Updates (Sep 2024)
On censorship, health, and various other things, including news of a new Substack
Dear Church Leaders (and everyone else)
Some updates, not least in the context of recent articles…
Censorship
Facebook censorship in the covid era
In the context of this post…
I was interested to see that Mark Zuckerberg recently signed a letter to the Chairman of the US House Judiciary Committee acknowledging that — in the context of repeated pressure from senior Biden administration officials — Facebook played an active role in the systematic censorship of those speaking out against the covid narrative:
Meta (which owns Facebook) is of course a partner of the Trusted News Initiative.
It’s worth comparing and contrasting that letter with what Alejandro Mayorkas, the US Secretary of Homeland Security, said here in 2022:
And with the First Amendment of the US Constitution:
Though we may reasonably ask why Zuckerberg has chosen now to confess. Jeffrey Tucker of the Brownstone Institute has some suggestions:
The 2023 UK Online Safety Act
Zuckerberg’s letter reminded me of the 2023 UK Online Safety Act, and particularly Section 179 (in Part 10):
And these exemptions in Section 180:
The Scottish covid inquiry
On the subject of censorship, and the Scottish covid inquiry discussed in this post…
Biologyphenom (Dave), the author of this fine Substack…
…has had his X account suspended.
Professor of Computer Science and Statistics Martin Neil is among many asking why:
Dave is reported as saying he has “no clue” as to the reason, but that his last comments included the statement that
not even ivermectin can cure medical neglect, no human rights, misuse of DNRs and overuse [of] midazolam and why aren’t awake doctors discussing the FACTS from Scottish COVID inquiry?
But I wonder to what extent the Streisand Effect is now at play here. I wonder too how long this YouTube video — a documentary about the Scottish covid inquiry — will stay up:
It’s also available on Rumble.
And in ten-minute sections at these links:
Part 1: The Impact of Lockdown
Part 2: Do Not Resuscitate
Part 3: Midazolam (NG163)
Part 4: Misattribution
Part 5: Summary and Conclusion
To my mind, it is vitally important that as many people as possible are aware of what actually went on during the covid era. And the Scottish covid inquiry documents that better than any other official inquiry I have seen.
If you prefer to read rather than watch, here is a short written overview, including this summary (plus a relatively short video of the closing statements):
House of Lords debate on the UK Covid Inquiry
As to the UK, I was encouraged to see a couple of members of the House of Lords speaking sense at the recent House of Lords debate on the UK Covid Inquiry.
Here is David Frost (transcript of selected parts below, emphasis added):
…I am I think the only person in HM Government, either a minister or official, to have stepped down in protest at pandemic handling, and specifically against vaccine passports and the prospect of a further lockdown in December 2021…
Like others, I am not particularly impressed by what I have seen of the workings of the inquiry so far, and I can’t share the warm words that I have heard earlier today. The inquiry’s conduct so far seems to have lacked something both in seriousness and in real intellectual curiosity about the pandemic. I hope I am proved wrong as subsequent reports emerge, but I fear that this one rather bears out my concerns… It is not even clear to me that we are going to get from the inquiry what we really need — a report on the costs and benefits of measures taken, factoring in the economic and social costs…
And, after making reference to Mark Zuckerberg’s letter (mentioned earlier in this post):
…most disinformation and misinformation comes from governments. That culture was set during the pandemic, and it needs to change. That is why it is so important not just to avoid groupthink in government but to promote free debate more broadly.
And here is Daniel Hannan,12 (transcript of selected parts also below, emphasis added):
[At the times of the lockdowns…] we saw herd instinct at its worst: people joining in one after another without stopping to think. It is an interesting counterfactual to ask what would have happened had the first sign of the pandemic had not been in autocratic China but in a country where lockdowns — the confinement of the entire population — would have been unthinkable… and then, suddenly, lockdowns, which had never been foreseen in any previous planning document, were considered a standard tool of public policy.
We were panicked into a response that no-one had foreseen… by shrieking broadcasters… Piers Morgan night after night saying, “Why aren’t we copying these other countries?” …we didn’t stop to think, and we still don’t want to go back and ask if it was justified or proportionate.
It’s not true to say that there was no plan or that it was a plan for the wrong pandemic… We had a plan that we had worked out in cooler-headed times, at precisely the moment when you are supposed to think rationally about these things…
There has been no evidence at all that the original 2011 plan was wrong to say that face masks would be ineffective at containing a disease. Or that closing schools would have little impact. Or indeed [that it was wrong about] the basic supposition that if you are dealing with something that is going to spread throughout the population your best bet is to do that in a way that minimises fatalities rather than pretending that you can stop it altogether.
Actually there was one country that kept our plan. They didn’t have the resources to do their own. They simply downloaded ours. And that was Sweden…
Among the institutions that put Sweden as the single lowest excess mortality rate in Europe are the BBC and the ONS... And yet there is this extraordinary readiness to tiptoe around rather than facing them.
My lords, shouldn’t this be… the sole focus of the inquiry whose provisional findings we are discussing? Shouldn’t the only question that really matters be: were non-pharmaceutical interventions effective? Given the cost of the ruined educations, the elderly people isolated… the debt, was it proportionate?
…We now have actual hard data. And yet we seem extraordinarily reluctant to ask the central question: did lockdowns work? Did they work a little bit but not enough to justify the dislocation? Did they work a great deal? Or, as the Swedish case prima facie would suggest, did they not work at all? Did they in fact even drive up the mortality rate…?
