The recent Portuguese election results were wholly unsurprising for anyone paying even minimal attention to European politics over the last five years: an electorate tired of career politicians who continually ignore the most concerning issue for the future of their country – uncontrolled immigration – get behind a populist who addresses the issue unabashedly (if admittedly not always articulately).
The only mildly surprising aspect was that there was relatively little hysteria in the world press and even less here in Portugal. Indeed, with the exception of one or two sore-loser socialists on election night muttering grim portents of “dark times for democracy”, the general agreement among the commentariat was that the Portuguese had sent a clear message to the governing class and that the other parties needed to accept the will of the people whom they serve and try to work with Chega – the ‘far Right’ populist party that took a remarkable 48 of 230 seats, up from 12 last time.
Predictably though, the Guardian is not happy with the voice of the people being heard and has published a hand-wringing article about Chega and its leader André Ventura that deserves a brief rebuttal. For context, I am an (English) immigrant who lives, works and has a young family here in Portugal, and therefore I fully understand why good people would vote Chega. Indeed, my wife did vote Chega, albeit reluctantly. She was reluctant because, quite frankly, they’re a bit clownish. But they’re also the only party to talk seriously about reducing immigration, and unfortunately that one issue trumps all the others – even above the crippling taxation we suffer under and which multiple parties ran on reducing.
To understand the scope and speed of the immigration change, just 10 years ago my wife knew all of the residents of her road by name, everyone greeted each other in the street and I would not think twice about letting her walk home alone at midnight. Now we know almost no-one, being nearly the last native residents in a road of Airbnbs and low cost Third-World-immigrant rentals. The gentle sound of Fado music every Saturday morning from one elderly neighbour’s radio has been replaced with the repetitive, repellant bass of Kizomba. All but two of the small local stores in the area that were run by Portuguese and sold fresh vegetables, fruits and smoked meats are now run by South Asians who speak only broken English (and not a word of Portuguese) and sell only alcohol, tobacco and junk food. The central café is now a kebab shop. It no longer feels like Portugal. For us, as extortionate and unfair as the taxation is here, it is still of less importance than ensuring that the country our children grow up in will be safe and decent.
When one questions these changes brought about by unprecedented immigration levels the answer from the old guard such as my father-in-law is that immigrants contribute six times what they take (or seven times, according to the Guardian article). The provenance and accuracy of this oft-repeated statistic is dubious, but even if true should not the question then be “Okay, but which immigrants”? I am an immigrant, I contribute an exorbitant amount of tax and take almost nothing in return (we even have private healthcare), so should I really be counted in the same statistic as the South Asian women who come here simply to give birth in publicly funded hospitals? Moreover, even if it’s true that immigrants increase our GDP, many of us would happily be a little poorer if we could return to the sleepy, low-crime, culturally homogenous Portugal of the past.
Of course, the Guardian article doesn’t even attempt to address the legitimate concerns of one million Portuguese who have seen their country completely transformed in the last decade and voted en masse against it, but instead it relies on the relentless repetition of the weasel-word “racist” to hammer home its point. It mentions as evidence André Ventura calling for a serving black MP –Joacine Katar Moreira – to be returned to her own country. The statement itself is correct, but the impression given by the Guardian is that Ventura said this in all seriousness to a respectable black MP, which simply isn’t the case. “Joacine” was a hyper progressive prima donna who brought such chaos to Parliament that she was fired from her own party (despite being its only MP) after a matter of months. Her most salient characteristic was that she was almost completely incomprehensible due to an extremely severe stutter, but that could perhaps have been forgiven had the words she did manage to get out not been the most childish grievance politics imaginable. Ventura’s comment came after the endless dramas caused by her almighty ego and sense of entitlement had led pretty much everyone, everywhere just wanting her gone so we could discuss serious things again. When she requested that every item in Portuguese museums be returned to their country of origin, Ventura made an obvious, low-brow joke that rather than the priceless museum pieces being returned, perhaps she herself should be returned to her native country (she was born in Guinea-Bissau) for the sake of a peaceful Parliament.
