The Perverse Logic of Monsters

When coming to fully understand the core reasons why their is such a determination for pharmaceutical companies and governments around the world to introduce a vaccine for the corona virus, we should first recognise who the main players in this lucrative market are, how they are related, and also grasp the fact that there are vast amounts of money to be made in this current venture. However, to activate such a business programme, it must first be delivered under the banner of safety and the preservation of lives if these companies are to gain public acceptance of mandatory vaccinations.

Consequently, you will find in the names of these organisations many positive connotations which are likely to reassure the general public – connotations which most people normally relate to humanitarian projects. However, it is a crucial mistake to simply place your trust in in any large corporation without first confirming, unequivocally, that they do, indeed, faithfully represent that to which they claim; if we do not, we are wide open to manipulation of the innate goodness that exists in us as human beings. Therefore, it behoves all of us to apply due diligence and engage with deep research in order to affirm the credentials of so-called philanthropists such as Bill and Melina Gates.

Profit, first and foremost is their prime motivator; and running closely behind, lies public declarations of population reduction ie sterilisation of the human reproduction organs.

As we shall see, the positive images related to such “health” organisations conceal much startling criminal activity; or to lend the analogy of the conman: he knocks on your door, smartly dressed, with toothpaste smile, offering to help alleviate the pressures in your life by arranging a medical package of insurance that will keep you safe in the future; of course, he does not want anything in return. He is beguiling. Your instinct is to trust him. You relax and leave yourself open to his advances. Now, he has a clear path on which he can decide the entire course of your life and your children’s.

Consequently, getting you to accept the vaccines the pharmaceutical giants are preparing for you, in order to, as they claim, to alleviate your fears and keep you “safe”, is the central purpose in these emotional overtures that they constantly send your way; they want to gain your trust, to stave off any fear you still have over vaccines. In this way also, they will decide, without your permissions, the future course of your life.
Many of their motives are fairly clear. In this vast drug industry (a financial game) there are huge profits to be gained for several key players: International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, World Bank, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), world Health Organisation (WHO), UNICEF, Global Alliance for Vaccination and Immunisation (GAVI), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), and the Programme for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), – most of these organisations started or funded by Bill Gates. He is the one organising, bank rolling, enabling and promoting all other institutions to carry out these abuses of power.

Let us begin with PATH to explore the historical facts relating to this organisation, their relationships and their practices. For this organisation, due to conducting illegal health programmes and disturbing patterns of medical negligence has been firmly linked with this organisation in Africa and India.

In 2012 a major case reached the supreme court in India, highlighting the activities of this organisation while setting up an illegal programme of mass vaccination. As we shall see later, this programme, unbeknown to the young girls and adult women receiving the vaccination, was also intended to sterilise every single one of them in order to meet the shared agenda of population reduction by the main groups noted above. This illegalies of the vacci ations was reported in the prominent medical journal, The Lancet:

“The Indian parliament’s Standing Committee on Health, which, in April, 2010, began probing the use of HPV vaccines in two states after the reported deaths of seven girls, has concluded that “safety and rights of children were highly compromised and violated”. In view of the report’s finding of violation of human rights and clinical trial rules, the committee has recommended legal action against non-profit organisation Programme for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH)” PATH and the ICMR [India Council of Medical the committee notes, did a full-scale clinical trial in vulnerable population groups, such as tribal girls, without mandatory permission.

The report noted that “PATH resorted to an element of subterfuge by calling the clinical trial ‘observational studies’ or ‘demonstration project’”. PATH, the committee reported, was not even a registered legal entity when it began working with the ICMR… [but only a proxy paid for by the Gates foundation]. Slamming state agencies including the Drug Controller General of India for dereliction of duty, the committee recommended further investigation into the PATH and marketing approvals given for HPV vaccines.
https://www.thelancet.com/400.jsp

This is how the corporate and international conman does his work. It is normal procedure for them. He picks out a “mark”, someone, or some group, that will provide no obstacles in preventing him from selling his wares. However, in their wake, the medical consequences of these mass vaccination programmes leave a trail of devastation, killing, or severely injuring thousands, and condemning children to a life of disability.

So what is the chief role of the World Health Organisation (WHO)? In many ways, the WHO acts as the enabler of such illegal and unethical programmes. This is an organisation that has been compromised by rampant corruption since its inception. As a global organisation, the role of the WHO is to lend some respectability to any vaccine programmes, therefore they can be viewed as a public relations team that serves to ‘legitimise’ each vaccine programme, reassuring the public, and recipients that they are “necessary” and “safe”. They get away with this corruption simply because the majority of citizens had placed their trust in them for many years. Why would you question an organisation that claims to function only to “keep you safe”.

However, is it not sobering to consider that until more recently the WHO, established seventy years ago, had never been led and managed by someone who had experience as a health minister!” Let that point sink in for a moment. How can that be possible? And this is the organisation which is currently advising on this corona virus. More recently the WHO appointed their first ever health minister, an Ethiopoan called Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

The following is from the ‘The Independent’:

“Tedros was Ethiopia’s foreign [ & health] minister from 2012 to 2016 …then left office to run for the W.H.O. job. He was accused of covering up three cholera epidemics in his home country, Ethiopia. During Dr Tedros’s campaign to lead the WHO he was also accused of working for a repressive government in Ethiopia’s ruling party — of displacing thousands of citizens, gunning down hundreds of protesters, and jailing or torturing political opponents and journalists… “ [for revealing the truth about government corruption].

So what was his response to these charges? He described these human rights violations as “serious mistakes” and said that Ethiopia is a “nascent democracy with the growing pains common to new governments.”

So, for the man who currently advises us on the corona virus, it is okay to gun down protesters on the streets and call it “mistakes”, and it seems that manipulating epidemics is also okay with him. Therefore, we must all be careful about where we get the information from that moulds our perceptions, beliefs and attitudes on the corona virus, and not least how this disinformation gains out trust.

However, the WHO role is absolutely crucial in maintaining that facade—and the perception that all safety trials, and risk assessments, related to the vaccines have been carried out; therefore, there is nothing to fear. But the abiding caveat here should always be kept in mind: those who are trying to fleece you must first present an image that elicits your trust—unequivocal trust; without question.

In terms of vaccine dangers, then, much damage has been reported in the use of the Pentavalent vaccine. The following report from the Office of Medical and Scientific Justice (OMSJ) highlighted 54 deaths and 135 hospitalizations had been recorded as a result of the vaccine. This sent the Indian government, GAVI and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) into a spiral of deceit and denial.

Finally, with the pressure mounting, and after several attempts to block investigations that any wrong-doing took place, the Indian government acknowledged that the vaccines administered to so many children were indeed highly dangerous:

It was recently announced that the government of India has finally admitted that the deadly Pentavalent vaccine had indeed been linked to the deaths of children. The five-in-one Pentavalent vaccine contains five vaccines for: Diphtheria, Pertussis, Tetanus, Hepatitis B, and Hib Meningitis. The Pentavalent vaccine is currently manufactured by U.S. pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson and British manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline. While the controversial vaccine receives almost no mention in the U.S. media, it is a hot topic in the countries where it has been introduced in past few years. Many doctors oppose the vaccine due to the serious adverse effects. In India, there is a lawsuit in place filed with the India Supreme Court. OMSJ reports: In 2010 when the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI) recommended Pentavalent’s introduction in the country’s health program, many public health experts criticized it.

Two of NTAGI members, a policy adviser and a bureaucrat filed a PIL in Supreme court against Pentavalent’s introduction… The PIL clearly stated: figures obtained from countries where Pentavalent vaccine has been in use for years, show that there is no actual benefit of this vaccine in preventing diseases. [Furthermore]

1. Efficacy of Pentavalent is doubtful as it has many side effects and has caused deaths in many developing countries. The vaccine is being introduced in India’s UIP under WHO and GAVI’s influence, ignoring facts and figures about its need and safety profile. The government should first test its effects on children without combining it with DPT and Hepatitis B vaccines.

OMSJ goes on to report that the Pentavalent vaccine has been linked to deaths in other developing countries as well, where it has been mostly banned as a result:

2. Sri Lanka started use of Pentavalent in 2008, but suspended it soon after the deaths of 5 children reported after vaccination.

3. Bhutan started it in 2009 and stopped its use after 9 deaths. Though Bhutan started using it again as WHO intervened and declared Pentavalent safe, but it again caused 4 deaths. Bhutan stopped using it permanently.

4. Three children died in Pakistan soon after introduction of Pentavalent in its immunization program.  A healthy child died within half an hour of vaccination

5. Vietnam started use of Pentavalent vaccine Quinvaxam in 2010 and stopped its use in March 2013 after reporting of 12 deaths and 9 hospitalizations from October 2012 to March 13

After 54 Infant Deaths, Gov’t Finally Admits Pentavalent Involved

After the charges against the HPV & Pentavalent vaccines were proven to be true, a new scandal opened up in Africa due to a deliberate and covert programme of sterilisation and these charges began to gain traction in some news outlets. This caused so much alarm that a number of bishops in Kenya felt compelled to carry out an investigation: The Muslim Mirror reported:

“Gates, UNICEF & WHO have already been credibly accused of intentionally sterilizing Kenyan children through the use of a hidden HCG antigen in tetanus vaccines. In 2014, the Catholic Bishops Conference of Kenya conducted a study on the 5-injection, two year vaccination project performed on female Kenyans aged 14-49, in a South African laboratory and concluded that “all 6 samples tested positive for the HCG antigen….

“This proved right our worst fears; that this WHO campaign is not about eradicating neonatal tetanus, but a well-coordinated forceful population control mass sterilization exercise using a proven fertility regulating vaccine,” Dr. Ngare, spokesman for the Kenya Catholic Doctors Association, said. “This evidence was presented to the Ministry of Health before the third round of immunization, but was ignored….

“The vaccine, which was administered to 2.3-M girls and women by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF for free, was said to be funded by Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), an organization started and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Call for investigation into Bill Gates ‘crimes against humanity’ and ‘medical malpractice’

In countries of mass poverty such as these, it is not a surprise, then, why the people and governments are duped into accepting “free” vaccines that are advertised to protest them. These enormous figures, their health and social implications, and the sterilisation of 2.3 million women and children, are simply staggering. Perhaps we should pause and consider the extent of this corruption and the mass suffering they have caused.

All of the corporations and organisations mentioned in the opening paragraph are inextricably linked together in this web. Therefore, because of rising concerns, these financial relationships and conflicts of interests were picked up by the Economic Times of India, where many doctors and activists had clearly stated their objections to the incestuous relationships between pharmaceutical corporations and those funding and administering the vaccination programmes:

“These two institutions [GAVI & BMGF] have a working relationship with pharma companies. The main charge against GAVI is that it has representatives from pharmaceutical companies on its board while the PHFI accepts grants from pharma companies…“BMGF and GAVI are pushing the [vaccine] agenda with governments around the world, including India,” says Ritu Priya Mehrotra, professor of Social Medicine and Community Health and School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi….

“GAVI is an organization started in 2000 and funded by BMGF…In short, they work together with the World Health Organization (WHO)… specifically UNICEF, to purchase vaccines from pharmaceutical companies for distribution. BMGF is a founding partner of GAVI. Its initial grant helped establish GAVI and it continues to support its work. Some of the pharmaceutical companies have affiliation with BMGF to manufacture the vaccine… [but] unlike the United States, victims of vaccine harm and fraud will get their day in court as the Supreme Court in India takes up the HPV Gardasil fraud claims”.

We have established a precedent to demonstrate the unethical practises, first of PATH, and its endangerment of lives — and its standing as a direct financial recipient of Bill Gates’ foundation—and secondly of GAVI. The roles of the WHO and UNICEF are clearly implicated. Therefore the reader will begin to grasp the extent of this corruption in which all of them operate. This financial monopoly is all pervasive, and unified, in its deception of the public.

One other independent news outlet willing to speak the truth on such matters, and do what most mainstream news outlets won’t do, is Health Impact News. Developing this story on these legal case in India, they point out the institutionalised corruption that has overtaken this industry and the role of the man funding all of these organisations, Bill Gates:

“While fraud and corruption are revealed on almost a daily basis now in the vaccine industry…[and around the world]… the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and their vaccine empire are under fire… Narayana Kumar of The Economic Times of India has just written a scathing report of fraud and scandals surrounding Bill Gates…..

“Kumar starts out his 4 page article by focusing on the case that went before the India Supreme Court regarding deaths and injuries occurring during drug trials carried out over Merck’s HPV vaccine Gardasil.
Vaccine trials were conducted on thousands of girls between the ages of 9 and 15. Many of the girls fell ill, and at least 7 died, and the lawsuit is alleging that in most of these cases, the girls and their parents did not even know what kind of vaccine trial they were participating in.

Most of the girls were students, and an investigation showed that as many as 120 girls who participated in the HPV vaccine trials “experienced adverse reactions such as epileptic seizures…”
Furthermore, Gates’s collusion in this matter is exacerbated when we discover that not only is he funding the vaccination programmes of PATH, GAVI and UNICEF—but he is also sponsoring the final reports on their clinical findings. These reports essentially announce the procedures of such a programme safe – declaring vaccination programmes as an act of conscience by all agencies involved.

Kumar then points out:

“After these adverse reactions, a report was conducted to explain them all away as not related to the vaccines, so that the approval process could move forward to market the HPV vaccine in India. That report, according to Kumar, was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). Authorities in India have looked into BMGF, and see a huge conflict of interest”.

Unfortunately this kind of practice is very common in the vaccine industry with most companies not willing to wait until health and safety trials have taken due course as this significant time lapse eats into their annual profit margins. They are in a hurry to make their money. They also refuse to consider the awful health consequences of such actions—just as we see elsewhere around the world and here in the UK as the Scottish and English governments prepare to roll out an untested covid 19 vaccine. The public, they presume, will be willing guinea pigs for such an experiment.

Consequently, in a man such as Bill Gates, financial opportunism in pushing untested drugs and contaminated vaccinations, while ignoring human rights and health regulations, is a practice he is all too familiar with. All of this recorded evidence will not sit well with the uninformed reader, and one presumes, particularly with those who are keen to take this vaccine for the corona virus as soon as it appears on the market—in attempts to stifle months of uncontrollable fear spread by dishonest and irresponsible media. But the truth and the historical facts cannot be altered, they stand precisely as they are, regardless of denial or obfuscation.

It is also imperative that the reader grasps the significance of those organisations in projecting such a positive image here, as this puts the public and local legislators at ease with such a programme – as it appears, at face value, to be a humanitarian programme motivated by only one thing: to improve the health of the population. In short, by “cooking the books” so to speak, they dress up multiple deaths and various examples of vaccine damage to the immune systems of young girls as another successful health initiative, and a medical intervention, they claim, to be imperative.

When one considers the extent of control that Bill Gates has over the administering of these vaccines — a man with no medical qualifications in this field—and the narratives that are produced to justify the lack of medical ethics—one has to say, the blatant indifference to the loss of human life he and his organisation’s demonstrate raises a sense of alarm that quickly begins to take hold in most observers.

Only recently on April 12 ,2020, Gates was doing his promotional rounds for new corona vaccines in the BBC studios in England, advocating the use of this untested vaccine, without safety trials in the UK, which he suggests should be administered to all of it 65 million citizens. During this interview Gates inadvertently revealed what has now become a prominent factor in his promotion of profitable business: his indifference to safety tests and professional trials before bringing the vaccine to market. During this one-sided diatribe, Gates went on to regale the national audience on how prudent he thought it was to do away with transparency and safety when he said, without pause:

“Of course, if you want to wait and see if a side effect shows up two years later, that takes two years. So whenever you’re acting quickly, like during the HIV crisis, they created a quick way of getting drug
approval [avoiding safety trials] – there is a trade-off there. In that case, that worked super, super well. ‘Here, we will, I think, be able to get some safety indications. But this is a public good.”

