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๐Ÿ”ด๐—จ๐—ฆโ€“๐—œ๐—ฟ๐—ฎ๐—ป ๐—ง๐—ฎ๐—น๐—ธ๐˜€ ๐—ถ๐—ป ๐—œ๐˜€๐—น๐—ฎ๐—บ๐—ฎ๐—ฏ๐—ฎ๐—ฑ: ๐—๐—ถ๐—ป๐—ป๐—ฎ๐—ต ๐—–๐—ผ๐—ป๐˜ƒ๐—ฒ๐—ป๐˜๐—ถ๐—ผ๐—ป ๐—–๐—ฒ๐—ป๐˜๐—ฟ๐—ฒ ๐—ฅ๐—ฒ๐—ฏ๐—ฟ๐—ฎ๐—ป๐—ฑ๐—ฒ๐—ฑ ๐—ข๐˜ƒ๐—ฒ๐—ฟ๐—ป๐—ถ๐—ด๐—ต๐˜ ๐—ฎ๐˜€ ๐—œ๐—ป๐˜๐—ฒ๐—ฟ๐—ป๐—ฎ๐˜๐—ถ๐—ผ๐—ป๐—ฎ๐—น ๐— ๐—ฒ๐—ฑ๐—ถ๐—ฎ ๐—”๐˜‚๐—ฑ๐—ถ๐˜๐—ผ๐—ฟ๐—ถ๐˜‚๐—บ- ๐™๐™๐™š ๐™จ๐™–๐™ข๐™š ๐™ซ๐™š๐™ฃ๐™ช๐™š ๐™ฌ๐™๐™š๐™ง๐™š ๐™‡๐™š๐™ & ๐™…๐™–๐™ž๐™จ๐™ ๐™ง๐™–๐™™๐™ž๐™˜๐™–๐™ก ๐™จ๐™ฅ๐™š๐™š๐™˜๐™๐™š๐™จ ๐™ฌ๐™š๐™ง๐™š ๐™ค๐™›๐™ฉ๐™š๐™ฃ ๐™ค๐™ง๐™œ๐™–๐™ฃ๐™ž๐™จ๐™š๐™™. This is the same place,๐—๐—ถ๐—ป๐—ป๐—ฎ๐—ต ๐—–๐—ผ๐—ป๐˜ƒ๐—ฒ๐—ป๐˜๐—ถ๐—ผ๐—ป ๐—–๐—ฒ๐—ป๐˜๐—ฟ๐—ฒ, ๐—œ๐˜€๐—น๐—ฎ๐—บ๐—ฎ๐—ฏ๐—ฎ๐—ฑ, where the majority of ๐—Ÿ๐—ฒ๐—ง ๐—ฎ๐—ป๐—ฑ ๐—๐—ฎ๐—ถ๐˜€๐—ต radical extremist and Jihadi speeches were often organised, and...

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#ChiefDakamelaAwardsFestival2026 A delegation of prominent izinduna zomdabu ZaKwaZulu (traditional Zulu Chiefs from KwaZulu-Natal province in South Africa) being introduced to the people at the annual Chief Dakamela Achievers' Awards at his Nkayi village homestead, Matabeleland North province, yesterday. The chiefs' delegation included princes, members of the Zulu royal family and other royals from the region. The Zulu delegation included Prince Thulani Zulu, Prince Kwazikwenkosi Zulu, Prince Kinobho Zulu, and Prince Phumlani Pro okaHuzulu. The chiefs who came from South Africa were Mncwango, Mdlalose, Shandu and others. Zulu cultural historian, storyteller and traditional music singer Mbuso Khoza was also there. There was also Prince Ayanda Manala and Princess Andile Mabena representing the Ndebele Kingdom from Mpumalanga in South Africa. Chief Zwelenqaba Mgudlwa and Dr Ondile Dlanga represented the abaThembu Kingdom from the Xhosa royalty. Local chiefs where also present. There were also local and South Africa celebrities, prominent personalities, musicians and actors including Albert Nyathi, Zenzo Nyathi, Madlela Skhobokhobo whose real name is Mothusi Bashimane Ndlovu, Ezra Tshisa Sibanda, Mbo Mahocs (Mbonisi Mahonondo) and Dawn Thandeka King, among others. Government was represented by Emily Jesaya, Deputy Minister of Sport, Recreation, Arts and Culture. Chief Dakamela - born Mbusi Bekithemba Dakamela, a descendant of Dakamela Ncube of the Babambeni Regiment fame under Ndebele King Lobengula - has now become the new centre of cultural revival, gravity, pilgrimage and pride in Matabeleland. The Chief Dakamela Achievers Awards is now only outdone by Ndebele ceremonial King Bulelani Khumalo and the Mzilikazi Day event in the region in terms of prominence, attendance and resonance. The Imiklomelo kaDakamela Awards is an annual ceremony held in Nkayi district, to celebrate individuals, organisations and institutions that have made significant positive contributions and difference to society to uplift people's lives, particularly in those areas under the chief's traditional jurisdiction and influence. This year's awards peaked yesterday under the theme "uBuntu yiSintu Sethu" (Our humanity is our culture). The event has been a huge success. What began as a simple awards ceremony in rural Matabeleland backwater setting has now grown and expanded into a multi-day cultural festival featuring bush dinners, art exhibitions, history lectures, storytelling and traditional performances. In future, the plan is to have an organised series of performances or exhibitions around it such as a public lecturers on history and culture, film festivals, music festivals or literary festivals, underlining the importance of education and writing books. The event - a major cultural revival festival - is increasingly becoming a tourism magnet and driver of development contributions for Bulawayo and the Nkayi region, bringing together hundreds of visitors and various corporate partners like Kingdom Blue Funeral Service, mainly benefitting local main tourist attractions like Matopo Hills, Hwange National Park and Victoria Falls. Rooted in deep Nguni culture, traditions and heritage, the event is now attracting attention across different countries in the region which share the same ethnic cultural ties among some parts of its population, including South Africa, Eswatini, Mozambique, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. ๐Ÿ”ดCaption: Ndebele Nkayi Chief Dakamela, who was born Mbusi Bekithemba Dakamela (left), and prominent Zulu Chiefs (right).

TheNewsHawks

12,116 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 5 ไธชๆœˆๅ‰

$NWBO #๐——๐—–๐—ฉ๐—ฎ๐˜…-๐—Ÿ: ๐—ง๐—ต๐—ฒ ๐—˜๐˜ƒ๐—ถ๐—ฑ๐—ฒ๐—ป๐—ฐ๐—ฒ ๐—ถ๐—ป ๐—ฃ๐—น๐—ฎ๐—ถ๐—ป ๐—ง๐—ฒ๐—ฟ๐—บ๐˜€ A short, plain-language reading of the survival evidence for DCVax-L in #glioblastoma, and what it means under the MHRAgovuk guideline on external control arms. ๐Ÿ“Š ๐—ฃ๐—”๐—ฅ๐—ง ๐—ข๐—ก๐—˜: ๐—ช๐—›๐—”๐—ง ๐—ง๐—›๐—˜ ๐—ง๐—ฅ๐—œ๐—”๐—Ÿ ๐—™๐—ข๐—จ๐—ก๐——, ๐—”๐—ก๐—— ๐—ช๐—›๐—ฌ ๐—œ๐—ง ๐— ๐—”๐—ง๐—ง๐—˜๐—ฅ๐—ฆ DCVax-L more than doubled five-year survival, and the benefit is durability: a subset gets lasting disease control and simply stays alive. ๐Ÿ’‰ ๐—ช๐—ต๐—ฎ๐˜ ๐˜๐—ต๐—ฒ ๐—ฑ๐—ฟ๐˜‚๐—ด ๐—ถ๐˜€ DCVax-L is a personalized cancer vaccine for glioblastoma, the deadliest form of brain cancer and a designated orphan disease. It is a living drug: its active ingredient is the patient's own immune cells, primed with proteins from that patient's surgically removed tumor, so the immune system learns to attack the cancer. Unlike a chemical drug that is metabolized and cleared, it switches on a living immune response that keeps working long after the injection. Glioblastoma comes back in almost everyone: even with the full standard of surgery, radiation, and temozolomide chemotherapy, most patients live under two years, and only about one in twenty reaches five. DCVax-L is given on top of that standard care, not in place of it: every patient in the trial received surgery, radiation, and temozolomide, and the vaccine was added to it, so the comparison measures what the vaccine adds. For two decades, nearly every new drug tried in this disease has failed. That is the backdrop against which any positive result must be judged. ๐Ÿ“ˆ ๐—ช๐—ต๐—ฎ๐˜ ๐˜๐—ต๐—ฒ ๐˜๐—ฟ๐—ถ๐—ฎ๐—น ๐—ณ๐—ผ๐˜‚๐—ป๐—ฑ In a Phase 3 trial of 331 patients, those who received DCVax-L lived longer. At the median the gain looks modest, about three months (19.3 versus 16.5). The number that matters sits at the far end of the survival curve: more than twice as many vaccine patients were alive at five years, 13.0% versus 5.7%, and a few reached ten years in a disease that usually kills within three. In patients whose tumor had already returned, the effect was larger still, cutting the risk of death by about 42%. ๐Ÿ‘ฅ ๐—˜๐˜ƒ๐—ฒ๐—ฟ๐˜† ๐—ด๐—ฟ๐—ผ๐˜‚๐—ฝ ๐—ฏ๐—ฒ๐—ป๐—ฒ๐—ณ๐—ถ๐˜๐—ฒ๐—ฑ, ๐—ฒ๐˜ƒ๐—ฒ๐—ป ๐˜๐—ต๐—ฒ ๐—ต๐—ฎ๐—ฟ๐—ฑ๐—ฒ๐˜€๐˜ ๐˜๐—ผ ๐˜๐—ฟ๐—ฒ๐—ฎ๐˜ The benefit was not confined to the easy cases. Of the six prespecified subgroups the trial examined, every single one favored DCVax-L, and there was no group in which it did worse than standard care. The largest gains came in patients whose tumors carry MGMT methylation, who reached a median survival of 30.2 months from randomization against 21.3 for the controls. But even the hardest-to-treat patients, whose tumors lack that methylation, resist standard chemotherapy, and carry the worst prognosis in this disease, still came out ahead with the vaccine, at a hazard ratio of 0.93. A treatment that helps across the whole population, and helps most where the biology is most favorable, is acting like a real drug. ๐Ÿ“‰ ๐—ช๐—ต๐˜† ๐˜๐—ต๐—ฒ ๐—บ๐—ฒ๐—ฑ๐—ถ๐—ฎ๐—ป ๐—ต๐—ถ๐—ฑ๐—ฒ๐˜€ ๐˜๐—ต๐—ฒ ๐—ฟ๐—ฒ๐—ฎ๐—น ๐˜€๐˜๐—ผ๐—ฟ๐˜† That five-year number is the whole story, and the median buries it. Almost every treatment that ever helped in glioblastoma did the same modest thing: it slid the survival curve a few months to the right, then let it fall back. Doubling five-year survival is different in kind. A three-month gain at the median cannot, by itself, double the fraction alive at five years. The only shape that produces both numbers is a split: most patients get the small delay the median measures, while a subset gets durable disease control that lasts for years, well past where glioblastoma should have ended them. That subset is the long tail of the curve, and it is where the benefit lives. A median ignores extremes, the way a town's median income tells you nothing about its millionaires. The real story is not a longer delay; it is that a meaningful share of patients simply stay alive. ๐Ÿงฌ ๐—ช๐—ต๐˜† ๐˜๐—ต๐—ฒ ๐—ฏ๐—ถ๐—ผ๐—น๐—ผ๐—ด๐˜† ๐—ฝ๐—ฟ๐—ฒ๐—ฑ๐—ถ๐—ฐ๐˜๐˜€ ๐˜๐—ต๐—ถ๐˜€ ๐˜€๐—ต๐—ฎ๐—ฝ๐—ฒ The tail is not luck. It is what this biology is built to produce. The vaccine carries proteins from the patient's own tumor, so it aims the immune system at whatever that tumor is made of, not a fixed short list of targets. And it amplifies: one trained immune cell drives many others that multiply into cancer-killers. Andres Salazar, the neurologist who developed poly-ICLC into the clinical adjuvant given with the vaccine, puts it in a line: you start the fire, and you keep it burning. A response like that does not produce a one-time bump. It builds and widens over time. What matters is not just that a response forms, but what kind. Dendritic cells are the immune system's master switch for that, the cells that set what kind of attack the body mounts, and this vaccine is built from them. It drives what immunologists call a type 1 polarized response: an interferon-driven, cytotoxic program aimed squarely at the tumor. That direction comes from the vaccine itself; the poly-ICLC adjuvant given with it drives the same interferon program and sustains it. That is the active ingredient, and it has been measured. In UCLA studies of this approach, the patients whose immune systems mounted the strongest interferon response lived the longest. The response also spreads. In a different cancer, a vaccine carried on this same poly-ICLC adjuvant drove more than 70% of a patient's cancer-killing T cells to target proteins that were never in the vaccine: the immune system outgrew its original targets and went after the rest of the tumor on its own. This is called epitope spreading, and it is not particular to one tumor; it is what this kind of response does, and it is the kind of response DCVax-L builds. That breadth is the likeliest thing separating the long-term survivors from everyone else, a response that breaks past its targets and clears the disease rather than one that stays caged and stops. There is even a tell in who benefits most: the effect is largest in tumors whose biology builds up more mutations under chemotherapy, and more mutations mean more targets for a whole-tumor vaccine to find. The same logic explains what the vaccine is not, and what it does not need. Checkpoint inhibitors, the drugs that release the immune system's brakes, have failed on their own in glioblastoma because there was no active response to release; the vaccine supplies that response first. That makes the vaccine the natural foundation for combination therapy. Combining it with its poly-ICLC adjuvant, made by Oncovir, has already shown meaningful survival gains in a published analysis. In the pivotal trial, the vaccine's proven benefit came added on top of standard chemotherapy and radiation; the newer question is how much the immune response can carry on its own. A UCLA trial is now testing that in patients whose tumors have returned, adding #Keytruda (pembrolizumab), the checkpoint antibody from $MRK, in a regimen built entirely around the immune response with no chemotherapy or radiation in it at all. Its interim survival curve shows the shape the biology predicts. In the arm given the vaccine and Keytruda together after surgery, the curve does not fall away but flattens into a plateau, with roughly 65% of patients still alive well past the point where recurrent glioblastoma kills nearly everyone. That plateau is the signature of a response that took hold and lasted, the type 1 attack forming durable immune memory so that once the disease is controlled it stays controlled. That is where this points, and where it is already arriving, a treatment that works through the response itself, one that could in time lean less on the harsh radiation and chemotherapy that have defined glioblastoma care and barely moved its survival. These are interim results, from Prins, Cloughesy, and Liau at UCLA. ๐Ÿ” ๐—ฃ๐—”๐—ฅ๐—ง ๐—ง๐—ช๐—ข: ๐—œ๐—ฆ ๐—œ๐—ง ๐—ฅ๐—˜๐—”๐—Ÿ? The trial was randomized, an independent experiment shows the outside comparison is trustworthy, and every separate check points the same way. ๐Ÿค” ๐—ง๐—ต๐—ฒ ๐—ผ๐—ฏ๐—ท๐—ฒ๐—ฐ๐˜๐—ถ๐—ผ๐—ป, ๐—ฎ๐—ป๐—ฑ ๐˜„๐—ต๐˜† ๐—ถ๐˜ ๐—บ๐—ถ๐˜€๐˜€๐—ฒ๐˜€ ๐˜๐—ต๐—ฒ ๐—บ๐—ฎ๐—ฟ๐—ธ So much for what happened; the harder question is whether to believe it. The trial has the feature critics attacked: it could not keep a normal placebo group, because patients assigned to placebo were allowed, by design and by medical ethics, to switch to the vaccine once their cancer returned, and almost all did. That erased the internal comparison, so survival was measured against closely matched patients from other completed trials, an approach called an external control, which critics argued could tilt toward the vaccine. What the objection misses is where the randomization went. This was a randomized, blinded trial. The patients who got the vaccine were assigned to it at random, not hand-picked, so the treated group is an ordinary slice of the trial population, not a favorable one. The crossover removed the placebo group but never touched how patients were assigned. That leaves exactly one place for bias to enter, the outside comparison group, which is precisely what the next checks test. โœ… ๐—ง๐—ต๐—ฒ ๐—ฐ๐—ต๐—ฒ๐—ฐ๐—ธ ๐˜๐—ต๐—ฎ๐˜ ๐—บ๐—ฎ๐—ธ๐—ฒ๐˜€ ๐—ถ๐˜ ๐˜๐—ฟ๐˜‚๐˜€๐˜๐˜„๐—ผ๐—ฟ๐˜๐—ต๐˜† Before trusting a scale to weigh something unknown, you confirm it reads zero with nothing on it. That is what the calibration does, and it is the strongest part of the case. A separate, independent randomized trial called INSIGhT was run through the very same external-control method, and it gave two answers. First, three experimental drugs that had already failed were run through it, and it correctly found nothing (hazard ratios of 1.00, 0.93, and 0.88): the method does not manufacture a benefit where none exists. Second, INSIGhT's external controls were set head to head against its own randomized internal controls, and they were statistically indistinguishable. In this disease, an external control reproduces the answer a real randomized control would have given, and because that trial belonged to a different group, no one can say a sponsor graded its own work. The one place bias could enter, the control side, is the one place an independent randomized experiment certified as clean. There is a deeper fit worth naming, and it is what makes the two halves of this case one. The same instrument that reported those three failures as failures reads the vaccine as a success, and the biology says why: those drugs could not hold a tumor this varied, and the vaccine builds the broad, lasting response that finally does. One method, opposite readings, and one mechanism behind both. The statistics and the biology are not two arguments. They are the same argument seen twice. ๐Ÿƒ ๐—ช๐—ฎ๐˜€ ๐˜๐—ต๐—ฒ ๐—ฐ๐—ผ๐—บ๐—ฝ๐—ฎ๐—ฟ๐—ถ๐˜€๐—ผ๐—ป ๐˜€๐˜๐—ฎ๐—ฐ๐—ธ๐—ฒ๐—ฑ ๐—ถ๐—ป ๐˜๐—ต๐—ฒ ๐˜ƒ๐—ฎ๐—ฐ๐—ฐ๐—ถ๐—ป๐—ฒ'๐˜€ ๐—ณ๐—ฎ๐˜ƒ๐—ผ๐—ฟ? A natural worry is that the outside comparison was arranged after the fact to flatter the vaccine. The trial was built to prevent that. The patients to compare against, and the rules for matching them, were fixed in writing before anyone saw results, and an independent firm, not the company, chose the comparison trials against those rules. The trial also switched its main measure partway through, from delaying tumor growth to overall survival, but that was not a maneuver: immune treatments cause a harmless swelling that mimics tumor growth on scans and made the growth measure unreliable, and the switch was made while everyone was still blinded. Three further checks point the same way. Survival in this disease has not improved over the years the comparison spans, so same-era controls are sound. When the borrowed controls were tested directly, the comparison came out conservative rather than flattering. And the controls were counted from the same point in the disease as the vaccine patients, so neither side got a head start. Where the comparison can err, it errs against the drug. ๐Ÿ”ฌ ๐—ง๐—ต๐—ฒ ๐—บ๐—ผ๐—ฟ๐—ฒ ๐—ฐ๐—ฎ๐—ฟ๐—ฒ๐—ณ๐˜‚๐—น ๐—ฎ๐—ป๐—ฎ๐—น๐˜†๐˜€๐—ถ๐˜€ ๐—บ๐—ฎ๐—ฑ๐—ฒ ๐˜๐—ต๐—ฒ ๐—ฏ๐—ฒ๐—ป๐—ฒ๐—ณ๐—ถ๐˜ ๐—ฏ๐—ถ๐—ด๐—ด๐—ฒ๐—ฟ, ๐—ป๐—ผ๐˜ ๐˜€๐—บ๐—ฎ๐—น๐—น๐—ฒ๐—ฟ The first comparison used whole groups. A sharper one became possible once patient-level records from three other trials could be obtained, pairing each vaccine patient with controls matched on the traits that drive survival in glioblastoma, above all MGMT methylation status, matched exactly, plus age, sex, extent of surgery, residual disease, and performance status. When the comparison got sharper, the benefit grew in every one of these analyses. The original cohort-level estimate was 2.8 months. Patient-level matching across the three trials put the gain between 3.4 and 6.3 months, and a method that weights patients rather than pairing them put it between 3.4 and 4.3, with several of the matched comparisons roughly doubling the original figure. The hazard ratio moved the same way, from 0.80 to between 0.69 and 0.77. The direction matters. A real effect blurred by crude matching gets clearer when the matching improves, while a biased one tends to shrink. It got stronger. ๐Ÿ•ต๏ธ ๐—›๐—ผ๐˜„ ๐—บ๐˜‚๐—ฐ๐—ต ๐—ต๐—ถ๐—ฑ๐—ฑ๐—ฒ๐—ป ๐—ฏ๐—ถ๐—ฎ๐˜€ ๐˜„๐—ผ๐˜‚๐—น๐—ฑ ๐—ถ๐˜ ๐˜๐—ฎ๐—ธ๐—ฒ ๐˜๐—ผ ๐—ฒ๐˜…๐—ฝ๐—น๐—ฎ๐—ถ๐—ป ๐˜๐—ต๐—ถ๐˜€ ๐—ฎ๐˜„๐—ฎ๐˜† A fair question is how much hidden bias it would take to erase the result. Statisticians measure that with the E-value, and here a hidden factor would have to be about as strong as age is on survival, would also have to drive who received the vaccine, and would have to have escaped the decades of research that mapped every known risk factor in this disease. A second, independent check, Rosenbaum's Gamma, comes at it from the other side, asking how large an unseen imbalance between matched patients it would take to break the result, and it reaches the same verdict. Every factor strong enough to matter was already matched. A hidden one that clears that bar is not plausible. ๐Ÿ”’ ๐—ช๐—ต๐˜† ๐˜๐—ต๐—ฒ ๐—ฟ๐—ฒ๐˜€๐˜‚๐—น๐˜ ๐—ถ๐˜€ ๐—ต๐—ฎ๐—ฟ๐—ฑ ๐˜๐—ผ ๐—ณ๐—ฎ๐—ธ๐—ฒ The strongest point is not any single result. It is that a hidden bias big enough to explain the effect away would have to produce the same answer in every independent test at once: โ€ข The independent randomized calibration trial. โ€ข Three separate comparison trials, drawn from different studies. โ€ข Two different statistical methods that handle the data in different ways. โ€ข A separate pooled analysis of other dendritic-cell vaccine trials. โ€ข The internal math of the survival curve, which points to the same result (about 0.71 at five years) that the patient matching found. And it would have to fall in the exact direction the biology predicted before any data existed: a slow, widening benefit concentrated in long-term survivors. A single hidden factor that could forge all of that at once is not a hidden factor. It is a coincidence that does not happen. ๐Ÿฉบ ๐—ฃ๐—”๐—ฅ๐—ง ๐—ง๐—›๐—ฅ๐—˜๐—˜: ๐—ช๐—›๐—”๐—ง ๐—œ๐—ง ๐— ๐—˜๐—”๐—ก๐—ฆ The drug is nearly free of harm, the evidence fits an established and approved regulatory path, and what remains unrun changes nothing about the case. ๐Ÿ›ก๏ธ ๐—ง๐—ต๐—ฒ ๐˜€๐—ฎ๐—ณ๐—ฒ๐˜๐˜† Two things decide whether a real effect reaches patients: whether the drug is safe enough to use, and whether regulators will accept the evidence. The first is settled. Across 2,151 doses, only five serious side effects were even possibly related to the vaccine, with no autoimmunity and no cytokine storm. It is made once, in about eight days, then stored and given as a simple injection. When a treatment barely harms, the benefit needed to justify it falls, and the benefit here clears that lower bar easily. โณ ๐—ช๐—ต๐˜† ๐˜๐—ต๐—ฒ ๐˜€๐˜๐—ฟ๐—ผ๐—ป๐—ด๐—ฒ๐—ฟ ๐—ฑ๐—ฎ๐˜๐—ฎ ๐—ฎ๐—ฝ๐—ฝ๐—ฒ๐—ฎ๐—ฟ๐—ฒ๐—ฑ ๐—ผ๐—ป๐—น๐˜† ๐—ป๐—ผ๐˜„ A reasonable person asks why the sharper analysis appeared in 2026 and not in 2023. The answer is access, not choice. The patient-level analysis was written into the trial's plan from the start, to run if and when the data could be obtained. The company tried and could not get it in 2023, because the trials that held it had not released it; it became available later through a data-sharing repository, on the data owners' timeline, not the company's. The stronger analysis was always the plan. It was waiting on data that other parties control. ๐Ÿ”„ ๐—ฃ๐—ฎ๐˜๐—ถ๐—ฒ๐—ป๐˜๐˜€ ๐˜„๐—ต๐—ผ๐˜€๐—ฒ ๐—ฐ๐—ฎ๐—ป๐—ฐ๐—ฒ๐—ฟ ๐—ฟ๐—ฒ๐˜๐˜‚๐—ฟ๐—ป๐—ฒ๐—ฑ ๐—ฎ๐—น๐˜€๐—ผ ๐—ฏ๐—ฒ๐—ป๐—ฒ๐—ณ๐—ถ๐˜๐—ฒ๐—ฑ The vaccine helped not only newly diagnosed patients but also those whose tumor had already come back, and there the effect was the largest seen anywhere in the trial. In that group, median survival ran 13.2 months from recurrence against 7.8 for the controls. The separation opened immediately, with 90.6% of vaccine patients alive at six months against 64.0% of controls, and the lead held to the later marks, where survival more than doubled: 20.7% against 9.6% at two years, 11.1% against 5.1% at two and a half. These are the original cohort-level results, already published. The high-resolution patient-level matching that was applied to the newly diagnosed group has not yet been done here, for a practical reason: it needs patient records from other recurrent-cancer trials, held by a European research organization that shares them through its own formal request. Obtaining them is a routine next step, not an obstacle, and the newly diagnosed experience suggests the sharper analysis would only make the recurrent result stronger. The approval case rests on the newly diagnosed evidence, so nothing important depends on this step; it would simply sharpen a result that is already the strongest in the trial. ๐Ÿ›๏ธ ๐—ช๐—ต๐—ฎ๐˜ ๐˜๐—ต๐—ถ๐˜€ ๐—บ๐—ฒ๐—ฎ๐—ป๐˜€ ๐—ณ๐—ผ๐—ฟ ๐—ฎ๐—ฝ๐—ฝ๐—ฟ๐—ผ๐˜ƒ๐—ฎ๐—น Regulators do not treat an external control as a first choice, but the MHRA's guideline allows it in exactly this situation: a severe disease where a placebo trial is not ethical or feasible, and an effect large enough to interpret despite the design. The guideline even gives its own worked example of an acceptable external control, and it reads almost like a description of this trial: a rare disease, no ethical placebo, same-era standard-of-care controls, an objective survival endpoint, and an effect too large to blame on bias. DCVax-L fits on every count, and it was the first medicine ever to receive the MHRA's Promising Innovative Medicine designation, which asks essentially the same questions. The newly diagnosed case carries the decision on its own evidence, and regulators weigh that evidence against the disease it treats: in a cancer this lethal, with nothing better on offer, the question is whether the benefit is large, clear, and consistent enough to act on, and a benefit of this size, pointing the same way from every direction, is. ๐Ÿ“œ ๐—ง๐—ต๐—ถ๐˜€ ๐—ต๐—ฎ๐˜€ ๐—ฏ๐—ฒ๐—ฒ๐—ป ๐—ฑ๐—ผ๐—ป๐—ฒ ๐—ฏ๐—ฒ๐—ณ๐—ผ๐—ฟ๐—ฒ, ๐—ฎ๐—ป๐—ฑ ๐—ฎ๐—ฝ๐—ฝ๐—ฟ๐—ผ๐˜ƒ๐—ฒ๐—ฑ External controls are not a novelty invented for this drug. Over the past two decades they have factored into roughly forty-five drug approvals by the United States regulator, each granted under the conditions that apply here: a serious or rare disease, a placebo that would be unethical, and high unmet need. Regulators do not grant this lightly. They grant it when the disease is serious, its course is predictable and objectively measured, and the effect is large. Glioblastoma meets all three. The named cases cover every part of this disease's profile. Defibrotide, for a life-threatening transplant complication, was approved on a propensity-score comparison to a historical control, the same kind of method used here. Blinatumomab, for an aggressive relapsed leukemia, is the precedent for a fast-killing cancer, cleared by both the United States and European regulators. Cerliponase alfa is the precedent for a fatal brain disease, cleared by both agencies on treated patients versus a matched natural-history group. Glioblastoma is both at once, a fast-killing cancer of the brain, read by the same method, so no part of its profile lacks a close approved precedent. And on the one axis that governs how far an external-control result can be trusted, DCVax-L goes beyond all three. Each of those drugs was tested in a single-arm trial, with no randomization at all. DCVax-L began as a randomized trial and became an external-control comparison only when ethics consumed its placebo group. It sits in that tradition, and at the top of it. ๐ŸŽฏ ๐—ง๐—ต๐—ฒ ๐—ฏ๐—ผ๐˜๐˜๐—ผ๐—บ ๐—น๐—ถ๐—ป๐—ฒ This began as a randomized trial. Medical ethics forced it into an external-control comparison. Every independent way of checking it, on different data and different math, points the same direction, and the biology predicted that direction in advance. The first analysis did not overstate the vaccine's effect. Read with the right tools, it understated it.

