First the good news. All schools will re-open in full in September, the Government has declared. No, really. They will.
Now the bad news. They won’t. At least, not if all schools are expected to comply with the voluminous and entirely pointless guidance the Government has issued today. The BBC has a summary and we’re talking about a veritable forest of red tape. All entirely pointless, of course.
- Grouping children together in groups or “bubbles”, one per class in primaries and one per year group in secondaries
- Avoiding contact in school between these groups, with separate starting, finishing, lunch and break times
- Attendance compulsory with the threat of penalty fines
- Test and trace in place for schools
- Regular cleaning of hands, but masks not expected for pupils or staff
- Those with symptoms told to stay out of school
- No big group events like school assemblies and arranging classrooms with forward facing desks
- Separate groups on school buses and discouraging the use of public transport
- Pupils will be expected to continue with all their GCSEs and A-levels
- Emphasis on Maths and English in primaries and in Year 7 of secondaries
Readers of lockdown sceptics may not know this, but I co-founded four schools and have been a Chair of Governors, a Chair of a multi-academy trust and CEO of a multi-academy trust. So I know a thing or two about running schools. And believe me when I tell you that complying with some of these “safety measures” will be flat out impossible.
Take the guideline about lunch and break times. Staggered break times are notoriously difficult to manage, but staggered lunch times? Forget it. Suppose the school in question is a two-form entry primary. That means 14 different classes or “bubbles”. How on earth can you have 14 different lunch sittings over the course of an hour? Just managing it with two separate sittings is a logistical nightmare and often means lunch over-runs, thereby eating into the first period of the afternoon. But 14? Cloud cuckoo land. Even doing that over the entire school day would be a logistical nightmare. These guidelines, like so much that comes out of the Department for Education, have been written by a group of bureaucrats who have never set foot in a school and haven’t a clue about how to run one.
The teaching unions have already said the guidelines are going to be “enormously challenging” to implement, i.e. impossible. So “Down tools, comrades” as per usual. Or rather, “Don’t bother picking up your tools until you’re satisfied that your school is going to comply with every jot and tittle of this guidance, comrades.” Not much hope of headteachers getting behind them either – they’ve described them as “mind-boggling“.
Back to watching The Last Dance on Netflix for teachers, in other words.
And even if a school somehow manages to hack its way through this red tape, there’s the ridiculous rule that if two or more children test positive for the virus, the entire school will probably have to close! What a complete nonsense.
In the Telegraph, Angela Epstein asks, what is the point of Gavin Williamson? Incredibly, she manages to spend 1,000 words answering this question.
If I was the Education Secretary I’d scrap all the guidance and replace it with four words: Use your common sense.
Prague Throws End-of-Lockdown Party
Inspiring story in today’s Independent about Prague.
Prague has celebrated a self-proclaimed end to its coronavirus epidemic – by throwing a massive party attended by thousands of people all sharing food and without any social distancing.
The Czech capital held the unorthodox gathering to say a “symbolic farewell” to the infection and to show residents should no longer be scared to meet with friends or visit local businesses.
A 500 metre table was set up on the famous Charles Bridge with people packed along it swapping snacks and drinks brought from home.
Dancing and singing were enjoyed as local musicians played in the open streets.
The event was held despite some 260 new COVID-19 cases being found in the country last week. Fears that such an event could become a super-spreader if just a few undiagnosed sufferers turned up were apparently dismissed.
I like that note of alarmism at the end. Two hundred and sixty news cases in a week out of a population of 10.7 million. Ooh, mother!
People of Leicester, I look forward to you following suit.
World At One – and Matthew Parris – Embraces Scepticism!
It seems as if the sleeping broadcasters are finally waking up to the fact that the lockdown may – just may – have been a mistake.
Matthew Parris was interviewed on the World at One today and said he’s changed his mind and now thinks we should have stuck with herd immunity.
Matthew Parris: I think the herd immunity idea was right, right from the start and I think in the end the whole world is going to develop some kind of immunity from this and it won’t mean some people won’t still get it but its not going to rage through the population as it has been doing.
Sarah Montague: So ultimately do you think we’ll look at Sweden with envy?
MP: I think it’s going to be a very long time before anybody admits that they were wrong and I suppose I should include people like me in that analysis. But I think the Swedes who stuck to the course on which we started out and then lost our nerve will turn out to have done at least no more harm to their population than the Norwegians or the Danes have.
That was refreshing enough, but the Parris interview was immediately followed by one with Carl Heneghan, Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford and longstanding lockdown sceptic. He was even better!
Carl Heneghan: The death rates as they currently stand have diminished. This is a radically different disease than what it was a few months ago. About six per cent of all people in hospital were dying then. Now it’s down to about one per cent. So the key about lockdown is that it’s a very blunt tool and it should be used for one reason and one reason only because the health system is becoming overwhelmed. What we see in Leicester is an increase in the number of people coming forward for testing and a small increase of the number of people with Covid. I would say right now it’s a very blunt tool and a mistake for us to be locking down in Leicester. It’s a perfect opportunity to let the test-and-trace system start working and in fact we’ve seen a 30% reduction in cases in the last week already so it is having an effect.