However, contrary to what Gates claims, the opposing evidence arising from those same trials of this vaccine for HIV was unequivocal in its failure to cure or even alleviate symptoms. Therefore, let us examine what Gates describes—in his parlance— the vaccines for HIV that worked “super, super well”. For the evidence reveals his claim to be all the more disturbing:

DSMBs periodically monitor such large-scale trials to see if the vaccine is safe and effective. [but] the vaccine… was not working…there was no evidence of efficacy, no matter how you cut it,” said Dr. Larry Corey, principal investigator…

The Uhambo [HIV] trial was sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation… and vaccine manufacturers Sanofi Pasteur and GlaxoSmithKline.

Corey said that researchers will closely analyse the new trial data to find out why this vaccine did not work… [This] promising new vaccine had failed a critical test, shutting down a major clinical trial in South Africa two years before it was scheduled to end… Operators of the trial, which was launched in 2016, had expected to unblind the study and reveal the results in 2022. But they called a halt to it on Feb. 3 [2020] following a recommendation of an independent data and safety monitoring board.

https://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center-news/2020/02/hiv-vaccine-trial-africa.html

Gates Pushes Experimental Technology on Seven Billion Humans

However, even in regular influenza vaccines lie major health hazards due to excessive levels of mercury. This clear and imminent danger was exposed in an investigation in a report by ‘Natural News’ after it was identified in its Forensic Food Lab:

“A shockingly high level of toxic mercury in an influenza vaccine (flu shot) made by GlaxoSmithKline (lot #9H2GX). Tests conducted via ICP-MS document mercury in the Flulaval vaccine at… 51 parts per million, or over 25,000 times higher than the maximum contaminant level of inorganic mercury in drinking water set by the EPA…

“The tests were conducted via… a 4-point mercury calibration curve for accuracy. Even then, the extremely high level of mercury found in this flu shot was higher than anything we’ve ever tested, including tuna and ocean fish which are known for high mercury contamination…

In fact, the concentration of mercury found in this GSK flu shot was 100 times higher than the highest level of mercury we’ve ever tested in contaminated fish. And yet vaccines are injected directly into the body, making them many times more toxic than anything ingested orally. As my previous research into foods has already documented, mercury consumed orally is easily blocked by eating common foods like strawberries or peanut butter, both of which bind with and capture about 90% of dietary mercury. Here are the actual results of what we found in the influenza vaccine from GSK (lot #9H2GX):

Aluminum: 0.4 ppm
Arsenic: zero
Cadmium: zero
Lead: zero
Mercury: 51 ppm…. All tests were conducted via calibrated, high-end ICP-MS instrumentation as shown in these lab videos.

Such is the case regarding thimerosal, an adjuvant (preservative) in almost all vaccines and its direct link to cases of autism in children: “It’s true that most people have at least heard something regarding the issue, but all one ever sees in the mainstream news are denials that there is a link…. except for “minor reactions like redness and swelling at the injection site.”

This report goes on to ask: “what if that statement turned out to be a complete falsehood, and the Centre of Disease Control (CDC) knew all along that there was a clearly demonstrated connection between vaccines and a heightened risk of autism.

https://www.naturalnews.com/054155_thimerosal_autism_CDC_documents.html

As the facts stand today, the connection between Mercury and autism is undeniable. However, despite these denials of government and the pharmaceutical industry in the face of this mounting evidence that the vaccines are dangerously contaminated and have a direct link to this condition, the truth is still reachable and remains out there for anyone with the will to research the facts.

A Dangerous Inactive Ingredient

In conclusion, the virus itself, as all corona viruses do each year, has expired and its rising curve flattened out around the world months ago—one that is now confirmed by many eminent infection specialists to be no more that a virulent flu for those not carring any prior comorbidities. It’s one of many corona viruses we are all exposed to every year.  Therefore, a vaccine for this virus is now irrelevant.

Furthermore, it behoves all of us to change our perception and view this continuing facade realistically.   These lockdowns, social distancing, compulsory wearing of masks, are core strategies of a two-pronged social engineering plan—one that has also acquired its own specific business arm in carrying out one of its key objectives: profiteering. However, in the coming vaccine, there is a pot of gold for those in power.

The general policy of these pharmaceutical corporations and the government agencies with whom they are associated is to exaggerate the need for vaccines, using various strategies such as mass advertising — almost always predicting dire health consequences for those that will not accept vaccines in their current form.

Yet governments around the world, in collusion with all of the organisations I set out in the introductory paragraph, continue to claim that vaccines in their present contaminated form are harmless. While ignoring the proven and undeniable dangers to health by “over-reporting” vaccine efficacy—and failing to announce the damage and the deaths caused by vaccines—our governments act like traitors of their own people. by promoting the business end of their corporate masters by concealing stories that might threaten their profit margins “or even put them out of business altogether”.

With the recent Corona Virus Act brought in by the British government that allows untrained hirelings to inoculate the population without their permission—or in the parlance of the Corona Virus Act—to take you or your child from your home to be “disinfected” (force vaccinated)—there has never been a more critical time to take direct action against our governments, to find the courage to stand up, to simply say No!

Jonah Goldberg once put our critical situation into perspective when he said:

“If there is ever a fascist takeover, it won’t be some form of storm troopers kicking down doors but with lawyers and social workers…. [and staff from the National Health Service telling you, with that toothpaste smile]   “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help”.

I ask you, every man and woman around the world, facing this tyrannical threat:

Will you allow agents of the state to walk into your home offering help?

 

 

 

Microchip (under skin tattoo) links:
http://news.mit.edu/2019/storing-vaccine-history-skin-1218

https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2019018301A1/en

https://stm.sciencemag.org/…/523/eaay7162/tab-article-info

 

Web: http://www.truthbarrier.com
FB: Celia Ingrid Farber
Microchip (under skin tattoo) links:
http://news.mit.edu/2019/storing-vaccine-history-skin-1218
power SCIENCE.naturalnews.com, a massive research resource featuring over 10 million scientific studies.

“Microneedle patches have been developed that can be used to deliver therapeutic, prophylactic, diagnostic agents and/or dyes to the skin. The microneedles encapsulate the agent(s) to be delivered. These are formed of a biodegradable polymer that dissolves upon insertion into skin or tissue, so that the microneedles break off from the substrate forming the patch, remaining in the skin/tissue at the site of insertion. The patches are used to create a tattoo or to deliver therapeutic, prophylactic or diagnostic agent in combination with a tattoo. In one embodiment, the microneedle patch contains both vaccine and dye pigments to administer vaccine and record such administration in one application of the microneedle patch

https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2019018301A1/en

https://stm.sciencemag.org/…/523/eaay7162/tab-article-info
‘30 studies show link between autism and vaccines’ —https://www.naturalnews.com/055446_vaccines_austim_scientific_studies.html

Alternative News

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2908963/Judges-demand-answers-children-die-controversial-cancer-vaccine-trial-India.html

Read Dr. Sin Hang Lee’s letter to the government of China regarding HPV vaccine safety

 

New Zealand doctor’s letter

Has the link between vaccines and autism been discredited?

ANALYSIS: Why does an old, false claim about tetanus vaccine safety refuse to die?

 

Bill Gates – Philanthropist or Eugenicist?

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://lalignejaune.fr/c/lien_we_call_for_investigations_into_the_bill_and_melin_56275064&ved=2ahUKEwj8x9SAx_LpAhXxpHEKHcokB04QFjAPegQICRAB&usg=AOvVaw3jRZUiqFqTIC6SdmJBm2i2&cshid=1591632975943

1. http://www.worldlawdirect.com/article/1044/what-tort.html

2. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/05/12/722216512/bottle-of-lies-exposes-the-dark-side-of-the-generic-drug-boom?t=1591615584855But in Bottle of Lies, investigative

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/as-drug-industrys-influence-over-research-grows-so-does-the-potential-for-bias/2012/11/24/bb64d596-1264-11e2-be82-c3411b7680a9_story.html

NB For several years, stories have been emerging of drugmakers abusing the FDA’s Risk Evaluation Mitigation Strategy (REMS) and Elements to Assure Safe Use (ETASU) safety rules to protect their profit margins —

Blocking generic competition: will naming and shaming work?

https://www.pharmamanufacturing.com/articles/2019/redeeming-the-seedy-and-greedy/

https://www.fool.com/investing/value/2015/07/19/7-facts-you-probably-dont-know-about-big-pharma.aspx

https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/vaccine-side-effects-and-adverse-events

 

 

 

Scotland’s Government of Tyranny

Psychiatrist and political philosopher Frantz Fanon once said, in the face of absolute oppression, “when we revolt it’s not for a particular culture. We revolt simply because, for many reasons, we can no longer breathe”.

This is such a moment for the Scottish people, and for all those around the globe, who have simply had enough because the powers that be have made it impossible for them to breathe while a boot remains firmly pressed down upon their necks.

It is precisely these circumstances in which many Scottish people find themselves today — those who retain an independent state of mind — and wish to preserve their rights to free speech, to freedom of thought, without fear of arrest for simply stating their views. Any negation of freedoms, then, should be considered an abomination of true democracy.

In the context of the current crisis, and the suffering endured by men, women and children across Scotland, the content of this reflection could be interpreted, in the words of the poet Robert Frost, as a “momentary stay against confusion” — for in this trauma we experience now, all of us require clarity about the future; we also need reassurance that in the face of this oppression brought on by our governments and their inhumane diktats, that there is hope and a way out of this madness.

As a native Scot, and in terms of location, I speak mainly from this perspective, but of course, as activists for free speech, we are now becoming united across the globe for the same reasons. The outrage that many Scots feel while our lives are being crushed under the weight of this vicious and perpetual assault by this Scottish government and its First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, is now palpable.

On that note, a large demonstration recently took place on September 5th outside the Scottish parliament to protest the implementation of those savage lockdowns, the wearing of masks and mandatory vaccinations. This was organised by Yelrebmik Kirred and councillor Paddy S. Hogg. Both activists can be found on Facebook.

Attending this event that drew thousands to it was world renowned Professor of immunology, Dolores Cahill. Also attending was Professor Richard Ennos from the University of Edinburgh, and doctor and author, Malcolm Kendrick — all of whom advised on the current dangers facing us in the Corona Virus Acts passed by the Scottish and English governments. In particular they warned of the dangers of vaccines and their contents; of which, Thimerosal, a mercury based preservative (neuro toxin) is one such ingredient to be found in multi-dose influenza vaccines. It’s highly dangerous.

Normally any new vaccines being pushed forward by governments require rigorous testing for many years before approval. However, this is where the Scottish and English government’s indifference to the public’s safety becomes a significant problem. For they wish to rush out a vaccine without clinical safety trials of acceptable length and practice. This is negligence on the part of all governments; and reckless management of health policy.
Normal procedures would require theoretical development of a new drug, rigorous laboratory testing (“in-vivo”) to prove that it works as intended. Then a phase 1 study would begin, involving a small group of people to ensure it is does not have any major side effects; consequently, a phase 2 study with a larger group of participants would proceed to check that the vaccine is consistent, and whether it triggers an immune response.
Added to these checks, phases 3, 4, & 5 are followed through to guarantee the vaccine’s safety. However, the Scottish and English governments want to ignore due diligence and dispense with all of these safety checks, and years of study, to release this corona vaccine on the public. This should never be acceptable to you or your children and loved ones.

In light of the dangers we face in this rushed vaccine being pushed on the general public of Scotland, Mr Paddy Hogg was arrested for conducting a second short protest outside the Scottish parliament on September 10th simply for pointing out the multiple dangers of vaccines to the public, and emphasising that there are other highly effective alternatives in dealing with this virus such as high dose vitamin C. So much for exercising one’s right to free speech in Scotland then, and one’s right to protest under the regime of Nicola Sturgeon.

On this matter, then, the speakers at the event represented all of us who expect responsible government policies that do not interfere with our autonomy to make informed decisions about our health, and that of our children’s; in short, the speakers at the protest were saying — as millions around the world already have — that we are entitled to the universal right to say No to enforced medical procedures.

Furthermore, it is our right to reject the wearing of masks. We do not require anyone’s permission to breathe fresh air. We are, in relation to our human rights, entitled to say No — to reject future lockdowns — as long term isolation has also proven to be, by its very nature, a killer.

Meanwhile in Ireland another man — one of a growing number of people around the world — has been speaking out in a similar way: he is Dr Marcus de Brun, a man who has, equally, demonstrated great personal courage and challenged the Irish government in protest over its dreadful handling of their epidemic and unnecessary loss of life. Videos of all these speakers can be seen on the platform, ‘Saving Scotland’.

Let there be no doubt in anyone’s mind, all of these men and women mentioned above are, at this precise moment in time, living symbols of resistance and steely conviction in the face of a rapidly accelerating global tyranny that threatens us all. We should acknowledge this and thank them for their sacrifices (and to be sure, there will have been many).

Furthermore, I would argue that these speakers are now recognised symbols of universal freedom — representing all free thinking people who object to draconian regulations that force us to wear masks, endure savage lockdowns and resign us to a future of unemployment. Additionally, I would assert that all of them remain striking symbols of human courage as they turn and face their oppressors.

However, in the First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, we endure someone who seems to think that we Scots, in totality, will always acquiesce if her government continues to apply threat and constant pressure on us to comply with inhumane regulations; this is, I believe, a grave mistake on her part, and that of her ministers.

Why the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and her cronies (“who are just following orders”) would believe that all native Scots would cower indefinitely in their homes, wearing masks, obsessively washing their hands, obeying every lockdown order they are assigned without question — no matter how grevious it is to our physical and mental health — defies logic.

Knowing the temperament of the average Scot, their long history of rebellion, and their courage in the face of tyranny, it is anathema for them to submit to the whims of despots and worship at the feet of power — particularly those in the Scottish government carrying out abuses of power. Therefore, I do not envisage the majority of the Scottish people remaining quiet much longer.

As I speak the most brazen theft of our civil liberties is taking place; and in a country such as Scotland, our God-given human rights are being guillotined before us — threatening our children — consigning our elderly to nursing homes and to lonely and unnecessary deaths.

In effect, the Scottish Government has followed a similar route as that of Westminster and it has initiated a national programme of eugenics. This is unacceptable by any kind of moral standards. This state sanctioned form of murder cannot, and must not, stand unchallenged.

It must not become what government likes to reiterate as the “new normal”. In simple terms, they have went too far. This government has broken the trust and the patience of a rapidly growing number of Scottish people.
At this moment we owe it to our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers, and in particular, to our sons and daughters” — our children who signify our future as a nation — to stand up, to be counted, to speak out, to lay at the First Minister’s door a simple message: No!

No. We will not comply to our elderly being treated like cattle and consigned to deaths of isolation. We will not agree to inhumane lockdowns, particularly when it has, unequivocally, been proven, that they are irrelevant and do nothing to reduce the effects of a virus, or hasten its end.
No, we must not comply to this pattern of diktats issued by the first minister and, most significantly, we must refuse to accept these weak explanations and excuses for continuing to apply lockdown in communities around Scotland.

We must not accept at face value the statistics and numbers of “new cases” churned out at random by this government, keeping people in perpetual fear — or “infection statistics” and “covid deaths” without public transparency, public scrutiny and firm corroboration. This government must, as all governments should, provide transparent information that has, in foundation, accuracy and accountability.

We are human beings, not pawns to be pushed around on a board of political chess by Scotland’s first minister. Furthermore, after the suffering that has been endured over this last few months in every household across this nation, we must not accept the government’s version of their “new normal” and comply to their demands that we shut down our lives — separated from our children, grand children, our elderly parents and neighbours who need our support more than ever.

For what? Based on the spontaneous whims of this Scottish government and their pseudo-science that remains worryingly inaccurate; and it is provably wrong.

I would argue that we are not even seeking a return to how things were prior to this virus outbreak. No, we do not wish to return to the social, educational and economic injustices which have simmered for so long in Scotland under SNP government until the point of explosion. Our politicians like Nicola Sturgeon and her deputy, John Swinney — driven only, I argue, by craven ambition, are too busy building careers for themselves to take a serious interest in those that are barely surviving on the margins of Scottish society at this moment.

Additionally, we do not accept a return to the events during this crisis when ordinary people were dying in their homes, too scared to ask for urgent medical intervention for fear of being admitted to a casualty ward and labelled DNR. This has to stop now.

This is the choice that Nicola Sturgeon’s government has given our elderly, our friends and family: you can choose to die in hospital without urgent medical intervention — or you can die at home — but there will be no life-saving treatments administered to you under their informal policy of DNR’S.