Andrew Caravello, DO

10,959 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 2 ไธชๆœˆๅ‰

๐—ฆ๐—”๐—ก๐—จ๐—ฆ๐—œ'๐—ฆ ๐—ฆ๐—ฃ๐—˜๐—˜๐—–๐—›: "๐—ง๐—›๐—˜ ๐—–๐—›๐—œ๐—ก๐—˜๐—ฆ๐—˜ ๐—›๐—”๐—ฉ๐—˜ ๐—–๐—›๐—œ๐—ก๐—”, ๐—ง๐—›๐—˜ ๐—œ๐—ก๐——๐—œ๐—”๐—ก๐—ฆ ๐—›๐—”๐—ฉ๐—˜ ๐—œ๐—ก๐——๐—œ๐—”, ๐—ง๐—›๐—˜ ๐— ๐—”๐—Ÿ๐—”๐—ฌ๐—ฆ ๐—›๐—”๐—ฉ๐—˜ ๐—ข๐—ก๐—Ÿ๐—ฌ ๐—ง๐—›๐—˜ ๐— ๐—”๐—Ÿ๐—”๐—ฌ ๐—Ÿ๐—”๐—ก๐——." Some supporters of Pakatan Harapan have criticised me for supposedly remaining silent over the recent speech by Kedah Menteri Besar Dato' Seri Sanusi Md Nor, which has sparked widespread controversy and is now under police investigation. This is not the first time that the Kedah Menteri Besar's speeches, many of which have carried strong racial undertones, have generated public outrage and attracted police scrutiny. His latest speech, delivered during the Negeri Sembilan state election campaign, has also created friction between Barisan Nasional and Perikatan Nasional. In fact, UMNO President Dato' Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi openly signalled that Sanusi was no longer welcome to campaign in Negeri Sembilan. As the backlash intensified, Sanusi and his supporters began offering various explanations. One of the familiar defences often used by politicians was that his words had supposedly been taken out of context or distorted by the media. He has also threatened legal action against numerous individuals and organisations. At the same time, he published a lengthy statement in English, citing historical British politicians whom he claimed shared similar views in an attempt to justify his position. I will be discussing this issue in much greater depth in YBM Podcast Episode 57, airing this Friday, 31 July, at 9:00 p.m. For now, however, I would like to introduce one important perspective regarding the doctrine that lies beneath speeches like these. But before we go any further, what exactly did Sanusi say? This is the relevant excerpt from his speech in Jempol, beginning at around the 14-minute mark: "The Malays no longer have any land. The Malays only have this Malay land. The Indians have India. The Chinese have China..." Those defending Sanusi argue that he was merely stating a historical or factual reality, that this is the homeland of the Malays. Those offended by his remarks argue that the real message goes far beyond the literal words. They believe the underlying implication is that non-Malays are merely immigrants who will always have another homeland besides Malaysia. Whether one agrees with either interpretation often depends on one's own political instincts and emotional inclinations. My analysis, however, takes a somewhat different direction. I am less interested in debating the literal or implied meaning of the speech itself. Instead, I am interested in examining the much deeper question that is rarely discussed openly, the underlying doctrine that continues to produce politicians like Sanusi Md Nor, and speeches like these, generation after generation. At its core, this is a question about the kind of society we have chosen to build, and the kind of Malaysian society we want to become in the future. Many of the political campaigns we have witnessed over the years, whether under slogans such as Penyatuan Ummah, Muafakat Nasional, or claims that "the Malays only have this land", ultimately stem from the very same political doctrine. That doctrine can be summarised quite simply. It says that the Malays are the rightful masters of this country. If you are a Malaysian citizen who is not Malay, you are welcome to live here, but ultimately you should accept whatever decisions the Malays make. Those decisions are to be determined by Malay political leaders, acting on behalf of the Malay community. Under this doctrine, non-Malay political leaders who choose to cooperate with these Malay-led parties are viewed as acceptable because they are seen as respecting and submitting to this framework. On the other hand, non-Malay leaders who contest elections against them are portrayed as being disrespectful, challenging Malay authority, and threatening Malay political dominance. When a majority of non-Malay voters support parties outside this political coalition, the contest is no longer framed as one political party competing against another. Instead, it is portrayed as non-Malays confronting Malays. Surprisingly few people have examined the long-term political consequences of organising an entire nation around such a doctrine. Several important questions naturally arise. First, has this doctrine succeeded in creating genuine harmony within Malaysian society? So far, the answer appears to be no. As long as this doctrine exists, there will always be those who believe that the Federal Constitution guarantees equal rights to every Malaysian regardless of race, while simultaneously protecting the special position and legitimate rights of the Bumiputera community. This means the doctrine can only deliver temporary political victories. Over time, the political pendulum will continue swinging from one extreme to the other. The greatest beneficiaries of this cycle are political leaders, both Malay and non-Malay, who obtain positions of power, salaries, and influence. Meanwhile, the everyday lives of ordinary Malaysians, regardless of race, remain largely unchanged. Second, has this doctrine succeeded in elevating the economic standing of the Malays? Again, the evidence suggests otherwise. The statistics tell a remarkably consistent story. Even when governments were overwhelmingly Malay, such as during the long years of UMNO rule, when roughly 80 percent of the Cabinet was Malay and the government commanded a two-thirds parliamentary majority, Bumiputera equity ownership remained stubbornly around 17 to 18 percent. Governments have changed. Political coalitions have changed. Prime ministers have come and gone. Yet Bumiputera equity ownership has barely moved. Whenever a new generation of leaders embracing this doctrine comes to power, they publicly champion Malay political supremacy. But behind closed doors, they shake hands with many of the very same Chinese and Indian business tycoons whom they criticised while they were in opposition. That is why governments may change, yet the underlying structure of the economy rarely does. The only thing that changes is which group of politically connected elites, Malay, Chinese, or Indian gets to share in the nation's wealth. Third, has this doctrine succeeded in eliminating corruption? In reality, it has often contributed to the very problem it claims to oppose. A political doctrine built upon ethnic dominance inevitably concentrates enormous discretionary power in the hands of those controlling the government. They decide who receives licences. They decide who wins government contracts. They decide who enjoys monopolies. Governments may change, but those licences, contracts, and monopolies continue to circulate within a relatively small circle of well-connected individuals. Within that circle are Malays, Chinese, and Indians alike, many of whom eventually become close allies of those who previously campaigned most aggressively under this doctrine. As long as this doctrine remains unchallenged, insufficiently examined, and poorly understood, Malaysia's political pendulum will continue swinging back and forth. At one point, this doctrine dominates public discourse, and the parties promoting it win power. Once in government, many of them repeat the same old practices while hiding behind the rhetoric of protecting Malay rights. Over time, however, the public begins to witness corruption, administrative failures, abuse of power, and growing displays of wealth among the political elite. The pendulum then swings in the opposite direction, and they lose power. But if the new government fails to challenge this doctrine by governing better and delivering meaningful reform, it unintentionally breathes new life into the very doctrine it defeated. Before long, the political pendulum begins swinging back once again. That, in my view, is precisely where Malaysian politics stands today. What I have shared here is only the beginning of a much broader discussion. I hope you will join me for YBM Podcast Episode 57 this Friday, 31 July, where I will explore these ideas in much greater depth.

Rafizi Ramli

19,405 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 1 ไธชๆœˆๅ‰

The Wikipedia wars As Wikipedia approaches its 25th anniversary in 2026, its open editing model faces a growing challenge: coordinated edit wars. In these campaigns, Kremlin-aligned actors try to rewrite history, launder disinformation, and lock distorted narratives into one of the worldโ€™s most trusted reference platforms. Founded on the idea that volunteers could collaboratively build a neutral, reliable encyclopaedia, Wikipedia has become one of the most influential information platforms ever created. It is often described as the worldโ€™s largest crowd-sourced knowledge project, built on consensus and verifiable sources. In recent years, however, it has also become a frontline in geopolitical information warfare. This is most visible in so-called edit wars: prolonged conflicts where opposing groups repeatedly overwrite and revise articles to control historical narratives. Since Russiaโ€™s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, these battles have intensified. Kremlin-aligned actors have systematically targeted articles related to Eastern Europe, the Soviet past, and contemporary political leaders. Estonia and especially EU leader Kaja Kallas, Estoniaโ€™s former prime minister, have been frequent targets. What are edit wars? An edit war happens when editors repeatedly change the same content instead of resolving disputes through discussion. Wikipedia officially discourages this behaviour and emphasises consensus, neutrality, and reliable sources. In practice, however, edit wars can and do break out. Coordinated editors can use endurance, procedural rules, and administrator complaints to exhaust good faith contributors. The goal is rarely to win a single argument. Instead, it is to wear down opposition, freeze pages at favourable moments, and normalise contested language. Once a page is locked or protected, the version in place gains a sense of legitimacy, even if it reflects a distorted view. Edit wars exploit open systems, operate over long periods, and aim to embed manipulated narratives into reference material rather than spreading short-lived falsehoods. Multiple investigations show that Wikipedia manipulation increased sharply after Russiaโ€™s invasion of Ukraine. Russian-language Wikipedia and parts of the English version became arenas for systematic narrative control, especially as independent Russian media was shut down. Wikipediaโ€™s openness, once a strength, had suddenly become a vulnerability. Coordinated editor networks have worked to soften descriptions of Russian aggression, reframe invasions as โ€˜conflictsโ€™, and question the legitimacy of post-Soviet states. These efforts rely on subtle wording changes, selective sourcing, and procedural tactics rather than obvious vandalism. Estonia and EU officials as targets Estonia shows how edit wars are used for historical revisionism and political influence. Since 2022, English-language Wikipedia articles about Estoniaโ€™s history, statehood, and politics have faced sustained pressure. One recurring tactic has been changing the birthplaces of hundreds of Estonian public figures from โ€˜Estoniaโ€™ to โ€˜Estonian SSR, Soviet Unionโ€™, despite the legal consensus that Estonia was occupied, not legitimately incorporated, by the USSR between 1940 and 1991. This is not a minor wording issue. Calling Estonia a โ€˜Soviet republicโ€™ supports the Russian claim that the Baltic states voluntarily joined the USSR and directly contradicts the position of Estonia, the EU, NATO countries, and international law. Historical topics have also been targeted. The Estonian War of Independence between 1918 and 1920 has at times been reframed as an โ€˜offensive campaignโ€™ or โ€˜separatism from Russiaโ€™, language that closely mirrors contemporary Kremlin rhetoric. High-profile figures are especially vulnerable because their pages attract constant attention and frequent administrative action. The Wikipedia article on Kaja Kallas has repeatedly been edited to reflect Russian-aligned interpretations of history and geopolitics. At key moments, the page was locked while these contested narratives were in place, blocking corrective edits. Page protection, meant to prevent disruption, instead helped freeze a favourable version of the article. This shows how procedural tools can be exploited as effectively as false information. Why Wikipedia matters Wikipedia is not just another website. It ranks highly in search results and serves as a default reference for journalists, students, policymakers, and the public. Winning an edit war on Wikipedia helps turn contested narratives into global โ€˜common knowledgeโ€™. For Kremlin-aligned actors, this makes Wikipedia a valuable target. Making small wording changes, downplaying occupation, reframing wars, and questioning democratic legitimacy can slowly erode our understanding of history and present-day aggression. Estoniaโ€™s experience shows how smaller states are especially exposed. Because Wikipedia is also a core source for AI systems, the stakes are even higher. Recent studies indicate that Wikipedia is one of the most cited sources for ChatGPT, effectively serving as a foundational knowledge base for how the AI understands and retrieves information. Manipulating articles today can therefore shape how future technologies understand, reproduce, and repeat history. This practice is referred to as LLM grooming, the deliberate attempt to influence large language models by seeding biased or distorted narratives into the sources they rely on. The rise in Wikipedia edit wars since 2022 reflects a broader shift in information warfare. Instead of loud propaganda, actors now use procedural, platform-native manipulation. Estonian history and Kaja Kallas are not isolated cases but targets of coordinated action. And as long as open-knowledge platforms shape how societies understand history and politics, sites like Wikipedia will remain contested ground.

EUvsDisinfo

343,369 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 6 ไธชๆœˆๅ‰

Our first duty as members of Parliament is to protect Australians. Fifteen women linked to the listed terrorist organisation ISIS have returned to Australia while this government has been in office. Two women facing serious charges, one for alleged terrorism offences and one for alleged ISIS-related slavery offences, are already free on bail in our community. Now it is reported that thirteen men who served ISIS are being held in prison in Baghdad. They include Perth-born doctor Tareq Kamleh, known as โ€˜Dr Jihadโ€™. Kamleh travelled to Syria to join ISIS, appeared in terrorist propaganda videos. In one propaganda video, Kamleh urged Muslims to travel to ISIS-controlled territory or wage jihad elsewhere. He declared that โ€˜jihad itself isnโ€™t only in the lands of Syria or Iraqโ€™ and that fighting for the cause could occur โ€˜anywhereโ€™. Kamleh and other individuals who reportedly served ISIS may soon be released from custody and seek to return to Australia. The Home Affairs Minister says existing law may require him to permit their return. That is not good enough. If the law prevents a minister from protecting Australians, Parliament must change the law. Even more concerning is that the conduct of the Home Affairs Minister suggests he is aiding this return. Handwritten departmental notes from a secret meeting with advocates lobbying for the return of these ISIS-linked individuals recorded remarks attributed to โ€˜TBโ€™, including โ€˜cโ€™ment to find a wayโ€™, โ€˜donโ€™t want govt to rule it outโ€™ and โ€˜success of first cohort will be great help after weโ€™ve got them homeโ€™. A separate record of the same secret meeting reveals that the Minister thanked advocates for keeping their lobbying out of the media. A departmental official was then asked to leave to enable a โ€˜frank discussionโ€™. Before leaving, the official recorded the Minister saying that there โ€˜may be a way to achieve the same outcome without government undertakingsโ€™. On their face, these records show the Minister discussing how the return of ISIS-linked individuals might be achieved without a formal government undertaking, while thanking those involved for keeping the matter out of the media. That is incompatible with his most fundamental duty as Home Affairs Minister: to protect Australians. We do not know what was discussed after the departmental official left the room. We do not know whether any commitments were made, or whether any proposed pathway is being used to return male ISIS fighters. I recently wrote to the Leader of the Opposition, offering to work together to strengthen the Oppositionโ€™s bill. I received a response from him yesterday afternoon at 3:41pm. The Oppositionโ€™s bill from earlier this year is a step in the right direction, but it does not go far enough. Senator Duniam has acknowledged its central limitation: the Oppositionโ€™s bill does not prevent ISIS-linked individuals from entering Australia. That leaves the central problem unresolved. A bill that cannot prevent foreign terrorist fighters from returning does not adequately protect Australians. We have therefore prepared the Protecting Australians from Foreign Terrorist Fighters Bill 2026. The Bill would: ๐Ÿญ. ๐—–๐—ฟ๐—ฒ๐—ฎ๐˜๐—ฒ ๐—ฎ ๐—ณ๐—ผ๐—ฟ๐—ฒ๐—ถ๐—ด๐—ป ๐˜๐—ฒ๐—ฟ๐—ฟ๐—ผ๐—ฟ๐—ถ๐˜€๐˜ ๐—ณ๐—ถ๐—ด๐—ต๐˜๐—ฒ๐—ฟ ๐—ฒ๐˜…๐—ฐ๐—น๐˜‚๐˜€๐—ถ๐—ผ๐—ป ๐—ผ๐—ฟ๐—ฑ๐—ฒ๐—ฟ. The Home Affairs Minister could apply to the Federal Court to prevent a person from returning where the Court finds that the person voluntarily served, participated in or materially supported a listed terrorist organisation, would pose an unacceptable risk to Australians, and could not be safely managed by a less restrictive measure. ๐Ÿฎ. ๐—ฆ๐˜๐—ผ๐—ฝ ๐˜๐—ต๐—ฒ ๐—ฎ๐˜‚๐˜๐—ผ๐—บ๐—ฎ๐˜๐—ถ๐—ฐ ๐—ถ๐˜€๐˜€๐˜‚๐—ฒ ๐—ผ๐—ณ ๐—ฟ๐—ฒ๐˜๐˜‚๐—ฟ๐—ป ๐—ฝ๐—ฒ๐—ฟ๐—บ๐—ถ๐˜๐˜€ ๐˜„๐—ต๐—ถ๐—น๐—ฒ ๐˜๐—ต๐—ฒ ๐—–๐—ผ๐˜‚๐—ฟ๐˜ ๐—ฐ๐—ผ๐—ป๐˜€๐—ถ๐—ฑ๐—ฒ๐—ฟ๐˜€ ๐˜๐—ต๐—ฒ ๐—ฐ๐—ฎ๐˜€๐—ฒ. The Ministerโ€™s obligation to issue or consider a return permit would be suspended while the application is prepared and determined. ๐Ÿฏ. ๐—ฆ๐˜๐—ฟ๐—ฒ๐—ป๐—ด๐˜๐—ต๐—ฒ๐—ป ๐—ฏ๐—ฎ๐—ถ๐—น ๐—น๐—ฎ๐˜„๐˜€ ๐—ณ๐—ผ๐—ฟ ๐˜๐—ฒ๐—ฟ๐—ฟ๐—ผ๐—ฟ๐—ถ๐˜€๐—บ ๐—ผ๐—ณ๐—ณ๐—ฒ๐—ป๐—ฐ๐—ฒ๐˜€. Community safety and national security would be the paramount considerations. Childcare, family circumstances, accommodation or electronic monitoring would not, by themselves, amount to exceptional circumstances justifying bail. ๐Ÿฐ. ๐—ฆ๐˜๐—ฟ๐—ฒ๐—ป๐—ด๐˜๐—ต๐—ฒ๐—ป ๐—ฝ๐—ฎ๐˜€๐˜€๐—ฝ๐—ผ๐—ฟ๐˜ ๐—ฝ๐—ผ๐˜„๐—ฒ๐—ฟ๐˜€. The Minister could refuse, cancel or suspend a passport where a person is subject to an exclusion order or has been charged with or convicted of a terrorism offence. ๐Ÿฑ. ๐— ๐—ฎ๐—ธ๐—ฒ ๐—ถ๐˜ ๐—ฎ๐—ป ๐—ผ๐—ณ๐—ณ๐—ฒ๐—ป๐—ฐ๐—ฒ ๐˜๐—ผ ๐—ผ๐—ฟ๐—ด๐—ฎ๐—ป๐—ถ๐˜€๐—ฒ ๐—ผ๐—ฟ ๐—ณ๐—ฎ๐—ฐ๐—ถ๐—น๐—ถ๐˜๐—ฎ๐˜๐—ฒ ๐—ฎ๐—ป ๐˜‚๐—ป๐—ฎ๐˜‚๐˜๐—ต๐—ผ๐—ฟ๐—ถ๐˜€๐—ฒ๐—ฑ ๐—ฟ๐—ฒ๐˜๐˜‚๐—ฟ๐—ป. A person who arranges the entry of a terrorist fighter without Commonwealth authority could face up to 10 years in prison. The Bill preserves judicial oversight. It enables the Minister and the Court to act on advice from Australiaโ€™s national security agencies. An exclusion order could remain in force for up to two years. Any further order would require a fresh application, updated national security advice and findings based on the risk at that time. One Nationโ€™s position is absolute. People who choose to serve a listed terrorist organisation like ISIS over Australia, and who remain an unacceptable risk to the Australian community, should not be allowed to return. Not with a permit. Not under surveillance. Not at all. Australians should not be forced to bear an unacceptable terrorism risk because Parliament and the Home Affairs Minister failed to act. We want to work constructively with the cross bench and other elected Members. We welcome any comments or proposed amendments that would strengthen the Bill or improve its operation. The safety of Australians should come first. I hope we can work together to close this gap in the law. #PaulineHanson #OneNation #ISIS #ProtectingAustralia #Government #Albo #Burke #Minister #AngusTaylor #AnthonyAlbanese #PrimeMinister #FireTheLiar