It was a stupid thing to say, politically speaking, but then that’s why people vote for populists – they say out loud the kind of dumb, reactionary things that sometimes cross the minds of us plebs. Indeed, the article goes on to say that Ventura “initially carved out a national name for himself through a series of sustained attacks on the Roma community, accusing them of exploiting welfare benefits and alleging there is a ‘chronic problem’ of ‘delinquency and violence’ in the community”. It’s true that’s how he made his name, but what he said is exactly what the average person here actually knows to be true. Yes, some Roma do integrate well and are accepted (Ricardo Quaresma is a national football hero and proud Roma), but most don’t and have no desire to. Everyone watching the news knows the ethnic reality behind the euphemism ‘large family’ when there’s a story about them terrorising a school or hospital, and Ventura was simply the first politician to speak openly about it. Perhaps he did so opportunistically and cynically knowing it would get him press and votes, but even so, at least the problem was finally being discussed.
The remainder of the Guardian article is a defence of the (comparatively small) Muslim communities here, which are naturally presented as benevolent and charitable minorities running a wholesome community sportsground and cooking meals for the poor. Charming. But we do have television and the internet here and have seen what has happened to much of Europe over the last decade, so many of us agree with Ventura that we should perhaps have a cost-benefit analysis before importing vast numbers of people whose religion is diametrically opposed to our Catholic-based culture.
Unfortunately, although Chega annoys all the right people like the Guardian, it’s unlikely to be the permanent solution we need. For starters, the other parties have explicitly ruled out doing any kind of deal with Chega, so we’re in a political stalemate and probably nothing much of importance will happen until a new election is called. Secondly, more generally, the populists are not our saviours. It may be that each country needs its own ‘balls of steel’ straight-talking egotist to break down the taboos, but to actually effect change requires serious politicians willing and able to negotiate and compromise and having the integrity to carry the message of national sovereignty to a wider audience. This is unlikely to happen with Chega. The raucous world of populist politics attracts the wrong type of people, and it will only take one or two newly elected Chega MPs causing scandal for the more moderate voters to get squeamish. If any are found to have links to the true far Right then the press will be able to say “see, we told you, anyone against unlimited immigration truly is a Nazi”, and the issue will once again become taboo, perhaps until it’s too late.
Let’s hope not, and I wish Ventura well, but I’m not optimistic about the future here.
Granger is a pseudonym.
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The existence/origin of the virus doesn’t matter: it’s the lockdown that has trashed our civilisation.
The lab origin is key to discrediting both “The Science” and the people who did the trashing.
No it really isn’t: lockdown never made sense irrespective of where the virus came from. It was a political decision, not a medical one.
Exactly, and the Wuhan leak blows the political motivations wide open.
As an aside, I don’t believe in lockdowns at all, but a leak probably justifies them more than a natural origin for the simple reason that one might assume a man made virus to be potentially or actually much more dangerous and unprecedented in its effects. That’s assuming you didn’t already know its effects which it seems, given what’s coming out, they may well have done.
All helps to uncover the nine pathetic lies as outlined by Yeadon.
Novelty, lethality, lack of prior immunity, lack of existing treatments, efficacy of testing, asymptomatic transmission, efficacy of masks, efficacy of lockdowns, danger of variants.
They knew the effects of said virus perfectly well by 19th March 2020, 100%, when they downgraded the severity level of Covid19 officially on the gov.uk website, citing low overall mortality rates as the reason for the downgrade. So you might be able to make a case for applying some caution up to that point, in theory, when they might have been able to say they had genuine concern, because an IFR of 3.4% was being bandied around, but as soon as it was established that “the virus” was no more lethal than common flu, which they definitely did know by 19th March 2020, there was no longer any justification fdor any further measures.
19th March 2020 was just before the first lockdown. We’re still living the nightmare, in a more advanced form, 15+ months down the line.
This is a fundamentally important but often overlooked fact which blows the government narrative out of the water. It is something everyone should work to promote to people who believe in the government narrative, because you can show them the gov.uk webpage which still has the announcement of it being downgraded up for all to see. I presume it serves some kind of legal purpose.