The next interviewee was with Allyson Pollock, former Director of the Institute of Health and Society at the University of Newcastle. She too was a sceptic!
Last up was Professor Julien Legrande – also sceptical.
Julian Le Grand: You have to be careful about applying the precautionary principle. Epidemiologists tend to operate very much on the precautionary principle, which basically says, “Look if you’ve got no data, no information, if you’ve got a dreadful risk of some calamity, better to be safe than sorry.” Which makes a great deal of sense at the first stages, but of course what it doesn’t take account of are the costs involved and what you do when you’ve got a little more data. We’re now in a situation where actually we do have a little more data. Your previous speakers have been talking about the Leicester situation. Well, we do now know that infection rate in Leicester is incredibly low it has to be said. It’s something like 140 out of 100,000 which is 0.14%. I mean this is a tiny risk and I, in agreement with your previous speakers, think it’s certainly not worth the costs involved in locking down the entire city.
Le Grand went on to say the fatality risk for under-45s was “virtually zero”.
You can listen to the entire parade of sceptics from the 20 minute mark here.
What a pleasant change.
The Ethics of Lockdown
Good post in Hector Drummond Magazine on the ethics of lockdown by Tim James. Here’s a taster:
Deaths from COVID-19 are deaths from natural causes, wherever you believe the virus originated. The Government does not have a responsibility to prevent these at any cost, despite their repeated pledges to do “whatever it takes” to beat the virus.
Conversely, deaths resulting from the lockdown will be deaths resulting from reckless human intervention. Those deaths are their moral responsibility. The Government has no moral authority to sacrifice the lives of those at little or no risk in the uncertain hope of saving the lives of those who are.
Worth reading in full.
Covid Comedy
What’s the difference between COVID-19 and Romeo and Juliet? One’s a coronavirus and the other is a Verona crisis.
Getting Away From It All
I got an email from a reader who has escaped Britain for Switzerland and is relieved to somewhere comparatively sane.
Having got thoroughly fed up with the ongoing government insanity, my wife and I decided last week to escape Stalagluft UK and booked up flights to Switzerland. We managed to get some travel insurance despite the blanket FCO “advice” and are spending a couple of days in Geneva. Then we are moving on to the German speaking area in the Bernese Oberland and then Berne itself. While Terminal 5 and the BA flight this morning gave us our first experience of having to wear masks for hours, Geneva is a revelation. The hotel has taken away the mini bar, but otherwise it all feels blissfully normal. The streets are full of shoppers, the bars and restaurants are full and relaxed. Friends greet each other in the streets with hugs and kisses. Hard to imagine anything similar at home. It feels surreally different from the UK – the thought of 10 days away from Matt Hancock and the rest of the gang is more relaxing than an all-inclusive spa break.
Sounds quite tempting. However, I think Mrs Young has settled on the Dolemites. Just a bit nervy about the EasyJet flights being cancelled 24 hours beforehand…
Great Quote
A reader has pointed out that I included a great quote from Richard Klein in How to Lose Friends & Alienate People. That book, about my misadventures in New York, was published in 2001 (and made into a film in 2008). But this quote could not be more relevant.
We are in the midst of one of those periodic moments of repression, when the culture, descended from Puritans, imposes its hysterical visions and enforces its guilty constraints on society, legislating moral judgements under the guise of public health, all the while enlarging the power of surveillance and the reach of censorship to achieve a general restriction of freedom.
Richard Klein
Round-Up
And on to the round-up of all the stories I’ve noticed, or which have been been brought to my attention, in the last 24 hours:
- ‘What’s to stop the people of Leicester “doing a Cummings”?‘ – Allison Pearson poses a good question in the Telegraph
- ‘How King’s College London has become Cancel College‘ – Two pseudonymous academics at King’s College London describe how the once top Russell Group university became Woke Central
- ‘Two in three victims of COVID-19 had a disability‘ – Interesting article in the Times
- ‘Look closely at the motives of the Facebook boycotters‘ – Good piece by Izabella Kaminska in the FT
- ‘Why Covid herd immunity could be “twice as high as first thought”‘ – Not “as first thought” by me. Glad to see the MSM finally coming round though. This piece is by Holden Firth in the Week
- ‘DEFUND THE BBC: Campaign To Defund “Biased” BBC Gathers Pace‘ – Exciting development
- ‘We risk going over a cliff chasing second wave red herrings‘ – Good column in the Telegraph from the always dependable Sherelle Jacobs
- ‘If you really love Cornwall you’ll stay away this summer‘ – Bedwetting piece about how “dangerous” it would be for the locals if tourists from London descend on Cornwall this summer. Yeah, right. Better to stay away, even though tourism is the single biggest industry in the county
- ‘No more air bridges? What a colossal waste of time and money this has been‘ – Nick Trend with an understandably angry piece in the Telegraph about the fiasco that is the Government’s “air bridge” policy, now more or less abandoned
- ‘If Only Governments Were REALLY “Guided By The Science”‘ – Good summary of John Ioannidis’s trenchant views in Principia Scientific International
- ‘Even the royal family has jumped on the BLM bandwagon‘ – Hard-hitting piece in Spiked about Prince Eunuch’s pathetic attempt to appear woke. Not sure I want to listen to a Royal Prince lecturing me about “privilege”
Theme Tune Suggestions From Readers
Two suggestions today: “Stay Free” by The Clash and “Mad World” by Tears for Fears.