Pauline Hanson ๐Ÿ‡ฆ๐Ÿ‡บ

61,084 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 1 ไธชๆœˆๅ‰

A National Inquiry That Refuses to Name the Guilty Will Fail In 2013, the Home Affairs Select Committee recorded that senior officials in Rochdale and Rotherham had failed in their duty of care to children subjected to organised sexual abuse. The Committee identified responsibility up the chain of command. It named the council Chief Executive, the Director of Childrenโ€™s Services, the Local Safeguarding Children Board, and individual practitioners. It recorded that senior figures claimed not to know about the abuse during years when it was documented by frontline staff. That claim of ignorance was rejected. The Committee stated it was no excuse. It stated that those in senior positions were responsible for the consequences of their inaction. Despite the conclusions of one of the most powerful government committees; - No criminal investigation into senior officials followed. - No police force opened misconduct inquiries into those named. - No minister referred the findings for prosecution. The Committee also recorded that Rotherham had secured 'no prosecutions relating to organised child sexual exploitation since 2010.' That finding was published in 2013. The first significant prosecutions in Rotherham relating to organised child sexual exploitation took place years later, following further public exposure and additional reports. Those prosecutions were brought ONLY against a handful of perpetrators. They did not include senior council officers, police commanders, or safeguarding leads identified in the earlier parliamentary findings. No individual named by Parliament in 2013 was charged. Political decisions taken after 2013 determined how these findings were handled. The Home Affairs Select Committee report was the closest the state came to pursuing those responsible for failing children and for suppressing the truth. It identified senior officials, rejected claims of ignorance, and stated that responsibility rested at the top. What followed was a retreat. The Jay Report documented prolonged abuse and institutional neglect in Rotherham. It confirmed the scale of harm already known to Parliament. It did not pursue criminal liability for senior officials. No referrals were made. Responsibility was redirected into local reform. Telford later confirmed industrial-scale exploitation and repeated police failure. Again, the findings did not lead to criminal proceedings against senior decision-makers. No prosecutions followed. In Greater Manchester, reviews were commissioned with terms that limited examination to organisational learning. Individual criminal responsibility was excluded from scope. That exclusion was accepted. No request was made to widen it. Across each case, the same decision was repeated; - record harm - exclude liability - move on. Language changed. Structures were altered. Senior figures exited quietly. Criminal accountability never followed. Only after years of pressure from victims, journalists, and campaigners has a National Inquiry been forced. That inquiry now sits at the same decision point reached in 2013. Whether to follow responsibility where Parliament already traced it or to retreat again. A National Inquiry has now been confirmed. Its Terms of Reference are being consulted on. Under the Inquiries Act 2005, an inquiry may act only within its Terms of Reference. If individual responsibility and criminal referral are not explicitly required, they can be lawfully avoided. Previous inquiries operated within those limits. Harm was described. Failures were recorded. Individuals were not named. Prosecution did not follow. This Inquiry will do the same unless its remit is written differently. What You Can Do Now Contact your MP and ask one question only. Will they write to Baroness Anne Longfield demanding that the Terms of Reference explicitly require the Inquiry to name individuals, examine political decision-making, make findings where conduct may meet criminal thresholds, and refer cases for prosecution. Responses will be published. Silence will be recorded. The consultation closes soon. After that, the outcome is already set. Use the draft below. Do not deviate from it. Subject: Will you write to Anne Longfield on Inquiry powers and accountability? Dear [MP NAME], In 2013, Parliamentโ€™s Home Affairs Select Committee recorded that senior officials had failed in their duty of care to children subjected to organised sexual abuse. Those officials were identified. No prosecutions followed. Under section 5(5) of the Inquiries Act 2005, a statutory inquiry may act only within its Terms of Reference. Unless individual accountability and referral are explicitly required, an inquiry can avoid naming individuals or recommending criminal investigation. Will you write to Baroness Anne Longfield requesting that the Terms of Reference explicitly require the Inquiry to: - identify by name individuals whose acts or omissions may meet criminal thresholds, including misconduct in public office; and - refer such cases to the police and the Crown Prosecution Service. Please confirm, yes or no, whether you will do so. Yours sincerely, [NAME] _________ I need your help. My work is free. No paywalls. No gatekeeping. No exclusions. Because the truth shouldnโ€™t belong only to those who can afford it. Iโ€™m Raja Miah MBE. For seven years, I led a campaign that exposed how senior Labour politicians helped protect Pakistani rape gangs and helped force a national inquiry. You wonโ€™t see me on the BBC. You wonโ€™t read my work in the legacy press. Thatโ€™s not an accident. I take this to a place from where there is no coming back. I document everything in my newsletter. Itโ€™s 100% free to read. If this work matters to you, if you believe it must continue, I need your backing. ๐Ÿ”ด Supporting me costs as little as 75p a week (ยฃ30 a year): ๐Ÿ‘‰ If you canโ€™t do monthly, a one-off contribution genuinely helps keep this alive: ๐Ÿ‘‰ ๐Ÿ‘‰ Weโ€™re up against a machine, politicians, police, officials, and media, working together to shrink, sanitise, and bury the truth. This work survives because of you. If youโ€™ve ever shared my posts, learned something, or felt less alone reading them, stand with me. Raja ๐Ÿ™

Raja Miah

11,114 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 7 ไธชๆœˆๅ‰

Why is it, that everywhere I go, it is White politicians that want to help hide the industrial scale gang rape of working class White girls? There is no Muslim bloc vote in Barrow. So why? My thoughts on what I witnessed last night in Barrow. _________ Secrecy and Shame in Barrow: Labour Councillors Vote to Block Gang Rape Inquiry While Instructing Survivors to Shut Up and Stay Silent In Barrow Town Hall, survivors of grooming gangs were instructed to shut up and sit in silence as Labour Councillors voted to help cover up the gang rape of the town's children. When a motion to include Barrow in the national inquiry came before the council, Labour councillors blocked it while Mayor Fred Chatfield tried to unlawfully stop the cameras from recording what was happening. When the team of three newly elected Reform councillors demanded a recorded vote so the public could see who stood where on this critical issue, Labour voted to prevent it, ensuring their names would be hidden from the record. A Simple Motion for Truth The motion, tabled by Reform UK councillor Sienna Churcher, was straightforward in its ask. It welcomed the National Inquiry announced in June 2025 and requested that Barrow Borough Council write to the Home Secretary, formally asking for the town to be included amongst those examined for historic and ongoing grooming gang activity. The motion recognised the courage of whistleblowers and survivors, called for transparency in all correspondence, and demanded public accountability. For survivors in Barrow who have lived with the knowledge that their town has been scarred by organised rape gangs just like Rotherham, Rochdale, Oldham, and Telford, this represented hope for official recognition of their suffering. Especially as, In February this year, that suffering was finally acknowledged in court when the truth was laid bare. The Takeaway That Became a Trafficking Hub Three brothers, Nasir, Naser, and Nabeel Miah, were convicted of horrific child sexual offences committed in Barrow and Leeds between 2008 and 2016. They targeted teenage girls, many as young as 14, who were groomed, abused, and traded like commodities in what the Crown Prosecution Service described as systematic sexual exploitation. The brothers had moved to Barrow to work in a family-owned takeaway that became, in Judge Unsworth's words, a "hub of criminality." Girls, some still in school uniforms, were picked up in cars, taken upstairs, plied with alcohol and drugs, and assaulted on what the court heard described as "scabby beds." Judge Unsworth, sentencing the men to a combined 70 years in prison, delivered words that should have resonated through every corner of Barrow's political establishment. "In Barrow, the brothers were not acting in the shadows but acting in plain sight. Each of the victims was vulnerable, and the brothers were confident that if the girls blew the whistle, they would not be believed." Instead of heeding that judicial warning about institutional blindness, Labour councillors chose to repeat the same pattern of denial that enabled the abuse in the first place. Because what Judge Unsworth's court had established was far worse than isolated incidents. A rape gang had been operating in Barrow. Men were coming to Barrow specifically to rape children. Children from Barrow were being trafficked to other towns and cities to be raped. The takeaway wasn't just a business but the centre of a trafficking network that moved vulnerable girls across county lines for sexual exploitation. The court heard how the Miah brothers had treated teenage girls as commodities, passing them between abusers and transporting them to Leeds. The Miah brothers didn't act in the shadows but acted in plain sight while local institutions looked the other way. Last night, those same institutions did it again. The Wrecking Amendment Labour's response to the original motion was to gut it entirely. Councillor Andy Coles proposed an amendment, seconded by William McEwan, that removed the specific call to write to the Home Secretary and replaced it with procedural camouflage about "allowing the independent commission and survivors to get on with the inquiry." Reform Councillor Colin Rudd called it exactly what it was. "This amendment adds no value. It undermines the motion. It sabotages the motion. This is a wrecking amendment." The councillor was correct. This was sabotage dressed up as sensitivity, taking a concrete act of solidarity and replacing it with the empty comfort of hoping someone else would act. The victims of the Miah brothers deserved action, not hope. The Mayor Who Tried to Stop the Cameras As the debate intensified, and Cllr Rudd quoted Judge Unsworth's words about acting "in plain sight" as a warning about institutional complacency., Mayor Fred Chatfield intervened to stop filming. "It's a public meeting," came the reply. "You've never asked permission to film," the Mayor snapped back. The exchange summed up everything wrong with how power operates in Barrow. When confronted with truth, the instinct wasn't reflection but control. Yet what Mayor Chatfield attempted wasn't just politically damaging but illegal. Under The Openness of Local Government Bodies Regulations 2014, introduced through the Localism Act 2011, members of the public and press have a statutory right to film, record, and report on all public council meetings. The legislation is unambiguous. "Council meetings are public meetings. The press and public have a right to attend, and to film, record, blog, or tweet during those meetings." No permission is required. No consent is necessary. The only exception would be if filming genuinely disrupted proceedings through shouting or obstruction, none of which occurred. Mayor Chatfield's instruction that filming required his permission violated both the letter and spirit of the Localism Act, which was designed to ensure democratic transparency. The Mayor should now resign for his actions. By attempting to silence the cameras, Mayor Chatfield didn't just betray the survivors watching from the gallery but broke the law designed to protect their right to witness democracy in action. The Vote They Didn't Want You to See When the Reform councillors called for a recorded vote so the public could know who supported Labour's amendment and who opposed it, Labour again chose secrecy. Under standing orders, a recorded vote requires majority support. Labour used this procedural rule to block transparency, ensuring their names would not appear in the public record. "So the councillors who stopped the inquiry can hide who they are," muttered one member of the public. "Disgraceful." "Shame on you." The chamber doors were closed for the final vote. The Survivors Watching Among those in the public gallery were women who had lived through the horrors being discussed. Some had waited years for recognition. Others still live in the same town where their abusers walked free. They listened as councillors downplayed the motion, softened the language, and eventually killed it entirely. Councillor Colin Rudd spoke directly to the chamber's shame. "Every person in every office, in every department, in every institution in this town failed these girls... and you're doing it again." His words carried the weight of judicial truth, but they didn't move the majority. The vote carried, the motion died, and the survivors left that hall knowing nothing had changed. The Labour Playbook of Denial What happened in Barrow follows the same playbook used across Britain's Labour strongholds when grooming gang scandals surface. Whether it's Oldham, Rotherham, or Telford, the institutional response never varies. Resist external scrutiny, prefer internal reviews that can be controlled, deploy procedural manoeuvring to protect the institution over the victims. The formula never varies. Protect reputations over truth, deploy bureaucratic language to avoid concrete action, and when challenged, retreat behind phrases like "independent commissions" as though process can substitute for courage. The questions are obvious. If everyone truly wants accountability, why block a letter to the Home Secretary? Why stop the filming? Why refuse a recorded vote? Because they understand that public accountability requires public records, and public records create public consequences. The Continuing Cover-Up Last night's meeting exposed the mechanism by which grooming gang scandals are managed across Britain's local authorities. This wasn't incompetence or confusion but a deliberate strategy deployed with surgical precision. Here's how it works. Acknowledge the problem exists but only after court proceedings make denial impossible. Express concern and sympathy while blocking any external examination that might reveal institutional culpability. Deploy procedural manoeuvring to prevent public accountability by killing recorded votes, stopping filming, and sanitising minutes. The pattern is so consistent it might as well be written in a manual. Oldham Council used identical tactics when faced with demands for transparency over Operation Augusta. Rotherham's political leadership employed the same playbook during the Casey Review fallout. The strategy works because it allows politicians to appear concerned while ensuring nothing changes. But Barrow's case reveals something more disturbing. The Miah brothers operated their trafficking network from 2008 to 2016, eight years of systematic abuse while local institutions looked the other way. Children were being transported across county lines for rape while Barrow Council carried on with business as usual. When survivors finally saw their abusers jailed, they might have hoped for institutional recognition and reform. Instead, they got Andy Coles and William McEwan drafting amendments to avoid external scrutiny. They got Fred Chatfield trying to silence cameras. They got Labour councillors voting to hide their names from public records. This goes beyond political embarrassment. It's institutional betrayal that mirrors the same complacency that enabled the Miah brothers to operate with impunity. The children who were trafficked from that Barrow takeaway deserved better then. The survivors watching from the gallery deserved better last night. It is now up to the people of Barrow to decide if they want better politicians representing them. _________ This isn't about politics anymore. It's about preservation of a ruling clique defending its own survival, even if it means abandoning the very people they swore to protect. The nation does not need silence. It needs truth. This is not only a child abuse scandal. It is a crisis of truth, trust and governance in modern Britain. I am Raja Miah. For seven years, I led a small team that exposed how politicians protected the rape gangs. I cannot do this on my own. I need you to stand with me and help make sure the National Inquiry we have all fought for is not a whitewash. Weโ€™re running out of time. Without the numbers, they will win. Itโ€™s as simple as that. ๐Ÿ”ด Subscribe to my newsletter โ€“ itโ€™s free. Or support the work for just 75p a week (ยฃ3/month or ยฃ30/year). Whatever you do, please subscribe; ๐Ÿ‘‰ This is the fight. This is the moment. There will not be another ๐Ÿ”ด Prefer a one-off contribution? ๐Ÿ‘‰ ๐Ÿ‘‰ No corporate sponsors. No party machine. Just you and thousands of ordinary people who know whatโ€™s at stake. Weโ€™ve come this far. Help finish it. Raja Miah MBE

Raja Miah

105,503 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 9 ไธชๆœˆๅ‰

When Judge Napolitano asked me on his show how Syria ended up with Abu Mohammed al-Jolani as its โ€œpresident,โ€ I could almost hear the cognitive dissonance on the other side of the screen. How does a man who was once the emir of al-Qaeda in Syria, a co-founder of ISIS by any reasonable historical reading of his trajectory, become Washingtonโ€™s chosen man in Damascus? For me, the answer is not a mystery. It is the logical end of a dirty war that began not with Syrian protesters in 2011, but in an American-run prison camp in Iraq years earlier. And if anyone still suspected this was โ€œjust a conspiracy theory,โ€ a former CIA officer โ€“ John Kiriakou, who went to prison for exposing CIA torture โ€“ has now said publicly what many of us have long argued: Jolani is, in all likelihood, a CIA asset. Letโ€™s start with the timeline, because the timeline alone already screams โ€œintelligence operation.โ€ Abu Mohammed al-Jolani was in a CIA-run prison in Iraq โ€“ Camp Bucca โ€“ alongside another familiar name: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Both men were released in early 2011. โ€œCoincidentally,โ€ that is exactly when the regime-change war in Syria begins. Within weeks, Baghdadi goes on to lead what becomes ISIS, and Jolani crosses into Syria to found Jabhat al-Nusra โ€“ officially al-Qaedaโ€™s franchise in my country. Washington designates Nusra a terrorist organization. The UN follows suit. On paper, Jolani is the enemy. The State Department even slaps a $10 million bounty on his head. But bounties are cheap. Cruise missiles are expensive. And for over a decade, while the US flattened cities in Iraq and Syria allegedly to fight โ€œterrorism,โ€ it somehow never found the time, or the coordinates, to seriously target Jolani or his core command structure, even though he controlled large swaths of Syrian territory from Aleppo countryside all the way to Idlib. Because Jolani and his men were fighting the one government Washington had already decided must go: the Syrian state under Bashar al-Assad. This is where Operation Timber Sycamore comes in: a multi-billion-dollar CIA covert program that funneled weapons, money, and training to so-called โ€œrebelsโ€ in Syria. They were sold to Western audiences as โ€œmoderate opposition.โ€ On the ground, those moderates were a disappearing species. What existed in reality were hardline Salafi-jihadist factions, with Nusra at the top of the food chain. The Free Syrian Army (FSA) was the mask, the logo on the paperwork, the brand name you could sell to Congress and CNN. The real muscle on the ground was Jolaniโ€™s men and other takfiri groups, who did the actual fighting, took the actual territory, and imposed their version of rule. Weapons went โ€œto the moderates.โ€ The moderates magically handed them to al-Qaeda. Everyone in Washington pretended to be surprised. No one stopped the pipeline. Over the years, the mask slipped. US officials themselves began to speak of Jolani as something more than just a former enemy. James Jeffrey, Washingtonโ€™s former envoy to Syria, openly called Jolani โ€œan assetโ€ for US strategy โ€“ not my word, his. Robert Ford, the former US ambassador to Syria, has publicly admitted that he personally worked with Jolani to โ€œtake him out of the world of terrorismโ€ and polish him into a politician. Think about what that means: the same US that claims to be fighting an endless war against al-Qaeda quietly devotes diplomatic energy to rehabilitating the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda into a partner, a useful strongman, a future head of state. I said on the show, and I repeat it here: I believe Jolani was recruited in Camp Bucca. The timeline makes no sense otherwise. You donโ€™t walk out of an American-run prison and, weeks later, magically have the networks, the money, the arms, and the logistical capacity to found al-Qaeda in Syria, right at the moment when Washington and its allies need a battering ram against Damascus. Recently, former CIA director David Petraeus even sat with Jolani and told him, โ€œYour success is our success.โ€ What more do people need? A signed employment contract? But letโ€™s assume, for a moment, that you still think this is a stretch. Enter John Kiriakou. Kiriakou is not a YouTuber chasing clicks. He is a former CIA officer who went to prison because he exposed the torture program and named the torturers. His loyalty is clearly not to the Agencyโ€™s PR department. Recently, on Unfettered Speech, he described the Jolani situation bluntly. Here is the essence of what he said, which Judge Napolitano played on air: -The โ€œnew presidentโ€ of Syria is a former al-Qaeda member and a co-founder of ISIS. -This same man is welcomed at the White House. -Senior US officials, including the Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East, travel to meet him. -President Trump suddenly lifts sanctions on Syria as Jolani consolidates power, prompting Syrians โ€“ desperate and exhausted โ€“ to dance in the streets. The only thing that makes sense is that Jolani is a CIA asset, per Kiriakouโ€™s. When a former CIA officer who has already sacrificed his career and freedom to tell the truth looks at the pattern and says, โ€œThis is our guy,โ€ it is not a conspiracy theory anymore. Now, you may ask, why would the United States and its allies back such a man? The answer lies in what Syria used to be, and what it has now been turned into. Before this war, Syria, for all its flaws, was a horizontally integrated state. People identified themselves as Syrian first and then Armenian, Druze, Christian, Alawite, Sunni, Shiโ€™a, Kurdish, and so on. The stateโ€™s foreign policy aligned with Iran and Hezbollah, supported Palestinian factions, and kept a real deterrent posture toward Israel. For Washington and Tel Aviv, this was unacceptable. The goal was not โ€œdemocracyโ€; that word is just wrapping paper. The real objective was to remove a government allied with Iran and replace it with a fragmented landscape: a weak central authority in Damascus, surrounded by sectarian cantons and warlord enclaves, all dependent on foreign patrons. Jolani is perfect for this role. For Israel, he brings vertical division. A man with a long al-Qaeda pedigree ruling Syria is a nightmare for minorities: Christians, Druze, Alawites, Shiโ€™a, many Kurds, and other smaller communities. They will not accept al-Qaeda rule. So they retreat into their own militias, their own cantons, their own de facto mini-states, exactly in line with old Israeli strategic doctrines like the Yinon Plan, which openly advocated fragmenting neighboring states along sectarian lines. On the ground, we already see it: -Druze militias running their own affairs in the south with quiet Israeli backing. -Kurdish forces in the northeast under US protection, managing their own autonomous zone. -Alawites discussing an autonomous coastal enclave. -Christians living in silence and fear. You donโ€™t need formal borders on a map to balkanize a country. When I, as a Syrian of Armenian origin, stop thinking of myself as Syrian first and start thinking purely as Armenian, when I instinctively fear my neighbor because he is from another sect, the balkanization has already happened in the mind. For Washington, Jolani is equally โ€œuseful.โ€ He has promised to normalize relations with Israel, to open Syriaโ€™s markets to Western capital, and to hand over the countryโ€™s resources from the hydrocarbons east of the Euphrates to the gas fields under the Mediterranean to American and allied companies. A 24-million-person country reduced to a reconstruction market: $300 billion worth of contracts, infrastructure projects, and โ€œinvestments.โ€ But for investors to feel safe, they need a strongman in Damascus who can project the illusion of stability while remaining utterly dependent on foreign protection. That strongman, in their design, is Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. But Jolani is not acting alone. Around him is a constellation of Western intelligence veterans and โ€œconflict resolutionโ€ NGOs acting as intermediaries. British MI6 circles, under figures like Jonathan Powell โ€“ former chief of staff to Tony Blair โ€“ are central in managing this process. Powell runs an organization called Inter Mediate, which specializes in โ€œtalking to armed groups.โ€ Behind the humanitarian language lies political engineering. One of Inter Mediateโ€™s operatives, a woman named Clare Haigh, is now said to have an office inside the Syrian presidential palace, advising Jolani on how to talk, how to dress, how to handle journalists, how to sell himself as a reformed jihadist turned statesman. And then there is Qatar. Ahmed Zaidan โ€“ once Osama bin Ladenโ€™s favorite journalist, photographed sipping tea with him and broadcasting his tapes on Al Jazeera โ€“ is now a personal adviser to Jolani. Make it make sense. An al-Qaeda emir, handled by US and British intelligence veterans, advised by bin Ladenโ€™s favorite media man, massaged by Western PR consultants, welcomed in Washington, and crowned in Damascus as โ€œpresident.โ€ If you wrote this as fiction, an editor would tell you itโ€™s too on the nose. Since Jolani took power through an international and regional deal that pushed Assad aside, over 11,000 people have been killed. Many of them are from the very minorities the West loves to mention in speeches but abandons in practice. Videos circulate of his fighters asking terrified villagers at gunpoint, โ€œAre you Muslim or not?โ€ and executing those who give the โ€œwrongโ€ answer, including Druze and Alawites who are not recognized as โ€œtrue Muslimsโ€ by their extremist ideology. Christians, who had already suffered massive emigration between 2011 and 2024, are being squeezed further. They have no organized armed force, no foreign sponsor. They are expected either to live under the mercy of an al-Qaeda-bred regime or to leave the land of their ancestors. This is what Washingtonโ€™s โ€œasset managementโ€ looks like in human terms. If you are an American reading this, you might be tempted to say: โ€œThis cannot be. My government would never knowingly empower al-Qaeda.โ€ But it already has, repeatedly. From Afghanistan in the 1980s, when US intelligence backed the Mujahideen (and, indirectly, their Arab foreign fighter allies), to Libya and Syria in the last decade, where jihadist factions were instrumentalized against secular or nationalist governments, the pattern is clear. The names and acronyms change. The logic does not. The same establishment that lectures the world on โ€œdemocracyโ€ and โ€œhuman rightsโ€ is perfectly willing to install a man like Jolani as the ruler of one of the oldest civilizations on earth, as long as he delivers strategic gains: -breaking the Iranโ€“Syriaโ€“Hezbollah axis; -fragmenting Syria into weak, controllable pieces; -opening its resources and markets to Western and Gulf capital; -and giving Israel unprecedented strategic depth and security. Everything else โ€“ the massacres, the ethnic cleansing, the collapse of national identity, the destruction of ancient communities โ€“ is treated as collateral damage. I am often asked what Syria will look like in five or ten years. I wish I could answer with optimism. Right now, the forces pushing to turn my country into a permanent vassal state โ€“ ruled by a former al-Qaeda emir, policed by foreign intelligence, exploited by foreign capital โ€“ are incredibly strong. But nothing in this region is permanent. People who come to power by cutting off other peopleโ€™s heads often lose their own. If there are still sane voices left in Western politics โ€“ people like Tulsi Gabbard ๐ŸŒบ, whom I mentioned on air โ€“ they must at least recognize this insanity: backing an al-Qaeda emir as โ€œour man in Damascusโ€ is not just immoral; it is ultimately self-destructive. Syria does not need Jolani. The West does not need Jolani. There are Syrians who can have friendly relations with the United States without being former al-Qaeda commanders, without murdering their own people, without turning an ancient nation into a laboratory for extremist social engineering. The question is not whether such alternatives exist. They do. The question is whether Washington and its allies want a sovereign, stable Syria, or whether they prefer a shattered, cantonized carcass kept alive just enough for the next โ€œassetโ€ to feed on.