Status of COVID-19
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid#status-of-covid-19
As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious disease (HCID) in the UK. There are many diseases which can cause serious illness which are not classified as HCIDs.
The 4 nations public health HCID group made an interim recommendation in January 2020 to classify COVID-19 as an HCID. This was based on consideration of the UK HCID criteria about the virus and the disease with information available during the early stages of the outbreak. Now that more is known about COVID-19, the public health bodies in the UK have reviewed the most up to date information about COVID-19 against the UK HCID criteria. They have determined that several features have now changed; in particular, more information is available about mortality rates (low overall), and there is now greater clinical awareness and a specific and sensitive laboratory test, the availability of which continues to increase.
Our last warning if we heed it and if it’s not too late.
No. Mark my words, the Collapse of the Lab Leak Theory will show you that people are sheep and they’ll quickly forget that the mainstream media lied to them for so long and persecuted anyone who told the truth. The mainstream media took hold of the narrative by filing a Freedom of Information Request for Fauci’s emails and they’ll take the story anywhere they like from now on.
2 + 2 = 5 and we’ve always been at war with Eurasia. And men can have babies as long as they don’t participate in women’s sports. Any more. Or something.
If President Trump had been shown evidence of the lab leak by US intelligence then they would have shared this intelligence and all knew there was this possibility. I do feel if it turns out to be true, which it is certainly looking the case, the suppression of this by scientists raises what else have they suppressed and who can actually be trusted. Scientists and experts clearly can’t be trusted.
And did some use this to bring down the president of the USA? And all those people who have tried to say anyone questioning China is racist and all that Chinese money invested in western economies and western research? The implications seem huge. Many have been moving away from google, Facebook etc but now will there be a real movement away from them to more independent platforms.
Back last May people commenting here did raise the possibility that the government thought they were dealing with a bio weapons attack. But none of this means that the pandemic preparedness plan should have been jettisoned for lockdowns.
It came from Chimerica.
Natalie Winters in The National Pulse highlights a NIH hosted conference in 2011 at which CCP scientists (no other sort in China and perhaps even Chimerica) spoke of the lack of regulation in China (as an advantage perhaps).
While speaking at the event via telephone, Yuan Zhiming repeatedly emphasized that his lab and China lacked any meaningful regulation of dual-use research.
“There’s no regulation in China, there’s no regulation on the identification of some dual-use research, and there’s no regulation on the classification of research or the classification of information,” he explained.
https://thenationalpulse.com/exclusive/nih-hosted-wuhan-lab-director-asserting-no-regulation/
“no other sort in China”. And what are communists famous for? I suspect it’s not truth. We desperately need more truth in science and medicine.
(And nothing anti-Chinese people btw. We have nothing against the real Chinese government in Taiwan, or the brave democracy activists in Hong Kong).
Not as if we weren’t warned.
by the lights of perverted science …
Yet in holding scientific discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
“Engineered mice with humanised lungs”? v What the hell?
Tolkien had it right with his opprobrium towards crossing man with orcs. Biological experimentation is going to be an absolute nightmare this century, I fear.
I’m sceptical
They can squash trends and news if they want to (Biden Jnr)
This is being allowed
Why??
I’m sceptical too. Not much of a bioweapon! Most people who die ‘from covid’ are elderly with comorbidities. And the virus still hasn’t been isolated and purified. But if they are saying that the virus is an escaped bioweapon then they can keep ramping up the fear element, and it is this ramped-up fear that is really the weapon.
Just because it escaped from a lab doesn’t mean it’s a bioweapon – as I understand it, they were doing research into viruses in the Wuhan lab – research which may be of questionable wisdom due to leaks, but nevertheless research, not weapons manufacturing.
Anyway, releasing a virus as a weapon that kills billions isn’t a very smart idea, as it will kill your own citizens and your export markets.
No, you need a bioweapon that causes just enough disturbance to be seen as a novel threat, but not one that takes out police and government.
You want to reorganise society not destroy all the profitable bits.