Small Businesses That Have Re-opened
A few weeks ago, Lockdown Sceptics launched a searchable directory of open businesses across the UK. The idea is to celebrate those retail and hospitality businesses that have re-opened, as well as help people find out what has opened in their area. But we need your help to build it, so we’ve created a form you can fill out to tell us about those businesses that have opened near you. Now that non-essential shops have re-opened – or most of them, anyway – we’re now focusing on pubs, bars, clubs and restaurants, as well as other social venues. Please visit the page and let us know about those brave folk who are doing their bit to get our country back on its feet. Don’t worry if your entries don’t show up immediately – we need to approve them once you’ve entered the data.
Note to the Good Folk Below the Line
I enjoy reading all your comments and I’m glad I’ve created a “safe space” for lockdown sceptics to share their frustrations and keep each other’s spirits up. But please don’t copy and paste whole articles from papers that are behind paywalls in the comments. I work for some of those papers and if they don’t charge for premium content they won’t survive.
Shameless Begging Bit
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the last 48 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. It usually takes me several hours to do these updates, along with everything else, which doesn’t leave much time for other work. If you feel like donating, however small the amount, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links I should include in future updates, email me here. (Please don’t email me at any other address.) I’ll try and get another update done on Saturday.
And if you’d like to join the Free Speech Union, please click here. I’ve talked about the tsunami of censorship we’re facing in my Spectator column today.
And Finally…
In my monthly column for Spectator USA, I’ve documented some of the people who’ve been cancelled in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests.
Never in the field of human conflict has so much misery been caused to so many by so few.
I’m thinking of the hard-left rage mobs that have been policing the public square since the beginning of June — quite literally in the case of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle. I’ve been keeping a list of all the people who have suffered catastrophic career damage because they’ve fallen foul of the Red Guards — and it’s growing ‘exponentially’, as a virologist might say. Like the COVID illness at its peak, it has been doubling every two to three days.
Some of the victims have been people you’d expect to lose their heads in this cultural revolution. Nigel Farage, for instance, the former leader of the Brexit party, who lost his job as a radio presenter in London within 48 hours of comparing statue-destroying protesters to the Taliban.
Others have been canceled, not for anything they’ve said, but because those close to them have breached a taboo — like the LA Galaxy midfielder Aleksandar Katai, who was ‘released’ by the club after his wife captioned a photo on Instagram of a looter carrying boxes out of a shoe store with the words ‘Black Nikes Matter’.
But by far the largest group of victims have been white liberals in their forties or fifties who have made the mistake of genuflecting to the BLM protesters. They’ve issued pro forma statements of solidarity that have been judged insufficiently pious by their more enlightened peers. They took a knee, as it were, when what they should have done was throw themselves to the ground and beg for forgiveness.
And if you want a longer list, there’s always the one I’ve been compiling for the Free Speech Union’s Twitter feed. Now up to 50…
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
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When I see “jailed for 20 years” I recall that jail was never intended as the punishment, but as a holding cell while awaiting the actual punishment.
Gotta love Pat Condell. He says it like it is. This video, about Gaza, is from 9 years ago and it’s as relevant today as it was back then. ( 6min )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ugsv5u-sW0&ab_channel=PatCondell
What is a ‘proportionate response’?
”Proportionality is not part of international law or the history of warfare. It occupies a space akin to what Justice Potter Stewart said about pornography and not being able to define it, though “I know what it is when I see it.”
In other words, there is a cottage industry of finger-waggers who have decided that Israel’s responses to wanton murder need to be somehow referenced to the magnitude of the aggression.
As British author and political commentator Douglas Murray astutely noted, does that mean that Israel should shoot and behead the precise number of babies that Hamas did?
What proportionality really masks is an all-season, never-varying sympathy for the perceived underdog. What do you expect of Hamas; they are resisting Israeli aggression and domination (the fact that Israel left Gaza in 2005 has no bearing on this mindset), and are desperate.
So that inherently means that Israel either has it coming, or at least should suck it up and accept such attacks as the price of their “domination.”
https://www.jns.org/the-truly-proportionate-response-to-hamas-is-its-elimination/
It’s totally unreasonable to ask Israel to go back to the pre-attack status quo. Either,
My money is on the last one. Occam’s razor.
This guy’s correct. It’s the sheer hypocrisy from world leaders condemning any terrorism or violence in their countries. But they are the very ones responsible for this violence because they prized ‘diversity’ above the safety of their citizens.
