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by jordan roberts - 2022-10-13 06:39:27 ( in education, research) [php version] rebuild

Several articles worth reading:

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Man Paralysed by AstraZeneca Vaccine Tells His Story

By Will Jones

Thousands of people in the U.K. have reported suffering serious adverse reactions to the covid-19 vaccines. Vaccine Injured and Bereaved U.K. (VIBUK) is a group of individuals injured or bereaved by the covid vaccines (with medical or coroners reports confirming this) campaigning for a change to the current Government vaccine damage payment scheme (VDPS) scheme to create a bespoke covid-19 compensation scheme that ensures the adversely affected are appropriately compensated and supported. They also want people similarly affected by the vaccines to know that help is available and want their stories to be heard and not ignored. This is Tony's story as told by VIBUK and reprinted here. VIBUK can be found on Twitter and contacted here.

Back in March 2021, 58 year-old father of two Anthony Shingler from Northwood was getting on with life enjoying his job as a security manager (admittedly stressful at times, he says, but it came with the job and he learned to live with it). He received a text from his doctors surgery with the date and time for his covid vaccination, which he duly attended. Little did he know of the consequences that would unfold as he followed the Government advice that the vaccine would 'protect yourself and others'.

Tony had his first and only AstraZeneca vaccine on March 5th 2021.

Within the first week following his vaccination he started to feel aches and pains, mostly in his legs. During the second week things were getting worse. He managed with work commitments up to the Friday, the end of his working week, but that Friday morning he was really having trouble walking and developed pins and needles and numbness in his feet and hands.

Tony was sent home by 'Heath and Safety' to get checked out by his GP. After ringing the surgery and being told they would contact him the next day, Tony and his wife Nicola decided to attend the local walk-in centre, who assessed him sent and him to hospital A&E. Following assessment, the hospital sent him home, saying he had an allergy. Tony has never had an allergy in his life, so found this odd. The next day he started to decline even further. Nicola called an ambulance which took Tony to hospital again; this time they discharged him with sciatica. He'd had sciatica before, so knew how this felt, which was not what he was experiencing, and what to do to diagnose it, which no one in the hospital had done.

Tony returned home, still not knowing why he was feeling so ill and could hardly walk. That same night he had tremendous lower back pain and by the morning he could hardly walk or breathe and could barely talk. Another ambulance was called; on this occasion they encountered a very abrupt and argumentative female paramedic, who didn't want to listen to Nicola, which caused avoidable stress. On Tony's third visit to hospital they finally admitted him after Nicola begged an A&E doctor over the phone to investigate transverse myelitis " she had researched and found this had temporarily halted the AstraZeneca trials. He was put on an assessment ward and monitored.

An MRI scan and lumber puncture revealed high proteins in CSF fluid. After asking the doctor what could cause this, he replied: 'Double the amount of proteins leads me to believe the vaccine.' Doctors then examined Tony's medical records and informed Tony: 'We believe after reading thoroughly through your medical records and seeing that you have not suffered any previous viral infections, we've come to the conclusion that it is a vaccine related illnesses called GBS or Guillain-Barré Syndrome.'

After five days in the assessment ward and having intravenous immune globulin (IVIG), Tony continued to deteriorate; the condition was now massively affecting his arms and lungs. Tony was assisted to phone home and was told to 'say what you've got to say, as it may be the last time you see them' " words no one ever wants to hear.

Tony was rushed into ICU and fitted with a tracheotomy and ventilated, along with the insertion of a feeding peg and catheter. Tony pulled through but the battle wasn't over.

This was the beginning of eight and half months in ICU. During Tony's stay he had a collapsed lung, pneumonia and MRSA numerous times, all whilst being paralysed from the chin down, unable to talk or move. It was a constant battle which played havoc with his mental well-being, on top of the Guillain-Barré Syndrome which caused burning pain all over his body as nerves throughout had been stripped of their protective cover.

One evening, during the summer of 2021, Tony noticed one of the fire escape doors in ICU was slightly ajar. He didn't give it a second thought as the nurses did this on a regular basis whilst it was warm weather, and he always needed a fan on next to his bed due to the burning hot sensations he was suffering. Out of nowhere, a man walked in through the fire escape and walked towards his bed. At the foot of his bed he was met by a nurse and Tony heard him say, 'You made me do this'. He then proceeded to stick a knife into his own chest and died. Later, a nurse was asked to speak with Tony to find out what he saw; the same nurse also spoke with Nicola, saying there had been an incident and they were concerned about Tony's well-being. Tony told his wife about it; he didn't think much about it at the time as he was in so much pain, but looking back at that moment, Tony was very vulnerable, he couldn't defend himself and this continues to haunt him.