How is it that we can have this lengthy and expensive inquiry — by the way, Sweden has completed both of its inquiries and moved on while we’ve ben getting around to phase 1 — how can we have had all those conversations, and not asked that one central question?
But I expect that few people — and especially those who rely on the mainstream media — will see speeches such as these. At the time of writing I could not readily find reports of them on the BBC or any major UK newspaper.
The Hansard transcripts of the above speeches (and the other speeches in the debate) can be found here.
Health
Under-18s seen by mental health services
Further to this post…
I noticed a doctor pointing out this data (source here) regarding under-18s seen by mental health services:
And also this headline… the irony…
On 13th July, I sent a link to the Who will speak up for children? post to the senior staff, the churchwardens, and the safeguarding team at the large city-centre church I attend. But at the time of writing this post (5th September), I have had no engagement about it at all from any of them.
A rise in abortions for fatal abnormalities in March to May of 2021
In the context of this post…
I saw pathologist Dr Clare Craig recently point out a rise in abortions for fetal abnormalities in March to May of 2021 (Freedom of Information request data here):
She adds:
And:
The evidence for covid vaccine harms continues to mount. This website documents over 3,500 peer reviewed case reports and studies citing adverse events post covid vaccination:
And yet the NHS website continues to state (to pregnant women) that:
It’s strongly recommended that you get vaccinated against COVID-19 to protect you and your baby
Likewise the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.
It is any wonder that trust in our institutions and the medical profession is on the wane?
More broadly, it seems to have been forgotten that recommending pregnant women to take any medical product that has no long-term safety data — let alone a gene-based novel technology injection — is, to say the least, highly unethical.
Japan leading the way in beginning to acknowledge and discuss covid vaccine harms
On the plus side, it seems that Japan is leading the way in beginning to acknowledge and discuss covid vaccine harms. Here is a clip from Japan’s largest national broadcaster:
A related Substack post with additional commentary from Aussie17 — an anonymous former pharma executive — can be found here.
I doubt that NHK is part of The Trusted News Initiative.
A proposal for forced vaccination in Northern Ireland?
In these posts, among others, I have highlighted the dangers of so-called covid vaccines:
Our health authorities are well aware of the harms that covid vaccines have caused.
And yet the Department of Health in Northern Ireland currently has this Consultation Document…
Which, according to the Minister’s Foreword on page 3…
sets out the proposals which will underpin a new health protection legislative framework for Northern Ireland… learning from recent public health emergencies.
And those proposals include this, on page 46-47 (emphasis added):
Any “requirement” to take any medical intervention under any circumstances violates the basic principle of informed consent as set out e.g. in the 2005 UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (Article 6, snapshot below, emphasis added):
And such violation is particularly bad when there is no long-term safety data on the medical intervention in question.
Responses to the Northern Ireland Consultation Document are invited by 27th September.
Various other things
The push for National Service
I noted that then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had proposed “a bold new model of national service” for 18-year-olds, which was apparently rejected by Labour:
But now senior Labour figures apparently say that “thousands of teenagers should do national service for a year”:
A report by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) think tank said a new optional military scheme would give youngsters “a sense of active citizenship and belonging”…
The commissioners behind the CSJ report, titled A United Nation, include Sir Stephen Timms, the disability minister, and Andy Burnham, the Labour mayor of Greater Manchester.
In the paper, Sir Keir is urged to introduce a new “army short service limited commission” that would be based on an existing programme for Norwegian teenagers.
Under the scheme, 15 to 20 per cent of all 18-year-olds – or 110,000 to 145,000 people – would take part in 12 months’ military service, in return for apprentice-level pay.
Which is a reminder that, for some things at least, it doesn’t matter which of the main parties gets into government.
When I see such articles these days, my inclination is to try and think about them in the context of the Global Public-Private Partnership featured in this post (diagram below):
And to ask questions such as:
Who funds the Centre for Social Justice? And if such organisations are not transparent about their funding, why is that?
If some of the policy makers of the Global Public-Private Partnership actually wanted a war in which many young European would fight — perhaps in 3-5 years time, or maybe sooner — how might they work towards that?
By the way, if you ever see an opinion poll on national service (or anything else), it’s worth keeping in mind this classic clip from Yes Prime Minister:
And to remember that those who participate in opinion polling are selected by the opinion polling companies.
And that YouGov was co-founded by the former UK Minister for Covid Vaccine Deployment.
Food for thought (updated)
Following the removal of the video featured in the post titled Food for thought, I have put out a revised, updated and (I think) improved version:
I found these two clips particularly striking:
And I wonder to what extent seeing such videos might help people think about the bigger picture.
Unexpected Turns
And finally, I am in the process of posting versions of some of the Dear Church Leaders (and everyone else) articles on another Substack titled Unexpected Turns:
For example, a version of the above Food for Thought article is now available here.
My main reason for posting on Unexpected Turns is to provide material in a format that could appeal more to people who are disinclined to read articles that might appear related to church matters.
At present I have no plans to put any material on Unexpected Turns which is not already available on Dear Church Leaders (and everyone else).
Dear Church Leaders articles (some of which can also be found on Unexpected Turns)
The Big Reveal: Christianity carefully considered