“Macron says ‘Islamist terrorism’ rising in Europe, all states at risk.”
When Egypt flat-out said they would not be taking any Palestinian asylum seekers, everyone was in agreement.
When Georgia Meloni wanted to stop people floating to Italy as a stepping stone into Europe with zero security screening, she was deemed a racist.
The world is a silly place. Hypocritical is the word. The very same people who always ask the West to stop meddling with their affairs almost always condemn the West for not helping when there’s a crisis.
No one else really cares about human rights, women’s rights, minority rights, racism, climate change, refugees, etc. They’ll just pay lip service to it and use these to extract more cash or other concessions from the West.
Why the fuck would you go to a different country “for a better life”, then spread the same toxic ideology that made your original country a shithole, to begin with?
For many decades leaders of European countries have welcomed people whose secret goal is to murder the citizens of the same countries that helped them.
Countries that gave them everything they needed, food, clothing, housing, and money.
All who disagreed with this were labeled as racists and even laws were made to silence them. So much for free speech.
Suddenly they are worried about the problems they have been creating themselves.
I laugh at the ridiculousness of this all and the hypocrisy of globalist leaders.
Western countries have doomed themselves by being so naive and blue-eyed about Islam.”
https://twitter.com/ImtiazMadmood/status/1714413351164350975
Morning ,naivety doesn’t cover “The Great Replacement” which is a thing ! No one gets into a country unless the F-ckpigs in charge allow it ! How far would an average uk Joe get ,starting an outbound world tour in a small rubber raft from a beach in Kent without taking any paperwork ! Look at Airport security to just go on holiday ! We ( the indigenous ones) can’t fart without permission & must be masked Jabbed , tracked & traced etc etc but unknowns are waved in by the hour ! TPTB,s pot is simmering nicely on the stove of western cultures destruction !!!…
Morning Freddo. Yes exactly. And on that topic, I know he’s not exactly saying they’ll take all 1 million but what do you think the Scots have to say about this latest bombshell from their leader?
https://twitter.com/GoldingBF/status/1714700873291403365
Useless Yousaf looking to cement his power base and Scotland be damned.
fascinated that you got so many likes and few dislikes for this post but a majority of dislikes for your previous post on proportionate response. to me they are both relevant to the hypocrisy. why is it commentators have such a problem explaining why they differ in their reactions i wonder.
Your guess is as good as mine, rachel! haha..
I don’t do downticks..so not guilty…
but maybe because the Murray article is utter rubbish?
Whenever ‘intellectuals’ use a ton of words, and invent tangled reasons for something that give you whiplash as you try to follow, and in turn does away entirely with common sense and the ‘norms’…. then you know they’re talking tripe.
Everybody generally knows what people mean by proportionate, and dis-proportionate responses…..although Murray seems to suggest you’ve never had a clue….
For instance if someone breaks into my home and kills my husband and my son..firstly I would say I should follow the actual law, but if I grappled with him and got the gun and shot and killed him…proportionate.
Same scenario…I kill him, then go to his home, kill his wife and kids, and the inhabitants of the street….disproportionate.
Murray’s tangled nonsense about proportionality tries to sweep this common sense under the rug….maybe to defend Israel’s response I don’t know. But I DO know baloney when I read it…..
thanks. agree. a distraction. murray should stick to addressing the cultural revolution.
“Jenrick compares BBC reporting of Gaza hospital blast to ‘blood libel’ against Jews”
The lie was half way round the world before Truth got its boots on.
“In the last week alone, billions of words have been spewed about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, so saying something that hasn’t already been said, or saying something in a way you might not have seen before, is a tall order. If I can pull it off, it will be thanks to a retch-inducing article in The Daily Sceptic which I will comment on in the last section of this piece. It’s an absolute skunk. When you walk past a turd, holding your nose and quickening your pace is usually sufficient, but this time it was so large that I felt compelled to stop and place safety cones around it as a civic service to fellow passers-by.”
https://plagueonbothhouses.substack.com/p/the-palestinian-israeli-conflict
Can you summarise this lengthy tomb !
That’s a bit lazy of you. It is about those seeking to decontextualise Hama’s atrocities and Israel’s response. It eviscerates the Spiked article and DS’s endorsement of it (the one that trashed Varoufakis), with copious evidence.
‘Its all Israels fault.’
*Awaits downtickers…
Tome. Nobody was buried in the article
2 similarly balanced and as such here likely abhorred ones:
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/hamas-attack-what-comes-after-israel-enters-gaza-by-carl-bildt-2023-10?barrier=accesspaylog
https://www.readtangle.com/israel-attacks-hamas-palestine-war/
Exellent and precise, what’s also exellent and precise is this post at the bottom…
Nik Jewell
Writes Glitches in the Narrative
2 hrs ago
A great piece. Toby and the DS have lost the plot over the last ten days with their entirely one-sided coverage. Critical faculties and scepticism suspended altogether regarding the conflict and the stories about it.