On another occasion, a stand-in nurse entered the room to see if Tony was alright and introduce herself. She checked his tracheotomy and Tony then realised she had placed a plastic cap on it; she didn't realise but she had blocked his airway. As Tony couldn't move or talk, panic set in and he quickly became stressed as he couldn't breathe, but the nurse only realised after she heard him gasping for air. Fortunately, she stayed in the room and hadn't just walked out not seeing him struggling to breathe. These traumatic events will haunt Tony forever.

IVIG treatment initially had no effect on bringing Tony out of the syndrome, and after some discussion between Nicola and the doctors, plasma exchange was the next treatment to be tried to stop the GBS from travelling above his bottom lip.

After seven and a half months, Tony was transferred to ICU respiratory. He was told by one of the doctors they were looking for a long term respiratory unit for him because he was still ventilated and there's usually not much recovery of the lungs after that amount of time being ventilated. He still doesn't know how it happened, but his body started to react to the tracheotomy, he started to cough past it, which the physio said shouldn't be happening. He had nerve tests on his lungs and eventually, after a lot of hard work by the physios, he finally had the tracheotomy removed and could eat and drink again. After eight months of not tasting anything he says his first taste of hospital food was fantastic " and he never thought he would say that!

It was now November 2021 and he had a date to move to a physio rehab hospital. At this point he was still being hoisted out of bed because of his paralysed state. Eventually he started to twitch his fingers and raise his hand slightly whilst resting his arm on his leg. Over the months this progressed, and he remembers the day the physios wanted him to stand with the help of a standing hoist. The pain in his calf muscles was horrendous, but he says he just kept thinking to himself, 'no pain no gain'.

The months went by, the physio kept coming, and over time Tony managed to sit on the edge of the bed then progressed to standing with different lifting equipment and frames.

The day came after 14 months in hospital care for Tony to return home for good, after first going home on the odd days and then returning to hospital. One hiccup was that the local council said it was unable to pay for or fit a stair lift for him, without which doctors said it would be an unsafe discharge, but eventually one was supplied by a charity.

Tony's discharge date was decided. He was in a ward on his own until two days before his discharge when they admitted two new patients. Unbeknown to Tony the one next to him had covid and Tony caught it. He had two days of headaches and a temperature but then began recovering, although he had to stay in for a further 10 days in isolation.

Tony finally got home on May 17th 2022. He is still using walking aides to get round the house, getting used to the things he used to be able to do but now can't.

After eight weeks, Tony walked on the outside patio with his frame, but unfortunately lost his balance and fell to the floor. After waiting an extraordinary 14 hours for an ambulance, which arrived the following day(!), he was taken to hospital again. An X-ray revealed a fractured hip; a metal plate and three screws later he was back in a hospital bed. Luckily, he was home within a week and he is now fully recovered from his fractured hip. However the GBS remains and physio carries on. His hands have suffered some form of osteoporosis and his knuckles have locked and don't move so he has trouble holding most things " pens, coins, clothing etc. He still has nerve damage in the bottom of his legs and feet, for which he has to wear orthopaedic straps to hold his feet in place as the muscles and nerves are still weak and cause drop foot. He suffers with swelling of the lower limbs due to the insufficient working of the pumps in the legs to remove fluid.

He has progressed to crutches and a wheelchair for longer distances as he gets fatigued really easily. Tony takes one day at a time now and those precious moments he says he embraces more than ever before. Without the support of Nicola and his family he's sure he would not have made it.

Nicola then had to begin the battle with the Government vaccine damage payment scheme (VDPS), which dragged on for 16 months before he was finally awarded a payout. Tony and Nicola were shocked to learn he wasn't alone and how many people have been affected by all sorts of adverse reactions after having the vaccine. It infuriates Tony to know how hard Nicola had to fight for any recognition and compensation. This is a battle all VIBUK members are having to fight.

Nicola now plays a huge part in VIBUK, collating medical reports, new findings and news articles for research purposes which aids the group in offering advice, guidance and support. Since Tony was discharged from hospital he has been keen to speak to journalists and media sources about the trauma that he and his family have faced, but has been saddened by how few journalists are willing to tell his story and report on covid vaccine injuries, though some newspapers, particularly tabloids, have done so. He was glad of the opportunity to appear on a special edition of the Mark Steyn show on GB News, where Mark was joined by fellow presenters Neil Oliver, Dan Wootton and Michelle Dewberry and Sir Christopher Chope MP, to hear members of VIBUK tell their stories.