Kevork Almassian

177,007 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 9 ไธชๆœˆๅ‰

---------------------------------------- Educational Purposes Disclaimer This content is shared strictly for educational and historical purposes. It is based on documented facts, verified sources, and established historical records. The material may include sensitive or uncomfortable topics that some viewers might find disturbing or offensive. The intention is solely to inform and provide context, not to insult, demean, or promote hatred toward any individual, group, or culture. Truthful discussion of history sometimes requires addressing difficult realities. Viewer discretion is advised. If you have concerns or additional verified information, feel free to share them respectfully in the comments. ---------------------------------------- Dr. William Luther Pierce - The Truth of Democracy "Did you ever wonder why the วฐews are such great proponents of democracy? Whether in Indonesia or Pakistan or Serbia or you name it, whenever there is some threat to universal suffrage, the J*ws are ready to send the U.S. armed forces in to bomb and kill until everyone is permitted to vote. Why is that? Why canโ€™t the Indonesians have an Islamic theocracy if they want? Why canโ€™t the Pakistanis have a military dictatorship? Why canโ€™t the Serbs run their own country the way they prefer? What is the appeal in making sure that people whose minds have been wasted by Alzheimerโ€™s Disease vote? Well, letโ€™s not beat around the bush: the appeal of mass democracy lies in the fact that in essentially every country in the world today, the number of persons unable to think for themselves is substantially larger than the number able to make independent decisions. Those unable to think for themselves have their thinking done for them by the people who control the mass media. Which is to say, democracy is the preferred system because it gives the political power to those who own or control the mass media and at the same time allows them to remain behind the scenes and evade responsibility for the way in which they use that power. And the more inclusive the democracy is; that is, the more Alzheimerโ€™s sufferers and Mongoloid cretins and paranoid schizophrenics and people who live in empty packing cases in alleyways and Jamaican immigrants and football fans are able to vote; the more certain is the grip of the media masters on the political process. Those voters who buy astrology magazines at the checkout stand and spend their time watching soap operas, game shows, and Oprah absorb their general attitudes on things through the television screen. They learn which ideas are fashionable and which are not by noticing the facial expression and tone of voice of Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather when the news is announced each day. Their opinions on specific issues are formed as they view televised sidewalk surveys taken by reporters. The only uncertainty about these people is whether or not theyโ€™ll be able to pry themselves loose from their couches long enough to vote for the designated candidates. Thatโ€™s why itโ€™s important to have lots of them. And wherever there are lots of them, the men who control the mass media also will control the outcome of elections. Itโ€™s a much surer way of controlling governments than bribing corrupt dictators or slipping seductive whores into the kingโ€™s bedroom a la Esther and Ahasuerus; or Monica and Bill. Believe me, one day soon the Jeลตs on both sides of the great water will institute a web-TV voting system that allows the couch potatoes and the ball game fans to vote without having to get up from their couches, just by clicking their remote controls at their TV screens to select the next President or prime minister. That will be real democracy. You know, back close to the beginning of this century, around 1901 or so, a book first was published containing the text of what became generally known as The Prล‘tocols of the Learned Elders of Ziล‘n. The publisher was a Russian academic, Professor Sergei Nilus. Nilus himself allegedly had obtained The Protocล‘ls from a Russian official, who had obtained the text from a patriotic Russian noblewoman, who in turn had purchased the material from a Jeลต in Paris about 15 years earlier. The Protocols purports to be a collection of minutes or reports of meetings held by the leaders of the world Jewฤฏsh community, at which they summarize the progress they had made to that time in their quest for world subversion, world ownership, and world power and outline their plans for continuing the process in the future. They talk about gaining control of the banking systems of various countries, about fomenting wars and revolutions to weaken and destroy Gentile power, about corrupting music and art and education, about subverting various Gentile institutions, about taking over the press everywhere and controlling the flow of information to the masses, about undermining the family and bringing family values into disrepute, and so on. The Elders of Zioล„ really are a satanic bunch of schemers. Reading The Protocoล‚s makes oneโ€™s flesh crawl. We should remember that when The Protocolลก began circulating in Russia in the first decade of this century, that country had not yet fallen victim to Jewisฤง Bolshevism, but that wasnโ€™t for lack of trying on the part of the วฐews. The Jeลตs were generally recognized as a dangerously subversive element in Russia, as the schemers and string pullers behind every attempt to damage or upset the established order in Russia, and so Professor Nilusโ€™ publication of The Pล•otocols found a ready market among the Russian public. After the Jศ‡wish Bolshevik revolution of 1917 overthrew the Russian government and established a communist dictatorship in Russia, anyone found with a copy of The Protoฤols was liable to be summarily shot. The text already had been translated into a dozen other languages and distributed far and wide outside Russia, however. Since then it has been published in virtually every language which has a printed form and has been read by tens of millions of people around the world. The Jศ‡ws have been claiming hysterically since The Proลฃocols first appeared that the text is โ€œa forgery.โ€ I guess thatโ€™s their way of saying that itโ€™s not what it purports to be: namely, the actual minutes of meetings of Jewish leaders discussing their plans for world domination. The great American industrialist and automaker Henry Ford was very strongly impressed by The Proลฃocols and helped circulate the text in the United States. When told by newspaper reporters in 1921 about the Jewsโ€™ claims that The Protoฤols was โ€œa forgery,โ€ Mr. Ford responded that all he could say about the material was that it fit what was actually happening in the world and had been happening ever since the The Pล•otocols first appeared in print. Of course, what Mr. Ford had especially in mind when he made that remark were two momentous things which had happened during the previous decade. One was the Jศ‡wsโ€™ success in taking over Russia and imposing communism on the Russians, and the other was the recently ended First World War: a horribly fratricidal and senseless war, which had destroyed the old order in Europe, had spilled the blood of millions of the best Europeans, and had weakened all of Europeโ€™s long-established institutions, leaving every European country open to all manner of social, political, and cultural ills; in particular, to the further spread of communism. Well, Henry Ford was a very hard-headed, practical sort of man, and itโ€™s easy to understand his attitude. He had no way of knowing whether or not The Proลฃocols of the Learned Elders of Ziล‘n was actually what it purported to be, but he was quite impressed by the fact that the plan for world subversion and domination by the Jeลตs outlined in the book seemed to be happening pretty much as described. Iโ€™ll go a step further than Henry Ford was willing to go in assessing The Protล‘cols. I think that they very likely are not what they purport to be. In the first place the text of The Protoฤols doesnโ€™t ring true. Itโ€™s too straightforward, too open. It doesnโ€™t use the sort of deceptive, weasel worded, self-justifying language that Jeลตs customarily use in expressing themselves, even to one another. When a group of Jศ‡wish leaders get together to discuss their plans for the destruction of a host nation, they donโ€™t use straightforward expressions such as โ€œencouraging miscegenationโ€ and โ€œleading the goyim to the slaughter.โ€ They use weasel-expressions, such as โ€œbuilding tolerance,โ€ โ€œincreasing diversity,โ€ and โ€œeliminating inequality.โ€ In the second place, itโ€™s difficult for me to imagine the head Jศ‡ws laying out such a complete, self-contained, and pat explanation of what theyโ€™re up to. Itโ€™s just too convenient for those of us who aim at alerting our people as to what the Jewsโ€™ intentions are and then putting a monkey wrench in their gears. I wouldnโ€™t call The Protoฤols โ€œa forgery,โ€ as the Jews do whenever the book is mentioned. Iโ€™m inclined to believe Professor Nilus was an astute observer of the Jeลตs and also was a patriot. He wanted to warn the Russian people of what the Jศ‡ws were planning to do to them, and so he imagined how the วฐewsโ€™ plan might look if it were all laid out in straightforward language. I believe that he wrote the text he published, but that he believed it was a reasonably accurate description of what the วฐศ‡ลตลก actually were doing. And the reason that The Protล‘cล‘ls ended up being translated into hundreds of languages and read by millions of people is that many people, like Henry Ford, saw that they fitted what was happening. Sometimes I have tried to imagine what Professor Nilus might have written if he were writing today instead of a century ago; and if he were writing still in the straightforward sort of language he used earlier. A 1999 version of The ฦคrotocols of the Learned Elders of Ziล‘n might read something like this: "Greetings, my fellow Elders of Zioล„! Today I am happy to report to you that our plan for the destruction of the hated Gentiles and the acquisition of their remaining wealth is practically complete. There remain only a few loose ends to tie up, and then the struggle in which we have been engaged for thousands of years against the filthy goyim against the Nations, against all the non-Jeลตish peoples of the world, finally will be victorious, and we will be able to devour everything they have created, as Yahweh, the god of our tribe, has commanded us. Everywhere we already rule behind the scenes, with puppets completely under our control in the offices of power. In Russia, where they resisted us for so long; where the ordinary people always hated us as exploiters, as moneylenders and tax collectors and purveyors of alcohol and merchants in the sweet, white flesh of their daughters and sisters, and where the aristocrats also hated us, as subversives and troublemakers, and kept us confined to only certain areas of the country, so that we could not exploit all of the people; in Russia we used the doctrine of our dear, departed Elder of Ziล‘n, Karl Marx, to divide the Russian people against themselves and get the power into our own hands, where it remains to this day. We butchered their Czar and his whole family like the Gentile cattle they were. With the help of the common people we slaughtered all of the Russian aristocrats and took their wealth. And then we turned on the common people. First we murdered their leaders; their writers and teachers and intellectuals and military officers; so that there would be no one able to turn them against us, and then we began murdering the common people themselves, the farmers and workers, first by the millions and then by the tens of millions in labor camps and death camps all across Russia. And most of them never did understand what was happening to them. One of them, who had been studying to become a Christian priest, we corrupted and made into our ally. His name was Stalin. Later, like the pharaoh who knew not Joseph, Stalin tried to turn against us, but one of our women was his doctor, and we poisoned him before he could harm us. When the system based on the theory of our departed Elder Marx had bled the Russian people dry, we launched a โ€œprivatizationโ€ scheme, which put most of the remaining wealth which had belonged to the government directly into our hands. Their gas and oil, their forests and their lumber industry, their mines and factories; and especially their television broadcasting facilities; are now owned by us acting as capitalists. Today we have a drunken, sick, old Russian clown, Boris Yeltsin, as the nominal leader of the Russians, but one of our people, Boris Abramovich Berezovsky, tells him what to do and keeps him under tight control through bribes. In England, the country from which all of us were expelled by the king as exploiters and troublemakers just over 700 years ago, we now have another puppet, Tony Blair, in place as the nominal leader of the English, but like Yeltsin he is completely under our control. One of our people, Michael Levy, finances his election campaigns and controls his purse strings. Another of our people, Jack Straw, controls his domestic policies. America, however, is the prize example of our success. Just as in England and in Russia, also in America we have been able to put a totally corrupt Gentile politician into the position of nominal power and then to surround him with our own people, who wield the real power. Actually running the American government, our people are in charge of Americaโ€™s State Department, Americaโ€™s Defense Department, Americaโ€™s Federal Reserve System, and Americaโ€™s Treasury Department. When one of our people, Robert Rubin, retired recently as secretary of the treasury, we simply moved another of our people, Lawrence Summers, into that position. Clinton appoints to every high office in the American government, whether the Supreme Court or his own cabinet, only those people we suggest to him, and the totally corrupt politicians of the Senate dare not disapprove anyone we suggest, lest we label them as โ€œanti-Semites.โ€ We have gained nearly complete control of Americaโ€™s educational system, from kindergarten through the universities. No ideas or facts may be taught unless we have given them the stamp of Political Correctness. We have made it impossible for anyone in an American university to contradict anything we have claimed, no matter how preposterous, about what happened to us during the Second World War. We now have the American government, just like every government in Europe, paying us โ€œreparations,โ€ because not enough was done for us during the war. We have succeeded in corrupting and then dominating Americaโ€™s art and music and literature. We have made degeneracy the touchstone for American culture. We own the art galleries and set the standards for painting and sculpture. We have the Americans lining up and paying admission to see a โ€œwork of artโ€ which consists of animal dung smeared onto a crude painting of a Nศ‡gress, which we tell them is their Virgin Mary. They read the depraved and trashy novels we tell them to read and believe that these novels are โ€œliterature.โ€ Their children listen to Negrล‘id rhythms and chant Nศ‡groid โ€œrapโ€ ditties, because we control the popular music industry. Through the immigration policy we have imposed on America we are increasing the percentage of non-White minorities in every part of the country. Within the next few years we will succeed in making White Americans a minority in their own country. Our success in America has been due to two things: our control of the mass media of news and entertainment, through which we control the ideas and attitudes of the masses; and the system of mass democracy, which ensures that the votes of the masses under our control determine which figurehead politicians actually make up the American government. Since the last part of the 19th century we have been gathering the power of the mass media into our hands. In those days many of us were only rag-pickers and dealers in used merchandise, recently off the boat from Russia or Poland, but whenever a Gentile newspaper got itself into financial difficulties, we were ready instantly to pool our resources and buy it out, so that henceforth it could be in the hands of one of our people. In the 1920s, when radio was becoming a powerful medium of persuasion, we began buying broadcasting stations and putting together networks. At the same time we saw the potential for motion pictures and began moving into Hollywood. By working together with each other we were able to bankrupt or buy out every Gentile film producer except Walt Disney. We had to wait until he died to take control of his film company, but by then we already dominated the entire motion picture industry. After the Second World War, when television became the most powerful medium of mass persuasion, we were ready to move in and dominate the TV industry from the beginning. Today no motion picture can be made and no television program can be broadcast in America without our approval. Only a few independent commercial radio stations, a few shortwave radio stations, and a handful of book and magazine publishers remain free of our control. But the American masses, for the most part, never see or hear anything we have not approved. They do not understand shortwave, and they are afraid to read any publication we have not approved, for fear that it might be โ€œhateโ€ material. There is, of course, that pesky Internet, which is not yet under our control, but we are moving rapidly to deal with that matter. We expect soon to have our puppet politicians enact โ€œhate speechโ€ legislation in America, similar to that which we already have succeeded in having enforced in Europe, so that no one can say anything on the Internet that has not been approved by us. The couch potatoes will not object, because we will tell them that the new laws will make them safe from terrorism. By that time we also should have achieved our goal for the disarmament of the American population. And then, my fellow Elders of Zioล„, we can do to the American people what we did to the Russian people. With our power of television, we will have them voting for their own slaughter. Long live our mass media! Long live democracy! Long live the power of triumphant ศคion!" "