I wonder how much of the knee-jerky pro-Israel reactions/opinions of the DS editorial team, and The Conservative Woman, et al, is because pro-Palestinian sentiment has tended to be a “lefty” thing. They ( DS etc ) just can’t quite divest themselves of that prejudice, that if the “left” supports/ed it it must be bad.
I saw a headline somewhere in Alt media suggesting that this latest crisis is another establishment “divide and rule” “flip” narrative, which this time will trap, challenge and divide conservatives, in the same way as covid trapped and challenged and broke up the “left”.
I think there is always an element of divide and rule, but I do not see huge signs of conservative division yet.
CJ Hopkins has a good take:
“Hamas is playing on your basic human decency … your empathy for the Palestinians. Their game is, if you support the Palestinian people, you have to support the Hamas attack and condone the mass murder of unarmed civilians.
Israel is playing on your basic human decency … on your sympathy for the murdered Israelis. Their game is, if you don’t support the mass murder of Palestinian civilians that is now in progress, then you are a “terrorist-sympathizer,” who hates the Jews.
Both of these parties are fucking with your head, as are their assorted propaganda-spewing mouthpieces. They are trying to force you into a position where your only choice is to support mass murder.
You do not have to support mass murder.”
CJ’s piece was indeed excellent.
It’s telling how much vitriol he got for it, from both ‘sides’.
Chris Hedges has a new one out not mincing his words, and also a podcast with Norman Finkelstein.
chrishedges.substack.com/p/israels-culture-of-deceit?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=778851&post_id=138087465&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=97oj4&utm_medium
I still respect TCW and Prof. Fenton in particular. He is entitled to his bias and opinion, just as Chris&co are.
To me, and the majority of people in the West if not the World, the truth lies somewhere in between (though the Global South aligns more behind Palestinians because of Islam’s prevalence and, even more so, because of it seeing this primarily and too simply as a brown people oppression through White colonizers issue).
It’s disappointing that the DS has lost its scepticism DNA reg. this issue. I speculate on that in my response to Amtrup.
Thanks. That’s the first interview I’ve listened to with him since the 7th. Poking the hornet’s nest, as ever.
I see the same thing on Twitter and in particular in Germany.
The Right has embraced this and Israel fully, but primarily to finally stop the immigration of Muslims, its all overriding agenda since 2015.
(It’s also opened a door to them to easily get rid of the anti-Semitism label the Centre-Left parties tried to put onto them just because they are deemed to be Right in the meaning of being more nationalist, aka sceptical of the EU and against more immigration.)
Personally, I have also come around to a much more sceptical view on such immigration and the failed integration of most immigrants, as well as to regarding it as a past mistake in general and being envious of Hungary or Poland who saw it and resisted it.
But I can still separate it from the Israel questions and am still supportive of their rights as residents or citizens now here, incl. the one to protest and the one of free speech.
See Rav Arora’s latest, and also the official position of the law in Germany, which is quite sensible actually but under fire.
https://www.illusionconsensus.com/p/moral-emergencies-are-the-true-test?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1604334&post_id=138000953&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=97oj4&utm_medium=email
+
The propaganda has a life of its own..I notice in the roundup it’s a ‘Pro Palestinian protest’ at the Capitol..in reality it’s been organised by a Jewish Group, Jewish voices for peace…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaQlYL7ckp4
Hundreds of American Jews are holding a sit-in at Congress — and we won’t leave until Congress calls for a ceasefire in Gaza. As thousands of U.S. Jews protest outside, over 350 are inside, including two dozen rabbis, holding prayerful resistance.
Such people are often sadly derided as ‘self-hating Jews’.
Here’s somebody who lost his parents:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/19/hamas-attack-peace-revenge-border-war
a big thanks to you and other commentators for broadening the discussion. this issue seems to be even more challenging for the sceptical community to address than the tyranny that’s emerged in the name of public health culminating in the last few years. i am horrified by apparent support for Hamas’s activities yet dont understand what “stand by Israel” means other than naive virtue signalling. assuming we do reach a stage where we can have a sensible discussion about it, agreeing that all killing is abhorent, what solutions can we propose? scott ritter may not be everyone’s cup of tea but i found his recent discussion with arkady Itkin on “Ask the inspector” somewhat insightful on this issue.
Thanks. I really wish I didn’t feel the need to speak at such a sensitive time for the Israeli people, but I disagree with our politicians and media giving the IDF the nod to do whatever they want in response.
Surely it’s always a sensitive time for Israeli and Palestinian people alike. They are gaslit by the lies and fearmongering by the warmongers and interfering busybodies who think they know best just as we are but in spades. We must speak up for common sense but, just as with the Covid narrative, too many people are afraid to speak out.
I agree it’s hard to navigate for many of us, and just like Russia Ukraine, especially when the Government /MSM agenda are telling you that there IS only one right way to think about it!
what I do know is that I’ve been called a Putin Troll more times, and not for defending Russia, but just for not defending Ukraine….I suspect this won’t be much different.?