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PCR Tests Yield Real Results, Even If They're Often Abused to Propagandise the Population

By Eugyppius

I have been travelling the past few days, which is the reason for my silence. Now I'm returning home, dodging the mask police on an eiously delayed train, and the intermittent mobile internet so characteristic of Germany is destroying my ability to research a longer post. Woe is me, I know.

Instead, I'll address a matter raised by many of the comments to my last post, namely the reliability and significance of polymerase chain reaction diagnostic panels. I've wanted to address this for while, because every time I discuss any study that involves PCR in any way, many readers respond with a range of bitter objections.

I get it: Three years of pointless mass testing and the heavily propagandised presentation of disease statistics have made everyone wary of mass testing for viruses. That's fine. But, propaganda is rarely based on total lies, because outright deception is expensive to maintain and requires a high level of coordination. You are deceived much more often by misdirection and deliberate silence. The (mis)use of PCR during the pandemic is no exception.

A lot of the puzzling decisions made by our public health authorities over the past few years are downstream of a fundamental choice, taken sometime between February and March 2020, to aban traditional, mitigationist pandemic planning, in favour of Chinese-style mass containment. Public health is supposed to be about improving health outcomes across the whole population, but in 2020, public health bureaucrats decided it would be more fun to exterminate a virus, regardless of what this project meant for anybody's health. Once you understand this basic shift in mission, a lot of other things fall into place, including the bizarre testing regime favoured by the pandemicists.

Critics of the PCR have three fundamental complaints. These are 1) that viruses aren't real or are somehow a hoax; 2) that Kary Mullis and others have said the PCR is not appropriate for diagnosis; and 3) that the American CDC said the PCR cannot differentiate between influenza and SARS-2.

I'm not going to deal with (1) here, because in my experience, people who deny the existence of viruses won't accept any arguments or evidence to the contrary, and these debates aren't productive. Viruses, indeed, are real; the largest viruses can be seen with optical microscopes (depicted above); and if you know anything about cell metabolism, you can appreciate why they exist. There's nothing remarkable or exceptional about viruses.

While (2) is a reasonable complaint for those interested in individual medical diagnoses, it doesn't really address the population-wide significance of PCR-generated case statistics. A well-validated PCR diagnostic panel (and the tests in use are generally well-validated) doesn't diagnose current symptomatic infection, but as I typed above, this isn't really what our public health authorities are after. They don't care whether anybody is actually sick. They're locked in pitched battle with a virus, and they want to know how much virus is out there and who is potentially shedding virus, so they can lock them up. This explains the preference for high cycle thresholds, which detect primarily past infections or trace amounts of contamination. In these cases, the PCR really is detecting viral RNA, even if there's no active infection, and that's enough for the virus eradicators. When we're discussing studies about the seasonality of various viruses, or the fate of influenza during the SARS-2 pandemic, it's also enough for us, because in these cases we're also not interested in counting sick people or diagnosing anybody. We're trying to work out when viruses are present in their hosts, which is a different question.

As for (3) and the CDC: PCR tests have gene targets that are selected because they are (believed to be) unique to the SARS-2 virus. These are RNA sequences that, as far as we know, other viruses don't have. These tests really, honestly won't light up on other common respiratory viruses like influenza, because the people who develop these diagnostic panels target genetic sequences that do not occur in influenza viruses. There was no little skullduggery involved in Christian Drosten's Eurosurveillance paper from January 2020 on the Detection of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) by real-time RT-PCR, but any intellectual malfeasance here has limited significance for the actual detection of SARS-2, because the gene targets Drosten's team chose are found only in the original (extinct) SARS virus from 2003-4, and in SARS-2. Could there be as-yet unknown viruses out there that also have these gene targets? Sure, and rare undiscovered viruses might even cause a false positive here or there. But the widely circulating respiratory viruses are all well known.

In July 2021, the CDC issued a lab alert saying the following:

After December 31st 2021, CDC will withdraw the request to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA) of the CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel, the assay first introduced in February 2020 for detection of SARS-CoV-2 only. CDC is providing this advance notice for clinical laboratories to have adequate time to select and implement one of the many FDA-authorised alternatives.

In preparation for this change, CDC recommends clinical laboratories and testing sites that have been using the CDC 2019-nCoV RT-PCR assay select and begin their transition to another FDA-authorised covid-19 test. CDC encourages laboratories to consider adoption of a multiplexed method that can facilitate detection and differentiation of SARS-CoV-2 and influenza viruses. Such assays can facilitate continued testing for both influenza and SARS-CoV-2 and can save both time and resources as we head into influenza season. Laboratories and testing sites should validate and verify their selected assay within their facility before beginning clinical testing.