Mofobian

24,562 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 2 ไธชๆœˆๅ‰

War Diary Day 1,391 Blaise Metreweli, the Chief of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, sticks it to the Killer in The Kremlin. And all his creepy helpers. I agree with every fucking word. VPDFO! (Transcript of the speech, exactly as it was delivered) ๐Ÿ“ท Welcome inside MI6. This iconic building, familiar to movie fans everywhere, is the home of Britainโ€™s foreign intelligence agency. But whilst hundreds of my team pass through the entry pods each day, the truth is that most of our work happens many miles away from this place - out of sight, hidden from the world, undercover, recruiting and running agents who choose to place their trust in us, sharing secrets to make the UK and the world safer. You might pass one of our officers on the street or sit next to them on a plane when youโ€™re about to set off on an adventure of your own, or in a foreign city taking selfies by the sights. Whether itโ€™s in seemingly everyday places, or on the front line embedded with our military, MI6 is there. In my first few weeks, Iโ€™ve heard repeatedly that MI6 is trusted and respected globally, two things that we never take for granted. We are seen as a source of hard power, soft influence and rapid innovation. Iโ€™ve also heard that people want to believe in MI6. Itโ€™s my job to make sure they can. Today, I want to talk about human agency. We all have choices to make about how we deal with the undercurrents shaping our world. About how, in our new, faster, more dangerous and technology-mediated world, it will be our rediscovery of our shared humanity, our ability to listen, and our courage that will determine how our future unfolds. Conflict is not inevitable. Understanding human nature is in my bones. From a family shaped by devastating conflict, I grew up with a deep sense of gratitude for the UKโ€™s precious democracy and freedom. I spent much of my childhood overseas, which is where my passion for travel and adventure began. I studied anthropology, and later psychology and AI, exploring how we make sense of the world and each other. Itโ€™s why I was drawn to MI6: it offers strong purpose, a chance to serve and a belief in the positive power of human connection. Like the Service, Iโ€™m operational to my very core. Over nearly three decades, my career has involved recruiting and running agents in hostile territory; and leading operations in warzones to defuse threats and support peace. Always in teams, always learning from others. Over the years, Iโ€™ve worked with hundreds of brilliant partners โ€“ and indeed occasionally those weโ€™d label as adversaries โ€“ across dozens of countries, tackling weapons proliferation and terrorism. During my time at MI5, I saw close up what it takes to defend Britain from being targeted by hostile states. Youโ€™ll find many like me in my organisation: powerfully motivated to protect our precious country; curious about how our world is changing, joining dots and taking action, across domains. But it was in my last role as โ€˜Qโ€™, where it was my job to turn emerging technologies from threats to opportunities that I could most see the world changing. As I dug deep into data and extraordinary innovation, I could see how technology was rapidly reshaping not just our capabilities but also conflict and trust, truth and global power. Let me lay out how I see the global issues MI6 must tackle. Because the greatest danger we face is to misunderstand the nature of the problem. Letโ€™s be in no doubt. Our world is more dangerous and contested now than it has been for decades. Conflict is evolving and trust eroding, just as new technologies spur both competition and dependence. We are being contested from sea to space, from the battlefield to the boardroom. And even our brains, as disinformation manipulates our understanding of each other and ourselves. Across the globe, we are now confronting not one single danger, but an interlocking web of security challenges โ€“ military, technological, social, ethical even โ€“ each shaping the other in complex ways. We are now operating in a space between peace and war. This is not a temporary state or a gradual, inevitable evolution. Our world is being actively remade, with profound implications for national and international security. Institutions which were designed in the ashes of the Second World War are being challenged. New blocs and identities forming and alliances reshaping. Multipolar competition in tension with multilateral cooperation. But thereโ€™s something distinctive that will make this change unlike any other: the impact of advanced technologies, which will accelerate the pace and scale of every threat and opportunity, and increasingly, individualise them too. Advances in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and quantum computing are not only revolutionising economies but rewriting the reality of conflict, as they โ€˜convergeโ€™ to create science-fiction-like tools. Thereโ€™s incredible promise in all this for all of us, from green technologies to hyper-personalised medicine. But also peril. AI-powered robots and drones are brilliant for scaled manufacturing but devastating on the battlefield. Discoveries that cure disease can also create new weapons. And as states race for tech supremacy, or as some algorithms become as powerful as states, those hyper-personalised tools could become a new vector for conflict and control. Power itself is becoming more diffuse, more unpredictable as control over these technologies is shifting from states to corporations, and sometimes to individuals. And at the same time, the foundations of trust in our societies are eroding. Information, once a unifying force, is increasingly weaponised. Falsehood spreads faster than fact, dividing communities and distorting reality. We live in an age of hyper-connection yet profound isolation. The algorithms flatter our biases and fracture our public squares. And as trust collapses, so does our shared sense of truth โ€“ one of the greatest losses a society can suffer. The defining challenge of the twenty-first century is not simply who wields the most powerful technologies, but who guides them with the greatest wisdom. Our security, our prosperity, and our humanity depend on it. Our world is being remade. And for the first time, we are all at the heart of it. My Service must now operate in this new context too: not just expert on hostile states, terrorism, proliferation and more, but also fluent in technology, able to anticipate the second and third order effects of advances that reshape the world in minutes not months. And as China will be a central part of the global transformation taking place this century, it is essential that we, as MI6, continue to inform the governmentโ€™s understanding of Chinaโ€™s rise and the implications for UK national security. Iโ€™m going to break with tradition and wonโ€™t give you a global threat tour, but will focus here on Putinโ€™s Russia. We all continue to face the menace of an aggressive, expansionist and revisionist Russia, seeking to subjugate Ukraine and harass NATO. I find it harrowing that hundreds of thousands have died, with the toll mounting every day, because of Putinโ€™s historical distortions and his compromised desire for respect. He is dragging out negotiations and shifting the cost of war onto his own population. But Putin should be in no doubt, our support is enduring. The pressure we apply on Ukraineโ€™s behalf will be sustained. Because it is fundamental not just to European sovereignty and security but to global stability. Alongside the grinding war, Russia is testing us in the grey zone with tactics that are just below the threshold of war. Itโ€™s important to understand their attempts to bully, fearmonger and manipulate, because it affects us all. I am talking about: Cyberattacks on critical infrastructure. Drones buzzing airports and bases. Aggressive activity in our seas, above and below the waves. State-sponsored arson and sabotage. Propaganda and influence operations that crack open and exploit fractures within societies. Countering this activity is the work of intelligence and security services across Europe and the globe. And as the Foreign Secretary made clear in a speech last week, the UK is defending itself against this Russian information warfare โ€“ sanctioning Russian media outlets pushing Kremlin narratives. The export of chaos is a feature not a bug in this Russian approach to international engagement; and we should be ready for this to continue until Putin is forced to change his calculus. So, how should we respond? Itโ€™s not enough now just to understand the world. We must shape it too. MI6 is well-positioned to respond to these threats and wider global instability. And we will continue to evolve, just as we have throughout our long history. The UK government has invested in our intelligence agencies and we are all using our unique powers to keep the British people safe. Our โ€˜open and connectedโ€™ partnerships across the UK Intelligence Community, with HMGCC, NSSIF and the wider tech ecosystem in the UK will become even more important โ€“ because in the digital battleground, no single organisation can prevail alone. As a global agency, MI6โ€™s inbuilt strength is our partners and our people. The risks I have set out require us to work ever more closely with our colleagues in MI5, GCHQ and in defence and diplomacy. But also with our Five Eyes partners, with the E3, the EU, NATO, those across the Middle East, the Indo-Pacific and beyond. And with many valued partners whose identity needs to remain secret. Together, we integrate our diverse talent, data and tools to meet the threat. AI is a domain in which we will excel, using the technology to augment, not replace, our human skills. Every digital trace, every byte of data, every algorithmic decision has implications for the safety of the lives of the courageous people who work with us as officers and agents, and for the UKโ€™s strategic advantage. Mastery of technology will infuse everything we do. Not just in our labs, but in the field, in our tradecraft, and even more importantly, in the mindset of every officer. We will become as comfortable with lines of code as we are with human sources, as fluent in Python as we are in multiple other languages. Under my leadership, MI6 will continue to attract Britainโ€™s best and most creative minds: linguists and data scientists, case officers and engineers, behavioural experts and technologists. We need people who walk in the shoes and get in the heads of our adversaries. We need people who think differently, challenge assumptions, and act decisively. All can thrive and make a difference at MI6. At an operational level, we will sharpen our edge and impact with audacity, tapping into โ€“ if you like โ€“ our historical SOE instincts. Weโ€™re at our best when weโ€™re hustling to make things happen, because our intelligence is most valuable when it changes reality on the ground. We will take calculated risks, where the prize is significant and the national interest clear. We will never stoop to the tactics of our opponents. But we must seek to outplay them. In every domain. In every way. So intelligence must drive action. Action must deliver advantage. And advantage must serve Britainโ€™s security and prosperity. But at the core, our deeper contribution is also our simplest โ€“ how we unlock human agency. Our fast-paced, tech and threat-infused world now generates more heat than light. As nations retrench and rearm, we are losing opportunities to listen to whatโ€™s really going on. Iโ€™ve seen time and again throughout my career, that this is where MI6 matters most: we listen and we hear. We understand, because we take time to learn languages and cultures, complex technical and historical detail, immerse ourselves in whatโ€™s really driving the situation. Across the globe, right now, our officers are finding people with the courage to step forward, and they are taking time to sit and listen to break these tightening cycles of violence. They listen for nuance, for connection, for opportunity. Over the years, Iโ€™ve listened to terrorists who have told us how to defuse the bomb because they know that more violence wonโ€™t help. To proliferators and smugglers whoโ€™ve told us where to find the dangerous material, motivated to protect their childrenโ€™s future. To people trapped in authoritarian regimes who know, deep down, that their humanity is being chipped away โ€“ and that telling us whatโ€™s really going on is an important release, allowing us all to find better ways to navigate our changing world. So, we will work with our agents. And we will continue to engage directly, and with respect, with states and organisation currently working against us. Away from the glare of the media, we will use MI6โ€™s convening power wherever we can to make a material difference, bringing parties together to defuse tensions. But the response to the increasing risks we face wonโ€™t be delivered by the UK intelligence community alone. Wider society has a role to play too. That includes work taking place in schools across the country so our children donโ€™t get duped by information manipulation. Letโ€™s all check sources, consider evidence, and be alive to those algorithms that trigger intense reactions, like fear. It also means everyone in society really understanding the world we are in โ€“ a world where terrorists plot against us, where our enemies fearmonger, bully and manipulate, and the front line is everywhere. Online, on our streets, in our supply chains, in the minds and on the screens of our citizens. We must all stand together against this. As we do today with our friends in Australia after the shocking antisemitic terrorist attack this weekend. My thoughts -and those of my whole organisation โ€“ are with the family, friends and loved ones of the victims. Light will always win over darkness. In rising to meet these challenges we, in MI6, will remain anchored to our values: courage, creativity, respect and integrity. And to our principles: accountability and trust are not constraints on our work; they are the foundations of our legitimacy with the British public. Recently, I had the privilege of meeting and thanking a foreign agent who has worked with us for decades, taking extraordinary risks to help keep the UK safe. I asked why. They said simply, โ€˜Your values. Your integrity and respect. None of us have a future without themโ€™. This moment reinforced to me that we must remain a very human agency. And so, to sustain that trust, MI6 will continue to be more open. Not for the sake of visibility, but because it matters โ€“ and as my MI5 counterpart Sir Ken McCallum said recently - because it is a strength. We will continue the practice of speaking publicly, broaden our channels of engagement, and sustain our focus on attracting the most diverse talent to join our Service. Transparency does not mean revealing what must remain secret. It means showing the British people who we are, what we stand for, and why our work matters. We need your trust and support for the difficult and often dangerous work our agents pursue, every day of the year. In an age of uncertainty, one constant remains: the choices made by human beings still determine the shape of the world. Yes, technology can illuminate possibilities: but information requires judgement; complexity demands clarity; and only people can decide which path to follow. The United Kingdomโ€™s global voice has never rested solely on strength โ€“ it has rested on trust, principle, and the ability to understand others as well as ourselves. That is also the essence of intelligence: not simply knowing the world, but interpreting it through a uniquely human lens. Ours is the quiet service, the hidden service. It is one rooted in a profound belief that when human beings act with purpose and integrity, they can steady a faltering world. When the Berlin Wall fell, it was our shared belief in freedom that carried Europe forward. When acts of terror targeted open societies, it was intelligence, cooperation and resolve that preserved them. And when adversaries blur fact and falsehood, our task is to defend the space where truth can still stand. As we step into the future, the tools at our disposal will evolve. But what will always matter most is the human element โ€“ the person who stands in the shadows and says: this is right, and that is wrong. That choice โ€“ the exercise of human agency โ€“ has shaped our world before, and it will shape it again. Because in the end, it is not what we can do that defines us, but what we choose to do. Thank you. Published 15 December 2025

John Sweeney

42,257 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 8 ไธชๆœˆๅ‰

BOOM!!! ๐Ÿ’ฅ๐Ÿ’ฅ๐Ÿ’ฅ Dr. Aseem Malhotra's testimony was delivered in the Helsinski District Court on April 12, 2024, with the understanding that any deviation from the truth would constitute perjury. This clip was immediately banned by YouTube so please share widely. I've trimmed the clip, removing the interpreter's segment for a smoother listening experience. Here's the first hour of the testimony. ---------------------------------- My name is Doctor Aseem Malhotra. I am a consultant cardiologist. I've been a qualified doctor since 2001. I have held various roles both in academic health policy. In England, in the United Kingdom, and of the various roles, I won't bore you with all the details. I think three of the most relevant and prominent are the fact that I was an ambassador for the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges for six years, which represented every doctor in the UK. I served a full term of six years as a trustee of the King's fund. I was the youngest member to be appointed to this body which advises government on health policy. I was a founding member of Action on Sugar and a first science director. And through that role I'm considered the lead campaigner on bringing about a sugary drinks tax in the UK. And also, finally I served for five years as visiting professor of evidence based medicine at the Bahiana School of Medicine in Salvador, Brazil. In early 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic I was most vocal doctor on the mainstream, making the link very early on between COVID and those who are vulnerable to suffering serious complications from COVID In fact, in March 2020, I was asked to go on Sky News to explain my initial research findings of the link between especially obesity and COVID, but also to give people an opportunity and to suggest to the government this was a great time for them to implement public health policy to help people enhance or optimise their immune system, which could happen within just a few weeks of dietary changes and optimising vitamin D. This was later also backed up by medical journal publications a few months later. And I was first to mention on the back of an article I published in the Daily Telegraph newspaper, which became a front page commentary and was picked up by BBC News and Good Morning Britain, where I had said that it's likely our prime minister, Boris Johnson, was hospitalised because of his weight. As a result of that, the then secretary for health, Matt Hancock, and this was publicised in the news, had asked me to advise him on the link between COVID and obesity. ...before I explain my journey and in many ways U-turn on my understanding in terms of the benefits and harms of the COVID vaccine, my experience in this area over the last couple of years has made me realise more than ever that even for that the greatest barrier to the truth are not factual or intellectual barriers, but psychological. I think all of us as human beings are vulnerable to these psychological barriers and we should have compassion for ourselves. And I will just very briefly summarise those three psychological barriers before I get into my detailed account of what I was involved in in regards to the COVID vaccine. The first psychological barrier is one of fear. And many of us understandably, and I still remember from early on in the pandemic, we were all scared. We did not know what we were dealing with. The issue with fear is that when people and populations are in a state of fear, we are less likely to engage in critical thinking and we are more likely to be compliant. Although COVID was particularly devastating for vulnerable groups in the elderly and I even have managed and still manage people with long COVID, the fear was grossly exaggerated. And one of the examples of that is that when we had good information on the mortality rate of COVID in the United States, one survey in 2020 revealed that 50% of Americans believed that if they caught COVID, the risk of 19 hospitalisation was 50% one and two, when the actual figure, certainly an average for people in middle age, was less than 1%. The second barrier to the truth, which I think is very relevant to the situation we find ourselves in now, is one called willful blindness. This is when human beings, all of us, are vulnerable to this, turn a blind eye to the truth in order to feel safe, avoid conflict, reduce anxiety and to protect prestige and fragile egos. Some examples of this include, on a personal level, willful blindness can occur when a spouse turns a blind eye to the affair of their partner. On an institutional level, some great examples of willful blindness include Hollywood and Harvey Weinstein, the Catholic Church and child molestation. I believe the current situation we find ourselves in, with much of the mainstream narrative and the medical establishment and policy makers not acknowledging quite horrific, serious and common harms from this vaccine, is another example of willful blindness. And I also say this with full empathy, because I was one of those people that was for a very long time, willfully blind to the harms of the COVID vaccine. In January 2021, I was one of the first people to take two doses of the COVID mRNA vaccine because I volunteered in a vaccine centre. I still believe that traditional vaccines are some of the safest amongst all pharmacological interventions in medicine and I could not conceive of any possibility whatsoever of this vaccine causing harm. As a public figure and respected doctor in the UK, I have built relationships across the board with many other public figures, including celebrities and politicians, who often come to me for medical advice. One of those people was film director Gurinder Chadha, who you may be familiar with some of her work, including the movie "Bend It like Beckham", who had asked me whether or not she should take the vaccine and had sent me blogs which I dismissed and regarded as anti vax nonsense. I was then asked to go on good morning, Britain because Gurinder Chadha, the director herself tweeted that I had convinced her to take the vaccine. The main reason for this TV appearance was to help tackle vaccine hesitancy, which was very prominent amongst people from ethnic minority groups in the UK. I made the point on that programme that I understand where vaccine hesitancy was coming from because of the history that I have been involved with over many years in highlighting the shortcomings of pharmaceutical industry influence over medicine. And I even made the point, if I remember correctly, that they have been found guilty of fraud on many occasions, that the third most common cause of death, prepandemic after heart disease and cancer, is prescribed medications. I, however, reassured the public and said that despite these figures, of everything we do in medicine, traditional vaccinations are amongst the safest. I still believe this to be the case. A few months later, in April 2021, I met with a colleague and friend of mine who I regard as one of the brightest cardiologists in the United Kingdom. I was surprised when he told me that he had not taken the COVID vaccine. He explained to me that he had concerns because he had seen in the supplementary appendix of Pfizer's original trial that there were four cardiac arrests in the vaccine group and only one in the placebo. These numbers were small and did not reach statistical significance. So this could be random chance, or his concern was it could represent a signal of problems in the future. And if this was the case, we are going to have a huge problem. He said he'd rather wait and see what happens before taking the vaccine. On July 26, 2021, my father, aged 73, who was a very prominent, well known doctor in the UK, including being the honorary vice president of the British Medical Association and had received honours from the Queen of England with an OBE, suffered an unexpected sudden cardiac arrest. I was particularly devastated by this happening and I was also I find it difficult to understand why my father, who was a fit and well man, I knew his cardiac history and his cardiac status, would suffer a cardiac arrest. But also my initial investigation was to try and understand why there had been a 30 minutes ambulance delay arriving to his apartment. Two weeks later, the deputy chief nurse of NHS England, a government health body, called me up. She was very upset, she knew my father very well and she was crying and she told me, Aseem, there's something I need to tell you. She in effect told me that throughout the country, for the last two months prior to my father's cardiac arrest in most regions of the UK, ambulances were not getting to patients in time for heart attacks and cardiac arrests. And there had been a deliberate, and I will use these words because I mentioned it, I've mentioned it before, a cover up involving the government and the Department of Health to withhold this information from doctors and the public. I worked with an investigative journalist with the I newspaper in the UK to write an article and a news story that became BBC News headlines a few months later, exposing this. Just before I exposed this, I messaged a professor of cardiology who I trust in the UK. He has a leadership role to explain to him what had happened and what I was about to do. I have text message evidence of this. He told me not to do this because it would make me enemies. I explained to him that I had a duty to patients and the public. I'm highlighting this as one example and I'll give you more examples of a cultural problem within medicine. The next part of this story is the post mortem findings of my father. They did not make any sense to me. I am considered a leading expert, maybe in the world, on the development and progression of coronary artery disease. My father had two severe blockages in his coronary arteries. There was no actual evidence of heart attack and likely there was a rhythm disturbance because of reduced blood supply that led to his cardiac arrest. Then in, within the space of a few weeks, around October and November, 3, different sources of information was brought to my attention that made me realise that there was probably a significant problem with the COVID mRNA vaccine. The first in October 2021. I remember I was giving lectures in Stockholm. I was contacted by a journalist with a Times newspaper who reported to me and said, Dr Malhotra, we have reports of an unexplained 25% increase in heart attacks in hospitals in Scotland and asked me what I thought was going on. I explained to her that at that time, with the evidence I knew in my own experience, I said that two likely contributory factors were lockdown stress. We know that when populations undergo severe stress after war, for example, there is an increase in heart attacks and strokes that can last for many years. She asked me whether I thought that there was a contribution. I was surprised when she asked me whether I thought there may be a contribution of the COVID vaccine to these heart attacks. I said to her, a good scientist should never exclude any possibility. But I felt at the time it was unlikely to be related to the COVID vaccine. But we should watch this space and keep our eyes open. A few weeks later, a publication appeared in the Journal Circulation, which is considered the highest impact cardiology journal in the United States that revealed a potentially very strong link between the COVID mRNA vaccines and acceleration in heart attack risk. Very specifically, in several hundred people of middle age, there was a plausible mechanism, by use of inflammatory markers in the blood, that increased the baseline risk of those people having a heart attack in five years, from 11% to 25%, just within two months of having the COVID mRNA vaccines. Of course, this is one bit of data, but even if partially true, that is a huge increase in risk in a very short space of time. And for me now made me think and link back to why my father may have suffered a cardiac arrest six months after having two doses of the vaccine. I remember thinking and speaking to a colleague, that if this was true, then we were going to see an increase in cardiac arrests, heart attacks and excess deaths in heavily vaccinated countries for the next few years. Then within a few weeks, I was called up by a whistleblower at a very prestigious british institution. I will name that institution, which I have not done publicly before as a University of Oxford. This cardiologist explained to me that a group of researchers in his department had accidentally found, through the use of very specialised imaging of the heart, that there was a signal of increased inflammation of the heart arteries, which was there in the vaccinated, but not there in the unvaccinated. The lead researcher of that group had sat down, the juniors, and had said that we are not going to explore these findings any further because it may affect our funding from the pharmaceutical industry. At that point, with these three bits of information, I then felt it was my ethical duty to speak out. And I went on GBNews to talk about what I'd found what I'd heard and I'd asked for the Vaccine Committee of the UK on TV to investigate this, to see whether there was a real problem with the vaccine in relation to heart issues. Around the same time which I found very strange is that the Secretary of State for Health at that stage, who was not Matt Hancock, was Sajid Javid, had announced in parliament that we are going to introduce legislation to ensure that all healthcare workers are mandated to have the COVID vaccine. For me, this, by that stage had no ethical or scientific justification, because certainly after the summer of 2021, it had become very apparent that the COVID mRNA vaccine was not stopping infection and it certainly was not stopping transmission. It was understood that approximately 80,000 NHS workers had refused at this stage to have the COVID vaccine. And now they were threatened with losing their job if by April the following year they had not been fully vaccinated. Many of these people were very concerned and contacted me around that time, I was also conducting many interviews, both through the BBC and Sky News and GBNews in regards to what happened with my father's ambulance delay. And I used it as an opportunity on the mainstream media to call for Sajid Javid, the secretary for health, to U-turn on the introduction of a mandate for healthcare workers based upon the fact that I felt it was not scientific and it was unethical. I also received my own personal backlash from these comments where I was contacted by the Royal College of Physicians who I had an affiliation with, and they asked me to respond to anonymous complaints from doctors that I was spreading, in quotes, antivax disinformation. I felt with my own knowledge and experience of the healthcare system that this was a direct response probably fueled by a combination of willful blindness and institutional corruption. To elaborate a bit further, when I say institutional corruption, I mean that my view was that the complaints were likely being fueled by academics with financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry. I felt very concerned about the potential introduction of the vaccine, well, the vaccine mandate. And therefore I decided there were two things that I decided to do. The first was I made a phone call to the chairman of the British Medical Association in December 2021. I had a good relationship with him and he respected my opinion. And I spent 2 hours on the phone explaining to him everything that I knew up to that stage about my concerns of the COVID mRNA vaccine. He said to me, "Aseem, nobody appears to critically appraise the evidence on the COVID mRNA vaccine as well as you have from our conversation, he said, most of my colleagues are getting their information on the benefits and harms of the vaccine from the BBC". This was replicated by the former chair of the CDC in the United States, Rochelle Walensky, who in an interview later on had said that her initial optimism of the vaccine benefits came from CNN News report. I say this just to emphasise that we should all accept our vulnerabilities to where we receive health information. Even doctors, policymakers, judges and lawyers are all influenced on the public massively by mainstream media. The chairman of the BMA also agreed with me. There was no ethical or scientific justification for mandating the COVID vaccine. He said the BMA also did not support it. And he said because of my conversation with him, he would speak directly to the secretary for health, Sajid Javid. One month later, at the end of January 2022, the COVID vaccine mandate for healthcare workers was overturned. I at that stage, given the fact that there was some backlash happening towards me, I realised that because this is a very big issue and area, and not my initial area of expertise, I needed to carry out my own critical analysis of the COVID mRNA vaccines. I spent six to nine months critically appraising the data, including speaking to two Pfizer whistleblowers, three investigative medical journalists and eminent scientists from the University of Oxford, Stanford and Harvard. The most critical bit, the most critical research that was published on this issue, which I think the whole court should acknowledge in August 2022, was published in the journal Vaccine. That research was conducted by some of the world's top independent of drug industry influence academics. That research, we was able to reanalyze the original randomised control trials conducted by Pfizer and Moderna. They were able to do this because new information was made available on the FDA's website and Health Canada's website. The conclusions of that paper were really very disturbing. The original trials that led to the drug regulatory approval of these vaccines revealed that you were more likely to suffer serious harm from taking the vaccine, specifically hospitalisation, life changing event or disability, than you were to be hospitalised with COVID That rate of harm at two months was very high at 1 in 800. Just to give you some perspective, historically we have suspended other vaccines for much less. In 1976, the swine flu vaccine was pulled because it was found to cause a neurological syndrome called Guillain-Barre syndrome In one in 100,000 people. In 1999, the rotavirus vaccine was suspended because it was found to cause a form of bowel obstruction in children affecting 1 in 10,000. This was 1 in 800. In my view, it was very clear that given this information, published in the highest impact Vaccine journal in the world, peer reviewed, and has not had any significant rebuttals, that this vaccine now, in my view, should never have been approved for use in a single human being in the first place. In my view, this very important court case in some ways, actually is a distraction from the much bigger issue, which is there should be court cases around the world with a full inquiry into the pharmaceutical industry and an inquiry as to how we got this so very wrong. Of course, one could argue this is just one bit of research, but actually, unfortunately, there are different, many different strands of research that are showing a signal of considerable and common serious harm from these vaccines. From pharmacovigilance data that is reporting what we call yellow card reports from the public. We have plausible biological mechanism of harm. We have other research called observational data. We have autopsy data also confirming that certainly with the majority of people who died within a short space of time of having the vaccine in relation to the heart, was definitively caused by the vaccine. This is really a very, very, very horrific situation we find ourselves in. One would hope and expect that the regulators should be independently evaluating all medications. But of course, the evidence reveals this is far from true. There was an investigation by the BMJ, also published in the summer of 2022, which revealed that most of the major regulators across the world were taking most of their money from the drug industry. For example, the MHRA in the UK receives 86% of its funding from the drug industry, and the FDA in America receives 65% of its funding from the drug industry, A fact that most doctors do not know. And therefore, I would not expect members of the court to know this either, is that very, very rarely do drug industry sponsored research get independently evaluated. Clinical trial data can often involve thousands of pages of information on individual patients. The drug companies hold onto that raw data. They then give summary results to the regulator, who are then paying, who have an incentive to approve the drugs, and the drugs are then approved. I made these points in my peer reviewed article published in the Journal of Insulin Resistance in September 2022, where I concluded that we should pause and investigate the issue around the COVID mRNA vaccines. I have since then been campaigning and advocating for a return to ethical evidence based medical practise around the world. Some of the clear solutions moving forward would be changes in the law that are required so that patients, doctors, members of the public can have greater confidence in the information they receive to make decisions about their health. Two very clear, low hanging fruit solutions, which are both ethical, scientific and democratic, would be that the drug industry should be allowed to develop drugs, but they shouldn't be allowed to test them themselves. And they certainly shouldn't be allowed to design their own research to and hold onto the raw data. Their information needs to be independently evaluated. One other clear solution would also be that the medical regulators, again, should not be taking any money from the industry, as this is a gross conflict of interest. I also want to highlight for people to understand the bigger picture. Prior to the pandemic, I had realised that there was a big problem with the reliability of clinical research, where invariably the results of clinical trials on all drugs sponsored by the drug industry, grossly exaggerate their safety and benefits. I have taken this information to the European Parliament, where I spoke in 2019, and I spoke to very senior politicians in the UK government. But although they were sympathetic, they felt that the issue was much bigger than them as individuals, and therefore it also needed media attention to get public awareness on the importance of such an inquiry. Before we continue with further questions, as I've been speaking for quite a long time now I'll just finish with two references just for the court and the judges to understand just how bad this problem is. Prepandemic the man who I call the Stephen Hawking of medicine is Professor John Ioannidis from the University of Stanford. The reason I call him the Stephen Hawking of Medicine is he's the most cited medical researcher in the world and is a mathematical genius. In 2006, he published a paper which was entitled why most published research findings are false. In that paper, he makes a point that the greater the financial interests in a given field, the less likely the research findings are to be true. I say this in context of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine which has made the company $100 billion. The other point that he makes in a further paper in 2017 is, again, the reason the system continues as it is is most doctors are unaware of the information they receive when they make clinical decisions has been corrupted by commercial influence. The other credible name I will mention is the editor of the Lancet, Richard Horton, who I personally know. In 2015, he wrote an article in the Lancet in relation to a secret meeting that had taken place with himself and some of the world's top medical academics. In that, he wrote that possibly half of the medical published literature may simply be untrue. And he said that science has taken a turn towards darkness. But who's going to take the first step to clean up the system? I believe in this case and in this court today, this is going to be a very pivotal potential moment in history for that first step. ---------------------- Dr Aseem Malhotra H/T: Tiina Keskimรคki ๐Ÿ‡ซ๐Ÿ‡ฎ