Asking questions has never been harder and the pressure to follow the mainstream (whatever that is) narrative has never been greater especially as the dominant media is so corrupt. We live in extremely challenging times and must do everything we can to encourage everyone to think for themselves and speak freely. Most importantly, stay strong.
“The Left pushes for hard Covid measures (again)”
I’m up for a whip-round to buy George Monbiot a one way ticket to space. Another self-important fantasist who loves the sound of his own voice.
Two Down ticks , Mr 77th Elwood is touchy this early in the day !
E77wood still crabby perhaps at losing 16k salary add-on that went with being select committee chair; unfortunately, doesn’t seem to have stopped the ” hon gentleman’s” stream of unsolicited pronouncements.
The second Nakba rolls on.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/foreign-minister-at-wars-end-not-only-will-hamas-be-gone-but-gazas-territory-will-shrink/
By just enough so that they won’t have any more claim on that gas field ….
Plus ça change…
I may have missed it if you posted about this before JB … I was reading this yesterday…..it’s from 2009…
https://www.globalresearch.ca/war-and-natural-gas-the-israeli-invasion-and-gaza-s-offshore-gas-fields/11680
Those who have not read Hamas 1988 Charter should do.
It calls in plan words for the extermination of all Jews.
Got it yet?
I’m not sure why you keep bringing this up?…..think most of us accept that there are repugnant Palestinian/Arab/Muslim ideologies..
The problem is that you don’t accept that there are just as repugnant ideologies on the other side….
Neither are a voice for peace…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K60cxrGbcIc
When Israel is mighty….
I’ve shared a long article about the vile document on my Substack.
It is no longer, however, their official policy. A new charter was created in 2017:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/01/hamas-new-charter-palestine-israel-1967-borders
There are religious problems on both sides; for example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqSfrluRGAc
However, since 1948, the driver of the conflict has been primarily land, not religion, with the exception of the fanatics in Hamas.
Please don’t twist this to think I support Hamas in any way because I do not.
Rise of the Global Police State Leaflet to print or share
This seems quite prescient in the circumstances….?
Sir, a quick guide to Israelis PR method.
Test this against the next interview you hear or watch.
Letter sent to the Mail, during Israel’s 51 day war in Gaza in 2014.
Adam Johannes, Secretary of Stop The War Coalition.
Interesting take on the current situation by Arnaud Bertrand (from 15th Oct) & the loss of power in the wider West:
https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1713400292472225816
1) It says a lot about Israel’s image that it was expected to react with massive collective punishment, violating international law. 2) It also says a lot about Israel’s inability to think strategically that it would react in exactly the way its adversary predicted it to. Revenge is not a strategy, in fact it is the opposite of strategic. And, lastly 3) it says a lot that Israel doesn’t seem to have learned a thing from the US’s immense mistakes in its post 9-11 response.
It’s an interesting article.…
I’m also minded that we are supposed to live in the ‘civilised’ bit of the world…LOL…and yet all we have is wars death and destruction, and yet unnoticed in the mayhem, China has just hosted its third international forum centred around President Xi Jinping’s signature policy, the Belt and Road Initiative….
“The forum brings a flurry of diplomacy to Beijing, including at least 20 heads of state and government, mostly hailing from developing markets in Southeast and South Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.”
Do you think they look over here and want to join us, or that we are just nuts, and best avoided??
“Greta Thunberg charged following Fossil Free London protest”
Deportation perhaps (by wind-blown coracle, of course) – or is that too much to ask?
Israel Crossing the REDLINE. The Ethical Morass of Experimenting on one’s
own people…
https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/israeli-dna-and-human-lab-rats
ebygum
58 minutes ago
Awaiting for approval
Have you ever had any questions about 9-11? If the answer is yes, why don’t you have any questions about this?
Israel launches ‘most advanced of its kind’ radar spy satellite…
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-launches-new-ofek-13-spy-satellite-into-orbit/
The Ofek 13 is the most advanced of its kind, with unique radar observation capabilities, and will enable intelligence collection in any weather and conditions of visibility, thus enhancing strategic intelligence,” IAI President and CEO Boaz Levy said in the IMoD press release.
https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/ssa/srl/article-abstract/91/6/3236/590533/The-TRUAA-Seismic-Network-Upgrading-the-Israel?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Israel are using passive seismic technology to expose Hezboolah’s attack tunnels
The technology enables the IDF to identify where tunnel drilling is taking place — not only in limited, specific areas, but throughout the Israel-Lebanon border area, he said.
The sensors in the ground relay information to sensors at the border fence, as well as to receptors in patrol vehicles along the border.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/7/israel-announces-completion-of-underground-gaza-border-barrier
Israel completes ‘iron wall’ underground Gaza barrierIsraeli defence minister says the ‘technologically advanced project’ includes hundreds of cameras, radar and other sensors over a stretch of 65km.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/gaza-sea-barrier-nears-completion/
Over four years after a team of Hamas commandos entered Israel from the sea during the Gaza war of 2014, Israeli engineers are nearing completion of a smart sea barrier meant to prevent future attacks, Channel 10 news reported Monday.