Emphasis mine. It's easy to misunderstand what's going on here. The CDC is not actually saying that their PCR tests can't distinguish between Corona and the flu. Rather, it's withdrawing a PCR diagnostic panel for SARS-2 introduced in February 2020, because it was at this point 17 months into the pandemic, and many other PCR diagnostic panels were available. Unlike the original CDC diagnostic panel, these new panels are capable of detecting both influenza and SARS-2, whereas the earlier ones would light up only on SARS-2. If the patient had influenza, the test would come back negative.

If our health authorities were genuinely interested in measuring the prevalence of Corona across the population, they'd have used random sampling methods from the very beginning, testing separate pools of people both for the virus and for antibodies over time. Instead, their aim has been to propagandise the population to further their virus extermination agenda, which explains their unsystematic use of PCR. Crucially, though, this doesn't mean there's no information in official case statistics. Before Omicron especially, you could use surging case numbers to predict rising hospitalisation and death statistics several weeks into the future, which is the best proof possible that there is real information in these Corona dashboards, however otherwise broken they are. If the results of these tests were wholly arbitrary, they wouldn't show trends over time, and they wouldn't correlate with other medical outcomes.

As always, reality is in the difficult middle, rather than at the comfortable extremes of believing that it's all true or it's all a lie.

Update: This post has unsurprisingly attracted a lot of vitriolic comments, particularly about the phenomenon of high PCR cycle thresholds and the frequency of false positives. I guess I didn't address this explicitly enough: The PCR is very good at detecting the genetic sequences that it targets. The problem with high cycle thresholds isn't that these yield 'false positives' (i.e., they find virus where there isn't any), but rather 'meaningless positives' in the context of diagnosis. That is, at high cycle thresholds, the test detects trace amounts of virus that aren't relevant for establishing whether the patient is infected or infectious. Similarly, you could imagine a hypersensitive metal detector that detects trace amounts of metal being entirely useless for your garden variety weekend treasure hunter. The metal detector is detecting metal, just not in a way that is useful for the questions its user is most interested in.

This post was originally published on Eugyppius's Substack. You can subscribe here.

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State-Owned Media Agency Leads Campaign to Cancel Science Paper Which Found 'Climate Emergency' Not Supported by Data

By Chris Morrison

On September 14th the Daily Sceptic published an article reporting that four leading Italian scientists had undertaken a major review of historical climate trends and concluded that declaring a 'climate emergency' was not supported by the data. They suggested that children should not be burdened with anxiety about the climate. The Daily Sceptic story was retweeted around 9,000 times, read by at least 24,000 people and was widely seen across social media. It was picked up by print media such as the Australian and broadcast on a widely-distributed Sky News Australia clip. Mention was made of the impressive credentials of the authors, who included two physics professors, an adjunct professor of physics and an agricultural meteorologist, and the wide variety of sources they had referenced.

The story sent shockwaves through the ranks of the 'settled' climate science community that takes a more alarmist approach to the prospects of humanity and the Earth's climate. As always with heretical stories like this, the mere suggestion that the climate is not breaking down runs the risk of destroying the need for a command-and-control Net Zero solution. Something had to be done.

State-owned Agence France-Presse (AFP) is rapidly becoming the 'fact-checker' of choice for those seeking to enforce the strict 'settled' science narrative.

On Monday, the Daily Sceptic published details of a rather muddled 'fact-check' written by Lloyd Parry in which it was stated that we had misled over the recent growth in Arctic summer ice. To present his case, Lloyd Parry compared one fact " summer sea ice in 2022 " to a 30-year average ending 12 years ago. Now Lloyd Parry is joined on an AFP fact-check of the Italian scientists by senior editor Marlowe Hood, who was recently given =E2=82=AC100,000 (=C2=A388,000) by the Foundation arm of a large Spanish bank heavily involved in financing green technology. Hood describes himself as the Herald of the Anthropocene, the latter a political renaming of the current Holocene era that puts the alleged dominant role of human activity on the climate at the centre.

The claim that there is no evidence of a climate emergency is said to be 'misleading'. AFP reports that 'top climate experts' say the paper 'cherry-picked' data. Of course scientists often debate each other's findings in a robust fashion, but what they don't " or shouldn't " do is call for the other side to be cancelled. One of the experts quoted by AFP was Friederike Otto, an academic whose doctoral work was in philosophy of science, who works at the Imperial College-based Grantham Institute for Climate Change, a body partly funded by the green billionaire investor Jeremy Grantham. She said that 'of course' the authors were not writing this article in good faith. 'If the journal cares about science they should withdraw it loudly and publicly, saying that it should have never been published.'

