts identify it as an original which came from the collection of the National Museum in Lagos. Today, it is in the Grand Vestibule of Windsor Castle. The history of the memorial head is embarrassing: it came from an altar of the Oba and was captured by the British in 1897. Most likely an officer of the punitive expedition took it to England, where it eventually ended up on the art market. British colonial officials in Nigeria acquired the head between 1946 and 1957 for the National Museum in Lagos, where it remained until 1973. The British royal family received notification in December 2022 that Nigeria would not reclaim the state gift.
The odyssey of the Benin bronzes from Germany and other countries continues.
Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin was a professor of ethnology at the Georg-August University in Göttingen from 1992 to 2016. This article was first published in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on May 6th. Translation by Mike Wells.
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“Nerve disorder side effect for AZ”.
“Pandemic-hit NHS wastes over £560 million yearly on ‘unnecessary’ and addictive pills with severe withdrawal symptoms – study.. safer options not fully explored… 3 in 4 prescriptions totally unnecessary in some cases” (RT)
I have an old newspaper headline which reads: “Revealed: Big Pharma’s links to NHS policy”. Guess the newspaper and the date!
It makes some key points which I think help to explain the current mess: “NHS England commissioned a group called the Specialised Healthcare Alliance (SHCA) to consult with patients’ groups, charities [note that some charities including Cancer Research UK are owned by pharmaceutical companies] and health organisations and produce a report feeding into its future five-year strategy for commissioning £12bn of services”, and notes that the SHCA is entirely funded by commercial members, and that interestingly its director, John Murray, is also senior partner at lobbying company JMC Partners, whose clients include “drugs firms such as Novatis, Astro Zenica, Sanofi and Pfizer”. (my italics) and also “represents medical device manufacturers and biotech companies”.
The article notes further that the website of JMC partners “makes bold claims about how it has been able to influence policy… it represented a medical device manufacturer who was worried about a planned cut in the amount the NHS paid for a treatment… JMC boasted that it organised a lobbying campaign targeting MPs and ministers as well as mobilising doctors to support its cause… the market for the technology was saved”. The report further notes that John Murray had “had many meetings on a wide range of organisations and interests” with clinical director of specialised services at NHS England James Palmer”.
Worryingly, the article says of NHS England that, unlike other government departments, it “does not register its meetings with lobbyists. It also does not routinely publicly disclose all potential conflicts of interests of those who do work for it”. The suggestion of the SHCA report mentioned above is that NHS England should commit to “disinvest in interventions that have lower impact for patients in favour of new services or innovations”. The article notes that this could benefit big pharma, “keen to sell the latest equipment and treatments… even if… the benefits might be marginal”. The “formidable [lobbying] and unrivalled access to policy makers” is noted in the article by the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency.
The newspapers’ Whitehall editor comments: “Every time [NICE] turns down a drug its manufacturers fight a proxy battle using patients’ groups (which they often fund) and doctors… to campaign for the ruling to be reversed. Emotive stories soon appear in the press about thousands of women being condemned to death because of the failure of Nice to approve this, that or the other drug”. Sound familiar? “The lobbying industry’s greatest success [the creation of the Cancer Drugs Fund] allows drugs to escape Nice’s scrutiny – but still be prescribed on the NHS”. (Nice is supposed to hold drugs companies to account).
John Murray claims there is no problem. All the same, I want to know how many times someone from the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service (for example) has met with UK politicians compared to Mr. Murray, and if UK politicians have even read any single thing that the OMNS has written or have any interest (pun intended) in doing so.
I suggest furthermore that, knowing what we know, if they try and suppress legitimate discussion about politicians and the pharmaceutical industry – and not least in relation to experimental medication – that Facebook and the muppets at The Times have blood on their hands. We are not anti-vaxxers, we just deplore coercion to have experimental “vaccines” when this is the type of thing that is going on, and too many media organisations are failing to dig and ask the right questions. I am just one person with some old papers and an interest in getting to the bottom of things. I suggest that professional journalists at national newspapers such as those muppets at The Times should spend more time trying to give us answers to these questions, and less time slagging off people with genuine concerns about the coercion on people to have experimental “vaccines” – unless of course they are also in on this scam. Now which newspaper, I wonder, will run a headline such as “Revealed: Main Stream Media’s links to NHS policy”?
Times muppets.
Incidentally, the newspaper the article referred to was from was The Independent, 11 February, 2014. We’ve known about this corruption for years – why are so few questions being asked now by some?
Here is a link to the article.
Revealed: Big Pharma’s hidden links to NHS policy, with senior MPs saying medical indust
And commentary.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/big-pharma-lobbyists-exploit-patients-and-doctors-9120189.html
Because there is apparently a new length limit on posts, I could not say as much as I wished to in the post above. The point is, there has been apparently a relationship arguably amounting to corruption between the press, the pharmaceutical industry and government in recent years, as I have said before, but this is not just someone like Phillip Day saying it, but a national newspaper, as recently as 2014. This shows the sort of thing that may be going on in relation to the current shambles, and why I am loath to trust companies like AZ and Pfizer. As I’ve said before, a sophisticated propaganda campaign working on many levels is being conducted by these companies, and this Independent story proves it.
