Brian Gerrish, Mike Robinson, David Scott and Mark Anderson with today’s UK Column News.
Twitter un-purged—but social media still held in the vice
00:32 Online Safety Bill: Government ostensibly drops "legal but harmful content" weasel words, but shifts same burden to the platforms
02:03 Twitter accounts back after new owner Elon Musk polls: "Should Twitter offer a general amnesty?"
03:00 "Stalin's nanny" Susan Michie, Britain's behaviouralist-in-chief (SPI-B/WHO), has a tizzy about Musk: "OK, that’s it. When all these blocked accounts return, I will go"
David Scott asks Michie:
Before you go, do you have any regrets about using fear to coerce and manipulate people into taking an untried and untested experimental medical treatment without giving informed, express, voluntary, individual consent?
Michie blocks David in response—would this be for inappropriate behaviour?
Their Lordships decide to change our minds—behavioural psychology segment with guest Dr Bruce Scott
04:19 House of Lords Paper 64: In our hands: behaviour change for climate and environmental goals
Government nudging: From the infinitesimal to the irrelevant
UK Government's Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance bemoans “legions of armchair epidemiologists”
Bruce Scott commentary: How exactly did Vallance become an expert environmentalist?
Lord Peter Lilley’s minority report of one at the very back of the paper (Appendix 5) is well worth reading: even on the most optimistic estimate, lifestyle changes can hardly amount to 10% of the supposedly necessary CO2 reduction
Table in report shown on screen: people driving, people flying, diet, and construction of homes are among the top half-dozen “evils” targeted
Dr Bruce Scott: This drive will involve the usual shaming and perhaps Canadian scenarios: dissidents psychiatrically diminished, treated against their will as a “danger to self, to others and to the environment”
10:50 Climate Change Committee: Behaviour change, public engagement and Net Zero (2019)
“New, compelling narratives will be needed” for the envisaged nudging (p. 11)
Linked document on consent—includes table Public awareness and consumer choices: “what it will entail … is a prerequisite”
Without nudging, “the transition will continue to stall”
Who’s on the Climate Change Committee? Led by John Gummer; includes Prof. Nick Chater of Warwick Business School
Bruce Scott analysis—Conflicts of interest: Committee members (peers and academics) have positions in biosecurity and nuclear threats; sustainability company; mining interests; construction; surveillance industry; healthcare products company
14:56 Artificial intelligence to inform the tweakers of human behaviour
Human Behaviour-Change Project sponsored by Wellcome Trust: “developing AI system”
International Training Programme at UCL: that ubiquitous Susan Michie
Prof. Angel Marie Chater [uncertain whether or not related to Prof. Nick Chater]—more in Extra Time
Dr Louise Atkins: behavioural change intervention consultant and leader of Centre for Behavioural Change’s Australasian Hub; honorary academic at University of Auckland
David Scott commentary: Antipodean connections are telling, given Covid tyranny down under; Atkins is also researching end-of-life care and behavioural change, which has much Belgian involvement—a country that is a pioneer of mass euthanasia
17:27 Behaviour Change Wheel: book by Michie, Atkins and West
18:06 Life Sciences Vaccine Task Force: new UK Government model to “tackle challenges”—moved to Department of Health in March 2021 under Kate Bingham, long-time biotech investor
UK Government Life Sciences Vision published in July 2021
Today: UK Government Board of Trade publication—Life sciences: What’s next for this UK top sector?
Board of Trade's recommendations to make much more money out of British behaviouralism:
- Build more facilities
- More home-grown talent
- Promote regional investment
- Leverage overseas networks
Chinese Catholic leader prosecuted, people's patience wearing thin
20:07 China: Largest protests since Tiananmen Square 1989, with covidocracy the largest grievance
Cardinal Zen’s trial: Mark Anderson covers William F. Jasper’s speech at Red Pill Expo, Utah—Zen has been released pending further charges
22:23 BBC—China Covid: Record number of cases
23:29 Sky News: Patience running out in China over Covid lockdowns—and it poses major challenge to ruling Communist party
David Scott commentary: Excellent article
Leo Kearse response on Twitter: “Wait a minute: when we protested against lockdown, we were decried as selfish, granny-killing idiots”
Mark Anderson commentary: Cardinal Zen left in the lurch by the Vatican—Pope Francis has time to meet Bono, Jeffrey Sachs, Bill Gates and the like, but has very little to say about the plight of the former Bishop of Hong Kong
Zen could yet be charged with supposedly endangering national security
26:29 Secret societies
American truth-telling and its limits
30:27 Judge Andrew Napolitano speaks frankly to Gerald Celente's Trends In The News
Clip: An American reflection of David Scott’s observation on government as an occupying power
Mark Anderson commentary: Moreover, governments are themselves captive to private interests that set up the mass media cartel
33:30 Clip: Trump told Napolitano he would release all the JFK assassination records before leaving office—but baulked
Mark Anderson commentary: Don’t get overexcited about the prospect of document releases
David Scott promotes Amy Gallagher interview: Critical Race Theory in the NHS
38:05 French Covid jab awareness-raising: 10 December event poster shown on screen
USA: Planned theft of wages
Mark Anderson analysis: Midterms—Red tide (swing to Republican Party) slowed to a red trickle
38:45 American Social Security approaching its ninetieth anniversary
Big players like Peter G. Peterson Foundation (named after late CFR head) insist that social security is unsustainable
American Free Press article by Mark Anderson: Social Security on the block?