AFP author Marlowe Hood tweeted:

Their anti-free speech pressure bore fruit and on September 30th the publisher Springer Nature highlighted the following announcement at the top of the Italians' paper: 'Readers are alerted that the conclusions reported in this manuscript are currently under dispute. The journal is investigating the issue.'

All science, of course, should be in dispute. Will Springer bow to future pressure to place a similar statement against work on particle physics or molecular chemistry if a government-owned news agency 'fact-checks' its conclusions?

Other experts quoted by AFP included Professor Richard Betts, Head of Climate Impacts at the U.K. Met Office. He felt the scope of the paper was much too limited for it to inform a high level-level statement on whether the climate crisis is evident or not. Betts of course is often quoting the high authority of the IPCC, and goes on to note that the 'attribution' of human influences to extreme weather events has strengthened of late. Others point out that this type of work is the product of climate models and is unproveable.

Betts went on to suggest the scientists ignored results which showed some 'extremes' were increasing. According to Betts, it was noted 'in passing' that 'global trends in heatwave intensity are not significant'. Inexplicably, AFP and Betts failed to quote the beginning of the sentence in which the rigorous Italians drew attention to studies that had shown for the period 1951-2017, 'a significant increase in yearly values of heatwave days, maximum heatwave duration and cumulative heat'.

Friederike Otto commented on hurricanes and droughts, noting: 'Nobody said they are increasing globally " the IPCC is very clear on that " but that doesn't mean the trends that occur are not hugely problematic for the regions where they are already occurring.' With the best will in the world, it is difficult to see what Otto is writing about here.

Another scientist calling for the work to be cancelled was Stefan Rahmstorf, head of Earth Systems at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. He told AFP that he did not know of the Springer journal, 'but if it is a self-respecting one it should withdraw the article'.

Citizen journalist Paul Homewood also covered the story and noted: 'To simply demand that the journal withdraws the paper is the worst sort of censorship, and reminds us all of the dark days of Climategate, when such practices were rife whenever anybody dared to challenge the climate establishment's agenda.' Homewood looked at a number of the Italian paper's statements and concluded the study was 'actually a pretty level-headed, uncontroversial assessment of the actual data'.

It is difficult to see how AFP can call its work a 'fact-check'. It has not checked any facts on its own account, and just reproduced opinions from four people it describes as 'experts'. Yet in its headline it says the Italian scientists 'cherry-picked' data. The claim there is no evidence of a climate emergency is said to be 'misleading', but AFP's evidence to the contrary is just what others have told it. Nevertheless it has spearheaded a campaign to cancel the work, and potentially harm the reputations of four distinguished and highly credentialled Italian scientists.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic's Environment Editor.

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The Energy Crisis is a Self-Inflicted Disaster " But Fracking is Not the Answer

By David Hansard

As energy prices soar, what can be done to lessen the harm to families, businesses and an economy still reeling from the covid pandemic?

It feels like the Government is fighting a rearguard action. Its energy price cap, its granting of licences for new oil and gas wells in the North Sea, and the announcement earlier this year of plans for eight new nuclear reactors, all feels like too little, too late.

It is a piecemeal and desperate response to a crisis largely of our own making, and only brought to a head by the Russian invasion.

Buoyed by politicians' acceptance of green ideology, green billionaires have for years successfully lobbied our Governments and financial institutions to greatly restrict investment in fossil fuel exploration and extraction. They also persuaded ministers that nuclear energy is too dangerous and best avoided.

Now, when the wolf is at the door, rather than admitting their mistake, green fanatics not only want more of the same, but demand more of it sooner. At its annual conference last week, Labour " which looks increasingly likely to form the next Government " announced its intention to make the U.K. carbon-free by 2030.

Yet many have grave concerns about the reliability of renewables and whether they will be able to meet the nation's needs. Even with the new nuclear reactors in the mix, things look far from secure " and those won't be online for years.

So it is understandable that there is renewed interest in fracking. Liz Truss's recent lifting of the moratorium on drilling for shale gas was applauded on the Right and by some on the Left. They believe that while fracking may not be the answer to all our energy woes, it would bring considerable benefits: cutting s, improving our energy security and creating jobs.

But are they right? What is the evidence for these claims? Many supporters of fracking do not appear to have asked themselves that simple but vital question. Even when pressed, they seem uninterested in defending their position with facts, and are far more interested in endlessly urging that we should get fracking as soon as we can. But without considering all the facts, and without giving those with safety concerns a fair hearing instead of dismissing them all as misguided ideologues, it is not possible to come to a sensible and responsible decision.

There is no evidence that fracking would significantly reduce energy costs in the medium and long term. In the short term, while further exploration and initial drilling took place, fracking would not lower s. Just because extraction companies are eager to drill does not mean the public and businesses will necessarily benefit.