I wrote the above post and the below paragraph yesterday, but I am reproducing it here again because I feel it is an important point, and vital to fully understand what we are up against (and so I can correct some mistakes in the original post!).
Ironically, Oliver Wright, who wrote the commentary on the above article now works for The Times, though apparently not writing articles about the pharmaceutical industry (I wonder why)! Perhaps someone should remind the Times muppet who slagged off “anti-vaxxers” commenting btl on this site about that article by his colleague…
The Nobel Prize In Climate
Tony Heller
The Nobel Prize Committee has achieved peak junk science – by awarding the Physics prize to a climate modeler.
Nils-Axel Mörner told me the story about Alfred Nobel’s wife cheating with a geologist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9F7yd_7U5g
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Response to your Commentary link.
Some decades ago it was made illegal for pharmaceutical and medical instrument suppliers to wine and dine NHS doctors, even nurses, with what were known as ‘Drugs Lunches’
Seems they have got around that by taking their guests abroad and calling them Conferences. My former GP (retired at 50) was forever away on those, not sure about my current one who I never see but who does reply to emails promptly sometimes by personal texts.
Which, and because of other instances of utter corrupt practices from the year dot which have rendered GPs and other medics dispensers of medications and very little else – an over simplification but essentially true – is why there has to be a public register of any and all financial support, monetary and “for money’s worth”, to all GMC and other registered medics; if I was in charge it would be backdated to the date of registration of these “professional bodies”. Only in this way will it be crystal clear the extent to which those elements of the “medical profession” have been corruptly associated with the pharmaceutical industry ( clearly not all medics are so corrupt); I would also like to see a similar register of all elected MPs association with the malevolent elements of the same pharmaceutical cabal – clearly ethical businesses would have absolutely nothing to fear – as well as an outright ban on any UK Health related quango and media outlet receiving any form of financial/money’s worth from ANY source except UK registered charities or via estates of UK domiciled ( i.e. the legal definition thereof). Any such UK registered (“shell”) charity structures must have no links to any non UK resident person or non UK corporate structure and would be required to submit ALL records of meetings, formal and informal, and all forms of correspondence with ANY person or body wherever situated. There would be massive personal fines for the persons involved and a lifelong ban of working in this sector
Draconian? Maybe; pipe dream? certainly – but without such watertight oversight, exactly how do “we, the people” deal with the evident endemic corrupt behaviour of the parts of the medical and health related “professions”?
Trades Unions, CBI, elements of “big Businesses”, Local Government flunkies, MSM, MP’s, HoL, PHE, senior top level figures throughout the NHS, MHRA, JCVI, ONS, SAGE – all these have been instrumental in supporting/implementing/forcing draconian measures which evidently are based on a litany of falsehoods, corrupt practices, presentation of “truth” which is nothing of the kind and very easily demonstrated as such, saddling the UK’s future generations with debt = WWII levels – for no evident benefit …..
Sorry just woke up, that’s most of the non chattering classes!!!!
“Think we’re in a spot of trouble, Betty”
One of the conclusion I reached early on in this crazy crisis is that healthcare has been completely captured by the pharmaceutical industry.
The problem as with everything in this crisis isn’t that it isn’t obvious, or that it isn’t known but rather that in spite of the fact that it is well know, we seem powerless to do anything about it. The system has been captured to such a degree that they are in a virtually unassailable position.
They control the doctors because they’ve captured the organisations that regulate them (such as NICE)
They control the drug regulatory bodies such as the FDA.
They control the research through their funding of institutes and universities.
They control the media through their spending and can wield that sword at any politician or professional that tries to stand up to them.
They control the international bodies like the WHO or those organisations that seem to set standards around the world like the CDC.
And they’ve shown the extent of their power.
They’ve crushed any dissenting opinion on most media.
They’re crushing the careers of doctors and health professionals that try to do things differently.
They’ve crushed alternative treatments in order to prioritise their ‘vaccinations’.
They flaunt their access to power by marching Bill Gates into Downing Street to close a deal with Boris Johnson.
The pharma industry is a mafia that has a vice like grip over global healthcare and it doesn’t seem as if anyone can do much about it.
This ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ It really is like a new Roman ( Catholic ) Empire, a monolithic new state on a global scale.
That’s probably a pretty good analogy
The Baltic States were the last to be Christanised (14thC) in Europe but only after a centuries long Crusade and occupation by the Teutonic Knights and others. Many of the events on the Eastern Front in WW1 and WW2 can be traced back to this.
Pagan practices continued in rural areas into the 19thC and have undergone a revival in recent post Soviet years in part to demonstrate otherness from the Russians.
The upside to that being that the Roman Catholic Empire gradually lost its power over people in the West as we simply stopped believing in them.
One of its last remaining bastions being the Republic Of Ireland but even there numerous pedo scandals have recently greatly diminished its influence.
Only took 1,000 years.