Construction of the 200-meter-long barrier was carried out by the Defense Ministry off the beach of Zikim, on Gaza’s northernmost border. Work took seven months.
The barrier is meant to close a gap in Israel’s defenses along the border with Gaza.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/30/google_project_nimbus_israel/
The massive supply deal, dubbed Project Nimbus, will provide cloud and AI services to Israeli government organizations using local AWS datacenters. Some Google employees, including Koren, fear Nimbus will be used by Israeli officials to commit human rights abuses against Palestinians and others, through the use of facial recognition and other machine-learning surveillance and profiling tools. The staffers have also called on Google and Amazon to scrap the deal.
Mossad, Israel’s secret intelligence service, has a reputation for being fearsomely effective, protecting Israelis and Jews far beyond the country’s borders. With an annual budget of around $3 billion and 7.000 staff it is the second largest espionage agency in the world after the CIA.
but a supposed rag tag bunch of terrorists armed with paragliders and tractors manages to go undetected for over five, six hours???
“..a supposed rag tag bunch of terrorists armed with paragliders and tractors manages to go undetected for over five, six hours???”
A point I made right at the start of this conflagration. The whole event started with a lie. I find it difficult to identify any truth in anything we are being told.
I just want the killing to stop.
Ditto, hux. It’s all fishy AF. I thought Netanyahu was a sadistic nutcase just over the whole Covid/Pfizer Nation thing. How he treat the Israeli citizens was just despicable and inhumane. Now he’s gone next level psychopath. WTF is going on though? Too many questions and not enough actual evidence to make sense of it all. Israelis need to get away some place safe because their government clearly does not prioritise their safety and welfare.
Yes this is something I struggle with and why I haven’t discounted the ‘inside job’ theory. So much footage plus accounts that I’ve heard seem to support the fact that in broad daylight the terrorists breach the barrier and appear to be in no actual rush to go around shooting as many people as they can, getting in and out as quickly as possible without being caught. They actually appear to feel comfortable, knowing they can take their time, as if they know nobody is coming any time soon. How on earth did they feel relaxed enough to not only spend time ransacking houses but tie up families, torture them and eat the victim’s food at the same time?? Where were the first responders/military? You’re also telling me that no civilians had a mobile phone so that they can alert the emergency services as soon as the first gunshots were heard and given the known grave threat they exist with anyway of living nextdoor to maniacs who hate you and want you dead?? But as you say, comments I read said nobody responded until approx 6hrs after the attack commenced. Surely all Israelis are demanding answers about this. I haven’t yet come across any explanation for this.
But the paragraph by that American author of the article I shared the other day also stuck with me. How could officials, including military personnel, know something like this was about to happen and basically allow what must be a lot of family and friends to get slaughtered/kidnapped? Many of the victims must’ve been known to them. It’s not a huge place. I really hope we get some answers, especially as the Israeli citizens, more than anyone else, deserve it. I wouldn’t want to live there. Why would anyone want to raise a family in Israel? Surrounded by people who want you dead. I’d be moving abroad and getting the hell out of there because this threat is just ongoing and growing greater over time. Plus, how on earth can any citizens have faith in their government to keep them safe now?
This is just one such tragic example. How the hell did the sick f*cks have the time to do this at their leisure? Sounds like they were confident they wouldn’t be disturbed. This is what the Netanyahu government allowed to happen though. What would the proportionate response be if this were your family? People need answers because this will only happen again in future. Who’d be stupid enough to believe lame assurances now?
https://twitter.com/profnfenton/status/1714925082823290894
Yes..this..before anything else..needs answering..the people who’s families were affected need to know…
What’s worse is that you then have to wonder why a rave, full of young people, had its location changed just two days before, and to a location less than three miles from the border fence..where there have apparently been problems before…..and there was absolutely no military presence…
Something doesn’t add up….
This is one take: https://unherd.com/2023/10/gaza-will-change-the-future-of-war/
I’m still struggling, though, to convince myself that this was simply a cockup.
I’m not entirely convinced by the article,
…but it does make a sort of sense as to why Western Politicians are descending on Israel like headless chickens…
If genuinely all that top notch kit, along with the $3.8 billion that the USA provides every year to Israel, can’t stop men with tractors….things are a hundred times worse than we thought?…
Indeed.
I feel like Mystic Meg….I think I said this very early on….not only that inconsistency causes people on a private level to lose faith in what you are saying but that there are geopolitical ramifications when the ‘messaging’ is inconsistent!!
https://archive.ph/2023.10.18-110221/https://www.ft.com/content/e0b43918-7eaf-4a11-baaf-d6d7fb61a8a5
Western support for Israel’s assault on Gaza has poisoned efforts to build consensus with significant developing countries on condemning Russia’s war against Ukraine, officials and diplomats have warned.