aussie17

798,742 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 2 ๅนดๅ‰

"You just hate Hichilema": The dramatic fall of Zambia's president By Sishuwa Sishuwa Hakainde Hichilema stood in the queue to becoming President of Zambia for 15 years before voters finally removed him from it in August 2021. This demonstrates how badly the man wanted this job. But it has taken him only five years in office to display his unfitness for the role. When it comes to the bigger national issues, such as safeguarding our cherished democracy, getting the best out of Zambiaโ€™s mineral wealth, respecting the constitution and the rule of law, fighting corruption beyond rhetoric, genuine promotion of national unity and equitable distribution of appointments to public service positions, sorting out the cost-of-living crisis and the deplorable conditions of life for most Zambians, Hichilema has lamentably failed. In fact, I would go as far as saying that the President has become a clear and present danger to Zambiaโ€™s economy, to our democracy, our constitutional order, our nationhood and its 'One Zambia Nation' foundation, and to the lives of ordinary Zambians. Voting Hichilema out of office will be the highest expression of patriotism. As I have previously stated, I am convinced that Hichilema will lose the election on 13 August. The only thing that can save him from defeat is pre-ballot death (of any candidate) or industrial scale vote-rigging. I really hope that we Zambians will never again elect a lying, tribal, corrupt, unpatriotic, vindictive, hypocritical, lawless, and undemocratic scumbag. In addition to his policy failures on major issues of public concern, one reason why Hichilema is losing the election (unless he rigs it on an industrial scale) is because of having extremist supporters, mostly Zambezi supremacists, who dismiss legitimate criticism of his leadership actions as hate speech and consequently enable his continued failure to be receptive to criticism, to reflect on the feedback provided by the governed, and to change for the better. When citizens (be it the Catholic Bishops, opposition parties, civic actors, or ordinary Zambians like me) raise governance concerns, they do so in the spirit of accountable democratic governance. They do not do so because they hate the president as a person, hate his ethnic identity, or hate where he was born. I insist that a better Zambia is possible but we wonโ€™t get it if we treat criticism of presidential leadership failure as expression of hate. Unfortunately, even Hichilema himself has embraced this warped thinking that any criticism of his leadership actions is hate speech. This attitude has deprived him of the much needed feedback on his leadership performance and capacity to listen to divergent views, consequently impoverishing his presidency. We must embrace the unfamiliar, eschew haste in passing judgement, and be more tolerant and understanding. These qualities are especially essential to those in public leadership roles. I once raised concern that we seem to have prepared different standards for this president compared to those who came before him. If a leader can only provide five hours of electricity to the people in a day, they have failed. If a leader can only increase the cost of living, they have failed. If a leaderโ€ฆI can go on. In addition to denying the president the benefit of legitimate public feedback on his performance, misconstruing criticism as hate makes it look like the responsibility of holding our public leaders to account falls on those who either love him or hail from the region where the president does not come from. If his supporters and Tongas, Lozis and Zambians from Northwestern Province join in calling out the wrongs of Hichilema, he will no longer play the tribal card of reducing all criticism of his leadership to ethnic hatred. In the uncritical minds of some of the president's supporters, I criticise Hichilema because I hate him! Most of the individuals who hold this view are people who repeatedly criticise me on this platform, even when their criticism is quite often devoid of reason or substance. I do not think those who criticise me do so because they hate me. I think they criticise me, even if I hold no elected public office, simply because they have a different take, different opinions, on things. Why is it so hard to apply the same logic to my criticism of an elected public leader like Hichilema who is accountable to us, the public? I have been providing regular political commentaries on Zambian affairs since 2009. Why was my much stronger criticism of Hichilema's predecessors, namely Rupiah Banda, Michael Sata, and Edgar Lungu, not considered hatred of these individual leaders? In fact, many of the individuals who today accuse me of harbouring hatred for Hichilema were people who were very happy with my much stinging criticism of the leadership failures of his predecessors. When I called Sata a tribalist and undemocratic leader who did not listen to advise, and provided evidence in support of my conclusions, they were happy to cheer me on, even as Sata's supporters said I was bitter and a Hichilema supporter. When I called Lungu a tribalist and corrupt leader, and provided evidence in support of my conclusions, they were happy to cheer me on, even as Lungu's supporters said I was bitter and petitioned the police to arrest me for sedition. Some of Hichilema's supporters, as part of the enjoyment of their exercise of the right to free expression, even insult me, call me names, or outrightly declare that they dislike me. Of course I would prefer content-based discussion, but if the best that anyone's mind can do is to insult me, I will consider their actions as part of the right to free expression. I recognise that people have the right to dislike me, to call me names, to wish me whatever they desire, to feel however they want about me. I have no problem with all this. I do not speak to be liked or secure the validation of anyone. I speak to express myself and I respect the right of other people to do the same. As I have repeatedly stated, free speech is not just for the people or thoughts we like or agree with; it is also for people we despise and opinions that we do not support. The important point is not the position I take on a given issue of public interest. It is the reasoning advanced in support of said position. If I say Hichilema is a lying, tribal, corrupt, unpatriotic, vindictive, hypocritical, lawless, and undemocratic scumbag, what is important is not simply this description; it is the reasons and evidence I have adduced in support of this conclusion. Anyone is welcome to challenge my conclusions or evidence, to say "I disagree with your argument for this and that reason." What I totally reject is the idea that criticism of a president's leadership actions amounts to hate; it does not. If I point out that Hichilema is failing to ensure adequate ethnic diversity in public appointments and provide evidence in support of this assertion, anybody else is welcome to demonstrate weakness in my stated point of view. If I point out that Hichilema is a compulsive liar and provide evidence in support of this assertion, anybody else is welcome to demonstrate weakness in my stated point of view. If I point out that Hichilemaโ€™s fight against corruption is a sham and provide evidence in support of this assertion, anybody else is welcome to demonstrate weakness in my stated point of view. If I point out that Hichilema is a compulsive liar and provide evidence in support of this assertion, anybody else is welcome to demonstrate weakness in my stated point of view. If I point out that Hichilema has eroded Zambiaโ€™s democracy and provide evidence in support of this assertion, anybody else is welcome to demonstrate weakness in my stated point of view. If I point out that Hichilema has failed to reduce the cost of living, as per his campaign promise, and provide evidence in support of this assertion, anybody else is welcome to demonstrate weakness in my stated point of view. If I point out that Hichilema (working in cohort with his friend Situmbeko Musokotwane) has facilitated the extraction of the countryโ€™s mineral wealth by multinational corporations without ensuring sufficient returns in revenue collection for Zambia and provide evidence in support of this assertion, anybody else is welcome to demonstrate weakness in my stated point of view. If I point out that Hichilema has failed toโ€ฆand provide evidence in support of this assertion, anybody else is welcome to demonstrate weakness in my stated point of view. Simply dismissing my criticism as an expression of my alleged hatred for Hichilema is most unhelpful. Those who do so are depriving me the opportunity to learn what I do not know and Hichilema the opportunity to adjust his leadership style and change for the better. While I do not hesitate to share my opinions on matters of public concern, I also retain the intellectual integrity of one who is willing to abandon their point of view if its weakness can be shown. I have repeatedly stated that I harbour no hatred against Hichilema. What I hate is his bad leadership, whose meaning I have explained in the article below. There is no constitutional democracy in the world that requires citizens to love their elected leaders. Loving individuals is the responsibility of their spouses and family members. Once these individuals step up to hold elective public office, we owe them one thing: accountability or feedback on their performance. No elected public leader or their supporter should burden me or another person with any demand for affirmation or affection. In a functioning democracy, the duty of citizens is to hold their elected leaders to account so that they deliver basic services and do not undermine accountable democratic governance. This is what I have been doing across different administrations, including this one. As early as December 2021, when I analysed Hichilma's first 100 days in office, I raised governance concerns of his leadership in the hope that he could address them so that they do not grow into bigger problems. He did not listen. In 2022, when he was celebrating one year in office, I raised governance concerns of his leadership in the hope that he could address them so that they do not grow into bigger problems. He did not listen. In 2023, I raised governance concerns of his leadership in the hope that he could address them so that they do not grow into bigger problems. He did not listen. In 2024, I raised governance concerns of his leadership in the hope that he could address them so that they do not grow into bigger problems. He did not listen. In fact, as did his predecessor in 2021 in response to my criticism of the abuse of state institutions to fix critics and opponents, the president asked his supporters to report me to the police for alleged hate speech against him! In 2025, I raised governance concerns of his leadership in the hope that he could address them so that they do not grow into bigger problems. He did not listen. This year and for the many reasons that I shared in the interview on the link below, Hichilema is losing the election because he did not listen to criticism that we, as citizens, raised about his performance. He is also losing the election because of his extremist supporters who, in addition to a wilful but harmful failure to hold him to account, dismiss legitimate criticism of his leadership from other people as hate speech. What a pity! What a wasted opportunity! I have just read a story on a ruling party platform casually dismissing Global Witness's report that "Ahead of Zambia's general election...First Quantum Minerals and its associates have been running a decades-long covert influence campaign distorting the copper-rich nation's democracy" and that the Canadian firm has "become his [Hichilema's] largest funder in the upcoming 2026 election after pledging up to $50 million in support." The report adds that "FQM has reaped enormous benefits: major changes to Zambia's tax regime have save the company $771 million between 2022 and 2025, and it has been shielded from legal scrutiny." Rather than interrogating these grave concerns, the publisher, the Zambian Watchdog which is run from State House, is treating the issue so casually when Global Witness, a very credible international outlet, raises serious corruption and governance allegations. In January 2019, I raised questions about Hichilema's relationship with foreign mining firms, but was told by his supporters that I just hate him. Today, we are ere. The net result is that Hichilema, who in opposition politics had positioned himself as the reformist leader Zambia needed to reclaim its democracy, eliminate corruption, unite the country, and set it on the path to economic recovery, has, in power, turned out to be nearly everything he detested about his predecessor and, in some cases, much worse. Under his watch, corruption has thrived on a massive scale, the economy is a shambles, ethnic divisions have worsened, Zambiaโ€™s previously principled foreign policy has been shredded into something unrecognisable, and democracy is essentially non-existent. The man who was expected to lead reform has instead transitioned into an aspiring despot. Unless he rigs the election, or eliminates his main rival, Zambians should prepare for a new administration after 13 August. Many voters have reached a point of no return and it is too late for Hichilema to change their mind. A combination of failure to listen and the "you just hate Hichilema" brigade has destroyed his once promising presidency. I see many people expressing surprise at the huge turnout at Brian Mundubile's rallies. What they miss is that the turnout reflects the revulsion against Hichilema rather than genuine support for Brian. Even if Brian was not there, voters would have rallied behind another candidate through which to express their opposition to Hichilema as a result of his major policy failures. As early as 2023, wen I noticed Hichilema's direction of travel, I warned that the greatest opposition that he and the UPND face is a politically alert and informed citizenry, not an opposition party: โ€œThe biggest opposition that Hichilema faces is the people, particularly if he fails to lower the cost of living and tackle the huge unemployment outside the health and education sectors. They can stop opposition rallies like Edgar Lungu and the PF tried to do but if Zambians would have decided in a year or two that Hichilema must go at the next election, there is nothing that he can do to stop them....Even if Hichilema tries to, he cannot stop the peopleโ€™s will. Even if he succeeds in killing the PF and in his manoeuvres to block his main political opponents from running in 2026, another platform and another candidate to serve as the outlet of opposition will be found. The voters will support any visionary patriot they see as better placed to be used as the vehicle for removing Hichilema just like they chose him as the vehicle for removing Lungu. Please tell himโ€. Hichilema did not listen. Again. This continued failure to listen prompted my conclusion two years later that "Many Zambians may not know yet who they will vote for in the 2026 presidential election, but they already know who they wonโ€™t vote for." The truth is that I tried to warn Hichilema in good time and at different points that he was heading in the wrong direction. The President, dripping with arrogance, did not listen. Think of it this way. A bus (representing a political party in power) is transporting passengers (active citizens) from Intercity terminus (2021, being the departure point of where we did not want to be anymore) to Nakonde (2026, being the arrival point of destination before subsequently deciding whether to book the same bus for the return trip). After leaving Intercity, some passengers notice that the bus is heading towards Livingstone (a wrong destination that takes us back to before 2021). A few of us (active citizens) decide to stand up (holding the leader to account) and confront both the driver (the president) and his conductor (Minister of Finance), demanding an explanation for why we are heading to Livingstone when we were promised that we woud be taken to Nakonde. Other passengers, mainly those who came from the ethnic group of the driver and conductor, defended the duo even before it could respond to our concerns. They repeatedly told us that "You just hate the driver. Please sit down!" One or two relatives of the conductor joined in support, saying the "The driver and the conductor are excellent and one of them has even won awards for stellar performance on his duties, including his remarkable capacity to understand direction of travel"! That is how some passengers kept quiet. I kept on talking, especially after we reached Choma in the hope that if we turned atthat point, we woudl not wast more time. I talked because I could not get off the bus at undesigned stations, so the only solution was to appeal to the driver to change course. I explained that it would be an act of extreme irresponsibility on my part as an active passenger to wait until the bus has reached Livingstone before holding the driver to account about the direction of travel. That is why I tried to warn the driver that we were headed in the wrong direction. Unfortunately, other passengers said we should just sit back comfortably, enjoy the ride which included some morsels of food delivered by the bus, and trust the driver because other drivers before him were much worse. In the end, we arrived in Livingstone, our undesired destination. Just when we were arriving, we saw another bus, loading passing from there directly to Nakonde. The driver, upon realising the cost of his failure to listen and the disappointment in the eyes of the passengers, urged everyone to sit down, promising that he would take us to Nakonde if we give him more time. With the exception of those who came from the driver's ethnic group and the auxiliary ones, most passengers, who had shown great faith in his driving skills by paying (voting) the fare for the bus as their mode of transport from Intercity to Nakonde, have left the bus for the other. These include those who had adopted silence during the journey after realising that the driver, aided by the choir mentioned, was not a listening kind. As I write this post, the alternative bus is almost full. The same passengers who accused those of us who, along the way, advised the driver to change course, of harbouring hatred for the driver are now wondering why nearly everyone is leaving the bus we came with for an alternative one that is promising to take us directly to Nakonde. One of the driver's supporters, reiterating the driver's earlier appeal that we should stick to the bus that brought us to Livingstone, just shouted at us a moment ago: "The alternative bus will take you to a wrong destination. Its driver cannot be trusted; just stick to this one because you won't have to pay a new fare". The supporter is overlooking the point that we are already at a wrong destination, the current driver has betrayed our trust, and that we would rather repose our trust in another person. It is not good to remain on a bus, driven by a person who does not listen, out of the fear that an alternative one might be driven by someone who could be worse. Let us try the alternative bus. If its driver takes us to a wrong destination, we will disembark from the bus we are about to jump onto, as we have done before, and find another one until we reach Nakonde. For me and other active passengers, such has been the the current driver's betrayal of our trust that we have reached a point of no return. We cannot trust this driver anymore, especially that when we tried to correct him, no one explained to us why our concerns were unfounded. We were just told that we hate hate the driver or his ethic group or or the province where he comes from. Recently, Dr Lee Habasonda, a lecturer in political science at the University of Zambia, told Reuters (watch the video clip on the link below) that electoral success is a matter of thresholds โ€“ of grievances, feelings, frustrations, etc. Leeโ€™s view is that once a certain threshold or tipping point has been reached, "no matter your manifesto, ideology, lies" or whatever those in power do or say, the voters will "decide to change government" because they would have reached a point of no return. Emotionally, many Zambian voters, including some that I know who voted for Hichilema in 2021, have passed that threshold where no matter what Hichilema or UPND does, these voters will reject him. This is because the threshold, or the point of no return, has been reached. As Lee argued, those in power "may say we have already won this election when they campaign but the political coalitions and realignment" suggest otherwise. When the opposition wins next month, we will need to advise them to get non-sycophants at State House and in the critical posts in the civil service. It is important that they understand that unless there is a clear shift away from the harmful culture we have raised concerns about, we will be compelled to challenge them with the same resolve we previously applied to both the PF and UPND governments. On my part, I promise that I will always be on the side of the people. You will not find me in government even after the election. Once Hichilema is out of office, I will leave him alone and my attention will shift to holding to account the next set of public leaders. As I made clear in 2021, I am content serving as an academic and I will work, as part of my civic duty, to hold the new Government to account as I did with previous Governments. I am not available for or interested in any form of government job. For now, Iet me continue listening to the attached song. Chalo chesu.