Trans Pacific Partnership Treaty (or its European equivalent) implemented via the back door. Basically transnational corporations have a ‘right to profit’ that supersedes any national legislation. TCs can deem what ‘profit’ they expect to make in any country and the country can be sued at an industry-controlled tribunal for the ‘profit’ if national legislation gets in the way the TCs ‘right to profit’.
Corporate Feudalism enabled by the Mindless Maskers.
I’m glad you brought this up – it is essential background for what has been going on for a long time in the takeover of democratic processes by capital.
The Welcome Foundation paid for a building at the local University for research into depression, anxiety and suchlike. I understand that this gives them ‘influence’ over three Professorships there just as the Met Office has at the department that investigates climate change.
Ironically Channel 4 News exposed much of this 12 years ago, back in the days when the media was still free to report the truth.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/Wvo57rItOUP3/
That clip guided my thinking early during Lockdown 1, in part leading me to this site, then known as Lockdownsceptics.
Apologies to those who’ve seen this before, but this imo is a great short piece just summing up the profoundly different – basically sane – response of the Amish community to covid:
The Amish response to covid-19
I love these Amish stories. I particularly liked when he said it was more important for them not to be isolated than to go to hospital. I think your “inhuman” comment might actually have some justification when it comes to forced isolation from friends and family – something which shouldn’t happen outside of prisons and denies basic humanity.
Might I suggest though that it would be more interesting to hear more about the experience of Belarus, who appear to have done something similar to the Amish, but for a whole country, and without having any disaster with all cause mortality? Surely these two examples on their own are enough to make the case against further UK restrictions.
True. When I was a child, in the early 70s, I was in hospital for a small op. There were strict rules on visiting, and because I took longer to recover from the op, my parents were told to stay completely away. I didn’t recover, I had a high temperature and I was distressed because my parents didn’t visit. Eventually they relented and “allowed” them to see me. Well immediately I started to get better! And I was home within a couple of days!
I keep hammering on about this: knowing that the C19 age-related mortality distribution is the same as all-cause mortality, the C19 mortality rates are not relevant, all that is relevant is all-cause.
Worthwhile 5 minute watch.
While not attracted to the Amish religion or lifestyle their response to Covid was clearly the right one. Having allowed it to ‘rip through’ their community, is there any word about the incidence of reinfection and does that even matter if the effects were minor?
TPTB knew this following the Diamond Princess event at the very beginning (enclosed community, covid not particularly contagious and not particularly severe even among an elderly population) but chose to react in exactly the opposite way to the Amish.
The question, as the foolishness of the Wests response became more and more evident during the summer and autumn of 2020, was why?
It took a while for the ‘conspiracy theory’ of it being about Big Pharmas profits to become revealed as reality now that the West is committed not only to paying to have its its own populations repeatedly injected but the rest of the world as well. 8billion people x $50-$100 a time, for the foreseeable future. Nice little earner.
Thanks for that. What a great little film showing the sensibility of a group of people. Where do I sign up? (sigh)
Not much new in the Roundup today but Peter Robinson is one of the best interviewers in the business. “What happened?” Conversation with Dr Jay Bhattacharya. Saved for later.
The next article is ‘The Covid Catholic Parallel -Been Here Before?’ I don’t know why the author is picking on the Catholics, his argument works with most Christian groups and possibly other religions as well.
One area he does not mention is that the self appointed leaders of belief systems (be they religious or scientific/medical) like to hide behind a secret language so that only they are able to explain all to the rest of us. In another of todays Roundup articles, ‘Brutal take-down of mask rule claim’, even a sceptic academic refers to us as “Laypeople”.
I grew up with High Church Of England, 1960s, when religion was just one of the things you did along with going to school, cubs and Saturday morning matinee at the cinema.
I count myself lucky in being able to just grow out of religion as, becoming aware of the wider world, it didn’t make any sense. Just like Covid/lockdown but will todays modern believers be able or allowed to grow out of it?
The first part of the Peter Robinson interview discusses how Dr Jay conducted localised but intense testing in two California counties March/April 2020 so that instead of measuring Covid death rates against Covid hospitalisations it could be measured against all cases including the asymptomatic. This reduced the mortality rate from X per hundred to X per thousand.
Well I remember reading UK press articles before UK lockdown 1 in which South Korea had done the same on a wider scale with precisely the same result.
TPTB knew all along.
“I don’t know why the author is picking on the Catholics”
Simple – the ‘catholic’ church was the group that elected itself to domination over a period of a millenium and more, defining what was permissible in terms of allowable knowledge. A lot of christian and other jewish texts were excluded from the canon in order to present ‘the‘ artificial doctrine of a unified religion.
Agreed, at least people could pick and choose which ‘protestant’ sect and doctrine to adhere for even start one of their own.
GPs threatening industrial action.’
Who’s going to notice any difference?
Yes. In the past 2 years, I have seen my GP once, and only because I had to have my blood pressure taken as part of a routine medicine review. This year, my review was done over the phone, and my blood pressure is to be taken in 4 week’s time by a practice nurse. In fact, my GP asked me if I had a blood pressure machine at home (no), so I could take it myself and just let her know!