This First Minister of Scotland has a ‘duty of care’ to all of the citizens of Scotland regardless of their specific medical conditions, and it is a grave dereliction of her duty to abandon Scotland’s people and reduce this loss of life to mere statistics.

If Nicola Sturgeon does not wish the Scottish public to perceive her simply as a machine — churning out death data and the statistics of fear — then she must listen to us now. For currently she remains intransigent to our appeals for compassion, and a review of her policies under the Corona Virus Act, policies that have triggered cries of help from around the country.

Compounding this dreadful assault on her own people, she encourages all doctors to renege on their hipocratic oaths — the human instinct to save life at all cost — by placing DNR’s on patients, young and old, who could easily be rescued by quick and adequate medical intervention.

Furthermore, every doctor and nurse who have complied with these barbaric measures should now address their conscience and ask themselves if it is possible to look at themselves in the mirror tomorrow if they continue to enable this overt programme of eugenics today, merely to keep their job. At this defining moment in Scottish history, we will all have to make sacrifices if we are to survive this assault on our civil liberties.

No, we do no wish to return to the rampant narcissism of this Scottish government whose obsession with, and abuse of, power has seen them take leave of their senses.

They wish to condition our society to the autocratic diktats of a nanny state and gradually, by piecemeal, corrupt our kids; this is not acceptable to free-thinking Scottish people; of course, I refer to what is arguably an even bigger scandal — the wretched and sinister sexual programmes being introduced to our youngest children in schools across Scotland — under the illusory banner of sexual health. Led by the first minister’s deputy — Swinney has introduced nothing short of pornography into the classrooms.

To live in such times does indeed mean for many an acute sense of their own isolation, the attendant apathy, and more often than not, a debilitating sense of hopelessness. One does not require, as Christopher Hitchens put it, a mental leap equivalent to Jiujutsu to recognise that a life of quiet desperation is now the lot of the majority while suffering under this government while they try to mesmerise us with their favourite catchphrases, suggesting that “we’re all in this together”.

No! We are not all in this together. However, if we do not stand up and challenge them, this is certain to be our lot in this carefully designed model of dystopia. Contrary to this “togetherness” that the government like to portray, when we see people like Catherine Calderwood, the chief medical officer, who told us that lockdown was essential and had to be respected, then proceed to flaunt her own rules, leaves us with an acute sense of dislocation from this government — for I do not believe that most of the Scottish population, if any, experience a sense of togetherness.

Examples like this above, mean one rule for government officials, and an entirely different one for us; it is hypocrisy of the highest order.

Scotland is a country that is trapped in an endless purgatorial cycle of state diktats put in place to control the whole of society. Now, as they turn the political screw, this government led by Nicola Sturgeon, has triggered the most severe breaches of our human rights — breaches of civil liberties that would have seemed unthinkable only eight short months ago. Let that sink in for a moment.

While people are dying in their homes, and the general population is afraid to exercise their right to free speech, the First Minister refuses to take seriously such complaints, and with familiar arrogance, tells us she knows what she is doing. Perhaps their is a more fundamental truth in that statement than we realise.

So much for social progress in Scotland, then, or to be more succinct, so much for the covid mantra that “we are all in this together.”

There is no other way to put this: we are now witnessing a complete model of corruption within the Scottish government — and we are facing a global coup de’tat of elected officials around the world, all connected by one purpose: to establish a global society in which forced incarceration and mandatory vaccinations are common place, to speak of only two intended crimes against the people.

This tsunami created by the First Minister’s policies has destroyed everything in its path — destroying countless millions of lives, businesses, jobs, properties — forcing millions of people into the path of bankruptcy and unemployment—sending entire communities to the wall in Scotland; all of this done in the name of their acknowledged plan to “reset” global society in such a way that each citizen’s life is micro-controlled by government.

A global model of which this First Minister clearly advocates. Flaunting such brazen cruelty in our face, her government (in its core features, a recognisable cult) has created fear, anxiety and dread of the future, with flippant talk of ‘vaccine passports’, implementing ‘track and trace’, and enforced wearing of muzzles. Soon it is almost certain to be, on her watch, mandatory vaccinations for all.

Her actions are no different from the autocratic diktats that have come out of Brussels for the last thirty years or more; they are one and the same. It is no coincidence, then, that Nicola Sturgeon sees herself one day soon at the top table with Merkel, Juncker, Tusk and von der Leyen et al. While they dine on their caviar and sip champagne — indifferent to the mass human suffering they themselves have created in their own countries of Europe—the horrendous suffering of ordinary people is marginalised, so much so, that they have become invisible. Equally, here in Scotland, our people wait for justice.

In the wake of this social and political narcissism, this pathological ambition, Mike Davis & Bertrand Monk, have asked “a simple but epochal question about such tyrants: toward what kind of future are we being led by savage, fanatical” [politicians and their irresistible desire for absolute power and control of their citizens…. who seek to coddle the wealthy at the expense of everyone else…[creating] dream worlds of consumption and property…where the rich can walk like gods in the nightmare gardens of their deepest and most secret desires”.
Meanwhile, the Scottish National Party, and its government enablers tighten the noose around our necks. Selfishly, they feather their own nests and relentlessly build their own pyramids of power at the expense of our freedoms.

If the First Minister of Scotland can get away with locking us up in our homes without logical justification and mandate the wearing of masks, which are dangerous to the human respiratory system, without a serious and sustained challenge from the public — then they resign all Scottish citizens to a life of perpetual fear, ill health and ignorance of the truth.

So we must ask this pertinent question: what will she bring to our door tomorrow if we yield to such explicit acts of totalitarian control now? We must say no! We must resist this manipulation and fearmongering in light of all the recent quality of evidence showing us that there is nothing to fear.
Above all, we must find our individual and collective voices, get out on the streets, protest peacefully, but assertively, and demand that this First Minister not only listens to our needs as human beings, but that she respond accordingly, and revokes these measures within the Corona Virus Act 2020 which is literally killing our people.

This Act is designed to bring in mandatory vaccinations, legitimise brutal lockdowns, and force general compliance; in particular, to exert control over health related businesses and their owners.

This is done by direct threat. This Act allows the government “the right to acquire care home businesses” if they do not agree to follow government instructions, which can only be described as insane; and it’s nothing short of financial blackmail.

The subtext of the First Minister’s diktats can generally be read like this: do as you’re told! Or we will take from you the business you have worked for all of your life. Fearful of losing everything, and unable to feed their families if unemployed, many people are forced to accept the unacceptable.

However, what we are listening to here is the language and logic of monsters. So we must find our own language, a defined semantics to counter this onslaught of threat and propaganda — and it must come in the language of facts, truth, reason and determined resistance.

When confronting the level of oppression such as we face in Scotland, and around the globe, “each generation must discover its mission”, Frantz Fanon had opined, “it must fulfil it, or betray it, in relative opacity”.

At this very moment in Scotland we stand as a people on the edge of a precipice. The choice is ours as individuals, and collectively as a nation. Will we fulfil our social and humanitarian obligations, or will we betray them?

Will we wake up from the spell cast by this Scottish government and its controlled media — turn away from the cliff edge to face our oppressor — or will we continue to sleepwalk on this same path to medical concentration camps, forced detentions and the perverse sexualisation of our children in Scottish schools? It is your choice. But a shortage of time and the steady destruction of society and the family, requires you to make that choice now.

In reality, this explicit attack on our human rights and civil liberties leaves the general public with no room to manoeuvre: for if we do not speak up, exercise our right to free speech, cry out about this system they are currently trying to put in place — simply because we cannot breathe with their boot on our face– we will find out quite soon in the near future that the price we had to pay for our silence was one that bought and guaranteed our own slavery.

Then we will wake up tomorrow with not a single right of which to speak. We will be no more than mere chattel. It is getting late. I ask you, what shall we do collectively as a people here in Scotland?

For be in no doubt, this medical dictatorship threatens to force-vaccinate you and your child — perpetually throughout your lives; this is a rolling business model, it is about money and absolute power.

This cartel will prevent you from travelling unless you have a vaccination passport; accessing supermarkets, shops, restaurants, airports and similar, will be impossible for you unless you comply to being injected.

At this current moment we are faced with, arguably, the most dangerous threat that the human race has ever witnessed. Therefore, to the people of Scotland, and of every nation around the world, I ask you: what will you do to demonstrate solidarity with your fellow men and women in this battle against tyranny? What must we all do to protect our rights and freedoms?

What are you prepared to do?

 

 

The Terror of Propaganda: https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=9EAbR4WKJpM
Twitter:
https://mobile.twitter.com/MovementSaving/status/1303374720000237576
https://www.google.com/url?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4420971/#__ffn_sectitle

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150422121724.htm

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4868614

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7087880https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150422121724.htm

https://www.msn.com/en-sg/health/medical/7-long-term-side-effects-of-wearing-face-masks/ss-BB15ngOt?li=BBr8Cnr#image=1

https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/4/e006577

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article

http://scielo.isciii.es/pdf/neuro/v19n2/3.pdf

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2006372

Over 3 times the risk of contracting influenza like illness if cloth mask is used:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4420971/#__ffn_sectitle
Penetration of cloth masks by particles was almost 97% compared to medical masks with 44%:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150422121724.htm
“The surgical mask is a bad fit for risk reduction” —
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4868614/

“Effects of wearing N95 and surgical facemasks on heartrate, thermal stress, and subjective sensations”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7087880/

“These guidelines need to be updated to reflect the higher infection risk posed by cloth masks, as found in our study.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150422121724.htm
“7 long term side effects of wearing masks”
https://www.msn.com/en-sg/health/medical/7-long-term-side-effects-of-wearing-face-masks/ss-BB15ngOt?li=BBr8Cnr#image=1

“Our systematic review found no significant effect of face masks on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza. Proper use of face masks is essential because improper use might increase the risk for transmission.”
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article

Why Face Masks Don’t Work: A Revealing Review
Not only are these masks 100% ineffective at reducing the spread of COVID-19, but they can actually harm you. Increased risk of infection? Yes, that’s what it says.
https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/4/e006577ù

Other studies have also looked at the impact masks have on your oxygen levels (because you’re are forced to re-breathe your own Co2) and it’s not good.
http://scielo.isciii.es/pdf/neuro/v19n2/3.pdf
We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2006372

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=9EAbR4WKJpM

The Folly of Neil Ferguson

The primary scientist advocating UK public policy on “Covid 19″ is Neil Ferguson, working out of Imperial College (IC). However, in Ferguson’s wake, as many have now came to realise, is a highly questionable track record of handling such matters adequately during a pandemic. This scientist’s methodology and modelling to promote worst case scenario projections, to the exclusion of alternative advice by infection specialists in the field, has been a growing concern for many specialists for a considerable time. However, before we look at his current role in predictive modelling of the Corona virus, let’s rewind.

We should first recall the specific role Ferguson and his Imperial College team had played in the social, environmental and economic disaster of the UK Foot and Mouth epidemic of 2001 (FMD). This will give readers a deeper historical context that will help to frame how this present crisis was whipped up and allowed to instigate such fear among the public.

In 2001, based on computerised modelling of FMD, Ferguson postulated that such an epidemic could only be dealt with by a mass cull. Therefore, government was advised by him at that time to sanction the slaughter of all animals – including those on neighbouring farms that were not infected – the final toll of this cull was eventually estimated at over ten million animals—the largest majority of which were all healthy. This decision to resort to these extreme measures was made by Neil Ferguson. Speaking at that time in 2001, he said:

”Extensive culling is sadly the only option for controlling the current British epidemic.” https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/04/010413081732.htm

However, this was not the only option. Observing the specific role of Neil Ferguson in this agricultural disaster, Prof Michael Thrusfield, an expert in animal disease, had said in his co-authored paper ‘Use and Abuse of Mathematical Models’—(by Kitching, RP, Thrusfield, M and Taylor, NM, 2006)—that Ferguson’s approach to FMD made incorrect assumptions about how the disease was transmitted. In 2006 he laid out these sobering views on Ferguson’s inadequate modelling procedures:

“The models were…severely flawed [and] not fit for the purpose of predicting the course of the epidemic and the effects of control measures. The models also remain invalidated. Their use in predicting the effects of control strategies was therefore imprudent”. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16796055

This co-authored paper goes on to set the context in which Ferguson and his team went about the tragedy of this mass cull:

“During the 2001 epidemic of FMD in the United Kingdom (UK), this approach was supplemented by a culling policy driven by invalidated predictive models. The epidemic and its control resulted in the death of approximately ten million animals, public disgust with the magnitude of the slaughter, and political resolve to adopt alternative options, notably including vaccination, to control any future epidemics. The UK experience provides a salutary warning of how models can be abused in the interests of scientific opportunism”.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16796055

Ferguson’s mathematical modelling of that time received heavy criticism from specialists in the field for his decisions to recommend the cull—which were viewed by much of the farming community at that time as reckless acts of agricultural and economic vandalism.

Yet Ferguson, then, and now, remains unrepentant. In his explanation, reiterated in April this year, he quickly took an opportunity to justify his approach:

“We were doing modelling in real time… certainly the models weren’t 100% right…with limited data and limited time to do the work. But I think the broad conclusions reached were still valid”.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/28/neil-ferguson-scientist-convinced-boris-johnson-uk-coronavirus-lockdown-criticised/

From Ferguson’s tone here it seems that scapegoats in the shape of statistics are readily available to absolve himself of his own mistakes. Additionally, one year later another example of Ferguson’s predictive modelling going wrong was demonstrated during the UK’s experience of Mad Cows Disease (BSE) in 2002. Then he speculated at that time, based on similar predictive modelling used in the Covid 19 crisis currently, that BSE disease could kill as many as 50,000 people” if the public ingested contaminated beef.

At that time, Ferguson again entered into public conjecture, with no clinical evidence to support it, that sheep may acquire BSE. Based on this false premise, the now familiar tone of scaremongering prompted Ferguson to predict up to a possible 150,000 deaths across the UK if BSE gained this capacity to cross over species.

Yet as of the date of this article, the total of deaths that have occurred from BSE is 177—and there are no reported cases known for the transmission of that disease from cows to sheep—or from sheep to humans https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11786878

Furthermore, in 2005 he went on to predict that as much as 200 million people could die from bird flu, (H5N1) when just over 280 actually succumbed to it across the entire globe.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/sep/30/birdflu.jamessturcke?fbclid=IwAR2VyqLJYUXuKh_uEpB1da7mNbFyv4TLjjNNB2GTNWemWOtg-6q0NhJpOJQ

With Ferguson now on a roll with his miscalculations, he took these inflated predictions to the public once more in 2009 and claimed that the Swine Flu (H1N1) may infect “about one third of the world’s population”. The final total across the globe was 18,500. He then went on to say that as much as 65,000 people in the UK could die of Swine Flu, based on his range of 0.3 to 1.5%, when in fact it was in conclusion, 457 deaths. Clearly, all of these failed predictions show up his modelling for what it actually is, merely guess work. For the final percentage of deaths related to swine flu came in at 0.026%.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/sep/30/birdflu.jamessturcke?fbclid=IwAR2VyqLJYUXuKh_uEpB1da7mNbFyv4TLjjNNB2GTNWemWOtg-6q0NhJpOJQ

Another example of such irresponsibility in going public with terrifying predictions like these can be seen in the approach of the World Health Organisation (WHO), with whom Ferguson collaborates, and has sat on its emergency committee:

“A flu outbreak is imminent but no one knows if it will be next week or in three years’ time… It is really difficult to know how many people will be infected but we know we have to get prepared…best case scenario would be 7.4 million deaths globally.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/may/12/swine-flu-report-pandemic-predicted

This kind of communication is clearly not thought through logically given the direct consequences of social and economic upheaval they can trigger, and such poor methodology, and alarmist statements, appear to be endemic to these institutions. Perhaps we would gain more reliable figures, and much higher accuracy, if we were all to tune into the predictions of Nostradamus.