Sishuwa Sishuwa

32,627 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 1 ไธชๆœˆๅ‰

The tragedy of Zimbabwean politics is that there is reality, and then there are aspirations, aspirations that often drift into political delusions that hope for miracles. Too often, our people choose the latter. Instead of confronting the hard political realities before us, they cling to the hope that events will somehow unfold in their favour miraculously, regardless of the evidence saying otherwise. I have listened carefully to Vice President General Constantino Chiwengaโ€™s latest remarks, given to us through a parable of Lazarus and the other biblical analogies he has shared at different intervals. He has demonstrated that he understands religion, reads the Bible extensively, and is comfortable using scripture to communicate political ideas and messages to the Zimbabwean citizenry. That, however, does not change our political reality. In 2017, General Chiwenga successfully marshalled the military, worked hand in glove with other senior figures within the security establishment, mobilised ordinary citizens onto the streets with the help of the opposition, and carried out the military coup that removed former president Robert Mugabe from power after forcing him to write a resignation letter with a gun over his head. Today, however, General Chiwenga faces a far steeper challenge because Zimbabweans are deeply disillusioned by what followed. Fairly or unfairly, many do not see what happened after November 2017 simply as Mnangagwaโ€™s project. They see it as General Chiwengaโ€™s military intervention because he was the Commander of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces who executed it; he was the poster boy of the military coup. Zimbabwean citizens jokingly called him General Bae. โ€œBaeโ€ is an affectionate term for someone you love or care about deeply. Whether one agrees with that assessment or not, that General Chiwenga bears responsibility for what followed the coup is a political perception that remains ingrained in the countryโ€™s memory. Anything that emerged from that military coup inevitably falls, to some extent, on his shoulders. That leaves him with an enormous task if he hopes to redeem himself politically. His biggest challenge is that, unlike Robert Mugabe, President Emmerson Mnangagwa is an exceptionally patient, calculating, and tactical politician who plans years ahead of eventual execution, and who does so ruthlessly, without any mercy for his political opponents. Today, we are confronted with Constitutional Amendment Bill No. 3, which is now on President Mnangagwaโ€™s desk awaiting his signature. Once enacted, it will, barring a political miracle, effectively extinguish Chiwengaโ€™s path to the presidency and also extinguish the little prospect of an opposition president. But this story did not begin in 2026. It began in 2021 with Constitutional Amendment Bill No. 2, which abolished the running mate clause. That provision would have significantly strengthened General Chiwengaโ€™s prospects of automatically succeeding President Mnangagwa. When Amendment No. 2 was introduced, I argued that it was unmistakable evidence that President Mnangagwa had no intention whatsoever of handing over power to Chiwenga. As usual, because many people preferred comforting illusions to uncomfortable facts, many disagreed with that political assessment. Some within ZANUPF accused me of talking political nonsense. Others insisted that Mnangagwa and Chiwenga were inseparable political brothers who would always work together. Even sections of the opposition dismissed my political analysis, arguing that Mnangagwa would never have the political capacity to sideline Chiwenga because powerful forces would stop him. Reality has partly answered that debate. The results are before us. The so-called forces have not been able to stop him so far. Today, the Vice President increasingly relies on biblical parables to communicate his political messaging while Mnangagwa steadily and ruthlessly tightens his grip on every important lever of state power. The military itself illustrates this shift. The Zimbabwe National Army is now commanded by Major General Walter Tapfumaneyi. His rise is politically significant to the story so far and to where the story might take us as it continues to unfold. General Tapfumaneyi left the army as a colonel after falling out with the military establishment during General Chiwengaโ€™s tenure as Commander of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces. He was made a Brigadier General upon retirement from the army. He joined the Central Intelligence Organisation, where he rose to become Deputy Director-General. He also commanded Forever Associates Zimbabwe (FAZ), the organisation widely associated with supporting President Mnangagwaโ€™s electoral machinery during the 2023 elections. When President Mnangagwa returned him to the Zimbabwe National Army, he was promoted to the rank of Major General. He leapfrogged several Major Generals who had served longer at that rank when he was appointed Commander of the Zimbabwe National Army. President Mnangagwa was now building the army in his own desired image and dismantling General Chiwengaโ€™s army management network. His appointment strengthened Mnangagwaโ€™s influence over one of the countryโ€™s most important institutions, the military. He was appointed after President Mnangagwa fired General Chiwengaโ€™s right-hand man, General Anselem Nhamo Sanyatwe, who had been the commander who supervised the 2017 coup when he was commander of the Presidential Guard. He was appointed as Sports Minister, replacing Kirsty Coventry. Todayโ€™s Presidential Guard presents a similar picture. It has also been reshaped to suit President Mnangagwaโ€™s political pursuits. The same formation that played a decisive role during the 2017 military intervention, then commanded by Colonel Anselem Sanyatwe before his subsequent promotion to Brigadier General, is today under a commander aligned with Mnangagwa. Major General Fidelis Mhonda, who commands todayโ€™s Presidential Guard, was promoted a few days ago to the rank of Major General, reinforcing the widespread perception that the Presidential Guard is now firmly within Mnangagwaโ€™s sphere of influence and political control. Above them sits the Commander of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, General Emmanuel Matatu, from the Midlands province. Unlike Chiwenga during his tenure, General Matatu has generally not been viewed as an overt political operator. His role has largely been seen as maintaining institutional continuity rather than building an independent political constituency within the military, as General Chiwenga did during his time in the army. Taken together, these developments are seen by President Mnangagwa and his close associates as significantly reducing the prospects of another military coup to remove him. Over time, President Mnangagwa has systematically reshaped the senior military command structure. Military officers perceived to be close to Chiwenga have either retired, died, been reassigned, or gradually lost influence, while others considered more acceptable to Mnangagwa have risen through the ranks. Whether intentional or simply the natural evolution of military succession, the result has been the steady consolidation of presidential influence over the security establishment, weakening General Chiwengaโ€™s influence. Meanwhile, many Zimbabweans have begun looking to Chiwenga for a viable counterforce because they see little prospect of meaningful change emerging from the fragmented opposition. Yet Chiwengaโ€™s recent biblical parable appears to carry a different message. Rather than suggesting that salvation will come through him and his military associates alone, he seems to be telling Zimbabweans that they must act for themselves instead of waiting for someone else to rescue them. If that is indeed his message, it presents a political dilemma. Zimbabweans have repeatedly been encouraged to โ€œwait and watch,โ€ with suggestions that decisive, overwhelming action was imminent. Now they are being reminded that they themselves must participate. The difficulty is that many Zimbabweans remain traumatised by the stateโ€™s historical response to public demonstrations using the same military. When Chiwenga commanded the Zimbabwean military, those who protested often encountered overwhelming force. In August 2018, when he had become Vice President, soldiers shot civilians during post-election protests in Harare. The global media and British politicians like Kate Hoey directly blamed General Chiwenga for those killings because of Zimbabweโ€™s army history of dabbling in politics. Emmerson Mnangagwaโ€™s public relations machine kicked into action and blamed General Chiwenga when speaking to diplomats and international businessmen about the circumstances surrounding what had taken place. A very powerful narrative was created that pointed to General Chiwenga as the culprit. President Mnangagwa told African presidents that when the killings took place, he was actually in a meeting with the former Ethiopian Prime Minister, Hailemariam Desalegn and the former Ethiopian dictator, Mengistu Haile Mariam. In 2008, while he was Commander of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, the military killed hundreds of opposition supporters during the post-election violence that ultimately led to the formation of the Government of National Unity (GNU). Those events remain deeply embedded in the political memory of Zimbabwean citizens. Consequently, many Zimbabweans today are understandably reluctant to return to the streets for fear of being killed. Ironically, it is a political environment that Chiwenga himself helped create. Successful military interventions that seek public legitimacy usually require significant civilian mobilisation. Unless one is contemplating an outright seizure of power through force alone, public participation matters. Today, however, fear has largely replaced mobilisation. Across Zimbabwe and throughout the diaspora, many people hold General Chiwenga partly responsible for the political situation the country now finds itself in. They argue that in 2017 he possessed both the military authority and the political leverage to shape Zimbabweโ€™s future differently. Former president Robert Mugabe sent former central bank governor Dr Gideon Gono during the coup in November 2017 to engage General Chiwenga and other senior military officers with proposals that would have allowed General Chiwenga himself to assume power. General Chiwenga refused this offer and remained loyal to President Emmerson Mnangagwa during the coup. President Mnangagwa, by contrast, has demonstrated unwavering commitment to securing his own political future in a ruthless and Machiavellian way. Every major constitutional change, every strategic appointment, and every restructuring of the security establishment point in the same direction. His political objectives have been pursued with remarkable political discipline, patience, and clarity, coupled with an iron fist. Regardless of how objectionable his actions have been, he continues to execute them, and so far he has been succeeding. That is why I return to where I began. Zimbabwean politics has become a contest between reality and aspiration or delusion. Many continue to believe that somehow events will take a different course through a political messiah despite the evidence accumulating before them. But politics rewards those who deal with reality and political actors who are not scared of executing their plans, regardless of how controversial they are. It does not reward those who substitute objective reality with hope. Whatever one thinks of President Emmerson Mnangagwa or General Constantino Chiwenga, the evidence available today points overwhelmingly in one direction. Mnangagwa has spent years methodically consolidating power, while many of his opponents have spent those same years believing circumstances would somehow change in their favour. The other element that helped the ascension of President Emmerson Mnangagwa was the main opposition political party of the day, the MDC. Former Prime Minister and founding MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai and his successor, Nelson Chamisa, worked with Mnangagwa in sanitising the coup by putting their supporters on the streets to make it look like it was a popular uprising against the sickly geriatric leader, Robert Mugabe. Today, the opposition is in disarray, crippled and, in many cases, comfortably ensconced in ZANUPF pockets. To put it more accurately, it is in Emmerson Mnangagwaโ€™s pockets. The countryโ€™s most popular opposition leader, Nelson Chamisa, has also made his position clear through one of his own parables on social media. In a recent post, he suggested that he would not allow himself to be made to write Paper Two, in other words, another military coup. His argument is based on the fact that the first military coup delivered nothing but grief for the opposition. The opposition was promised a lot of things and as the coup ended successfully, former Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa told Zimbabweans that it was a strictly ZANUPF affair. Chamisa believes that repeating the same approach, when there is already evidence of what the first coup produced, would be politically futile. He is therefore clearly not prepared to marshal his supporters onto the streets on behalf of one ZANUPF faction against another because he sees this primarily as an internal ZANUPF power struggle as he sees it. Another important element is that President Emmerson Mnangagwa has been able to create massive wealth through public procurement for a coterie of loyal political backers. That wealth has played a significant role in securing political favours, consolidating power, and extending influence across many facets of Zimbabwean society. Mnangagwa loyalists have publicly donated luxury vehicles and other expensive gifts to senior military commanders, universities, churches, celebrities, and many related key institutional figures. In the religious sector, which has millions of fanatic followers, influential church leaders have received financial support and gifts. In the entertainment industry, prominent musicians such as Jah Prayzah, Alick Macheso, and others have also received gifts from wealthy Mnangagwa loyalists who openly support President Mnangagwaโ€™s political agenda to extend his term of office. Taken together, these patronage networks have helped consolidate political influence well beyond the structures of the state itself. The odds facing the Vice President are therefore enormous. Barring a miracle, his path to the presidency appears increasingly very difficult. The irony is that part of the political architecture he helped build over the past two decades has created the very climate of fear that now stands in his way. If he were ever to seek public mobilisation, many Zimbabweans would be reluctant to take to the streets because of the stateโ€™s historical response to protests, much of which occurred while he occupied positions of immense power in the security sector. The other risk is that, if nothing changes, he could eventually be dismissed. Some of his ardent supporters like Knox Chivero have already gone onto public social media platforms claiming that there are plans to remove him from office. That possibility does not surprise political analysts at all. At some point, Mnangagwa may conclude that there is little political value in retaining a deputy whom he believes has been politically and militarily neutralised. Many political analysts now say, barring a political miracle powered by a military coup, Chiwenga could ultimately find himself leaving office as an ordinary civilian. Any attempt to remove a government through a military coup carries enormous risks and requires tonnes of money, as we saw with the 2017 military coup, which was reportedly funded by fuel tycoon Kudakwashe Tagwirei. Such an attempt must succeed because, historically, failed coups often have severe, and sometimes fatal, consequences for those who participate in them. It is a kill-or-be-killed situation once it unfolds. So, Vice President Chiwenga finds himself in an extraordinarily difficult position. His own faction is looking to him to lead and deliver. At the same time, many opposition supporters who now feel politically orphaned, with no credible political home, are also looking to him in the hope that he can bring about change but are terrified of the streets. As all this drama unfolds, President Emmerson Mnangagwa continues to tighten his grip on power. Constitutional Amendment Bill No. 3 now sits on his desk awaiting his signature, and it could be signed into law at any moment. Yet, for General Chiwenga, this is a make-or-break moment. If the Bill is signed into law and the General does nothing, many will conclude that his political presidential ambitions have come to an undignified end. If he attempts to act and fails, he could place himself in mortal danger. And if he simply waits, the political outcome may ultimately be the same, he risks being removed once Mnangagwa concludes that he no longer serves a useful political purpose. Time, as always, will be the ultimate judge. Reality and aspiration are now facing each other, and we have not a long time left for the ultimate showdown, or, as many suspect, little resistance.

Hopewell Chinโ€™ono

105,734 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 2 ไธชๆœˆๅ‰

"We had people around us that started having things happen. And not all of it was rosy. We didn't know that...it's gonna stay with you for maybe...years and years or the rest of your life." ~Mr. B. A Whole Lot of Not Rosy Robert Bigelow: "And so, it (survival of consciousness research) does have this aspect of things to be concerned about. And you know, I've told you that since we formed this institute (Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies (BICS)) in June (of 2020), all of a sudden, we had people around us that started having things happen. And not all of it was rosy, okay?โ€ (I really hope he give details in a future interview because I think it's important to know what happened. Just the formation of an institute that planned on studying consciousness caused phenomena to start taking place and some of it was negative in nature. To me, that's problematic. Did anybody get injured or sick, or were they just scared?) Bigelow: "So, I mean, this is family members, myself, my staff. And none of this we expected, we hadn't asked for anything, positioned anything, decided to do anything in this kind of research. Our whole intention to begin with was simply trying to get ourselves up to speed in the literature, after being away from this for so many years, focusing on [the] space world, right? That's been mainly what I've been doing - except for the Skinwalker Ranch thing for 20 years - is the space world...has been huge in my life to pursue. The legitimate, parochial kind of, you know, using fire engines, rockets to get you there (smiles). "So we didn't expect anything like this to happen." (Again, this is various phenomena that allegedly started happening once they formed BICS with the intention of studying consciousness (including life after death), and apparently, some of it was not good. Again, did anybody get hurt? Exactly how bad was it? Details are sorely needed.) Bigelow: "And so, this Holy Grail is different than the second Holy Grail. If the second one being the ET, is a little bit lower. And this first one: Is there any part of your consciousness that survives your bodily death? That's a big deal, that's a huge story, that's gigantic." (I'd push back and suggest that both Holy Grails may be connected or related and the 2nd one may not be ET at all. This other intelligence (which John Keel labelled, "Ultraterrestrials") may reside in, or be able to enter, the same realms we enter when we die. Thereโ€™s strong evidence that psychic mediums can acquire information they had no way of knowing about via their five senses. But are they talking to the dead, or is something else going on?) ~~~Excerpt from Operation Trojan Horse by John Keel~~~ In 1866, a New Englander named William Denton declared himself to be the first modern contactee. He claimed to be in telepathic contact with beings from another planet, and he and his whole family later purportedly visited Venus and Mars. Denton wrote a series of books describing saucer-shaped vehicles in detail, which he thought were made of aluminum. (A commercial process for manufacturing aluminum was not invented until 1886.) He also told his audiences (he lectured widely) that the folks who rode around in aluminum airships looked very much like us. His narratives were, in many respects, identical to those of the modern contactees. Trance Mediums and Possession Trance mediums were nothing new in 1850. In the Bibleโ€™s First Book of Samuel, Chapter 28 describes how Saul consulted a medium (โ€œโ€ฆ a woman that hath-a familiar spiritโ€). Mediums acted as oracles in ancient times, and people with this peculiar gift appeared in each new generation. Such persons seem to serve as instruments through which the ultraterrestrials can speak to us directly, and they often come up with amazingly accurate prophecies of the future and precise details of events that could seemingly be known only to the dead relatives of the people who consulted them. Of course, when spiritualism became a national fad, a goodly number of charlatans and hucksters moved in. But most of the genuine mediums exercised their talents carefully and for free. They did not indulge in fancy hocus-pocus and did not need paraphernalia, such as spirit cabinets. They wereโ€”and areโ€”people who can apparently summon up unseen entities or alien intelligences and extract information from them. I am not a spiritualist myself, although I have attended a few sรฉances over the years, usually in the role of a scoffer and disbeliever. As a longtime amateur magician, I have been able to see through the frauds, but I have also been genuinely perplexed by some of the manifestations I have personally witnessed. (I recommend everybody read about The Scole Experiment or watch the documentary on YT about it. And...read the book, "Ghost Hunters" by Deborah Blum. Related links here: ) ~ Back to OTH... Essentially, a trance medium lapses into an unconscious state, and while in this condition, his or her body is taken over by some outside influence. This influence is usually a self-styled โ€œIndian guideโ€ from โ€œthe other side.โ€ Many mediums have been simple, uneducated people, but when in a trance state they have been able to talk foreign languages fluently. Scientists and clergymen have put countless mediums through severe tests over the years. At one group of sรฉances in the 1920s, sitters, who were all versed in different languages, grilled mediums in everything from ancient Chinese to Swahili, and the controlling entities not only conversed in those languages but corrected the sittersโ€™ grammar! The daughter of Judge Edmunds, president of the Senate in the 1850s, gave incredible performances while in a trance, speaking fluently in Greek, Spanish, Polish, Latin, Portuguese, Hungarian, and several Indian languages. Because the sittersโ€”and the mediumsโ€”assume that they are dealing with residents of heaven, they ask mostly spiritual questions. Customarily, the โ€œcontrolโ€ will announce that Mr. Blank is standing next to him and wishes to speak to Mrs. Blank, who is attending the sรฉance. Mrs. Blank excitedly begins to question her dead husband, Mr. Blank. How is life on the other side? Just fine, the control replies, a little bored, everyone lives in vine-covered cottages, and all is sweetness and light. Where did Mr. Blank hide his valuable gold watch before he died? Itโ€™s wrapped in an old sock and buried under some papers in the bottom drawer of the old rolltop desk, the control answers. Sure enough, when Mrs. Blank gets home, she finds the watch exactly where the mediumโ€™s alter ego said it would be. Try to convince Mrs. Blank that she didnโ€™t talk with her dead husband! In many cases, the medium even begins to talk in a voice that sounds exactly like the dead Mr. Blank, uses his pet expressions, and even refers to things known only to Mrs. Blank, indulges in their private jokes, and so on. Occasionally, a deceased celebrity will โ€œbreak through.โ€ Recently the late George Bernard Shaw made a tape recording in England that is now circulating in occult circles. Those who knew Shaw claim that it sounds exactly like him, uses his phraseology and vocal mannerisms, and displays his brilliant and distinctive wit. The trance phenomenon deserves extensive study because so many aspects of it are directly related to the contactee phenomenon. The contactees have been told a hundred different stories of what life is like on other planets. If you review the descriptions of heaven produced at the thousands of possibly genuine sรฉances, you will find the same contradictions. The entities will lie transparently at one point in the sรฉance, and a few moments later will come up with astounding information that could not be based upon simple trickery. The mediums themselves have always been aware of their controlsโ€™ mischievous sense of humor. They speak of false shades and malevolent spirits who perform outrageous hoaxes. So the mediums and the professional investigators are always wary. The fact that a control can imitate George Bernard Shaw does not necessarily mean that GBS is doing the speaking from the spirit world. The fact that a control knows where Mr. Blank hid his gold watch does not necessarily prove that Mr. Blank is standing at his side โ€œon the other plane.โ€ The medium generally remains completely inert while in the trance or โ€œoccupiedโ€ state but in some instances can become quite animated and make gestures appropriate to whatever is being said. In a very real sense, the mediumโ€™s mind has been blanked out, and his or her body has been completely taken over by the control. The medium has become a zombie of sorts, possessed by an alien entity, an entity who lacks a physical form of his own. Contactees often find themselves suddenly miles from home without knowing how they got there. They either have induced amnesia, wiping out all memory of the trip, or they were taken over by some means and made the trip in a blacked-out state. Should they encounter a friend on the way, the friend would probably note that their eyes seemed glassy and their behavior seemed peculiar. But if the friend spoke to them, he might receive a curt reply. In the language of the silent contactees this process is called being used. A used person can suddenly lose a day or a week out of his life. I have known silent contactees to disappear from their homes for long periods, and when they returned, they had little or no recollection of where they had been. One girl sent me a postcard from the Bahama Islandsโ€”which surprised me because I knew she was very poor. When she returned, she told me that she had only one memory of the trip. She said she remembered getting off a jet at an airportโ€”she couldnโ€™t recall getting on the jet or making the tripโ€”and there โ€œIndiansโ€ met her and took her baggage. She remembered nothing further after that. The next thing she knew she was back home again. It seems likely the same methods are applied to both mediums and contactees. In the case of the mediums, the mind control serves a useful purpose. It enables the entities to establish direct vocal communication with us and, in many instances, pass along worthwhile information. This process can also be destructive. A young man from Ithaca, New York, called me some time ago at the urging of William Donovan, president of Aerial Investigation and Research (AIR), to tell me of his close brush with death. One evening in the fall of 1967, he said, he left his home to drive to a meeting. For some reason he couldnโ€™t explain, he got out of his car, went back into his house, and carried out several aimless actions such as picking up a book from a table and putting it on the shelf. โ€œFinally, I said to myself, Okay, itโ€™s time,โ€ he told me. He remembers leaving the house and again heading for his parked car. The next thing he knew he was in a hospital bed. He had apparently driven about four miles to a railroad crossing just in time to meet an oncoming train. His car was demolished, but he escaped rather miraculously with only a few minor injuries. If he had not gone back into the house and carried out those meaningless, time-killing chores, he would have avoided the train altogether. It is possible, of course, that the shock of the accident blotted out his memory of that four-mile driveโ€”but he couldnโ€™t even remember putting the key in the ignition. This man had been active in investigating the UFO flap that took place around the radio telescope installations near Ithaca in 1967-68. In his book Passport to Magonia, Dr. Jacques Vallee, a NASA astronomer and computer expert, touches on all this. โ€œIn the Soviet Union, not so long ago, a leading plasma physicist died in strange circumstances,โ€ Dr. Vallee states. โ€œHe was thrown under a Moscow subway train by a mentally deranged woman. It is noteworthy that she claimed a โ€˜voice from spaceโ€™ had given her orders to kill that particular manโ€”orders she could not resist. Soviet criminologists, I have been reliably informed, are worried by the increase of such cases in recent years. Madmen rushing through the streets because they think the Martians are after them have always been commonplace. But the current wave of mental imbalance that can be specifically tied to the rise and development of the contactee myth is an aspect of the UFO problem that must be considered with special care.โ€ So there seem to be both good and evil forces at work in this type of phenomenon. The good guys latch onto people with particularly receptive minds and turn them into trance mediums. The bad guys use the same methods to tamper with the minds of contactees and even to commit murders indirectly. Because incidents of these types can be traced throughout history, it seems probable that these forces have always been extant on this planet. When the good guys worked through mediums, they needed some excuse that we would accept. The answer seemed to be โ€œcommunication with the dead.โ€ These communicative efforts led to the foundation of spiritualism, and the entities played the role to the hilt, using their complete knowledge of us and our individual lives to provide us with โ€œproofโ€ of the existence of a spirit world. This is the same precise methodology being employed with the UFOs to build up support for the extraterrestrial thesis. We humans need acceptable explanations for unnatural phenomena, so โ€œtheyโ€ happilyโ€”and often humorouslyโ€”supply us with all the explanations we can handle. At the same time, they give us tiny fragments of the real truth, hoping no doubt that we will be able to digest them slowly. Ever so slowly. In earlier times it seems as if they made a complicated attempt to convey the truth to us through mediums and psychics, but we chose to misinterpret these efforts and placed them within the context of our primitive religious beliefs. We are still doing this, and they are going along with it because even misinterpreted communication is better than no communication at all. Religion may not be truth but may merely be a step on the long path of the real truth. Do the ultraterrestrials really care about us? There is much disturbing evidence that they donโ€™t. They care only to the extent that we can fulfill our enigmatic use to them. The Reverend Arthur Ford is one of Americaโ€™s best-known trance mediums. For most of his life he has served as an instrument for an entity who calls himself Fletcher. In 1928, Fletcher announced that Harry Houdini (who had died in 1926) was on hand and had a message which he wanted conveyed to his widow, Beatrice. The message was in a code once used by the Houdinis in a mind-reading act. This code was known only to the couple and had never been published or revealed to anyone. Fletcher, through Ford, was able to give precise details of this secret code, and Mrs. Houdini later confirmed that the message had to come from her husband. This was only one of Fordโ€™s many coups. In the fall of 1967, Ford went into a trance on Canadian television and produced a message for Bishop James Pike from his deceased son. Bishop Pike, who was present at this televised sรฉance, avowed that the message seemed authentic and seemed to come from the familiar personality of his son. This well-publicized sรฉance launched a major revival of spiritualism in the United States. Reverend Ford travels in high circles but has never made any material gain from his peculiar gift. He gives freely of his timeโ€”and Fletcherโ€™s advice from the other sideโ€”at sรฉances all over the country. Mrs. Ruth Montgomery, the well-known author and Washington reporter, tells of the time that Reverend Ford visited her in Washington and lapsed into a trance so she could ask Fletcher for some advice on his behalf. Reverend Ford was then in the process of moving and wanted to know what he should do with some of his things. Fletcher seemed totally disinterested in Fordโ€™s problems, Mrs. Montgomery reported, and when she asked if Ford should visit a clinic for a checkup, Fletcher snapped, โ€œHeโ€™d better do something. If he doesnโ€™t, I canโ€™t work through him much longer.โ€ Although Reverend Ford had voluntarily submitted his person to Fletcherโ€™s use for nearly half a century, the entity was apparently completely disinterested in his problems and welfare. This is, alas, rather typical. Even the most helpful entities seem more dedicated to the job of communicating than to any kind of involvement with those to whom (or through whom) they are communicating. The bizarre history of psychic phenomena is filled with Fletchers. Mrs. Montgomery, incidentally, indulges in automatic writing herself and has received constant messages for the past few years, many of which have been valid prophecies and stern advice meant to govern her future actions. There have been innumerable psychic hoaxes for the past 150 years, and many of these parallel the UFO hoaxes. In 1855, the Fox sisters confessed that their spirit rappings were a hoax. They said they produced the sounds by โ€œsnapping their toes.โ€ Think about that for a moment. Snapping your toes so that it sounded like a rap on a wall or table would be a most remarkable talentโ€”perhaps even more remarkable than the ability to communicate with the spirit world. I donโ€™t believe I would pay ten cents to hear someone talk to a rapping spiritโ€”but I would happily pay five dollars to examine someone who could duplicate the rapping sound by snapping his toes. Later the two sisters said the confession was false, and they had been bribed to make it. "Mrs. Houdini was genuinely astonished and impressed by Reverend Fordโ€™s messages from her husband, and she made numerous public statements to that effect, as well as signing various affidavits. But later, in the 1930s, she chose to deny it all for a time. Then, shortly before her death, she reversed her denials. In ufology we have to contend with teenagersโ€™ hot-air balloons, and in psychic phenomena we have to worry about youngsters firing rocks at houses with slingshots and phony mediums levitating โ€œspirit trumpetsโ€ with black thread. But there are many more UFO sightings than there are plastic balloons, and there are more poltergeists dumping rocks in living rooms than there are wild-eyed youngsters with slingshots. There are also more ultraterrestrial entities than either the occultists or the UFO enthusiasts dream of." ~~~Edit of the Bigelow Interview~~~ Bigelow: "I also, I was...I got very disturbed toward the end (of AAWSAP) about something that happened to some of the government people, and I realized uhh...holy crap." (Read, "Skinwalkers at the Pentagon." I think it's one of the most important UFO books in recent memory.) George Knapp: "Hitchhikers." Bigelow: "Umm... Well, yeah. You know. So, hitchhikers being that you take things home with you. Everybody took things home with them. I took things to my house. Things happened to my wife, and to me. Different things. So, everybody took things home. We all, you know, we did. But we didn't know that, gee, it was like, gonna be kind of permanent. You know, we didn't know that, you know? That it's gonna stay with you for maybe...for years and years or the rest of your life, who knows? "But the ones that bothered me a lot where anybody got hurt or really disturbed... Not that it happened on the ranch, it was when they left the ranch. As you say, hitchhikers. And these were government people and it affected them." Knapp: "In very dramatic ways, though." Bigelow: "Very dramatic ways. Very dramatic ways. You know, and there's a cousin to that that we're facing, but it's abated, at least for now. And this other survival topic, right? The very dramatic kind of things that we wanted to have reduced or stopped." (The "cousin" to the hitchhiker phenomenon features the not-so-rosy things he referred to early on in this clip. But at least it had abated at the time of this interview. Has it started up again?) Bigelow: "But going back to the government people, the buyer (Brandon Fugal) came along at the right time, I had decided I wanted to tone down..." Knapp: "Take this off your plate." Bigelow: "Yeah, take it off my plate, tone it down, and if necessary, just lock it up and forget about it. And next thing I know, you know, [Fugal] comes along and, you know, the rest is history." Knapp: "Before we leave this, though, the incidents that happened to you, to your wife, to Colm (Kelleher), to me, the, you know, you bring it home. How does everybody handle that? I mean, is it spooky at the time, and do you draw the connection that it's ranch related?" Bigelow: "Yes and no. If the events hadn't happened very often prior to the ranch, then it's not ranch connected. But they did happen." (I think he meant to say, if the events hadn't happened prior to him buying the ranch in 1996 and did happen once he made the purchase, then it would seem to be connected just to the ranch. But he says these anomalous events did happen before he bought it. Maybe some events were connected to the ranch and others were not? Or, this precognitive sentient phenomenon, as John Alexander labelled it, was able to know that Bigelow was going to purchase the ranch in the future and began interacting with him and his wife before he bought it?) Bigelow: "And [these anomalous events] did [happen], where we lived with my wife and I. We had a poltergeist event one time that was really fun and very different, and that was before I ever acquired the ranch. My wife was a very strong - and probably still is, in spirit - person. And so she took them in stride. She had a full manifestation of an apparition, a human-form apparition in the bedroom, and looking at her. "And this was a holy cow. And she happened to tell me, kind of like, 'Oh, well, while you were gone, this is what happened here, a manifestation of this.' I've heard this kind of thing many times through other people, and recently. And she felt the bed depress as there was a curiosity going on because the facial features were distinctive enough to be able to...as though, 'Who are you and what are you doing here?' Coming from the manifestation from the apparition, looking at her, right? "And torso up was kind of what was manifested. And being able to see and feel the mattress being depressed as it's looking at you, wondering, 'Who are you?' That kind of look on the face. 'What are you doing here?' You know, usually you think it would be the opposite direction. 'Who the hell are you?'" (Fully-formed apparitions have been reported over the last 150 years or so but many times only partial bodies are seen. In this case, Mrs. Bigelow only saw the apparition from the torso up. When Leslie Kean sat with physical medium, Stewart Alexander, she said she only saw a hand form. The alleged spirits will say that, many times, it takes too much energy to form a full body. Learn more about the Kean encounter here: ) ~ Knapp: "Was [Mrs. Bigelow] freaked out?" Bigelow: "No. No, she wasn't. There was a bar of light - so this was not normal in the survival research, but maybe in the ET - that was between her pillows. A bar of light. It wasn't coming in from shutters or blinds or anything from the room or any kind of other light source. You could cover, put the pillows down, and the bar would not be reflected on the surface of the object above it, on the second pillow. It only happened when you did this. And she did that and said, 'Oh, well.' I said, 'Well, what did you do?' "'Well, I went to sleep.' Went to sleep, so..." ~~~ (In January of 2012, NYT journalist, Ralph Blumenthal wrote an article about Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies (BICS). He ended it with this: ) "One personal footnote. Donโ€™t ask me what happened on Jan. 4 at 5:45 a.m. as I lay sleepless, wrestling with this story. A tremendous bang jolted me and my wife and the dog upright. We found the glass door to our 12th-floor terrace completely spiderwebbed with cracks as if struck with tremendous force, but there was no sign of any projectile. Invisible moisture between the double panes? Or something else? There are things I donโ€™t mind talking about and things I do mind talking about." (Was this prosaic or just more of the not-so-rosy phenomena Bigelow referenced? We need to know!)