Although it is estimated that there are large reserves of shale gas in the U.K., how much of it is cost-effective to extract is currently unknown. It is possible that considerable amounts of it will not be viable.

It is also hard to see the industry creating a significant number of jobs.

If supporters of fracking have evidence to the contrary, now is the time to provide it: about jobs, about lowering energy s, and about reducing our dependence on gas imports. After all, it is them who support the construction of wells across the countryside, a very different proposition in the U.K. than in the far larger and less-densely populated U.S. It is them who support daily convoys of water tankers on already trashed roads. It is them who appear to claim there are only advantages, while disregarding doubts and public concern.

I often wonder, would they all be as keen if the drilling was right next to where they live, rather than hundreds of miles away?

And I am often reminded of climate change zealots when I challenge some fans of fracking, so intolerant of dissent many of them seem. It is hard to dispel the idea that part of them supports fracking simply because greens do not.

Looking at the bigger picture, the advantages which fracking enthusiasts assume are obvious seem much less certain. Cries of it is worth a try, and what is there to lose, become much less convincing when all things are considered.

Fracking in the U.K. must be viewed for what it is: part of a panicked response. The truth is, the benefits of fracking are highly questionable and its disadvantages not inconsiderable. And by the time it may bring any benefits, though that is not guaranteed, our needs could be more reliably met by ramping up nuclear power and investing in conventional offshore drilling, alongside the expansion in renewables which is coming whether we like it or not.

Supporters of fracking need to reflect on the wider issues and reconsider their unreserved support. It is particularly disappointing that those with inquiring minds who have challenged the orthodoxies and follies of our age, from the EU to lockdowns, and from Net Zero to identity politics, appear so incurious and accepting when it comes to fracking. It is good to have hopes and to believe in something, but that needs to be tempered with a healthy scepticism, something which in this case appears to have abandoned them.

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Cleese Enters the Culture War (Or in Old Money: Comedian Gets TV Show)

By Nick Dixon

Cleese has announced he will be hosting a new show on GB News.

This sentence, perfectly banal in any other era or on any other channel, is now a statement of such vast controversy that it was trending on Twitter for an entire day.

As we are becoming used to with good old GB, the pre-frontally challenged mob immediately descended to explain to us that Cleese was now 'far right', his Silly Walk now a sinister goose-step.

Ubiquitous Twitter Leftie and park serenader Femi expressed his disappointment that Cleese was now literally Hitler: 'I just find it sad. I used to ADORE you. Your dark humour was era-defining. Your Hitler bit was hilarious BECAUSE you knew the audience understood the far right were the bad guys. Now you're supporting a channel Andrew Neil left because even HE thought it was too far-right.'

The almost pathologically wrong on every issue 'law academic' Daniela Nadj stopped by to tell us all why she totally didn't care about it.

And the usual slew of half-man, half-bots gave us their 'reckons'. Some of which I could not resist addressing.

Of course, as Ms Nadj admits, none of these people have actually watched the channel (with the possible exception of Femi, who probably gets some sick thrill out of hate-watching it on rare breaks from savaging his Casio).

The real GB News is an Ofcom regulated, at times almost painfully balanced attempt at honest news untainted by most of the media's blatant metropolitan liberal bias.

I can tell it's balanced because they employ me, whilst also airing many views I find disgusting. Such as the idea that we should abort unborn babies all the way up to nine months, a disturbing and deranged opinion I recently heard twice on the channel within the space of a couple of days.

But none of that matters to the woke mobsters. To them, the sheer existence of GB News is a symbol of something, a mild but uncomfortable pushback against the woke hegemony, and they sense danger.

And the imminent arrival of one of Britain's greatest comedy legends throws another rather large spanner into their woke works.

Much as President Biden deduced that if a black person voted for Trump, they suddenly were not, in fact, black, a comedy legend appearing on a bad and naughty channel must suddenly mean they were never a legend at all, but a secret Nazi agitator playing an incredibly long game.

The more that respected figures decide to make this beautiful transition, the harder it is to condemn GB as 'far right', and the more difficult it is for the wokes to maintain their fragile and simplistic worldview.

The ostensibly intelligent Paul Sinha recently tweeted: 'People are of course free to go on GB News. I'm free to believe that by doing so you are knowingly enabling Far Right, racist, anti-LGBT agendas and will judge you accordingly. You of course are entirely free not to give a shit.'

He later deleted it after many explained the multiple errors in his Tweet (actually it was nearly all error: only the fact that people are free to go on GB News, and to not care what the bloke from The Chase says about it, was accurate).

All this is encouraging.