Ferguson’s work models and his IC team still continue to draw severe criticism from many different academic quarters. In August 2011 another co-authored academic paper—titled, ‘Destructive Tension: mathematics versus experience…’ (by L.M. Mansley, A,I, Donaldson M,V, Thrusfield N, Honhold) – Dr Alex Donald demonstrates that any validity in Ferguson’s modelling which led to the disastrous effects of the 2001 cull was undermined by the model’s own inherent weaknesses, and his implicit trust in it. This led Ferguson to ignore other highly relevant data, as he was perceived to be:

“…ignoring the species composition of farms, and failing to recognise
that Foot and Mouth would spread quicker between certain species as opposed to others… The mathematical models were, at best, crude estimations that could not differentiate risk between farms and, at worst, inaccurate representations of the epidemiology of FMD…The models that supported the contiguous culling policy were… based on data from dissimilar epidemics; used inaccurate background population data, and contained highly improbable biological assumptions about the temporal and quantitative parameters of infection and virus emission in infected herds and flocks”.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21961220

However, it does not require much intellectual effort to see a strong correlation between FMD of 2001 and the present pandemic of the corona virus. As recently as March 28 Professor Thrusfield, spoke to ‘The Telegraph’, and he made the following connection between Ferguson’s modelling approach in 2001, and its tragic consequences—to the similar approach he is taking to the corona virus, referring to the scale of human suffering then, and the suffering that follows his predictions today:

“This is déjá vu. During the FMD epidemic there was quite vocal opposition from members of the vet profession, especially from those who had their hands soaked in blood, killing perfectly healthy cattle. There was also a major economic and emotional impact…. this was serious stuff. This was farmers losing their livelihoods…They [more than ten million cows, sheep and pigs] need not have been slaughtered but they were because the predictions were wrong”.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/28/neil-ferguson-scientist-convinced-boris-johnson-uk-coronavirus-lockdown-criticised/

Recently, Dr Paul Kitching, who is also one of the co-authors of the paper, ‘Use and Abuse of Mathematical Models’, made clear that the criticisms made of Ferguson’s work in their paper on FMD, are as equally relevant to the present corona virus and raise the same concerns:

“In view of the low numbers of Covid 19 tests being reported as carried out in affected countries, it is difficult to understand what informs the current models. In particular the transmission rate. How many mild and sub-clinical infections are occurring?…The model–driven policy of FMD control resulted in tragedy. Vast numbers of animals were slaughtered without reason. Untold human and animal suffering was the result”.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/28/neil-ferguson-scientist-convinced-boris-johnson-uk-coronavirus-lockdown-criticised/

Furthermore, the use of this flawed modelling procedure, despite little or no recent media coverage, had already been flagged up in a public report, written by Deirdre Hine, former chair of the Commission of Health Improvement, to review the fiasco of FMD in 2001. Significantly, this report highlighted the very same mistakes in Ferguson’s methodology that we are witnessing now in this present crisis of the corona virus.

She warned ‘Sage’ then that they were relying too much on Imperial College and their published papers that placed disproportionate bias on the “academic [and] scientific viewpoint, the modelling activity, to the exclusion of views from those involved in operational epidemiology”; for example, health experts in the sciences of the agricultural industry, and others volunteering high quality counter information in the field that existed then and could have helped resolve the crisis before the government took the decision to mass slaughter millions of animals.
https://www.ft.com/content/1e390ac6-7e2c-11ea-8fdb-7ec06edeef84

Therefore, what we are watching now is twenty years of predictable and appallingly poor form demonstrated by Ferguson, where the same models, and the same methodology, is being used time and again, with the same catastrophic results. Apparently Mr Ferguson has become a liability—but one that the governments of Scotland,Ireland and the rest of the UK can accept at face value—but it is not one that any of the people around the UK can afford to tolerate any longer, given the long term socio-economic damage related to his modelling procedures.

Fast forward to the present crisis of Covid 19. Evidently, the same familiar pattern continues by the day. What is of great concern is that this same approach used now by Ferguson’s IC team which guides their advice on this present virus does not seem to be informed by those past mistakes. General decision making based on his predictive mathematical models continues to draw consistent fire and heavy criticism.

Significantly, great consequences arise from these inflations when allowed to remain in the published data, as they only form a misleading but terrifying worst case scenario that has a debilitating effect on the the public’s capacity to gain perspective. Facing a global emergency in the absence of sound, proven, counter-balancing information, is foolish to the extreme. This places the population in a state of extreme fear, inhibiting their ability to apply reason and logic in their conclusions relating to those statistics — thus preventing them from making fully informed decisions about the loss of their civil liberties and the real status of the pandemic.

However, this confusion experienced by the population makes it much easier for the government to get away with actions that would normally be condemned by the general public – such as forced isolation – which would normally instigate loud and visible street protest against the consequences of these “crude estimations”. This poor methodology, leading to the destruction of whole industries, jobs, livelihoods – precipitating mass human suffering across the planet — is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a sound strategy.

As we all know, Ferguson’s recommendation of a comprehensive lockdown has also played a key role in the withdrawal of our right to challenge these totalitarian measures, to be heard, and the right to public protest – since the English, Scottish and Irish government’s have quickly exploited mass panic and laid waste to our civil liberties, effectively placing every citizen under house arrest. And for what? The denial of our essential freedoms are based on modelling data that has an explicitly poor record, and in Ferguson’s own words, data that is “certainly not 100% correct”.

In a recent interview produced by ‘Unherd’, Professor of chemistry and recipient of the Nobel Prize, Michael Levitt, revealed some startling information. When asked on how these kinds of inflated figures are arrived at by epidemiologists, such as Ferguson, he explains that the preserving of the epidemiologist’s reputation is at the forefront of their predictions. Professor Levitt leaves us with a disturbing conclusion:

“In my work, if I say a number is too small and I’m wrong, or a number is too high and I’m wrong, both of those errors are the same…[but] it seems that being a factor of 1,000 too high is perfectly okay in epidemiology, but being a factor of three too low is too low.”

Professor Levitt goes on to demonstrate the folly of Neil Ferguson in changing course from the initial strategy of ‘mitigation’. This would have seen he elderly and the medically vulnerable in society shielded for some weeks to protect them, and limit cross-infection—while everyone else goes back to work and life resumes in an atmosphere of semi-normality, engaging, as we always had done, in herd imminity. However, Ferguson’s calculations led Johnson, and the Sage group, to an abrupt u-turn and he advised the government to go for ‘suppression’ and full lockdown. This was his error. Professor Levitt affirms this:

“I think the policy of herd immunity is the right policy. I think Britain was on exactly the right track before they were fed wrong numbers and they made a huge mistake. I see the standout winners as Germany and Sweden … and they got enough people sick to get some herd immunity… [but countries locked down] have damaged their economies, caused massive social damage… but not obtained any herd immunity. There is no doubt in my mind that when we come to look back on this, the damage done by lockdown will exceed any saving of lives by a huge factor…” https://unherd.com/thepost/nobel-prize-winning-scientist-the-covid-19-epidemic-was-never-exponential/

Furthermore, the presenter of Unherd extrapolates key data from this same interview that sheds further light on Ferguson’s failed approach when he summarises Levitt’s conclusions on the Imperial College data and notes:

“…this may seem like a technical distinction but it’s implications are profound… the ‘unmitigated’ scenarios modelled by (among others) Imperial College, and which tilted governments across the world, into drastic action, relied on a presumption of continued exponential growth… a consistent death rate, very quickly the majority of the population would be infected and a huge number of deaths would be recorded…

However, Professor Levitt’s point is that that has not actually happened anywhere, even in countries that have been relatively lax in their response…”

Then Professor Levitt’s concern over a footnote in Ferguson’s paper that led to lockdown, points out:

“I had looked at China and had never seen any exponential growth that wasn’t decaying rapidly”

Nobel prize-winning scientist: the Covid-19 epidemic was never exponential

Conversely, Ferguson had pencilled into his own calculations that there would be exponential growth of 15%. Which leaves us with a significant discrepancy between Ferguson’s math–and Professor Levitt’s—when he studied the patterns of Covid 19 in countries like Iran, China and South Korea, and drew distinctly different conclusions about the growth of infection to that of Neil Ferguson.

We should also remember the key technical aspects of his model that had laid the foundation for Ferguson to advocate the strategy of ‘suppression’, was the computer code. He himself created this code. It produced the initial numbers of 500,000 deaths, which suggested shutting down the UK was the “only option”.

Furthermore, Fergusson appeared to present a weak excuse for not releasing this into the public domain, delaying requests for it to be viewed by the open source community and general public for six weeks, all of whom have expertise in working with similar code. Many had volunteered their subject specialist skills in order to help create a more reliable one that would provide future global stability based on accurate predictions—but in general the public wanted to scrutinise the code that had triggered such a monumental catastrophe.

However, in his response on Twitter, March 23rd, after he had received hundreds of requests from around the world to release it, one on which his model predicted such high numbers of deaths, Ferguson appeared more than reluctant to acquiesce– and seeking the opportunity to buy some time:

✔@neil_ferguson
Mar 23, 2020 “I’m conscious that lots of people would like to see and run the pandemic simulation code we are using to model control measures against COVID-19. To explain the background – I wrote the code (thousands of lines of undocumented C) 13+ years ago to model flu pandemics…”

As much as it’s reassuring to know that Ferguson is still conscious, his response above only frustrated members of the public further, prompting them into more demands to see the code:

March 23. Replying to @neil ferguson “Why haven’t you just immediately released the code and allowed the global community to dissect it and work on it? Now is not the time to be embarrassed about some code. You’re missing the power of open source to accomplish feats, especially when people are highly motivated”.

MARCH 23 2020 replying to @neil ferguson “We do need this code, because otherwise how will we know if the stated assumptions are implemented properly”?

March 23 2020, replying to @ neil ferguson. “Like most C programmers, I’m baffled why you don’t publish your source code”
https://mobile.twitter.com/neil_ferguson/status/1241835454707699713

And Ferguson’s response? Silence.

What was he to do? Suddenly, he was taking considerable heat from the public and he was under increasing scrutiny. How could these demands be met. Finally on the very same day, 23rd March, Ferguson—like the proverbial magician he is—pulled another illusion out of his hat, to the frustration of many on Twitter who had been waiting weeks for him to release the original code:

March 23 2020, @neil ferguson “I am happy to say that Microsoft and GitHub are working with Imperial_Jidea and MRC Outbreak to document, refactor and extend the code to allow others to use withot the multiple days training it would currently require (and which we don’t have time to give)…”

Of course this only set in motion another slew of tweets from the public.

March 24 2020. replying to @ neil ferguson. “Neil, you have to put up the code, without delay. There are many who can and are willing to help”.

March 23 2020. replying to @neil ferguson. “Release the code now – make an update in 7-10 days. Community can make it reproducible & portable with Docker images”

March 28 2020. March 29 replying to @ neil ferguson. “The code might be more useful to others when ‘refactored’…BUT that’s a separate issue from transparency. You still need to release the original code that you used so we can look it over. As an academic in a different field this is obvious!”

Yet apparently transparency, and the sharing of the code for quick and conclusive accuracy in the predictions, did not seem to be a priority for Ferguson, and he seemed unwilling to engage in such a discussion. Of course, the more he ignored the calls for transparency, the more it triggered further demands to view the code; the clock was still ticking:

March 29 replying to @ neil ferguson. “Could you just release the source code. There are plenty of people who would be glad to improve your code…”

This further delay was beginning to encapsulate the frustration of thousands who were angry at Ferguson’s withholding of it. The pressure continued to rise. A multitude of tweets continued to pressure him, while many began to highlight the very real probability that this code—which had acted like a wrecking ball on the world’s economy and reduced it to rubble—may indeed have been completely inadequate as a modelling approach to Covid 19—therefore mirroring Ferguson’s ineptitude—and by extension– the British government’s too. Consequently, there was much to protect, or conceal, considering the government’s response to the numbers, and all of the key decisions such as lockdown, had all been made on the basis of this deficient code—one which still remained secret.

However, Ferguson’s extended silence only increased the disapproval of the open source community, and began to trigger a distinct change in tone:

April 10 2020 replying to @neil ferguson “History is watching now. You need to release this ASAP. The assumptions and bugs will be found
anyway—the sooner the better”

Regardless of the legitimate questions asked of Ferguson, and the justified demands to see this code, Ferguson was not forthcoming. At this point, silence was the standard response –and would continue to be—regardless of any appeal for professionalism:

April 10. Replying to @ neil ferguson. “With all respect, Neil, it is one thing to publish with hidden code, quite another to advise policy. The former, by the way, is unacceptable in many fields”. https://mobile.twitter.com/neil_ferguson/status/1241835454707699713

It should be noted that if this code was obtained by the public and scrutinised for all of its ageing faults, and mathematical improbabilities, it is conceivable that such information shared in the public domain could not only have forced Ferguson to resign in disgrace, but it could also, conceivably, have brought down this Tory government.

At that point, one could suggest that this whole house of cards would have collapsed—and the incompetency of those making such important decisions shown up for what it was when locking up 65 million people for months, based on data that had always historically been recognised in many quarters as “flawed”.

That was it then, no one was going to see Ferguson’s original code that stopped the world. No one would get the opportunity to scrutinise it. Only a code that was to be rewritten would be made available to the public, thus, presumably, covering up a mathematical projection that was riddled with errors. Therefore, from this author’s vantage point, Ferguson’s intransigence and no little arrogance in preventing its release, seems more of an excuse than an explanation. His code is either too long, or too complex, or too old, for it to be given out to the public.

Furthermore, as I have pointed out earlier, Ferguson has a track record of this slap-dash approach to predictive modelling that consequently triggers seismic effects on human populations, environments and economies. However, no one was going to see this old code—Neil Ferguson and Bill Gates had made sure of that.

Certain pressing questions still pertain: would it not have been more prudent for Ferguson to base his predictions on a new mathematical script designed specifically for this corona virus? Of more significance, would a superior approach not be to “refactor and extend” his code before a pandemic—as opposed to doing it backwards and rehashing it after the pandemic has struck?

Furthermore, why was a code of such imperative value left to stagnate without an upgrade, particularly as it was supposed to be the axis around which all key decisions would take place in the event of a pandemic? These are only some of the questions to which Ferguson must be compelled to answer before a jury of his peers and a public audience.

It should also be remembered here that Ferguson’s initial numbers concluding that there would be more than half a million dead in the UK due to this virus, if there was no mitigation of the spread, was his prediction that precipitated the panic. Additionally, of both this old mathematical code that led to the IC report—and the paper that delivered the devastating reaction of the British government to sanction lockdown—neither were peer reviewed. Just let that sink in for a moment of reflection.

On another note, but no less significant, five days later after he made the tweets above, a comment issued by him was picked up by The Telegraph on March 28 in which he dismissed any suggestions that the severity of Covid 19 was similar to a seasonal influenza. He strenuously maintained the corona virus was different from seasonal flu—for which his mathematical computer code was originally intended:

“It is ludicrous, frankly, to suggest that the severity of this virus is comparable to seasonal flu – ludicrous and dangerous. People who are doing so have not analysed the data in any level…”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/28/neil-ferguson-scientist-convinced-boris-johnson-uk-coronavirus-lockdown-criticised/

So why is he using a mathematical code that is designed to “model flu pandemics” if the corona virus is unique, and distinct from seasonal influenza? These concerns raise the disturbing scenario that not only was this code too old to use due to its age and the fact that Ferguson had not bothered to update his own code and make it fit for purpose—but that it should never have been used to model the corona virus in the first place, as it is very likely that it was completely inadequate for such a challenge. Indeed, Mike Cates, professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, makes this clear in the following statement in response to Ferguson’s paper which predicted up to 510,000 deaths if the virus was not intercepted:

“…everyone’s conscious of the fact that it [Ferguson’s code & model] has been rapidly converted from a different purpose and wasn’t originally designed for this type of virus and this type of transmission” https://www.ft.com/content/1e390ac6-7e2c-11ea-8fdb-7ec06edeef84

This approach of Ferguson and his IC team now, as with FMD in 2001, demonstrates the weakness of those unsubstantiated predictions, and when these are opened up to scrutiny, he tends to backtrack on his own conclusions, telling us that a more recent data set projects different conclusions, and promptly lowers the number again.