I had to wait a month for the phone call and another month for the blood pressure. Good job I don’t have anything seriously wrong, eh? Tough luck if I do!
To be fair to my (now retired) main GP, I had an excellent response to a heart problem. A previous ‘phone call from another in the practise was unsatisfactory – missing the significance of an oedema which should have been a warning sign.
But the point is that putting up barriers and introducing hypochondriac measures – as has been done – is no way to run a GP service, even given a need to cut out unnecessary appointments (I would happily settle for a quick telephone conversation on some issues).
As I see it, major damage has been done to the profession by the lack of understanding of the essential issues around SARS-CoV-2. The lack of numeracy and literacy casts a halo of doubt around other judgments.
To be honest, if I were a GP, I’d probably do the same.
They’re just a bunch of low level middle managers abused by the system as much as everyone else. I don’t think they have any power to make any decisions or affect most people’s health in any significant way.
They just see patients and follow a pre-established treatment protocol. In the vast majority of the cases they don’t really need to see the patients to decide the next step. And they probably have to put up with less shit on the phone.
In fact, in most instances their job could be fulfilled by a computer algorithm. But they are useful to the psychos that run healthcare because anything that goes wrong can be blamed on their human error.
The system is completely broken and at this point anything they do to wreck it further is fine by me. The sooner the whole thing is torn down and rebuilt the better.
Dr Malcolm Kendrick’s latest blog piece ( a long but fascinating essay on Vitamin C and its links to cardiovascular problems via clotting processes ), includes a comment to the effect that pharmaceutical drug induced illness and/or deaths ( ? ) are at fourth place tied with cardiovascular causes, and that if they were caused by anything else there would be an outcry and call for immediate action. But there is so much money in it that remain untouchable. PS. I like your description of GPs as “middle management”.
GP’s are now the equivalent of IT workers who say “have you tried switching it on and off again” before passing it on to someone competent.
A good GP knows when to ask for specialist advice. IM (extensive)E (of both), IT produces a far higher cock-up ratio!
Far too sweeping (see previous comments).
GPs may be low level middle managers (who pay their way into position like Officers in Wellingtons armies) but they are highly remunerated and can afford to retire at 45-50.
“They’re just a bunch of low level middle managers abused by the system as much as everyone else. I don’t think they have any power to make any decisions or affect most people’s health in any significant way.”
WTGR, I know of instances which demonstrate you are utterly wrong; some CCG GP’s are viewed by some Hospital Trusts as the worst thing to happen to the NHS since 1945. CCG hold the cost of treatment purse strings in large part; I could relate situations where GPs are casing mayhem in A&E and what is now known as “Women’s and Children’s Services” – would not be surprised of other services are similarly affected. How on this earth can you have “internal markets” within a publically funded national service?
The BMA has done immense damage to the credibility of the profession.
Recently had some tests, to eliminate a variety of causes, one potentially very serious, since discounted by YT, whilst other less serious issues are still on the table. Not immediately life threatening. Received message from non reply email account of CCG/GP practice – ” Routine tel call ANP/GP..” nothing else; dutifully rang their number and during the course of call was given position in queue as 20, then 27, then 21, then 23….warning message that if it got to 50, call would be terminated.Cannot access test records as that is “not allowed” by GP practice – have made a request for that to change with no response to date; cannot use Engage service for this purpose.
When I last managed to get an appointment – after the intervention of an emergency walk in GP/ 111 – I asked “how many GP’S are on duty at the surgery in question ( one of 4 sites from “normal opening hours” to very part time opening), how many are full time”; this was met with stonewalling at first, eventually confirmed as “1” to second question and outright refusal to answer first question.
“Who’s going to notice any difference?” – cheap shot would be “not many” but would it not be to far from reality?
James Forsyth thunks the tories have libertarian instincts?
God, I’d hate to fall victim to a government that had totalitarian instincts.
Mmm, yes, that would be terrible, wouldn’t it?
if Boris (well Carrie parroting what to type) wrote war and Peace, the last dot above the last i in the book would be about how much Boris cares about liberty for others.
The Telegraph article about the new Italian study seems bullshitty to me. An expert is saying that there is more chance of hospitalisations with Delta than all previous variants, but it’s got a lower IFR…?!? This goes against all the claims of “Delta is more transmissible but less deadly” that we’ve heard all over the place. Also they’re saying that PHE data shows under 50s are 3 times as likely to die if they’re unvaccinated than vaccinated. So what gives? It’s a stupid pay wall job again mind, but I managed to time “Esc” just right.
The MSM report that 93% of over 70’s support mask wearing.
This over 70 supports telling the maskateers of all ages to “go, f*ck themselves”
I see some elderly people wearing masks in the open but not most, often one of a couple does but their partner does not.
If 93% of them support it why aren’t they doing so already?
Bullshit reporting is why.
Weird Isn’t it? They must be adherents to the “my mask protects you, your mask protects me” creed
No. My mask protects me, your mask protects me, I don’t give a stuff about what happens to you unless you selfishly get ill and occupy a hospital bed that might be needed by me.