Indeed. I don’t think that’s what they did, but it has worked out like that. I do think that once it leaked they cottoned on pretty quickly to how well the theatre worked.
Tell the average person in the street that the virus was made in a lab and that this was known and covered up
They will be more scared, not less
And they will blame the Chinese, or the Americans, depending on their political persuasion
I don’t see how this helps us. The subtlety that it shows a pattern of deception will be lost on most people. The basic lies that need to be exposed – that covid was an exceptional public health emergency and that the lunatic measures taken and the dodgy vaccines were needed – will remain unaffected.
I always thought that Sars-cov2 was lab created because I had done a fair bit of research into virology prior to this and was horrified to see how gain of function experiments were being done. Relatively benign animal viruses (that only transmitted between animals in restricted ways, like when sheep rub their eyes together) were being aerosolised.
Most of the funding for this research was coming from Homeland Security and the Department of Defence.
The virologists themselves, though they purport to be doing medical; research must all have security clearance to work in these labs.
https://thebulletin.org/2019/08/is-there-a-role-for-the-biological-weapons-convention-in-oversight-of-lab-created-potential-pandemic-pathogens/
Research by Ron Fouchier in the Netherlands and Yoshihiro Kawaoka in Madison, Wisconsin marked the beginning of a “research enterprise” aimed at creating mammalian-airborne-transmissible, highly-pathogenic, avian-influenza live viruses. Such viruses could be transmitted through the air, similar to seasonal human influenza. Through November 2018, 14 laboratories have been identified in this enterprise.
These viruses are examples of lab-created potentially pandemic pathogens that bring up questions reflecting real concerns: Should details of this dual-use research be published? Could lab-created potentially pandemic pathogens be accidentally released from a laboratory into the community and seed a human pandemic? Could they be employed as biological weapons?
The probability of accidental release into the community from one of the laboratories in this research enterprise is uncomfortably high. For these and other lab-created potentially pandemic pathogens, just one laboratory-infected researcher could seed a pandemic. Concern over a pandemic from a research enterprise laboratory release should rival our grave concern over a natural pandemic; the likelihood of both is similar. Furthermore, a laboratory worker with hostile intent could introduce a potentially pandemic pathogen into the community.
Chimeric mice are routinely used in laboratories to test the effect of these new viruses or toxins. So the mice are used in the experiment, but they contain tissues that have been humanised so the researchers can see exactly how the toxin would work in a human.
I do not think there can be much doubt that the Sars-Cov 2 virus was well understood before it was released.
Whoever did it knew it would be sufficiently different to create an emergency, but not so pathogenic it would cause massive deaths – and they would not want the army and all essential workers dropping dead en masse.
Another point is, that Sars-cov-2 has an exact tropism for human cells and cannot infect bat cells. Quite apart from the signs that the spike has been artificially modified, the exact tropism for human cells and its inability to infect its purported animal host, with the absence of an intermediate host – these make the claims that it is our intrusion into natural habitats that is causing animal viruses to jump utter rubbish.
A fascinating article, thanks. Such essays are one of the best things about this site.
If the virus did indeed come from a lab, especially if it was engineered, then the consequences for public faith in science and experts will indeed be incalculable.
But isn’t there an even bigger scandal on the horizon, ready to dwarf the lab-leak theory? What if the Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin based treatments are indeed highly effective against covid-19, as is increasingly be plausibly claimed? How are ‘The Science’ and the Medical Establishment, as well as the media censors, going to explain why they supressed this?
An accidental lab leak is one thing. But the deliberate suppression of cheap and almost risk-free treatments for the resulting disease is on a whole larger scale. How many deaths could that have caused? And who pays the penalty?
And looking beyond that, I can’t help spying a cloud – as yet no bigger than a man’s hand – which may pass quietly, or may not. What if the vaccines do indeed entail serious medium- and long-term side effects? And hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of people have been injected with the stuff? Including a very large proportion of the adult populations of Western societies, and – if ‘The Science’ gets its way – the children as well?
Heaven only knows what we’ve done.