From his initial estimate of half a million deaths if nothing was done— albeit estimates described by his peers as a ‘crude’—he then foresaw a reduction to 250,000 deaths, even if the British government adopted the strategy of ‘mitigation’ and continued with it. This was the initial strategy that the UK followed, allowing everyone to go to work and carry on with life, while protecting the elderly and the immuno-compromised in isolation; and as Professor Levitt said earlier in this article, that was the correct policy.

However, Ferguson’s death data frightened the English government into a u-turn, and they then chose “suppression”, and full lockdown. He eventually reduced it further, presumably because of another new data set, on April 20th to 20,000 deaths. One retraction follows another.

However, by that point the critical damage had been done. The visible signs of profound tremor had taken place in society, loosening its foundations to such a degree, that a social, environmental, and economic tsunami had destroyed the basic building blocks of human life—jobs, businesses, properties, freedom of movement, freedom of speech, universal human right—all were washed away in its path—obliterating society as we know it–spreading continuously outward – moving in all directions from the original epicentre; Neil Ferguson’s predictive modelling.

Unfortunately for us, common society is standing in the way of this advancing wave. This devastation is the gift bequeathed to us by Neil Ferguson. As he is the one who had the ear of Tony Blair in 2001 during the FMD epidemic—destroying the agricultural industry with wild and inaccurate predictions—and he is the one who has the ear of Boris Johnson now, and the others in Downing Street, such as Whitty, Hancock and Raab, pulling the strings that suspend our civil liberties.

This societal earthquake has produced much more than a powerful shock. Much of the damage done is irreparable. Politicians like to tell us with the same sound bite—repetitively and in unison—that tomorrow will be “the new normal”, priming society, programming them, here in the UK and around the world, that we should not expect our lives to be as good as we would like them to be again. But why not? Why can’t we aspire to at the very least the equal of what we had—or much better? Beginning with more transparency in higher levels of government, and less secrecy and less corruption.

Once we appear from the eye of this storm, we should be aiming much higher and demanding much more from our elected representatives. For these social, physical and psychological consequences of paralysing the global population will not be reversed; at least not in the short term. At the very least, we should demand that all of those emergency laws implemented that breached our civil liberties should immediately be revoked.

So how bad are the physical and psychological effects of this long term isolation likely to be? Professor of medicine and epidemiology, John Ioannidis , highlights the increasing problem of extended lockdowns:

“I am deeply concerned that the social, economic and public health consequences of this near total meltdown of normal life…The unemployment, impoverishment and despair likely to result will be public health scourges of the first order… with lockdowns of months, if not years, life largely stops… and billions, not just millions, of lives may be eventually at stake… At a minimum, we need unbiased prevalence and incidence data for the evolving infectious load to guide decision-making… If we decide to jump off the cliff, we need some data to inform us about the rationale of such an action and the chances of landing somewhere safe.”

A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data

Bearing in mind the unjustifiable inflations that always accompany Ferguson’s work, and the historical miscalculations associated with it. mistakes of this magnitude are now unacceptable to any reasonable thinking citizen, given the collateral health damage happening presently. In a recent dispatch from the Sunday Post in Scotland, a doctor speaking anonymously has laid out the qualified stupidity of Ferguson’s suppression model:

“Another week passes and Covid admissions to our intensive care unit (ICU) can be counted on one hand … beds are now beginning to fill with our usual work load: post-op patients, acute exacerbations of chronic diseases, major trauma, and new acute illnesses. However, there seems to be a preponderance of super illnesses we rarely see; the super sick… [and] multiple patients over the last week… have come to hospitals too late… that not even the rigours of modern medicine could do anything to save them”

This newspaper goes on to report from National Records Scotland:

“Figures show that over four weeks last month [April] there were 1,001 more deaths in Scotland not linked to Covid19… than the five year average. This included 340 extra dementia and Alzheimer’s cases, 339 classed as “other” causes, 158 extra cancer deaths — but 30 fewer respiratory deaths… I see little we can do to hide from the impending wave of excess deaths…” https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/from-the-frontlinethe-legacy-of-c-19-could-be-an-elevated-death-rate-for-years-to-come/

It is extraordinary, to take Scotland as an example, that in in this small population alone, there are at least an extra 1,001 fatalities over this short period that have nothing to do with Covid 19. This is due to so many people unable to access care, while most hospitals sit at half capacity, or much lower, waiting for patients who very rarely appear. People are afraid to go into hospital in case they do not come out of it, fully aware that they will also be labelled Covid 19, regardless of the condition for which they first sought medical intervention.

This labelling of all deaths as a direct consequence of the virus is not only misleading the public but it is also terrifying them, and it is a required differentiation that all of governments in the UK do not make; however, they must now do so and demonstrate real transparency. Additionally, the public must also speak up and demand a complete revision of these death figures that remain completely inaccurate. https://www.gov.scot/coronavirus-covid-19/

Given the many false positives that also arise from faulty testing, and the obvious numerical inflations inserted into official Covid data, this author is compelled to present several urgent question: why are governments around the world inflating the real numbers? How do they benefit from such false statistics? What are the government’s true objectives in keeping people locked up for such long periods, based on inaccurate numbers and a science that does not stand up to scrutiny?

Why are so many patients immediately after arriving in Emergency rooms labelled DNR in the event that they may need resuscitation? To whom, or to which group, do we attribute this programme of eugenics underway in the UK, and around the world?

This fiddling of official statistics and a lack of medical differentiation is a grave concern because it continues to pump up the numbers and generate gross miscalculations, further traumatising the public, cowing them into acceptance of longer periods of isolation, and manipulating them into accepting decisions that are obviously counter-productive to their own physical and psychological health.

However, it seems that the figures must remain high, or continue to grow, to hold the public in this heightened state of fear, making them more malleable to governmental control—and by extension— quietly compliant with severe restrictions of their civil liberties. Then, as a direct consequence of this inflated death data, and the profound psychological effect it has on the public, any assault on our freedoms are likely to be accepted by a large proportion of the public in order to feel “safe”. This allows these breaches in our civil liberties to take place—and be justified by all governing leaders in the UK.

So what is Neil Ferguson’s answer to all of this unnecessary suffering and the rising fatalities of those left to die at home? He tells us that an indefinite extension to lockdown has to be part of his strategy of non- Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPI’S):

“…non pharmaceutical interventions (NPI’s) and drugs, if available, need to be maintained – at least intermittently for as long as the virus is circulating in the human population, or until a vaccine becomes available. In the case of COVID-19, it will be at least 12-18 months before a vaccine is available… Furthermore, there is no guarantee that initial vaccines will have high efficacy”.
( https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/covid-19/report-9-impact-of-npis-on-covid-19/

So no restrictions on the human misery that is caused by his scientific models, then. But we should expect to endure more of the same—further totalitarian restrictions on civil liberties—and continue to wait for a vaccine – possibly as long as eighteen months, even if this vaccine has “no guarantee” of protecting the public against this virus. This is madness of the first degree.
It is a grotesque strategy, one which sits contrary to what other eminent professors in the same field have recommended: herd immunity.

Infection specialist, Professor Knut Wittkowski, has spoken out against this approach self-isolation for extended periods. He makes it clear that a confined environment, with restricted air flow, and restricted access to higher levels of oxygen through fresh air and regular exercise, makes respiratory illness more likely, and exacerbates current illnesses to the point where immediate medical care is a necessity. In a recent interview, several pertinent questions were asked of Wittkowski on this approach to force a lockdown. The excerpt below of this interview explains the dangers of long term isolation in the home without spending more time outdoors:

Professor Wittkowski:
For a respiratory disease, the flu ends during spring time. That’s [because] people spend more time outdoors …[and] the viruses cannot easily spread. That is a form of containment, spending more time outdoors.

Interviewer: [But] we’re now spending time indoors. We’ve been told to go indoors. Isn’t that — doesn’t that help keep the virus going?

Professor Wittkowski: It keeps the virus healthy, yeah.

Interviewer: So we should be told to go outdoors?

Professor Wittkowski: Yeah. Going outdoors is what stops every respiratory disease.

Interviewer: … Now, it is interesting that you say that, because …Neil Ferguson has changed his estimate of the number of [predicted] dead… from 500,000 to 20,000 or less, and he says that is because of social distancing. Is there any possibility that that number would have changed that way because of the social distancing?

Professor Wittkowski: No. Actually, we have data for that. I looked at the dates when people actually started social distancing. In China, the epidemic peaked on February 1st to February 5th, in that period. But schools were not closed until February the 20th — that was two weeks later.

In South Korea, we have a similar pattern. In Daegu… the self-quarantine was ordered only on February the 23rd, but the peak in that city had [already] happened. [social] distancing was not advised until February the 29th, so that’s a week later, when the national peak had happened. So, both in China and South Korea, social distancing started only long after the number of infections had already started to decline, and therefore had very little impact on the epidemic. That means they were about to reach herd immunity. They were very close. But by installing social distancing, they prevented it from actually getting to the final point, and that is why we are still seeing new cases in South Korea, several weeks after the peak.

Interviewer: So what do you think? Should we tolerate this? Should we stand for staying…in house arrest…or should we, perhaps, be resisting ?

Professor Wittkowski: We should be resisting, and we should, at least, hold our politicians responsible… One thing we definitely need to do, and that would be safe and effective, is opening schools…which is a necessity to get herd immunity. That was probably one of the most destructive actions the government has done. We should focus on the elderly and separating them from the population where the virus is circulating. We should not prevent the virus from circulating among school children, which is the fastest way to create herd immunity….

I think people [ around the world] are more docile than they should be. People should talk with their politicians, question them, ask them to explain, because if people don’t stand up for their rights, their rights will be forgotten”
https://ratical.org/PandemicParallaxView/PerspectivesOnPandemic-II.html

More recently, Lockdown Sceptics published a report that had been completed by a concerned member of the public, in which this former software programmer of considerable experience in this field, made it clear the unacceptable condition of Ferguson’s original code, and the code released more recently that had been revised—six weeks after he had been first asked to release it. This revision had been worked on by Microsoft.

I believe this following synopsis will be of value to the reader given that it is written by a software engineer, and an experienced auditor of the kind of code Ferguson attempted to write. This is what she had to say recently after the code was released:

Square brackets are mine only; Single quotation marks indicate, auditor, Sue Denim speaking. Double quotation marks indicate quoted I.C. comments within their own document:

‘My background. I have been writing software for 30 years. I worked at Google between 2006 and 2014, where I was a senior software engineer working on Maps, Gmail and account security. I spent the last five years at a US/UK firm where I designed the company’s database product, amongst other jobs and projects. I was also an independent consultant for a couple of years. Obviously I’m giving only my own professional opinion and not speaking for my current employer…

The code. It isn’t the code Ferguson ran to produce his famous Report 9. What’s been released on GitHub is a heavily modified derivative of it, after having been upgraded for over a month by a team from Microsoft and others. This revised codebase is split into multiple files for legibility and written in C++, whereas the original program was “a single 15,000 line file that had been worked on for a decade” (this is considered extremely poor practice). A request for the original code was made 8 days ago but ignored, and it will probably take some kind of legal compulsion to make them release it. Clearly, Imperial are too embarrassed by the state of it ever to release it of their own free will, which is unacceptable given that it was paid for by the taxpayer and belongs to them.

Non-deterministic outputs. Due to bugs, the code can produce very different results given identical inputs. They [Imperial College] routinely act as if this is unimportant. This problem makes the code unusable for scientific purposes, given that a key part of the scientific method is the ability to replicate results. Without replication, the findings might not be real at all – as the field of psychology has been finding out to its cost. Even if their original code was released, it’s apparent that the same numbers as in Report 9 [from IC] might not come out of it. Non-deterministic outputs may take some explanation, as it’s not something anyone previously floated as a possibility. The documentation [the I.C. paper explaining Ferguson’s code and modelling procedure] states’

“The model is stochastic. Multiple runs with different seeds should be undertaken to see average behaviour.”

‘“Stochastic” is just a scientific-sounding word for “random”. That’s not a problem if the randomness is intentional pseudo-randomness, i.e. the randomness is derived from a starting “seed” which is iterated to produce the random numbers. Such randomness is often used in Monte Carlo techniques. It’s safe because the seed can be recorded and the same (pseudo-) random numbers produced from it in future. Any kid who’s played Minecraft is familiar with pseudo-randomness because Minecraft gives you the seeds it uses to generate the random worlds, so by sharing seeds you can share worlds…

‘Clearly, the documentation wants us to think that, given a starting seed, the model will always produce the same results. Investigation reveals the truth: the code produces critically different results, even for identical starting seeds and parameters…

‘I’ll illustrate with a few bugs. In issue 116 a UK “red team” at Edinburgh University reports that they tried to use a mode that stores data tables in a more efficient format for faster loading, and discovered – to their surprise – that the resulting predictions varied by around 80,000 deaths after 80 days:..” [ please see in link below the graphs indicated for example referred to] https://lockdownsceptics.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/image.png

The author of this report goes on to say:

‘That mode doesn’t change anything about the world being simulated, so this was obviously a bug. The Imperial team’s response [to Edinburgh University] is that it doesn’t matter: they are “aware of some small non-determinisms”, but “this has historically been considered acceptable because of the general stochastic nature of the model”. Note the phrasing here: Imperial know their code has such bugs, but act as if it’s some inherent randomness of the universe, rather than a result of amateur coding. Apparently, in epidemiology, a difference of 80,000 deaths is “a small non-determinism”…

‘Imperial advised Edinburgh that the problem goes away if you run the model in single-threaded mode, like they do. This means they suggest using only a single CPU core rather than the many cores that any video game would successfully use. For a simulation of a country, using only a single CPU core is obviously a dire problem – as far from supercomputing as you can get. Nonetheless, that’s how Imperial use the code: they know it breaks when they try to run it faster. It’s clear from reading the code that in 2014 Imperial tried to make the code use multiple CPUs to speed it up, but never made it work reliably…

‘This sort of programming is known to be difficult and usually requires senior, experienced engineers to get good results. Results that randomly change from run to run are a common consequence of thread-safety bugs. More colloquially, these are known as “Heisenbugs“.

‘But Edinburgh came back and reported that – even in single-threaded mode – they still see the problem. So Imperial’s understanding of the issue is wrong. Finally, Imperial admit there’s a bug by referencing a code change they’ve made that fixes it. The explanation given is “It looks like historically the second pair of seeds had been used at this point, to make the runs identical regardless of how the network was made, but that this had been changed when seed-resetting was implemented”.

‘In other words, in the process of changing the model they made it non-replicable and never noticed. Why didn’t they notice? Because their code is so deeply riddled with similar bugs and they struggled so much to fix them that they got into the habit of simply averaging the results of multiple runs to cover it up… and eventually this behaviour became normalised within the team…
Although the academic on those threads isn’t Neil Ferguson, he is well aware that the code is filled with bugs that create random results.

‘In change #107 he [member of IC team] authored the comments: “It includes fixes to InitModel to ensure deterministic runs with holidays enabled”. In change #158 he describes the change only as “A lot of small changes, some critical to determinacy…”

‘Imperial are trying to have their cake and eat it. Reports of random results are dismissed with responses like “that’s not a problem, just run it a lot of times and take the average”, but at the same time, they’re fixing such bugs when they find them. They know their code can’t withstand scrutiny, so they hid it until professionals had a chance to fix it, but the damage from over a decade of amateur hobby programming is so extensive that even Microsoft were unable to make it run right.’

The author’s summary issues the following indictment of Ferguson and his team at Imperial college:

‘Beyond the apparently unsalvageable nature of this specific codebase [Ferguson’s & IC’s ] testing model predictions faces a fundamental problem, in that the authors don’t know what the “correct” answer is until long after the fact, and by then the code has changed again anyway, thus changing the set of bugs in it. So it’s unclear what regression tests really mean for models like this – even if they had some that worked..

Conclusions. ‘All papers based on this code should be retracted immediately. Imperial’s modelling efforts should be reset with a new team that isn’t under Professor Ferguson, and which has a commitment to replicable results with published code from day one.