ABSOLUTELY.
Well – if you trust ‘public opinion’, or the MSM, for any sophisticated judgment, you need you bumps felt. :-). ‘Common sense’ is an oxymoron.
I don’t!!
You forgot to say “please” – politeness is usually the hallmark of your generation…?
That change of name is abhorrent. There are cries of horror when it is done on Social Media by individuals. But the MSM can get a way with it.
Ludicrous and outlandish claims make it easier to mock them in turn, name calling is all part of the political game but it can cut both ways.
Don’t think DeSantis is gonna lose any sleep over it. He’ll be used to the hate and jealousy, plus wise to the spitefully childish remarks from media and government figures by now. It’s petty AF, but he’ll have the last laugh ( just like in Texas ) and has shown he’s taking the correct strategy for many months now. The proof of the pudding is in the data.
They called the Texans ‘Neanderthals’ for living like human beings.
Funny, that.
This is massive! you wont see this in the MSM in the uk
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/nih-admits-funding-gain-function-covid-experiments-gives-ecohealth-five-days-report
Thank you. Good to know that the liars are being exposed, and the truth sayers beginning to be vindicated.
Good find.
Half aware people would know the truth when Fouci was being questioned in a Congressional (?) Committee some weeks ago. (Televised and posted on YouTube, possibly here at LS-DS).
He had to repeatedly pretend not to be able to understand/hear a question about his role in illegally funding Wuhan gain of function experimentation and was then rescued by the Chair claiming that he had ‘already answered the question’.
During a separate inquiry I found that Fouci had received Amrricas highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Honor, for his work on AIDS (which was also erroneous) but so has Oprah Whitney so not that special.
Indeed – it should be a smoking howitzer shell and it confirms what, for example, Del Bigtree, Jeffery Jaxen, Dr David Martin, Reiner Fuellmich’s team among many others have been saying , with contemporaneous cited proof, for a long time.
What has to happen now is for this admission of fact to be proved to have been known by Fauci personally and anyone else in his cozy email round robin clique including Drosten, Zhengli, Daszak, Farrar, Vallence as head of R&D @ GSK at the time, Baric etc etc.
One more hairline crack in the SARS COV2 Dam of Lies just got a bit wider.
Keep pushing folks
PS just close the pop up to read the article
“If the Government restricts a fully vaccinated nation, it risks ushering in a new way of life for good” Most of us here knew from the start, or not long after, that this was likely to be forever. Yet another “conspiracy theory” coming true.
It’s a good one to ram home to people who bought into the narrative that we were going to get back to normal. I’ve said this before, I think imposing lockdowns now would be a huge mistake tactically by the govt, but sadly I think they are too smart to do it.
I think the worst case is no lockdown but we carry on with the vaxx fascism and madness. And of course there’s still a lockdown for those workers who can’t work in their chosen job because they are not vaxxed, plus all the travel restrictions, testing etc etc. But the great vaxxed population don’t see these as restrictions, they see them as logical, necessary and normal.
The ‘vaxxed’ see these restrictions as a reward for being good (because the restrictions are imposed on other people who have not been good)
Some do. I think some genuinely believe the restrictions make sense, and some shrink from thinking it through because they know were this thinking through will lead – to a unpleasant conclusion that they have been had and our leaders are wicked.
Yep. An epidemic of cognitive dissonance coupled with the sunk cost fallacy. Their strategy is to keep their heads firmly buried in the sand and hope it all magically goes back to normal…whilst enabling the abusive government to pursue it’s authoritarian agenda and paradoxically making f**k all effort to help things actually go back to normal. Could these twits be any more moronic?
According to Charles Eisenstein, and/or Simon Elmer at ASH, ( I’m not sure any longer which blog I read it in ), we need to realise that a significant/influential minority ( or even majority ) of people *don’t* in fact want to go back to normal at all, because normal was so awful and/or empty of purpose/engagement, meaningless, etc; that in fact they love this new state of things because it gives their lives meaning, in the same way as a religion might, fills them with “feelings”, like pride, a sense of belonging, etc. And they don’t want this taken away. In other words the last thing we should be asking for is a return to normal; for many that was a living death.
PS. Phrases like “risks ushering in a new way of life for good” may sound positively attractive to them, more like a promise than a threat. I’m not sure that I’m not one of those people, however much i loathe the lies, manipulation, restrictions, loss of freedoms, damage done to so many people’s lives/businesses, the increased poverty/inequality, etc, never wear a mask, and am not and hope never to be vaccinated, etc. There is something exciting about the prospect of a radically different way of life. I didn’t think much of the way most things were being run in the old system. It’s a weird position, to deeply disapprove of the methods, and probably most of the likely “ends”, but at the same time to welcome, even enjoy, the upheaval.