E. Michael Jones has pointed out that social security is deferred wages, squarely owed; not dole, not welfare, not a luxury
Mark Anderson commentary: Hyper-laissez-faire Republicans, and even some Democrat Representatives, may approve the removal of Social Security in the new Congress
Mark Anderson solution: Get out of Federal Reserve system and issue U.S. currency that does not bear interest, to enable an alternative or solvent version of social security
44:36 Mark Anderson covers Red Pill Expo in Salt Lake City, Utah: Bill Jasper's speech "Red Pill—The Open Conspiracy is now" , on H.G. Wells’ eerily prescient The Open Conspiracy: Blue Prints for a World Revolution (1928)
Lynn Forester de Rothschild: WEF tone-setting article—Why we need a new kind of capitalism (2014)
Mark Anderson analysis: This will be “inclusive capitalism”, a reformed socialistic globalism with no public, only stakeholders and shareholders
Catholic News Agency: Pope Francis names Jeffrey Sachs to pontifical academy
Mark Anderson commentary: A lot of this is window-dressing to pass off the plans as continued capitalism
Ukraine: Can't stop now, supposedly
49:27 Brutal battle for Bakhmut (Artemovsk), which is being stormed by Russian private military companies
Brian Gerrish reviews pro-Russian platforms' coverage of carnage on the Donetsk Front: whole Ukrainian armoured columns wiped out, Passchendaele-level horror in the muddy trenches
Ugledar: white phosphorus or thermite deployed?
BBC—Ukraine war: Russia atrocities bring Nato members closer
Brian Gerrish reminder of recent coverage: Unbelievably disingenuous claim by BBC Europe editor Katya Adler that NATO itself is not training Ukrainians
26 February article reminder—BBC: The comedian president who is rising to the moment
57:52 Clip: Menacing music and applied psychology by the Ministry of Defence as RAF Brize Norton crew supplies Ukrainians with Brimstone missiles
Politico: Europe accuses US of profiting from war
1:00:48 New York Times: Artillery is breaking in Ukraine. It’s becoming a problem for the Pentagon.
Brian Berletic, The New Atlas, lists additional munitions provided to Kiev: National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) and a long shopping list besides
Brian Gerrish analysis: Not nearly enough to keep Ukrainian Armed Forces resupplied
New York Times: How was Russia able to launch its biggest aerial attack on Ukraine?—threadbare assertion that NATO specialists are not involved in air defence maintenance contract
1:02:28 The Economist: Either Vladimir Putin loses or the West does, says Lord Robertson (British former Secretary-General of NATO)
Mike Robinson analysis: Effectively calling for direct and open warfare with Russia
David Scott commentary: “Chicken George” Robertson is insane to call Britain under attack by a nuclear superpower when it is not under attack
Daily Beast: Russia risks knockout blow in war as Putin hits rock bottom—interview with Minister for War, Ben Wallace
Mike Robinson commentary: First open admission by a Western defence minister that military equipment, manning, readiness and training have been hollowed out for decades
Brian Gerrish commentary: The Russians have forced this grudging declaration as to the rot in the Armed Forces, overseen largely by Conservatives
Doublespeak of the Day: Rishi Sunak addressing Mansion House tonight on foreign policy: “Freedom never achieved standing still … We will stand up to [Russia and China] not with grand rhetoric but with robust pragmatism”
David Scott commentary: How about competing, then?
UK Column verdict: "Robust pragmatism" would appear to mean "muddling through"
Parlous state of British Armed Forces—even élite units
1:07:03 Ben Wallace disingenuously slams neglect of Armed Forces
1:08:32 Daily Mail: Junior Royal Air Force officer who ‘became pregnant by her Red Arrows commander’ claims he tried to pressure her into an abortion
Admits: “We were all hung over at work”
Brian Gerrish commentary: The long-wrought breakdown of the Armed Forces has been achieved; increasing numbers of servicemen and women not fit for purpose
1:10:43 UK Government Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict seminar, 28–29 November
BBC: Ben Key, head of Royal Navy, admits that chain of command used to be too heavily involved in investigating allegations of sexual impropriety, but “a completely independent process […] would slow it down and actually lead to less good outcomes”
Brian Gerrish commentary: Brand management at work
Scotland: Brass-necked political opportunism shown the door
1:12:29 Favor UK (charitable think tank), working against alcohol addiction, led by Annemarie Ward
Clip: Ward turfing opportunistic SNP councillor Graham Campbell out
Clip: Ward explains why she did it—“He’s barely spoken to us; he showed up to get his photograph taken […] to lie like that is a complete brass neck”
The Herald: SNP’s Graham Campbell expelled from meeting by drug deaths charity
Sunday Post: SNP councillor Graham Campbell accused of threatening drug charity—allegation that he will get his other half, an SNP MP, to cut the charity’s funding
And Finally
1:16:57 Bob Moran cartoon: “Please put this [Albanian] bear up in a four-star hotel”