On a personal level, I’d go further and suggest that all academic epidemiology be defunded. This sort of work is best done by the insurance sector. Insurers employ modellers and data scientists, but also employ managers whose job is to decide whether a model is accurate enough for real world usage and professional software engineers to ensure model software is properly tested, understandable and so on. Academic efforts don’t have these people, and the results speak for themselves.’ https://lockdownsceptics.org/code-review-of-fergusons-model/

Presently we see many of the measures triggered initially by Ferguson and his team at IC still in place in Scotland, Ireland and Wales, despite some relaxing of those damaging societal rules in England. Why? For there is now no justification for it. Ferguson’s code and the paper it triggered, Report 9, is now known to be completely flawed, therefore it is imperative that this decision of lockdown is reversed across the whole of the UK to alleviate the suffering of millions locked up in their homes.

Finally, a recent piece by Sherelle Jacobs in The Telegraph demonstrated how ridiculous this decision to go to lockdown, and currently maintain it, actually is. With Ferguson publicly dismissing his own instructions to remain indoors, regardless of the rising health casualties in the UK because of this enforced isolation, apparently he had decided that the virus is actually not that dangerous after all before meeting up with Antonia Staats for some aerobic exercise:

“The biggest political con in modern history has descended into farce. Professor McLockdown, has choked on his own junk science, resigning from Sage after the Telegraph exposed that he flouted the very mass house arrest he advocated for everyone else. But his defence – that he broke the rules because he had already caught the virus and recovered from it – is even more revelatory; turns out Britain’s most influential epidemiologist believes that not only can you gain immunity from Covid-19, but that this should release you from lockdown”.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/07/despite-ferguson-fiasco-no-10-make-second-major-blunder/

As pointed out very clearly in Jacobs’ excerpt above, Ferguson’s behaviour has demonstrated the great lie behind this lockup. Either way, as Jacobs said, he has inadvertently shown up this facade for what it is. A “con”. .
Yet here he is, revealing by his own actions, that this virus is not the dreadful contagion that we were all led to believe it was. The mask is slipping.

Additionally, this ridiculous death data is shown up for what it is when we see how Sweden has coped with this crisis and stand as a relevant example of sticking to the mitigation strategy and acquiring herd immunity without destroying their country and allowing thousands to die in their own homes.
Ferguson, in his hypocrisy, has inadvertently shown the world that there is nothing for a normally healthy person to fear in this virus (but some precautions for those who are immuno-compromised is wise) and if you do get it, as he has shown, you most likely will recover from it. Therefore, one can only assume the lockdown is in place for reasons other that this flu.

If ever there was a time in the history of the human race when quality of independent thought, personal courage, and strong independent voices were needed, that time is now. What can we do about the destruction of our civil liberties and the loss of our jobs and businesses? What can we do about the loss of our loved ones due to the state’s withdrawal of medical care?
What can we do about this inhumane policy of forced long term isolation? How do we combat the loss of our human rights?

What can we do to prevent the next stage of this totalitarian nightmare coming down upon us—the state’s intention to make its population comply and accept mandatory vaccinations based on calculations that remain invalid? For we now know as many other researchers do, that too many of these vaccinations in their present form have been proven by professional biologists in independent labs to be contaminated with a cocktail of heavy metals and other unacceptable foreign substances? Furthermore, we know that they have caused so many injuries in children worldwide.

https://fullfact.org/online/vaccine-damage-fund/
https://www.nature.com/news/calls-in-india-for-legal-action-against-us-charity-1.13700?referral=true
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/healthcare/biotech/healthcare/controversial-vaccine-studies-why-is-bill-melinda-gates-foundation-under-fire-from-critics-in-india/articleshow/41280050.cms

Is this what we have come to? Locked up, living like hermits, eating and drinking too much, not getting enough exercise, while trying to cope with the intollerable stress of being cooked up in our homes for months–or being isolated on one’s own–and being told what we should put into our bodies, regardless of the injuries or deaths the vaccine itself may cause to us or our children. This lockdown must be stopped around the rest of the UK now–and the vaccine narrative the government are currently pushing must also be addressed by the public at all levels.

How did the so-called leaders of this world descend into this deep cesspit of corruption, basing enormous critical decisions on “junk science”, then hiding it from the public after the damage is done? How could they engage in relationships with huge pharmaceutical companies—where profit is of primary importance and the health of its citizens secondary—without all of us putting up a real fight and stopping much of this in its tracks long before we found ourselves locked up in our homes? Nevertheless, we must ask ourselves again: what must we do now?

As Professor Wittkowski said, “we should be resisting, and we should at least hold our politicians responsible, question them, ask them to explain… because if people don’t stand up for their rights, their rights will be forgotten”.

Time is short.

What must you do now?

 

 

Last Beer in Buenos Aries

via Last Beer in Buenos Aries

Last Beer in Buenos Aries

via Last Beer in Buenos Aries

Poems of Protest

The Fortitude of Poetry

Brother, what must I do

at this late hour

to remind you of my innocence?

I merely asked some questions

to warn you of a storm coming in from the edge

of Arabia

But now you abandon me

and accuse me

of subversion.

Yet I recall that day precisely.

You and I sitting by the cafe in Abha

sipping coffee laced with cardamom.

The arc of  the winter sun had settled

in the crease of your brow —

the evening light softening that hard glance

you aimed at me like a dart.

And may I say now, brother,

your judgement of this refugee is harsh.

I spoke only of my paintings

and poetry — how they mitigate

the lash of the Mutaween —

make visible the shadow world

of Sharia — this consumption

of flesh and spirit. 

 

Yet you chose silence.

Brother, you know as well as I

how things stand

in the House of Saud.

The quiet terror spreads

like a virus

in muted streets and markets

and a new dark age brings down

with a thud the broad sword

of executioners.

Yes, I raised the stoning of lonely wives,

the wild tales of witchcraft and sorcery —

that fear a strict whip-hand has of women.

Yet, by the power of male decree,

the zealot makes it plain what’s on his mind:

the female form must be disfigured or hidden.

Yet you chose silence.

Here anything that reeks of love

must be routed out and crushed,

for they miss nothing —

not one unlawful kiss

that may pass between

the lips of many lovers.

But in this stone cell mercy has its price.

Money buys the killer pardon,

and spares his helpless neck from the block.

Yet for me?  The worst lies in wait

simply for the crime

of speech or thought.

They’d rather unsheathe the blade

and gild the truth with blood

than acknowledge a kingdom run by vice.

You see, brother, if I’m passing

on the road and see a man half naked

being nailed to a cross —

suspended there until the sky darkens —

until the ripe olives turn red,

then I must ask you: what have we become?

Do you remember?

How the light took refuge in the hollows

of his flesh — tugging and stretching

the sagging limbs — tearing the skin

until it turned blue

and peeled like paper.

His right foot was lashed tightly

against the left —

wrought iron nails were driven in

with quiet purpose, until his cries soared above

the crowded square

silencing the gasps of tourists,

the sighs of doves,

the holy call to prayer

rising uneasily in the distance.

“Be silent, Ashraf!” you cried.

The Commission for Virtue and Prevention of Vice

will always have its way.

But my answer then, as it is now,

Is quite simple.

I sing to fill the silence rising in you.

For it condones, by the edge of a sword,

the slicing of hands and the slicing of heads —

rendering mute arbiters of law.

Brother, I sing into this silence

to break a lineage of fear

and ring in a new paradigm.

My song will fill the silence

that prevails in the courts

of kings and queens.

Conscience will not be reduced

to a cult  — or a pathology

of the mind.

And know this.  My voice

will resonate in the throat

of the zealot,

it will draw poison

from this bitter root

and nourish the will of the people.

This is the fortitude of poetry.

It will outlast the silence

of good men and women —

it will soar above the venal stench of money —

beyond the blood-drenched square

of totalitarian kings.

The Curse of Brussels

 

In a few short words one union boss, Romain Altmann, captured the feelings of millions of French voters immediately after Emmanuel Macron’s victory in the last election when he stuck his face in front of a TV camera:

“It is like voting for your own hangman“, he said.

From the Scottish Enlightenment to the European Union

Images: Adam Smith and David Hume

The dust has long since settled on the Brexit referendum and most of the hysteria that went with it. Now seems like an appropriate time to raise some pertinent issues in relation to this major event last year. Prior to the vote many people gave different reasons to justify their personal choice at the ballot box. However, a recurring theme within the Scottish intelligentsia in support of their position to maintain the social and political bond with the EU was ever present. One of the main foundations on which they based their argument to remain was the historical relationship Scotland has always had with old Europe. From the vantage point of the Scottish intelligentsia, these ties to Europe are indispensable; this is, in their view, a relationship based on social, cultural and political longevity, therefore it should be retained at any cost.

At the outset, this assertion that we should continue to place our faith in this relationship with the EU on the basis of longevity and past alliances suggests an absence of solid analysis in the present day context.  After Brexit some felt compelled to say they voted to remain because of their “love for Europe” — but they were keen to make the distinction that their wish to stay was not for any distinctive appreciation of the EU. Well, there is no one loves or appreciates the diverse cultures of Europe more than I, (Camões, Monet, Goethe, Caravaggio, Beethoven) cultural giants  of which I never seem to get enough.  But that is not the point here.  From where the integrationists stand, ignoring the obvious conflation that should be made between old Europe and the modern day plutocracy that the EU has become is, at the least, misguided, if not entirely wrong.

Notions of old Europe and the EU are interchangeable. In the modern day they are one and the same — including all of the negative social and political aspects membership of this organisation entails. Therefore, when we talk in a modern day context about our “love of Europe”, we are also referring – whether we like it or not – to the social, political and financial foundations that underpin Europe; the union itself.

However, this raises some fundamental question: how  was it possible, if a thoughtful critique was being applied to the issue of Brexit, to view “Europe” in its current manifestation as an entity distinctly separate from the European Union?  What powers were acting against the awareness and conscience of the Scottish intelligentsia when they divided one and the same entity into two?

Yes, the distinct cultural riches that we identify with old Europe are indeed undeniable: the great musicians, writers, sculptors and painters — all of those beautiful cities and architectural gems that produce within us experience of the sublime, and endear so many Scots to Europe and its people is, nevertheless, projected and sanctioned under the auspices of the European Union.  Culture and politics are inextricably linked by place and time.

Of course we do have much shared history with Europe to look back on. Our national achievements are many, for we have been innovators across the main disciplines: education, science, mathematics, engineering, philosophy, sociology, literature and art.   We have accomplished so much for such a small nation of approximately five million people, whose ingenuity and genius has demonstrated to the world our capacity to be pioneers in every field.

Also, in no small measure, our innate ability as Scots to adapt and integrate has allowed us for centuries to forge prominent relationships with the other diverse peoples of Europe — and many cultures around the world.  We only have to look at Robert Louis Stevenson’s impact on the Polynesian island of Samoa and its indigenous people to see how integration with others comes naturally to to the people of Scotland.  In short, our nature has always been outward looking, European to a certain degree — with an outlook forged by the characters which inhabited those striking paradigms of the Scottish and European Enlightenments.

From our painters such as Gavin Hamilton and Alan Ramsay, who practised and honed their skills in Italy and Sweden, to John Locke, who based his ideas of good governance in the  ‘social contract’, to our national poet, Robert Burns, whose sojourns to the European continent saw him strike up a brief but intriguing collaboration with Beethoven — to the historian and philosopher David Hume, who spent some of the most rewarding time of his life in France, befriending Jean Jacque Rousseau while the Frenchman was being hounded around Europe — we have always reached out to our European neighbours, recognising, at times, a kinship of social, political and philosophical thought. We earned our place at the European table; deservedly so, through our willingness, essentially, to express the ideals of the Sottish Enlightenment.

However, in relation to last year’s referendum, our historical links to Europe raise other questions in the context of the 21st century. Was this nostalgia — for the friendships, alliances and cultural links we enjoyed with ‘old Europe’ — the overriding driver behind the majority vote of Scotland’s intelligentsia to remain in the EU?

Furthermore, is nostalgia acting as a brake on a broader and more objective consensus on the role of the EU in the lives of common people around Scotland, and holding back the people of this nation, rather than offering the Scottish people a progressive future that means real independence and much more than something just in name?

These two premises offered above, in the face of all documentable facts on EU corruption — complicity in imperialist wars of aggression — and the slow but reckless destruction of key European economies such as Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy, may offer cogent explanations in understanding the inexplicable loyalty demonstrated by the bourgeoisie in Scotland to their political masters in Brussels.

Then there are the refugee and migrant questions. In allaying ourselves with the EU, we are committing to an elite group of autocrats who have not only overseen the gradual breakdown of Europe and the bankruptcy of several countries operating within the auspices of the remit, but we are also dealing with an organisation that has greatly exacerbated the migrant crisis. The hypocrisy of the EU knows no limits: so-called leaders like Merkel have castigated eastern European nations for not doing enough to accommodate the flood of people coming in from three continents. It’s certainly true, some nations could have done much more, particularly for the traumatised Syrian refugees

However, as leader of the union what was Merkel’s solution to such a grave problem? Instead of diversifying budgets and resources, putting in place a well devised plan, she and several acolytes decided that the EU would be better to placate a dictator who is presently destroying his own country, and pay Erdogãn £6 billion of the tax payers money as a down payment to corral, indefinitely, hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria into holding pens; thus prolonging the human agony.

This seemed, from Merkel’s vantage point, like a good plan for managing the “livestock”. Better be relieved of these huge sums of money and pass on such a grave problem than do what they’re paid to do from the public purse and create real solutions. However, Erdogãn acting true to character, reneged on the initial agreement and would only support such a plan on one condition: the EU must find another 6 billion as final payment, or their would be no such deal. The leaders of the EU willingly obliged and accepted this extortion.

This is one of the more overt examples of EU bureaucracy — efficient in pushing paper, drafting diktats, standing by while a haemorrhage of tax payers money is squandered on a plan that cannot possibly resolve such a grave crisis. — but entirely incapable of being proactive and demonstrating a capacity to problem solve one of the greatest issues Europe, and the world at large, has faced in almost seventy years. Our European ‘leaders’ were unable to devise a long term strategy of their own that would adequately serve a redistribution of funds, resources and manpower — and provide a long term humanitarian solution acceptable to those unfortunate refugees, all of whom, have been broken by civil war.

If we are to be honest with ourselves while maintaining our romantic attachments to old Europe, it also behoves us to follow the tenets of the Scottish Enlightenment — and the message its greatest thinkers like Adam Smith and David Hume conveyed — all of whom advised that we do not forget to enquire into the social realities of our time — acting on them accordingly.

The fathers of the Scottish Enlightenment expected everyone to apply the process of objective analysis, question social and political legislation of the day, challenge social injustice in our time, express informed opinions, to come up with our own solutions, to have our voices heard at the highest level — not simply absorb standard political narratives and believe what we are told to believe and place our trust in a failed union and failed policies.

Today, in the 21st century, we are told that the EU is a force for good and that full integration will benefit every Scottish citizen. Yet when we take a closer look at historical facts — and the negative economic impact the EU has had on Scotland, the political and economic evidence does not stack up to support such an erroneous view. We only have to absorb Brussels’ poorly thought out fisheries policies to see how Scotland has been denied its natural capacity to sustain its own fishing industry — and that is only one industry among others which suffers a resounding economic disadvantage at the hands of the EU while many key decisions on Scotland are made in Brussels.

Consider the following sobering fact: since European legislation of the fisheries policy, Scotland has had to endure an annual loss of £1.5 billion per year. No. This is not a misprint. Scotland’s economy has forfeited one and a half billion pounds every single year since they were compelled to accept the Common Fisheries policy (CFP). Despite annual protestations, legal challenges, high profile meetings, and an appeal from the Scots who understand the industry, nothing has changed in over a quarter of a century.

One does indeed wonder if the integrationists would still somehow find a way to justify such an inconceivable haemorrhage of the public purse despite the hard facts which point to this policy of social and economic vandalism. Such is the fundamental leap of faith large swathes of the Scottish intelligentsia place in the EU.

A deeper critique of the argument put forth by the Scottish intelligentsia that we should never relinquish those key ‘economic benefits’ while remaining in the EU (presumably they mean we get more out of the EU than we put in) is completely misguided. Those who voted in the referendum to remain because they believed that Scotland is financially better off in such a relationship should also consider some other facts: Scotland has, historically, been a “net” contributor to EU funds, a fact acknowledged by the Scottish National Party, which of course means that historically they are putting in more to EU funds than they take out.