Yes I watched a lengthy interview with the Belgian, Prof Mathias somebody of Ghent Uni, and when he was speaking about the mass hypnosis of the public and mass formation he spoke of this topic too. Can’t remember the term he used but those who have no connection to society and feel disassociation from a community, drifting through life, were more prone to this mentality. But how any sane person with an ounce of humanity can endorse the segregation of society and a large chunk being discriminated against is beyond me. Anyone who supports a two-tier society is despicable as far as I’m concerned.
The Prof is Matias Desmet. Full interview is here. One of the top 10 must watch sceptic videos in my opinion.
He talks about how people who suffer from “free-floating anxiety” because they do not belong to a particular place or have any strong group or family associations. You could describe them as “citizens of nowhere” I suppose:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/RIzxcU8nBYQX/
Yes, absolutely, excellent analyses! I read some of a transcript from a presentation by/interview with him. … There seem to be a great many people in this state. As MiriAF says on her blog, people will fight if they have something to fight for, but many people now have been, as she types it; “de-MORAL-ised”. They have had their “morals” removed, by school, media, the money-making machine etc, been alienated from themselves, and it really shows.
Back in the mid 1990s I had a period of depression (resolved by visiting a counsellor trained in Jungian psychology) and one of the things I remember him saying was that “people talk about someone having depression, but that’s not right. People don’t have depression, depression has them“.
And he talked about how people in a depressive state are so wrapped up and lost in the fog of their own depression that they can’t step outside of the fog and see their state with any sense of detachment.
The position that the COVIDians are in seems to me to be exactly the same. People don’t have COVID fear – COVID fear has them.
As with depression, helping people out of this state is going to take a long time.
Very true IMHO and personal experience; I feel there is an analogy that these people are on the “medication” of the “MSM/HMG/WHO agenda”, and that “dose” has been cycled up repeatedly since early 2020. The top and tailing effect of this media/propoganda drug appears to put them – in a psychological sense – in a blinkered position where they cannot “see” outside its limits ( a position people who suffer depression often find themselves in) . As anyone who has come off AD/SSRI medication (“no, don’t worry Mr/Mrs/Ms/Miss/Master Patient, they are not addictive, trust me, I’m a Doctor”) will know, stopping this “medication” is likely to be very difficult for many reasons; post “event” recovery is as much about self management and being able to recognise and deal with the first signs of “the event” – something that cannot generally be done whilst “medicated”.
My “homespun remedy” is for these affected people to be able to rid themselves of the cosying effects of the “MSM/HMG/WHO agenda” – prepare for some “cold turkey” and never return; “Covid Fear” will not be eradicated, but it might be better handled by sufferers; a process of enlightenment – the fact that “you” are able to acknowledge “you” were affected by “Covid fear” is a very important step…..imho, of course.
Yes “free-floating anxiety”, that’s the term I was after. A lot of things dropped into place when I listened to him, although I know people without this type of anxiety who have equally been taken in and there will be people who also do not have that sense of belonging but oppose these discriminatory restrictions and what society is being morphed into. But a very interesting and revealing interview for sure. I think lots of people in society are just predisposed to being taken in more and have a natural deference to any authority figure, whom they will obediently obey as if on autopilot, than good old critical thinking non-conformists like we on here.
Too many people are devoid of healthy scepticism and rational thought unfortunately.
At one time this country had a religion. It taught that every individual had a value, that every individual had a capacity for good and evil, that sins could be forgiven but that God was just, that we should love our neighbors as ourselves, that eternity gave meaning to fleeting mortal lives… everything that’s missing now.
Such a good idea to sneer and snigger at Christians.
Not Dustbin Jellybaby and his coven. Christians..
That is what yesterdays Roundup article about China’s Huning someone (CCP braniac Politbeuro member) who is saying that nihilistic individualism in the USA would result in societal collapse, how it was spreading in China and what he was doing to stop it.
Lyons piece about Z/Wang, an “eminence gris” behind 4 different CCP leaderships? Yes, brilliant article analysing the changes in China’s attitude to Western liberalism etc over the last 20 years, like a huge cruise ship slowly making a U-turn, Xi and his committee deciding that if it/China and the CCP wants to survive it must not follow the American/Western liberal model anymore. Lyons’ blog, “The Upheaval” looks excellent/very interesting indeed, examining this time of .. upheaval.
I agree, and I don’t endorse that. But I understand the longing for a different way of doing things, or for a volcanic shattering of the current/old system, and if I hadn’t found my own way over the years, if I still depended on external approval and/or direction etc, then I imagine I might have been susceptible to the brainwashing, and believed the establishment narrative about the *need* for segregation etc, enough to feel “justified”. It is frightening how many people seem to “contract out” their thinking.
Yes, that’s it exactly. I agree, they appear to have outsourced their decision-making and ability to risk assess, thereby infantilizing and disempowering themselves into the bargain. I know it’s due to constant fear-porn and social conditioning with all the propaganda we cannot move for but they’re adults with a brain and I give them no excuses or pity. They are the ones screwing us over and I just feel pure resentment for them now as a result. Zero tolerance for those who betray their fellow citizens, not to mention the next generation who will inherit this society and all of it’s ills, in a free democracy. They are helping to f**k up our kids’ futures and to me that is unforgivable.