What Cleese has been calling 'binary' thinking is now faltering. We are entering the era of the non-binary.

People are so sick of the idiotic tribal ad hominems, they are beginning to embrace nuance again. As Sam Harris would say: the adults are back in the room. Except unlike Trump-deranged Sam, this time they actually are.

When I pointed out on Twitter that David Starkey regularly appears on GB News, and referred to him as our greatest living historian, someone tried to snipe me down with the classic 'This David Starkey?' reply, whereby you dredge up the inevitable moment of cancellation to discredit a man's entire life's work. Where this might once have been effective, I was now unfazed, and effortlessly brushed the bot aside with a sarcastic reply well beyond his binary IQ (he then blocked me).

I sense more and more that 'their' tactics are failing. Their horribly narrow Overton window " less a window and more like the trash compactor in Star Wars, ever-encroaching and harbouring concealed monsters " is now being rent apart once more.

It is time to say a Chad 'Yes' to their shrill accusations, like the one that GB News is 'Far Right'; to bear down the monsters and scare them away for good.

At the end of Tolkien's epic novel The Lord of the Rings, in a scene I always regret did not make it into the films, the hobbits return to the Shire to find it has been taken over by a low-level thug named 'Sharkey' (not to be confused with Starkey).

Sharkey turns out to be the great evil wizard Saruman in disguise, but the hobbits nonetheless make short work of booting him out of their home.

Whatever allegories academics may read into the scene, my take, upon reading it as a teenager, was simply that the hobbits' great journey has made them immeasurably stronger, to the point where figures and challenges that once seemed intimidating are now a breeze to shrug off.

I sense this point coming with the woke mob, after the onslaught we have suffered at their hands for the last decade. Their knavish tricks, to quote our anthem, have become exposed. Their swords blunted by our armour of reason.

The adults are returning to the room, silly walks and all, and this great country's great tradition of free speech and civil discourse is coming home.

Nick Dixon is a GB News presenter, host of the Weekly Sceptic podcast and co-host on the Podcast of the Lotus Eaters. This articlehis Substack page, which you can subscribe to here.

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Nick Dixon, Toby Young and Noah Carl Talk About Cleese Joining GB News, Andrew Tate's MSM Comeback and the Risk of Nuclear War

By Toby Young

Nick and Toby discuss Cleese joining GB News (and the ensuing and inevitable left wing meltdown), how the cancelled are so much more entertaining than the uncancelled, Andrew Tate's breakthrough into the mainstream media (even if it's only to discuss his cancellation in the non-mainstream media) and Hugo Rifkind's (and Jay Rayner's) magic carpet ride to jobs in Fleet Street (both were the beneficiaries of inherited privilege, in spite of being firebrand progressives).

They talk about how libertarian conservatism is not that great a departure from punk rock, Stewart Lee's continuing failure to recognise that he is now part of the Establishment, Kanye rise and fall (in the past week), whether white people should be excluded from events during Black History Month, Mermaids' spectacular own goal, why people filled with so much bilious hatred so often occupy 'equality' positions, and why women and not men attract the the most aggressive, in-your-face hostility from Woke protestors (spoiler alert: it's because they're more vulnerable).

About two-thirds of the way through, Nick is joined by Daily Sceptic contributor Dr Noah Carl to talk about the likelihood of nuclear armageddon. And this isn't just waffle " Noah has collated the percentages from the most eminent forecasters " the guys who have the best track record of predicting the future " and they're alarmingly high.

You can listen to the podcast here.

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News Round-Up

By Jonathan Barr

'Masks may be mandatory in some settings if covid spikes' " Irish Health Minister Stephen Donnelly has presented the Cabinet with an emergency response plan for the event of a new covid variant of concern this winter, reports RTE

'Austrian politician says return of mask mandates 'expected' after data projects re-elected president' " LifeSite News reports that less than an hour after the first election results projection showed that President Alexander Van der Bellen was re-elected as president of Austria, a Government official announced that mask mandates would be making a return

'covid Fraud: A Staggering $600 ion' " 'Congress appropriated more than five trillion dollars for covid relief but almost $600 billion may have been lost to fraud,' writes James Bovard for the Brownstone Institute. 'Washington's pandemic pratfalls are the greatest federal boondoggle of this century'

'Former French Presidential Candidate Says covid-19 Vaccine 'Almost Killed Me'' " Former French presidential candidate Jean Lassalle told NTD news that he underwent several operations and nearly died after receiving a covid vaccine, the Epoch Times reports. He also alleged that President Macron has not been jabbed

'Majority of ventilators bought by Trudeau Liberals still sitting unused' " The Trudeau Liberals have since admitted that they may have overestimated the amount of ventilators it needed, the Post Millennial reports, and have moved the vast majority to a warehouse for storage