So let us look in more detail at Scotland’s once lucrative fishing industry as an example of the pitfalls Scotland is forced to negotiate in this relationship. On the website, ‘Scottish Independence and Scotland’s Future’, Dr James Wilkie and David Thomson present a compelling case for Scotland to take its fishing industry out of the hands of the bureaucrats in Brussels and repatriate these policies to the control of the Scottish government to prevent further haemorrhaging of its annual budget.

The financial consequences of conceding authority of such a lucrative industry to Brussels, and its Common Fisheries policy (CFP) is very clear; my ellipses in the following passages serve only for the purpose of brevity:

“Fishing has been a key element of the Scottish industry for many centuries… During these centuries the Scottish fishing industry harvested the seas while maintaining healthy fish stocks in balance with the rate of exploitation. In 1970 all that changed with the advent of control from Brussels, a move that resulted in an economic, environmental, ecological, social and cultural disaster… The clear purpose [of the ‘Common Fisheries Policy’ (CFP) was to gain unrestricted access to the rich (being strictly conserved) fish stocks of the UK, Ireland and Norway…especially Scottish waters, which they would otherwise have been unable to exploit.

However, after it became obvious that free access to the fishing grounds for all was going to have disastrous ecological and economic effects, an enormous complex of rules and quotas was drawn up in a futile attempt to correct the damage — but without addressing the root cause of the damage. These ‘sticking plaster’ amendments — the real CFP — only made matters worse… The predictable result was the collapse of fish stocks…and there is still no sign of any genuine reform of the CFP.

The dog-eat-dog” situation created by abolishing the three mile limit and allowing European fleets into the national Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) pitched Scottish fishermen against each other, and this accelerated the reduction of fish stocks, particularly in the Firths and Minches. Scots pair trawlers and pursers felt they should harvest the coastal stocks before Continental vessels caught them.

The British government failed to institute local fishery management schemes, as it had in effect conceded… authority to Europe. The situation again changed dramatically when Spain and Portugal joined the Community in 1986. Offshore fishing in Spain is in the hands of large industrial combines that exert considerable political power.

Spain entered the CFP with a huge fishing fleet not much smaller than the entire remaining Community fleets combined, and contributed nothing substantial to the sum total of Community resources. From the beginning, the by now already over-fished Scottish waters were a prime target for … exploitation, [and as a consequence] the fishing sectors of Scotland and other northern countries were systematically run down to make way for the incomers.”

These are the unpalatable facts. Indeed, in the face of such gross exploitation of Scottish waters, it is difficult not to view this, if one is looking at this objectively, as a policy which is inherently piratical. There is no other realistic way to look at it; a major Scottish industry has been destroyed, and the fish stocks of the northern hemisphere depleted by an act of greed — brought on by a pact agreed between the European Union and the UK government.

In the case of the UK government, this appears to be another depressing example — if the Scottish people do indeed require further proof — that the British government, (and Brussels) still programmed by imperialist mentality, consider Scotland and its people to be no more than a mere outpost — but a lucrative one that benefits both Westminster and its ally the EU.

The Scottish people only have to consider that for fifty years the proceeds of their own oil industry in the North Sea — and the financial benefits of their oil, waters, and fishing industry — have continued to flow south to London, and west to Europe, uninterrupted. Should Scotland tolerate such exploitation indefinitely in the misguided belief that EU membership is, somehow, beneficial to our national economy?

Significantly, later on it was revealed that the initial estimated loss to the fishing industry and the Scottish economy as a whole of £900 million per year was an honest but severe underestimate. An additional 2009 critique by Dr Lee Rotherham for the Taxpayers’ Alliance concluded that the final amount is much higher – in keeping with the figures referred to above:

“The total annual economic cost to the UK of the EU Common Fisheries Policy is £2,813 million, or 2.8 billion… Of that total, £2,100 million was from the loss of access to home waters. Since Scotland has over 66% of the EEZ, then £1,400 million of that loss relates to Scotland. Adding the other estimates proportionally from the TPA study [above] now make the Scottish fisheries sector loss due to the CFP over £1,500 million every single year.

[NB] The 2004 calculation of £0.9 million including the wider related sectors is therefore forty per cent lower than the more recent TPA figure. Little wonder that nobody in the UK government or Brussels repudiated the [initial] estimate at the time.”

Implicit in that final sentence above lies the inherent dishonesty of both the UK government, and the autocrats in Brussels who oversee the inward and the outward flow of finance from Scotland. Indeed, in that final sentence above it is not only the familiar smirk of exploitation we see — but also the sheer dishonesty of the system which is, essentially, saying: “if you don’t notice we’re robbing you, we’re not going to inform you of the practice”.

The EU is precisely the same type of animal that the UK government has always been — they are one and the same when it comes down to extracting the natural resources of many smaller countries like Scotland for the benefit of big business. Hence the core objective which fuels the desire of many leaders within Brussels who wish to homogenise the whole of Europe into one superstate — obliterating social, cultural and economic distinctions — a self-serving relationship in which EU leaders feed off smaller host states while using their resources to sustain the insatiable appetite of corporations to monopolise and gain control of new markets.

The claim that the EU is an indispensable force for good is part of an old narrative, a derivative of post-World War 2 thinking that has largely remained unchallenged for over forty years. It is a neo-liberal narrative — an integral part of the psychology behind the machine in Brussels — an autocracy designed to impose, above all, harsh austerity measures on the ordinary people of Europe in order to furnish the banks and corporations with financial opportunities. To confirm this, we only need to look at the Troika — (European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund, European Union) — and what they did to Greece, and the impossible financial demands they have placed on Spain, Italy and Portugal as part of so-called austerity measures.

The EU is essentially geared to appropriate all viable resources, natural and man made, of the integrated nations within the community, then centralise them in order to assert absolute control of related economies — and by extension, the social, political and international direction of these nations. The question is, will the people of this country stand by while the EU continues to dictate the direction of Scotland’s social, political and economic policies, denying native Scots the opportunity to have a comprehensive say in the shaping of their country?

When the majority voted in the referendum to remain within the controlling mechanisms of the EU and embrace the most disturbing aspects of integration, the most ironic alliance was revealed: the following morning, after the hangover of the Brexit vote, the Scottish intelligentsia found themselves waking up with the most incongruous of bedfellows; their new partners were the privileged members of London’s financial elite, who voted with them in large numbers to remain within the EU. Yet few within the ranks of Scotland’s intelligentsia appeared to recognize this irony.

Or, given their hatred of some for the establishment in the south, (I should note here that as a Scot, I have my own large issues with Westminster and the British government) they could not bear to discuss such an alliance even beneath a whisper. It was okay to shout loud and proud about being a “European”, but apparently it was another thing entirely to discuss how their political ideology now aligned itself with corporations, banks and the financial elites of London, all of whom voted in line with the integrationists in Scotland. Strange days indeed.

This was a scenario that probably reminded the Scottish integrationists of the more reckless moments of their misspent youth when, after a night of drunken debauchery, they woke up and opened their eyes, looking through a crack in their fingers (but only for a moment) to find themselves staring at a partner they vaguely recognized from the night before but one who was, nevertheless, sharing the opposite pillow. I can only assume this was an intimacy they could not bear to acknowledge, either privately or publicly. Therefore it was was a moment to remain tight lipped and slip quietly out of the door — blaming all and sundry — with the exception of the EU’s reprehensible behaviour — for this debacle called Brexit.

On all of the social platforms I visited after the result, and there were a few, not once did I come across any pertinent questions being asked by the integrationists of Scottish voters about their reasons for voting No in the referendum. That is not to say such questions did not take place. However, more often than not any personal comments by members of the Scottish electorate who indicated they voted to leave the EU were drowned out — aided and abetted by a plethora of memes — all of which focused on racism; the implication was self-evident: every single vote rejecting the EU was a vote hijacked by right wing lunatics, or misinformed people who just did not appreciate the gravity of such a vote — unable to understand the broad complexities reached at such a political juncture.

More than once I read comments aimed at those who refused to be taken in by EU promises of better days ahead — comments which were generally typical of Scotland’s middle class at the time:

“If only they realised what they were doing” — which meant, presumably, that those who said No to Junker and Tusk in Brussels did, essentially, require cerebral guidance at the ballot box, but only in order to make sure that the ill-informed electorate mark the same option as the integrationists. Sometimes symmetry is so pleasing on the eye.

The chief targets of the integrationists were large swathes of the English electorate — immediately implying, or leveling accusations, of “racism” at the general majority of these English and Scottish voters who had the temerity to say No. At this juncture I should note, there were indeed despicable examples of racism, audible and visible, leading up to this crucial vote — not least from the obvious suspects such as UKIP and other more nefarious organisations south of the border whose hatred of the ‘Other’ demonstrated little restraint normally associated with common human decency.

That said, here in Scotland, we also had the misfortune to experience explicit examples of racism/bigotry (one of which was broadcast live on BBC during a debate prior to the vote).

Is it not time for the people who have enjoyed some financial perks derived from brutal neo-liberal policies to recognise the financial plight of their fellow citizens—and the mirrored aspirations which arise as a consequence of unemployment, poverty and destitution?

Choosing to cherry pick the small personal benefits that some have enjoyed via EU payments and therefore point up the EU as a liberal model for good but choosing to ignore the unpalatable consequences of neo-liberalism in creating mass poverty and a series of financial crises — precipitating the fracture of Europe and its people — is difficult to credit..

What about the men and women working two or three jobs in order to feed and clothe their children? Or the woman polishing the marble floors of banks and employed on wages below the minimum rate, trapped in zero hour contracts, merely to earn a pittance which may keep a roof over her head and her family? This is precisely the kind of slave labour enshrined in the TTIP, an agreement promoted and highly favoured by the European Union. More of which I’ll say in a separate commentary to this one. However, a short comment will suffice here.

The TTIP has two distinct elements: first the agreement to cooperate on regulation — which essentially is designed to ”standardize” employment laws within all countries signed to the agreement. However, given the climate of greed, it’s difficult to credit this agreement being aimed at raising the living wage in order to standardize it in favour of the employee; basically the TTIP agreement will drive down basic wages — and no EU law can stand in its way and prevent this. Why? The EU is fully committed, despite vigorous public protest, to embrace TTIP. A clear conflict of interest is being entertained by the EU here in terms of their law, for example, on the setting of a minimum wage.

The second element of TTIP is the ‘Investor State Dispute Settlement’ (ISDS) which, in the event that a country’s laws threaten corporate profits, this part of the agreement allows companies to sue governments by way of an offshore tribunal. [author’s italics]. The very definition of democracy is negated with this agreement here. Instead of the electorate democratically retaining the power to change certain elements of governance which run contrary to fairness and equality, ISDS prevents the electorate from having a say in such matters.

The predictable but awful consequences of such an agreement between the EU and global corporations is evident in recent cases brought before the tribunal: British American Tobacco sued Australia which passed legislation on a law that limits cigarette advertising; the French company Veolia sued Egypt for increasing the minimum wage, to name only two cases. However, the leaders of the EU are more than comfortable with TTIP.

As Claire Provost said recently when commenting on the serious consequences of this agreement, “This will have a huge impact on health, access to medicines, education and the environment.”

Our choice, egalitarian in essence, is to reject the EU machine which enables the most affluent of society to live a life of relative ease — in juxtaposition to hunger, homelessness, and above all, the abject sense of hopelessness felt by millions of people around Europe at the mercy of a neo-liberal clique. All of these nations and cultures have one thing in common: they are being assaulted by a relentless force which denies them the most basic human rights, denies them the will to live a life of quality and hope. It is a system devoid of human creativity, of cooperation between cultures, a system devoid of empathy and compassion. In the place of the eurozone we have a dead zone.

If we do not challenge the movers and shakers operating at the heart of Brussels, then we are choosing a global system over human aspiration. If we chose to cling on to this old narrative, that the EU has our best interests at heart, then we give them our consent, not so much as a result of our silence but by virtue of our own self delusions — and by extension we lend our support to an organization which is primarily designed for two things: to make money and centralise power.

If we continue with this evangelical belief in such a system — in spite of all the evidence available — then we give our consent to fracking, to the destruction of the natural environment, to the pollution of the planet’s most valuable resource — our water table — (the EU has already sanctioned the use of a Monsanto product, Glyphosate, on our crops and soil despite a petition signed by hundreds of scientists in Europe warning that there remains concrete evidence of its dangers as a carcinogenic). However, for the EU, profit always has the last word.

If we continue to believe that in such a relationship with the EU there is a common good inherent to their policy making, then we say yes to the cult of neo-liberal greed. We are saying yes to large corporations, protected by TTIP, to the hollowing out of the earth and the strip mining of its minerals — to the cutting down of our trees and the decimation of our rain forests. We are saying yes to a society which enables the narcissist, the hoarder, the opportunist, the sociopath and the monopolist; trapped in this self-delusional state, numbed and silent, we give them our vote and our consent.

In our love of the European model we experience a psychological bind in which the traits of capture-bonding are manifest — and in spite of the future dangers, and the risks of increased abuse, we have formed a traumatic bond with our captor. We in our millions are vaguely aware that our former lover has become our abuser — a bizarre form of Stockholm Syndrome — but we must extol the virtues of our master, we must identify with his regressive behavior and his cycles of greed and aggression.

However, we seem unable to break the emotional ties to our captor. So we sit back in the chair and sigh as the suffering unfolds on our screens; and we ask ourselves: what will be next? We whisper to ourselves: there is nothing I can do; I am as much a victim. For we empathise with our captor. Then we succumb to his cruelty, to the persistent cycles of abuse. We embrace the punishments and the rewards.

We have formed an emotional bond with our master. By an irrational expression of identification, we defend the indefensible. Then we withdraw into our own parochial existence and live out our fantasies as proud Europeans. Yet, in our silence our abuser still hears our insane mutterings: “we consent; come and do to us as you will”.

A History of Feeling: Dreams & Nightmares

Arc of the Hammer

1
…and I watched my father wield the unbearable
weight of the hammer—pounding volcanic dust in
a cavern of hell.  Spits of hot ash glowed like coals
in his vest, the hard graft of the foundry marking
him out—scars and welts tattooed on his arms and chest—
but Michael was always available for hire.
I listened to the wretched cranes groan and shriek in
the darkness—swinging great vats of molten metal
above his head. From a fire, I saw him escape,
gasping for air in the dense smoke, searching blindly,
groping his way along the walls, as he staggered,
dazed, out of the burning hangar, his clothes ablaze.

2
Later, choking and spluttering, I heard him speak
with my mother, counting the dead while he recalled
the list of casualties—shattering the silence
with news of Thomas, his brother. In the kitchen,
trails of newspaper were laid to contain the black
ash on the souls of his boots. Helping him remove
his smoldering rags, she held back the tears, while he
stripped for his bath. Peering through the door-jamb, I saw
a pile of clothes where they had fallen—smouldering
and threatening to combust. His huge frame sank into
the tub, head angled downward, coming to rest like
a rock which had been quarried between his shoulders.
3
And that night I saw how my father had been cowed.
Forty years the horn had wailed him home—then at dawn
it wailed for his return. Each shift he punched his card,
reported for duty, kept in synchronized step
with a company of men as they moved as one.
In the hollow of his ear lodged a hornet’s nest—
the dull hum and dissonant whine of production
vibrating in his bones. Day and night Michael
toiled with the machines at the face of the furnace,
serving the system well, until it laid him off
with a fake gold watch taken from the public purse.
He was replaced. And quickly his mind unravelled.

4
The clock on the wall stopped. Each day promised little
more than another day quite devoid of purpose.
The dreams of a younger man were declared dead on
the factory floor. Counting the days and the months
and the final years, he heard the same obsessions
rattle like dice in his head. For the deafening
roar of the machine and it’s hideous face had
taken hold of him long ago—forged him much as
the smithy shapes a random piece of iron on
the anvil—until he could hear neither the sound
of his own voice, or feel the immeasurable
void open up as he stepped through the factory door.