That’s why they encouraged the Thursday Clap for the NHS claptrap. To embody a fake sense of community among the compliant believers and hostility towards those who did not, would not or, in some documented cases, could not conform.
I keep asking your last question and the answer is always ‘yes’.
And on BBC radio 4 news at 8.30 on 22/10, the govt will debate the Assisted Dying Bill, last debated in Jan 2020… I think they may have given up trying to hide their nefarious intentions.
https://www.parliament.uk/business/news/2021/october-2021/lords-debates-assisted-dying-bill-at-second-reading/
Many people who still have some remaining empathy would support much of this Bill. You do know, I imagine, that hundreds of dying people choose to take their own lives every year in the UK. See, for instance, https://www.politicshome.com/members/article/the-house-of-lords-today-has-the-opportunity-to-fix-a-broken-outdated-and-unsafe-law
THIN. EDGE. OF. THE. WEDGE!
Bertrand Russell (who I don’t have much time for), once made the very astute observation that abortion would appeal to the selfishness of individuals and euthanasia to the cupidity of governments.
Assisted dying for only the most extreme cases would soon become common in cases where quality-of-life issues where identified – the logical progression will lead a Logan’s Run-type scenario at the age of 70 (instead of 30) in order to help ‘save the planet’!
In Theory it’s a good idea, in practise it’s not.
At one time I might have supported such a bill but having seen the State effectively declare war on the people via “public health measures” whose effect is to at best make public health worse and at worst actively set out to cause death via neglect or active intervention there is no way I would trust the government or health authorities with such legislation.
They certainly know all about assisted dying.
Just a reminder:
”The communication of only the “reasonable worst-case” planning assumptions meant that there was an obvious gap between what the government was saying and what was observable on the ground, namely that the disease was mild in most cases and that mortality levels were low. This gap could have risked damaging the government’s credibility and undermining public trust in the response”
This is from the Swine Flu report published in 2010. TPTB have learned nothing since then. I suspect that this “gap” is exactly what is happening now. There may well be more than 50,000 positive “tests” per day but none of us here know people who are being rushed to hospital in a serious condition with Covid (but we all know several people with a positive “test” result who have been double jabbed and who have a “sniffle”.)
I’m torn between “The boy who cried wolf” or “The Emperor’s new clothes” as a suitable comparison with government policy.
“TPTB have learned nothing since then. ” Au contraire they have learned that a “deadly pandemic” gives you much more power than could normally be obtained in a free, democratic country, and that the impression of a deadly pandemic can be created and perpetuated using classic propaganda techniques backed by huge state money and groups of experts.
Well, “huge state money”? AKA, tax-payer’s money!
Yes they are waging war on us with our own money. If in a few decades time the country and the world regains some of its senses, it would be wise to put in place some strong prohibitions against governments using the machinery of state to brainwash the population under the guise of “public information”.
Mugging us to afford a bigger sharper knife
If you’re referring to the Council of Europe report – it exposes the same game-plan, but one which failed, and was subjected to critical scrutiny by independent brains. The prime author was a Labour member of parliament (and the assembly), Paul Flynn, who is a reminder of the fact that cringing subservience was not always the name of the game on those benches.
No Rick, this was the Deidre Hinds report for the U.K.
I’m aware of C of E report though. It was listening to Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, a prime mover against the swine flu narrative which first convinced me that there was something wrong with the Covid narrative. When the numbers were first coming out of China, in February 2020, I remember typing “Covid hoax?” into a search engine. The rest, as they say, is history.
is the Deidre Hinds report online anywhere I cannot find it
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/61252/the2009influenzapandemic-review.pdf
Sorry TLAWL. Spelling error. It was Deidre Hine not Hinds.
Of course, Margaret, Wodarg was the prime mover in the Council of Europe, working with Paul Flynn.
… sidelined, of course.
And the Queen has spent a night in hospital… Just few weeks before COP26.
Perhaps the least of our problems – though, if she were to be replaced by Charlie Boy, this could be yet another nail in the coffin of UK plc.
If Charles becomes King, he will be the last one.
Someone mentioned a medical product which may have caused all-cause mortality to rise, not fall. Has she taken this product?
I wonder if she has had Teh Vaccine and then caught COVID from one of the business leaders she shook hands with this week.
Vaccine followed by COVID infection is not a happy combination, especially if you are in your 90s.
Well Brenda hasn’t exactly been a raging success in this shit-show, has she?
Tin Lizzie. Thinks we are selfish for refusing to deliver up our bodies to the covvifascists.
I don’t care a flea about her state of health.
Following the events of the past two years and now that once again the NHS is being weaponised and being used to threaten the populace once more, I think these questions have to be asked: Is the NHS fit for purpose? Should it be dismantled?
My response would be: No and Yes.
Quite possibly, but the health fascism in Germany and France is worse than here and I’m led to believe their healthcare systems are better than ours.
When I lived in France I was impressed by how efficient it was.
“youth protests led by Greta Thunberg.”
That’s a big fat lie, she’s done nothing, she’s been a puppet of her mother!