The reaction to the October 7 attack on Israel by Islamist militant group Hamas and to Israel’s vow to hit back against Gaza has undone months of work to paint Moscow as a global pariah for breaching international law, they said, exposing the US, EU and their allies to charges of hypocrisy.
In the first days after Hamas’s assault, some western diplomats worried that the US was giving carte blanche to Israel to attack Gaza with full force.
That had eroded efforts since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.. to build consensus with leading states in the so-called Global South — such as India, Brazil and South Africa — on the need to uphold a global rules-based order, said more than a dozen western officials.
We have definitely lost the battle in the Global South,” said one senior G7 diplomat. “All the work we have done with the Global South [over Ukraine] has been lost . . . Forget about rules, forget about world order. They won’t ever listen to us again.”
Some American diplomats are privately concerned that the Biden administration’s response has failed to acknowledge how its broad support of Israel can alienate much of the Global South.
What we said about Ukraine has to apply to Gaza. Otherwise we lose all our credibility,” the senior G7 diplomat added. “The Brazilians, the South Africans, the Indonesians: why should they ever believe what we say about human rights?”
https://twitter.com/UsforThemUK/status/1714691470513385739
From 2020 – 2022, Imperial College London took c.$108 MILLION in funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation –
This included $93 MILLION in 2020, the same year that Imperial published its flawed modelling paper which set the tone for the pandemic and espoused
“…this type of intensive intervention package – or something equivalently effective at reducing transmission – will need to be maintained until a vaccine becomes available (potentially 18 months or more).”
On any measure, this is a very significant amount of money.
Neil Ferguson, an author of that paper, appeared before @covidenquiryuk
yesterday, as did Professor Steven Riley, also of Imperial.
Ferguson’s witness statement to the Inquiry refers to the Gates Foundation as a ‘major’ Imperial funder, albeit the quantum of funding is not shared.
No question of the funding, or conflicts it might raise, was asked by the Inquiry.
Why is @covidinquiryuk
apparently uninterested in exploring the possibility that its witnesses might have potential personal or institutional conflicts of interest?
(Answers on a postcard please!!???)
A new thread from Ed Dowd..
https://twitter.com/DowdEdward/status/1714698640168808467
New Report: UK Death & Disability Analysis: Malignant Neoplasms (Cancer), Ages 15-44
The anecdotal evidence observed in independent media has been confirmed by a strong statistical signal
Excess Death Rates from Cardiovascular diseases flat in 2020 but up 13% in 21 & 43% in 22
Z-scores of 5 & 17 were observed in 21 & 22 respectively. Black swan signals.
Onservations point to a worrying picture of an even greater acceleration in coming years of deaths & disabilities…an investigation is needed!
Trend analysis:
Deaths per 100k were trending down to around 12.8 before 2020. Dropped slightly in 20 to 12.5 and is now 14 in 2021 and 17.5 in 2022. About 1000 excess deaths in 2022
Men & women were down slightly in 20, in 21 men were 16% higher deviation from trend while women were 10% higher. In 22 men were 52% higher from trend while women were only 30%.
This report which shows a strong signal for cancers is similar to our previous cardiovascular report from UK with the signal in 22 being even stronger. Interestingly 2020 showed no increase in excess cancer deaths.
Regardless of causes these 2 reports reveal that health authorities need to investigate as the trends are alarming.
It’s always been beyond me why anybody would send their DNA to a private company.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12648149/Warning-Brits-change-23andMe-passwords-genealogy-site-hacked-blackmailer-DNA.html
To quote from the Westminster Declaration:
“Open discourse is the central pillar of a free society, and is essential for holding governments accountable, empowering vulnerable groups, and reducing the risk of tyranny … We do not want our children to grow up in a world where they live in fear of speaking their minds.”
I hope they apply the same standards to criticism of the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians, and the US establishment’s support of those policies.
…probably not….?
https://archive.ph/SyuwP Oct 15 2023 Harretz.
Likud Minister Formulates Emergency Regulations to Imprison Citizens Who ‘Harm National Morale’Communications Minister Karhi is promoting regulations that would allow him to direct police to arrest civilians, remove them from their homes, or seize their property if he believes they have spread information that could harm national morale or served as the basis for enemy propaganda.
Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi is promoting regulations that would allow him to direct police to arrest civilians, remove them from their homes, or seize their property if he believes they have spread information that could harm national morale or served as the basis for enemy propaganda.
According to draft emergency regulations titled “Limiting Aid to the Enemy through Communication” drafted by the communications minister after consultation with National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, the jurisdiction to impose limitations on publications will be sweeping.
It will apply to both the general public and the media, as well as both local and foreign media (in contrast to the stated objective to limit Al Jazeera). It will also apply to the publication of factually correct statements, at the minister’s discretion.
Very much like our Online Safety Bill then?
Isn’t Lockstep a wondrous disease, it gets round the world quicker than a fake virus?
..one has to wonder why they can’t handle any opposition or criticism anymore?
Unless it’s because the scam woke so many of us up that it’s all they’ve got left….?
Indeed.