'Is Eric Topol right about the Japanese and the jabs?' " Guy Gin takes Eric Topel to task over his claim that Japan's low covid mortality is linked to its higher rate of vaccine and booster uptake

'A Vaccine is a Vaccine is a Vaccine' " Thorsteinn Siglaugsson examines a new study, conducted by Moderna, which shows how the vaccinated are 'more likely to become infected with the latest variants of covid-19 than the unvaccinated as time passes'

'LinkedIn suspends account of top UK educator for trying to protect children from medical abuse' " Joel Smalley reports that LinkedIn has cancelled Hugh McCarthy, a former headteacher and the author of an article in UK Column which argued against giving children a covid jab. 'No reason given,' says Joel 'Work it out for yourself'

'Artificial grass roots' " El Gato Malo responds to the revelation from a Freedom of Information Act request that the HHS and the CDC paid screen writers and comedians to mock the unvaccinated. 'Never trust the song of a bard who was paid to write it'

'Leaked EU-Pfizer agreement reveals cover-up of bacterial proteins, endotoxins, DNA, dsRNA, other contaminants and up to 50% truncated, modified, recombined, junk mRNA in the vaccine' " Vinu Arumugham examines the contents of an advanced purchase agreement between the EU and Pfizer BioNTech which was leaked to Robert Malone by Italian activists

'It is five past 12' " Omicron is now causing a fast and large-scale immune escape in vaccines, says Geert Vanden Bossche in his latest and last video message, published on Voice for Science and Solidarity

'My CPAC turpitudes' " Spectator Australia publishes Geologist Ian Plimer's remarks at the CPAC conference in Sydney. His first turpitude: 'No one has ever proven that human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming'

'Just Stop Oil: Drivers drag protesters from street as Knightsbridge blockade stops fire engine reaching emergency' " The Telegraph tells of how frustrated motorists took matters into their own hands when Just Stop Oil protesters blocked a road in Knightsbridge yesterday

'Why eco-activists are so hostile to humanity' " Spiked's Brendan O'Neil explains why he feels a 'strong sense of pride over the revolt against Just Stop Oil'

'Stress is normal, Harry " and we don't need emotional support dogs to handle it' " Humphrys writes in the Telegraph with a sceptical take on the Department of Health's upcoming campaign aimed at helping us cope with the 'Sunday Scaries'

'Transgender schools guidance says discussing women's rights could be offensive' " A draft policy by the National Education Union would label teachers 'transphobic' if they discuss sex-based women's rights with transgender colleagues, according to the Telegraph

'Video games could trigger heart attacks in children' " New research has found a link between computer games and heart attacks in children with undiagnosed cardiac issues, the Telegraph reports

'Kwarteng's mini-Budget will boost economic growth in Britain, admits IMF' " UK economic growth will outpace the rest of the G7 in 2022, the IMF has said, according to the Telegraph. And the Chancellor's tax cuts are expected to lift growth even higher than the 3.5% currently forecast

'Goodhart's law and order: the problem with policing by central diktat' " Ian Acheson writes in CAPX with a warning for Suella Braverman, our new Home Secretary, against trying to fight crime by central fiat

'Why have so many students given up on free speech?' " Writing for Spiked, Arif Ahmed takes heart from a recent King's College Lon survey which found that a while a vocal minority is opposed, the majority of students supports the incoming Higher Education (Freedom of Speech)

'Former Democrat Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard Leaving Party' " 'Today's Democratic Party does not believe in our constitutionally protected right to free speech,' said former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, according to the Epoch Times, as she announced her departure from the party

'Paypal Stocks Plunge $6 ion' " Paypal's stock is down and 'Delete PayPal' are up 1,300%, reports Not On The Beeb (who were defunded by Paypal back in June)

'The Genius Behind PayPal's Bad Idea' " Watch the reliably entertaining JP's take on PayPal's hastily withdrawn misinformation policy

'Why cash should be king again' " Over in the Conservative Woman, Drewry sounds a warning against the 'seductive, Luciferian beauty of digital'

'Europe's descent into totalitarianism' " Writing for the Forum for Democracy International, Laughland tells of how, earlier this month, he was detained by anti-terrorism police at Gatwick airport

'It's too late, mate' " Nat highlights a spot of back-peddling on the part of Piers Morgan

'Peak fact-check absurdity' " Izabella Kaminska highlights an absurd fact check on reports that Paypal intends to fine users for spreading misinformation. Its false, the fact check found, because paypal reversed the policy and announced that the clause was inserted in error

If you have any tips for inclusion in the round-up, email us here.

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