5
And now it is the turn of our generation
to be undone—not by the screech of cogs turning
like screws in the head—but by a juggernaut
grinding to a halt: we will see out our best years,
not as role models, but symbols of apathy
as we while away the days and years on the dole—
our mouths and bladders working only as a sluice
while the dreams we had are mere embers smoking in
the ashes. Hunger will be the close companion
of the new born. For the dried, lifeless breasts of mothers,
much like the Autumn leaves starved of light and shriveling
on the branch, are much more than the mark of seasons.

6
Look at the town schizophrenic, dumbed down by his
daily cocktail—wandering aimlessly in this
Thorazine haze. Look at our beloved infants—
who once spoke with such innocence—cowering in
unspeakable fear. In absence of song and joy
children sob themselves to sleep. Young mothers refuse
to rise from bed, unable to hear the daily
news which is always bad and unbearably cruel.
The same old film reel is wound behind her eyes—
a spool of thought unravels—the world’s gone mad!
The narrative yields no relief. Deceit and lies
pass as currency in Parliament. Old stories

7
of everlasting life fill the pulpit. Be good!
So mother remains entirely mute—even when
her lips part to form the word …. the lone word she tried
to utter throughout her life. If she dares throw up
a stifled scream, she is lulled into this deep sleep,
beguiled into a long but restless lassitude
from which it’s much too late to stumble from her dreams.
It’s the way the drunks stagger outside her window,
slumped against the walls of filthy slums. She listens
to feral cries echo on littered streets while packs
of wild dogs sniff out the last stray bitch in heat—
mounting her in such rapacious fits of desire.

8
Inscrutable signals draw some beyond the walls
of the Keep, but many succumb. The hard man rails
against the tremors—the seismic shift of mood—
against a system which makes him numb. Cries echo
from the watchtower, in blind alleys, for lives stillborn
before the human heart begins to beat. Serving
a long sentence, light and darkness merge. He resists
the urge to arrest the slide and swing happily
by the neck from the stair railing. For others,
sullen blocks of grey granite hold their gaze—staring
back at them—absorbing each hysterical scream
as tense fingers tighten their grip on the trigger.

9

It is the shadows cast by flare stacks–vomiting
up trails of grey vapour—spitting smoke and fire.
Deep inside itself the land shudders. High above,
the contrails form a crossword—spreading a yellow
hue across the sky—while down in the valley burns
an orange flame, lighting the lonely streets, where a black
harvest coughs its way up from stinking drains: glue bags,
needles, cigarettes butts, a green-moulded shilling—
putrid smell of dead vermin. Beggars are knocking
on the door, begging to be let in, their loose rags
flapping in the wind. An interminable ache
fills the junky’s vein—to escape from the projects,

10
graffiti, schemes, the present and persistent urge
to maim or murder her neighbour. Our homes crumble,
dogs are brawling, derelicts recoil in self-loathing—
sloughing off the night’s dead skin. Afraid, not a word
passes the lips of the kids while mum kneels and prays
for a fix. In the winter light, children are quick
to rise and fill the day, foraging for mere scraps
of food lying within their reach. They take the bus
to school—to a desk at which to rest, to sleep, to dream.
Industry collapses, banks hoard cash, creditors
whisper on the stair—homes must go—the habitat
bulldozed for another luxury round of golf.

11
But the nefarious hand of the billionaire
which casually signed that slip of paper should have
substituted a knife for his platinum pen—
or slashed our throats with a razor—for he cut out
our tongues. He rendered mute the voices of our youth.
Where are the seamen, their scrawny legs dangling like
a gull’s above the swell—chipping rust from the hull—
songs eddying back and forth on the evening tide.
Some live out their lives suspended, always in hope
the cycle will turn full circle. Some hunt down cheap
palliatives, easing their way to the very edge.

12

So many indictments due. So many questions. Who
processed forty years of executive orders,
stayed at his post without a break, only to be
fired for arriving late? What terror made him crouch
beneath his desk—gibbering about the limits
of resistance—of short circuits blowing inside
his head. On how much paper did this poor man choke
before those fucking bureaucrats showed him the door?
A fait accompli; you’ll work your way through the pile: note,
collate, pass, file, receive. You’ll function as a slick
machine—you’ll exceed times-twenty last month’s targets—
or we’ll put you out to grass! But lest we forget

13
the other hands rendered up for profit and gain,
consider the young mother who spilled her daily
dose of methadone and instantly went insane.
What of the dispossessed, some jack-knifed on the steps
of the world’s theatres—with whom will they break a loaf
of bread—share the reasons for their constant sorrow.
Not with YOU Thatcher! YOU, born with the cold eyes
of Caligula—swiveling hip and buttock
like a courtesan. YOU who wiped out opponents
with that bold stare of calculation—or seduced
those who could replace you—with those
red lips reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe.

14
YOU subverted the Age of Enlightenment—tore
up Locke’s claim that we are free and equal—
declared a standard Poll Tax for both the grand duke
and the common man. YOU said we have the right to
be unequal. And society is dead! YOU
conjured up a timely diversion, banged hard on
the drum of war, prodded the junta with your spear—
stretched the ‘exclusion zone’, whipped up a tidal wave
of jingoism, sent in hunter-killer subs—
torpedoed the peace—sank the Belgrano and swept
two hundred and seventy-five men to their death.
But for YOU, it was a boon in ratings and votes.

15

Provoked by this attack, we deciphered the news,
trying to separate hard facts from the censored stream
of fiction. Staring at the screen, we held our breath,
counting in scores the coffins draped in union jacks—
listening to the sombre notes of a trumpet.
It had all been a perfect ruse for the public,
until the Sheffield took a flying fish which smashed
a hole above the water line. Casualties rose
like columns of smoke in the South Atlantic sky—
and while the parents mourned their sons consumed by fire,
YOU discussed with ministers who will survive
the slaughter—and ultimately—those who will die.

16
So we drew from the dole the monthly pittance and
endured the sound of Tebbit squawking from his box—
“Get up! Get on your bikes and find some bloody work”.
But we had scoured the foundries and the shipyards,
factories and woodyards—moving from Grangemouth
to Greenock—yet the only work available
required we sacrifice our lives. I remember
that winter, the young man alone in the park—
spinning round and round on a carousel—singing
the words of a nursery rhyme, crunching on some
pills, killing the pain while he killed some time.
The inexplicable was etched like a scar on

17
his face, and I remember that brutal void in
his eyes that opened up like the desolate space
around him. Like many young men who waited in
this suspended state, his idle hands quivered and
shook with uncertainty, until he sat down at
noon to self-medicate. But the postman coming
up the path with a giro in his bag always
offered up some brief respite, relief for the slow
sedentary queue shuffling up in line who are
unable to speak of their shame—the sense of loss—
but once every fortnight they grip the pen and sign.

18
Yet it had been in this very town, from the red
ash parks, we had chased a ball, shaping a well worn
path through the easy sway of wheat and corn. Green fields
moved as one in windswept pastures—and there were no
regrets for yesterday—and no hopes dependent
on tomorrow—there was only the steady gaze
of the eternal sun on the silver waters
of the reservoir. We gulped back inhibitions,
stripped off our clothes and giggled—our naked arms as
brown as the speckled eggs we had plundered from one
unguarded nest. We roamed the hills, jam jars dangling
from our waists, hunting elusive bees—looking for

19
a hive of golden honey. We flexed our muscles
and wandered on a wild rush of adrenaline,
weaving our way merrily through the spring barley—
climbing steep slopes over the ridge of the central
valley, taking the high trail to the hard edges
of adolescence. By dusk, Mum had tucked us up
in bed, and as we slept, we dreamed of infinite
possibilities breaking for us in the dawn.
And this great mystery, which had always been an
inscrutable puzzle, was now so simple—
as easy to navigate as that old rope bridge
we took across the gully of our late childhood.

20
A hail of snow petals fell from the cherry trees,
white blossoms floated in the weightless air of long,
hot summers while we plotted a distinctive course
on the chart, a rite of passage through the tempest
ahead—the incomprehensions of puberty
and inherent promise of youth. But a virus
wormed its way through that brief gestation. The people
became servile and were neutered like dogs. Deprived
of vigour, young boys prowled the schemes—marking the lines
of their territory in large letters and bold colours YGB
trying to define their lives in music—by brute
force of masculinity—in the power of

21
a clenched fist, by the flash of knife’s blade. And the rats
ran wild in our own season of discontent, streets
filled up with rubbish—dreams were vandalised and smashed
to pieces—stabbed in the corridors of power.
The wounds opened. Strange rituals and new habits formed—
and the bleeding was handed down from father to
son, from mother to daughter, and this haemorrhage
took its natural course, bleeding out our will to
live, to hope, to dream. One man, we’ll call him J.M,
paced the floor, back and forth, as he listened to
the music, chain-smoking—piecing together bits
of the puzzle—the fragments of his past—as his

22
feet paced the boards into the present. The clock chimed.
He begins to gnaw on his bloody finger nails.
The track of time seized him: this is his future!
He cracks open the back of the vial, picks out
the paper strip, moulding the bennies into tight
balls, swallowing them in one gulp of black coffee.
The elevator takes him up—a sudden rush
through space—high above the undertow. Floodgates
open—he is alert. An electrical storm
sparks in his skull. There’s a spontaneous flash
of insight. He is weightless—just as he was in
his childhood—wandering the hills, roasting chestnuts,

23
in the leafy hollows of Polmont Wood. Dwelling
on this nameless ache for abstraction, he prepares
one more strip, seeking much more than the limits of
mere existence. Carefully, he swings the slender
arm of the player across the vinyl—gently
lowering the needle into the grooves—hiss of
static rising in the air. He listens intently
to the lyrics of The Pretender as each word
vibrates like a tuning fork. Speaking directly
to him, the singer recalls Johnie’s narrative
mode—his own brief history of feeling— his dreams
and his bloody nightmares: how his calloused hands were
24
used as spare parts, arms, legs, were processed for construction,
his acrobatic tongue—being the most valuable
part for some—served a loyal apprenticeship to
his trade union. But now he hears the sound of his
own voice—and the distinct echo of the men whose
lives had filled the margins. He stares out the window
and a deep sorrow takes hold of him. He develops
a vantage point, a new way of seeing, to cope
with the hunger—insatiable hunger. The words
sharpen the edge of his existence. The red eye
of his cigarette glows in the dark. He’s thinking.
That’s what he does! He’s thinking. There’s no need to speak—

25
for that role lies with the singer. Now it is time
to take a journey back through the years of troubled
youth, the lean years, the slow, aimless, drift of his life—
desire to escape the cycle, the destructive
course of boom and bust. His mind is loosening
from its moorings—for he recalls that rig breaking
free of its anchors. Alarm! Panic! Blue fireballs
exploding—streaks of incandescent light aglow
on the surface of the sea—a great shower of
meteors blazing paths across ocean and sky—-—-
and the scorched heads of dead men bobbing up
and down in the boiling slick. He can still hear
26
the wretched screech of metal as it collapses
and melts in the furnace—shell of the rig turning
over like a giant turtle, desperate cries
of men adrift in the distance of his nightmare,
widows kneeling at the pews, shrouded in prayer,
mothers weeping for sons lost at sea— last to be
taken by one more ferocious blast. The solemn
whisper of a novena is offered up for
the dead… Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with
you, blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed are
the fruit of thy womb, Jesus… He can hear the sound
of that cannon rifle through the rig—a sudden
27
burst of light—those working men bowled over like pins…
the inquest… big business closing it’s ranks around
the money… barristers whispering, discussing
strategy, diving stocks, depreciative value
of the men they lost. The grieving names did not stand
a chance, for big business had bought a young QC,
who took a hatchet to their claims. And every job,
every man, was temporary, but those machines,
those monstrous machines endured—and for those grateful
hands which turned them—greased, cleaned, fixed and honed—this system
turned every man to stone. On the TV screen his
eyes begin to rest, listening to the miners chant …
The miners, united,

will never be defeated…

The miners, united,

will never be defeated…

28
Now the brass band is knee-deep in mud. A clenched fist
is thrust up like a blunt club. They raise the red flag,
whetting Thatcher’s appetite for class war, batons
drawn—mounted cops ram the thin line of resistance,
full force of charging horses breaching the gap in
defense, the snarling leap of dogs—flash of white teeth—
hail of bottles, petrol bombs, rain down on the State
while Scargill rants in rebellious tone at the stance
of the Iron Lady. Both are charged by God-like
omnipotence, believers in their own power,
believers of their own press, posing in the glare
of flashlight—two attack-dogs straining at the leash—
baiting one another, toying with the hungry
paparazzi, waiting for soundbites, determined
to raise—bury—in one verbal stroke, the rotting
corpse of socialism.
Cul-de-sac
29
As always, the harbingers of Spring were vocal,
peewit-call of Lapwings—their sudden, tumbling
fall to earth, the raucous tapping of some ardent
woodpeckers—just loud enough to nudge those who still
remained asleep. The pervasive heat of the sun
began to leaven the last residues of snow
from the living woods. At that time, on the hard edge
of the old town, two men, Joseph and Benjamin,
began to make their way out of a cul-de-sac—
dreaming of a journey to some distant shores at
the world’s end. The brothers scaled a long border
fence in place—the line of divergence—cutting off
30
wasteland, old tenements from new money—the trimmed
verges and manicured lawns, high-rise suites sprouting
boundaries—dividing the rubble of their common
aspirations from the stone portfolio which
rose up above the brothers like a monolith—
its shadow sprawling out across the reclaimed land.
Both men stared up at the intractable pillars
spreading east and west, unable to comprehend
how such schools, churches, docks and factories could be
swallowed up so quickly. But like there descendants
who had, so long ago, made their way from the wild
highlands of Sutherland, traveling by horse and cart
31
south to the port of Glasgow, trading for passage,
then climbing the gangway of the next freighter bound
for the New World, the vast prairies—the eternal
promise of which Columbus spoke—they too had dreamed
of this fabled land. This citadel on a hill
had cast a spell on the hungry crofters—calling
the expendable, the dispossessed, to set sail
on the cold salt waters of the north Atlantic—
to erase from their history the cruel purpose
of the Clearances—to join these bold pioneers
in pursuit of happiness. But now it was time
for Joseph and Benjamin to choose their own path.
32
Some weeks later, they found themselves haggling over
the last sticks of furniture as they sold up to
a ward of nurses who sensed the potential for
a bargain. Keen to barter, the women quickly
surveyed the flat, starched whites rustling on bare skin—
eyes roaming in the corners of each room. One sale
drew an excited cluck, while matron, blessing her
good luck, strutted across the floor with the larger
goods, chattering on the stair as she made her way
to the waiting truck. Joseph looked out the window,
listening to the coos of pleasure in the busy
street below. This rite of passage—this final act
33
was one of renewal—a time of becoming.
Benjamin imagined the luminous sphere of
western stars in the heavens—white lanterns set off
in the night sky—he could see the dazzling city
lights of Boston glowing on the Back Bay, a hub
of activity, as young and old—from the most
distant parts of the earth—set foot on the streets as
witness to the “fresh, green breast of America.”
In the foreground, he could hear the cooling towers
of the vast complex hiss, he could see the sky turn
orange, and the last light of the day fade out on
the horizon. But he could still hear the echo
34
of his brother’s voice from the past. At the table,
they had broken a stale bread—divided the crusts
and shared their visions of America. Autumn
light was smeared almost as thin as the salted lard
in which they dipped their bread. A profound longing had
settled in them—perceptible in the rising
and falling rhythms of both voices. And solemn
promises were made to each other—fair return
for their labour—and an offering to father.
But for the older son, too much had already
been endured and suffered in the silence of his
own counsel—too many sleights, many injuries
35
to carry in such a fragile mind. Murderous
fantasies began to take hold of him, beguiling
in their power—a lonely place to which he may
lure Daniel and slay the shadow of his father.
They would make passage along the eastern seaboard—
first to Boston, then on to New York. Sailing by
the Statue of Liberty, a torch flaming in
her right hand—stone tablet resting in the other,
they will gaze upon the urban sprawl of this great
metropolis, steel, glass, marble, stone—a sea
of people—a huge entity glimmering on
the shores of the Hudson like a bright star.