Follow the money
The young are fickle and will grow out of her and wonder what they were thinking when they look at the green taxes they’ll pay.
e.g. Malala
Livermore playing the ‘sensible sceptic’ role, better known as government apologist.
A few digs at Lockdowns and other measures, interspersed with ‘they may work in the short term’ and other qualifying statements. The two that hang him are the justification for jabbing 12-15 year olds and the statement that naturally acquired immunity is short lived. Utter bollocks.
This article started me thinking
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/covid-authoritarians-are-cause-americas-problems-not-unvaccinated
You know DS’s official line of covid incompetence, how is it incompetence that so-called liberal democracies have worked in lock-step with each other to achieve a common purpose of enriching big pharma?
Some of the most grotesque human rights violations, have happened in liberal “free” democracies Australia/Canada/France/ Italy! Daniel Andrews (Victoria) locking people out of the economy, recently asserted “now we have the architecture, infrastructure & changed the culture we will not be removing any restrictions for the unvaccinated in the future“. Then there’s the joke that is Canada’s Trudeau, Macron, Ad*rn (can’t bring myself to say its name) & Alexander depifffel of course not forgetting the empire’s Biden.
How come the last decade has seen a transition away from community based policing to a Paramilitary style police force. With police in almost all western liberal democracies using riot police, weapons & tactics against peaceful protesters “anti-vaxxers” & police kneeling for rioters!
Incompetence or ideology?
Canadian Times
All Vaxxinated People Must Quarantine Over the Winter Months or Risk Serious Illness!!
https://canadiantimes.live/health/all-vaxxinated-people-must-quarantine-over-the-winter-months-or-risk-serious-illness/
Jesus wept! Can anyone tell me what the “vaxxed” have even gained by getting jabbed?? If they’re not feeling just a little bit duped and hard done by yet then they really have donated their brain to The Church of Covid.
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandThe Most Popular Websites Loaded Insecurely
https://whynohttps.com/country/gb
Modeller’s den is #1 at somehting
Interesting couple of opinion items at the start of RoundUp – Fraser Nelson writing a puff piece for Baldie Bonce, and the Times piece reporting a minister telling the truth about ‘pressure’ on beds.
The media literate will finger these immediately as propaganda pieces coming ultimately out of the Cabinet Office.
So what is the current strategy behind the sudden writing down of panic?
We will have to wait until the New Year to see, but is it a real attempt to put the brakes on in the face of small shifts in public opinion? Or have we evidence of the achievement of an underlying objective – the jabs have done their work in laying down the platform for the underlying objective of identity cards and a control mentality with its acceptance of the abandonment of democracy? Time to play nicey-nicey?
Answers on a postcard …..
All good questions. I have largely stopped trying to surmise what’s going on behind the facade and what might happen next. I’m pacing myself for a long haul.
Covid believers will never unbelieve, a friend who is doubled jabbed, pneumonia jabbed, flu jabbed has spent 2 weeks in bed and now feels weak, tells me that this covid19 is a terrible virus and she hopes they can fit her in soon for the booster. !!
Easy to answer this question. All these major ‘human rights’ charities are fronts for the western establishment to bash equally evil foreign powers. They are social engineering and propaganda groups which couldn’t really give a damn about human rights just forwarding elitist / technocratic agendas. Don’t give any big charities like this a penny, fund local projects that actually do real life good (not satanic greater good).
Fixed it for you.
Those who want to “limit the spread” quite clearly don’t understand that this is impossible – not surprisingly, of course, given all the lies and propaganda claiming that lockdowns, face nappies, etc, do that.
I suspect a lot of those in favour of ‘limiting the spread’ are also not financially affected by it, and that many will think that ‘the economy’ consists of ‘bankers’ bonuses’ and the like.
Incidentally, there’s been quite a noticeable increase in face nappies being worn in shops this week – all very depressing.
OT info request:
I have just had a letter from the NHS regarding a real medical test I have to undergo. There is a load of BS about ‘teh covid’ – the symptoms of which are deemed to be high temperature, or new continuous cough or loss/alteration of sense of smell.
None of these, individually or collectively is specific to covid. When I had it in Jan 2020 the symptoms were persistent continuous DRY cough, extreme fatigue, fever which served to distinguish it from the bad flu I had in 2017. These current symptom list is a perfect match for severe cold, flu, etc, yet will be deemed/believed to be evidence of covid infection with all the consequent waste of resources.
I’m sure the dry cough was originally mentioned in official symptom lists, and the loss of smell was a later addition. The smell issue occurs in any respiratory disease affecting the upper part of the nose where the smell sensors are located.
Q1: When was the distinctive ‘dry’ aspect of the cough was disappeared from the symptom list?
Q2: Anyone know when the smell issue was tacked on to the list?
Covid is practically impossible to clinically diagnose, ask a doctor is you don’t believe me.
There is no case for new Covid restrictions. RNLI volunteers and Border Force, dont appear too bothered about this ‘deadly disease’ when they greet migrants whose medical history is unknown to them.