Joe Murgia

106,462 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 1 ๅนดๅ‰

The Royal High Courts are certainly a place of grandeur and perhaps some are intimidated by the surroundings. Well that impressive 19th century Gothic architecture is a sight to behold but the Judges less so. Iโ€™ve seen too many judges in the UK and Pakistan and by God, they leave a lot to be desired. Especially when one comes across McGowan the Mediocre. What should have been a straightforward win has turned into a cheating exercise by the very judiciary meant to uphold justice in this country. Why do I say straightforward? Letโ€™s recap. After 3-4 failed complaints to the GMC, the Jewish lobbies upped the ante. First came my loss of contract at South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust where I was doing some clinics. No investigation. Just blocked from the email and canโ€™t address patient queries. Then started the defamation in the press โ€“ articles in the Jewish News, Jewish Chronicle and Telegraph followed by loss of contract with Medinet with whom Iโ€™d worked since 2018 intermittently and had glowing reviews. The GMC now opens an investigation โ€“ given the pressure from Wes Streeting, elected in July 2024. They wanted an Interim Orders Tribunal (IOT) to decide if any sanction should be imposed whilst I was being โ€œinvestigatedโ€. I had a trip abroad for my brotherโ€™s assassination case and I had clinics. Patients who had waited 12-18 months to see a Neurologist. The GMC and MPTS didnโ€™t care. The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) is allegedly an independent body to the GMC and runs the IOT panels. They would not move the IOT by 11 working days as the GMC had refused (so much for independence!) โ€“ instead of 20th December I had suggested 13th January 2025. Recall this was over the Christmas period โ€“ people going on holidays and yet I was expected to get legal advice when I was in clinic from 8am โ€“ 6pm. I told them patients came first โ€“ I stand by that. Hurt Jewish feelings arenโ€™t urgent and they donโ€™t come before my patient care. I requested deferment by 11 working days, told them I would defend every single tweet and indeed, looked forward to it. This was all via email. Multiple emails. All ignored โ€“ including the one letter that contained my โ€œdefencesโ€. They would not budge โ€“ the Jewish lobbies were demanding action and the GMC wasnโ€™t going to risk their ire again. Wes Streeting was breathing down their necks. On 20th December 2024, I saw my Neurology patients and on 23rdDecember, I found out that Iโ€™d been suspended for 18 months. No other doctor had an 18-month suspension or got one since โ€“ in their absence. My remaining clinics in December and January all cancelled. Some patients were cancelled as they were making their way to my clinic. I requested the transcript of the IOT hearing โ€“ the GMC had been demanding conditions on my license on public interest grounds yet 3 batty women decided I should be suspended for 18 months for public interest and patient protection! Later, the barrister for the indemnity body stated he โ€œcouldnโ€™t get purchase onโ€ how they came to that decision. In any case, after being misled by my indemnity body โ€“ who suggested that I first ask for an early review, delayed asking for it and then the GMC refused. They were refusing to allow me to be heard after claiming I wouldnโ€™t attend. The indemnity body then reneged on the agreed High Court action. The GMC even send me the Rule 7 letter โ€“ the final โ€œallegationsโ€ against me on 5 February 2025 which they then updated in March. Ordinarily this takes about 9 months to send โ€“ in my case, they managed to do it within 6 weeks! Yet one of the reasons they claimed I needed to be suspended for 18 months was because of the lengthy investigationโ€ฆ. I had to reply by 5 May 2025 which I did via a191-page response. The GMC usually respond within 3-4 weeks. As of 21 January 2026, I have yet to hear from them. I then took matters into my own hand. Let down by cowardly lawyers except one (Yasmin), I filed a High Court application under Section 41 A(10) of the Medical Act 1983 to challenge my unlawful suspension. I requested an urgent expedited hearing as I was being left with no way to earn a living. There were 10 grounds of appeal. The High Court date was set for 10th July 2025. Meanwhile, the MPTS is obliged to give a 6-month review โ€“ 16th June 2025 afternoon was scheduled. I stated I wanted this in person and in public. I flew back from Kashmir on 9th June โ€“ itโ€™s cheaper to live there - and found myself arrested at Holyhead under s12 of the Terrorism Act for โ€œalleged support of proscribed groupsโ€ โ€“ apparently I was โ€œon the wanted list. Iโ€™m released 14 hours later. Theyโ€™d seized my mobile phones and laptop and wait for it, all my GMC documents that Iโ€™d carefully put together. Iโ€™m still not sure why I couldnโ€™t get those back. I learn that the GMC is seeking information about this non-reportable arrest within 24 hours of it โ€“ they know. In any case, I go for the IOT hearing โ€“ and the GMC Counsel attempts to utilise the arrest. I object. The panel agree that it will not be considered. However, the MPTS have set an insufficient amount of time for the hearing โ€“ they would have known. There were over 1000 pages in the bundle of nonsense โ€“ the only worthwhile part of that was my beautifully written 191-page response. I was quite proud of it if Iโ€™m honest. It could be considered my second PhD thesis. As I have to return to Pakistan for hearings and the High Court case was 10thJuly, the IOT hearing was re-scheduled for 14th July 2025. So, fast forward to 10th July 2025. Under 48 hours before the hearing is due, the GMC submit their skeleton arguments โ€“ ordinarily submitted 7-14 days before โ€“ no doubt, to wrong foot me. They finally admit that the IOT panel made an โ€œerror of lawโ€ in not properly applying the Article 10 rights but argue they got to the โ€œright decision but by the wrong routeโ€ (!) I am self-representing in Court 1 at the Royal Courts of Justice โ€“ the GMC have their in-house lawyer, their GMC Counsel and her clerk. But I have the best lawyer (currently abroad) and an excellent McKenzie friend, Sean Naughton and my well wishers who attended to support me. We start at 10 30am โ€“ and I ask the Judge to review the admission of illegality. On that basis alone, my suspension should be revoked. She declines and wants to hear the case. I then detail the IOT powers and how the grounds to sanction me had not been met โ€“ they had not proven public interest or public protection. I discussed the GMC actions, the unfairness, disproportionality, the abuse of process, the outright lies by the GMC, the draconian 18-month suspension, the persecution by the Jewish lobbies and the breach of my rights under Articles 8, 9 and 10 of the ECHR. My opening lines: โ€œI submit that the suspension was political in nature. It was subject to bias and external pressure was clearly evident. It was unlawful and demonstrated seriously flawed reasoning. It was manifestly wrong and the panel erred in law. It was completely unnecessary. Itโ€™s been tainted by marked procedural errors, unfairness and it has demonstrated gross abuse of process by the GMC and the MPTS and the IOT panel and those abuses have continued. The suspension is draconian and disproportionate and inconsistent with other decision makings of the IOT panels. It is a complete violation of my rights under Article 8, 9 and especially Article 10 of the European Court of Human Rights. And it is demonstrated also limitation of the panelโ€™s expertise, both in terms of law, but also, importantly, the context of the rights of the Palestinian people and it brings into serious question whether the GMC should be policing speech of doctors. It should certainly not be policing or interfering in political speech.โ€ I went through each ground in detail giving the relevant case law. I talked openly about the nature of that persecution: โ€œAll of the complaints against me have been made by Jewish and pro-Israeli affiliated organisations and I think itโ€™s necessary to list them โ€“ Lawyers for Israel, in collaboration with Gnasherjew, the Jewish Medical Association twice; the unnamed Jewish Zionist doctor; the Jewish News who defamed me; the reporter is Michelle Rosenberg - who is Jewish and Zionist; the Daily Telegraph defamation - George Chesterton is married to a Jewish woman; Miranda Levy and Jacob Freedland are both Jewish and Zionist. I had the Jewish Chronicle defamation - Jane Prinsley is Jewish and has a home in Israel; Campaign Against Antisemitism by Stephen Silverman, who is Jewish and has submitted three similar tweets in March 2025 to the GMC which have been included in my Rule 7 letter without due process the GMC is obliged to follow on receipt of a new complaint. And then, twice in the Jerusalem Post - Mathilda Heller and Michael Starr are both Jewish Zionists. And despite the suspension, Sabrina Miller, a Jewish Zionist journalist at the Daily Mail attacked a number of pro-Palestinian doctors, including myself. So, these previous complaints that have been dismissed by the GMC included tweets of a similar nature. The tweets have not changed, but I would contend that the priorities of the GMC had and my complaint was clearly being handled by individuals who appeared conflicted. In my witness statement, I have detailed the behaviour of XXX, XXX, XXX who refused to respond to emails on where disclosures from the GMC themselves, since I submitted this appeal, have since revealed that XX XX had made false notes on my record claiming I had prior FTP history. In addition, in July 2024, Wes Streeting became the Health Secretary. I refer Your Honour to pages 327 to 337 of the bundle. Thereโ€™s a Declassified article, incidentally, thatโ€™s been written by a Jewish journalist, Matt Kennard. He has investigated Streetingโ€™s support of Israel since his days at the National Union of Students. It documents that he visited Israel in 2022 paid for by the Labour Friends of Israel. That organisationโ€™s former chair was Joan Ryan, infamously found to be discussing her ยฃ1 million payment from Israel with Shai Masot, the Israeli diplomat. Streeting has taken over ยฃ20,000 from Israeli lobbyist, Trevor Chinn. Trevor Chinnโ€™s father heads the Jewish National Fund which supports illegal Israeli settlements and from Lord Mendelsohn and David Menton. The Jewish Chronicle even ran a profile of him entitled โ€œWes Streeting, our friend at the NUSโ€. So, thereโ€™s little surprise that Wes Streeting made comments in The Telegraph stating he would urge medical regulators to discipline staff expressing views which he, as a pro-Israeli and Zionist, opposed. He stated that regulators had the power to set conditions that a healthcare professional must work under. Suspend them or strike them entirely from the medical register. He made similar comments to The Times. He then met with the Board of Deputies for Community Security Trust, which is also behind my complaint, the Jewish Leadership Council and the Jewish Medical Association, reiterating โ€œI expect employers and regulators to take actionโ€. The idea that this political pressure by the Health Secretary in November 2024 was irrelevant to my suspension is untenable in the face of this clear intervention, which actually represents political interference and undermines the alleged independence of the GMC.โ€ And I made clear the Jewish privilege at play โ€œSo, from what Iโ€™ve just presented, itโ€™s very clear that the red line concerns Israel. Tweets, thatโ€™s words. Criticising an entity, carrying out the mass slaughter against innocent civilians will be punished more severely than malpractice, blatant dishonesty, criminal convictions or even genuine Jew hatred, as long as you are not a Muslim. And if youโ€™re Jewish and you belong to a powerful lobby group like the Jewish Medical Association, then the GMC gives you a clear pass as shown in the case of Liz Lightstone and Justin Stebbing.โ€ I made clear that even the GMC referral to the MPTS explicitly stated โ€œthat there was no evidence of [her] racially discriminating against anyone or discriminating against Jewish people.โ€ I stated in the High Court โ€œAnd I should point out that the Jewish people are not a race; Judaism is a religionโ€ and โ€œIt is my inalienable right to be able to disagree with the narrative from Israeli lobbies and express it. Their free speech does not trump mine.โ€ I made sure that she understood that my patients and even Grok approved of me: โ€œIn fact, Grok is positively glowing โ€“ โ€œDr Rehiana Aliโ€™s tweet carry a fiery, unapologetic tone blending sharp intellect with a raw defiance against injustice echoing the spirit of Malcolm X, mirrors Malcolmโ€™s blend of moral clarity, confrontational rhetoric and distain for oppressive systems.โ€ โ€œI canโ€™t think of a better person to be compared to.โ€ I further stated โ€œI do not believe that legal, that legitimate political commentary or reporting facts can be antisemitic. I do not believe that any groups, be they Jewish, Muslims or Christians, are exempt from criticism where the situation warrants it. I do not believe in hate speech, as thatโ€™s the very antithesis of free speech, but also, importantly, there is no tweet of mine that demonstrates hatred for any group simply by virtue of their religious identity and, indeed, none has been identified as such.โ€ I even quoted the Queen: โ€œI do not accept that stating facts becomes anti-Jewish simply because the majority of those committing the crimes are Jewish. If you take that to the logical conclusion, that would mean that no Jewish person could ever be criticised for their bad behaviour. That cannot be right. I would also point out that the late Queen, according to the Israeli press, and the ex-President of Israel Rivlin, was reported to have viewed every Israeli as a terrorist or the son of a terrorist. Who would have thought that the Monarch would have been so based?โ€ At 1pm, the Judge wants a lunch-break โ€“ I havenโ€™t finished. We continue after lunch break โ€“ and I complete my submission dealing with the GMCโ€™s arguments. โ€œBefore I sum up, Iโ€™ll just briefly address the skeleton arguments that the defence submitted on 8 July. And obviously Iโ€™ve already raised disgruntlement about that but I think itโ€™s important to note, that the GMC has finally conceded, after over two months since receiving my skeleton arguments, that the IOT erred in law. On that basis alone, that suspension should be quashed today. If the GMC was capable of self- reflection, it would have withdrawn its objections to my appeal gracefully but that is probably too optimistic an outcome to expect of this bureaucratic monster which has become a law unto itselfโ€ฆโ€ Then the GMC repeats their arguments and argues that the High Court have broad powers and should take original jurisdiction over the matter: โ€œAnd that is an exercise that this Court can properly make, exercising its original jurisdictionโ€ In fact, the words โ€œoriginal jurisdictionโ€ were repeated about 7-8 times. The GMC Counsel repeated to the Judge โ€œWe accept that you have a free-er handโ€ and again โ€œBecause, as I say, this Court is free-er to exercise the original jurisdictionโ€ and so on. Look at the tweets! She said โ€œMossad did 9/11โ€ and that โ€œIsraelis shouldnโ€™t be allowed near humanityโ€. She said โ€œIsraelis are involved in organ traffickingโ€. All true. I was amused. Ordinarily the High Court usually looks at technical and legal aspects without going into the actual details of the issue itself (e.g. on covid, they wouldnโ€™t debate the merits of the covid vaccine โ€“ the issue was whether the conditions/suspension was legal according to rules and procedural fairness). I reply I have no issue but it wasnโ€™t necessary โ€“ the grounds did not require that. However, if the Judge wanted to look at the tweets she should acquaint herself with the facts that I presented in my 191-page response. I request a judgement that day or the next day. I had no faith in the MPTS and GMC. That review hearing was due a few days later on 14 July 2025. Judge McGowan was fully aware of that review IOT hearing. She stated โ€œWe need to finish this during the course of today. It cannot go part heard and I understand that your review hearing is listed on Monday next.โ€ She stated the following: โ€œAnd if there is not a decision from this Court today then, presumably, the review hearing will be made aware of these proceedings, but their decision is independent of this. If they decide to not lift the suspension, then my decision either does the same or lifts or terminates the suspension. If they terminate the suspension on Monday, then my decision probably becomes quite academic, but necessary, nonetheless.โ€ Even the GMC Counsel admitted that the Courtโ€™s decision was โ€œof interestโ€ I didnโ€™t agree it was โ€œacademicโ€ The Judge continued: โ€œThere is too much material. It is too important.โ€ And later that her decision was โ€œnonetheless, an important exercise.โ€ I emphasised in my response that I wanted the High Court to rectify that injustice done to me in December 2024 and that โ€œthe overarching question is โ€œwas my original suspension, was it correct or not?โ€ McGowan replied : โ€œI โ€“ I do understand that and in order to reach a decision about that I have to look at what you say are the procedural mistakes. I have to look at what you say are the errors of law. I have to look at what you say is unfair about the way the hearing was conducted...โ€ and again,โ€œUntil I have made my mind up about the procedural unfairness and all the other points you have raised, I have got to consider everything.โ€ I again pointed out โ€œ..I would argue itโ€™s an abuse of the system and Iโ€™m actually paying the price for their deficiencies, or rather procedural irregularities. Iโ€™m having to live with the consequences of being deprived of an incomeโ€ฆโ€ In other words, there have been consequences for me โ€“ financially and professionally. And I ended with โ€œI have no faith in the IOT. I have no faith in the MPTS, and I have no faith in the GMC, and I am not the only one to feel that way. The fact that we are calling for a different body and weโ€™re calling for the GMC to be dismantled. Iโ€™m simply asking that the injustice that was done in December is rectifiedโ€ฆโ€ The concluding remarks of McGowan? โ€œWell, I am certainly not going to give judgment in this case at 3.55pm. You raised an awful lot of important issues. The importance of a decision to you, personally, is obviously great. The importance of a decision to your potential patients is high and the importance of a decision to the public is equally important. So, all of those matters have to be considered and balanced and I will get to a decision early next week. I think that is probably the best way, which will be handed down in the usual way. All right, well thank you both very much. Thank you all very much for your attendance.โ€ At no point did McGowan state there would be no Judgement. On 14 July 2025, my suspension was revoked. I self-represented and I didnโ€™t concede a single point or any tweet. What happened next was a shocking abuse of the judicial process. My registration was reinstated โ€“ no conditions. But that 7 months suspension remains on my record visible to every employer. The very next day GMC emails the Court to state that the High Court no longer has jurisdiction over the matter as the suspension was revoked! The IOT panel has very limited powers so whilst it revoked my suspension, it will not deem it unlawful or indeed make any comment about the previous panelโ€™s decision โ€“ and certainly not its legality. The MPTS admitted that only the High court could rule it was unlawful. I contacted the Court pointing this out and that I was expecting a judgement as per McGowanโ€™s position in the High Court. The High Court had a full dayโ€™s hearing and the court was independent of the tribunal and had seized jurisdiction. All my grounds including the legality of the suspension were outstanding. The revocation was to some extent irrelevant to the Court issuing the Judgement โ€“ if anything, it rather supported my contention that the suspension imposed on me in December 2024 was unlawful. I ask the GMC to provide what law theyโ€™re relying uponโ€ฆ.they quote this section and claim it is written in the present tense! โ€œSection 41A(10 of the Medical Act 1983, Interim Orders, states Where an order has effect under any provision of this section, the relevant court may โ€“..โ€ Yes โ€“ that is the best they could come up with it. Needless to say, the convention in UK legislative drafting is the simple present tense โ€ฆbecause the law is โ€œalways speakingโ€. I call and even visit the Royal Courts of Justice. The Court staff chase the Clerk โ€ฆIโ€™m asked to be patient and await the Judgement. Even up to 6th August 2025 I was told that the Judgement was coming. On 11th August 2025, I am informed by email that there will be no Judgement!! I spoke to a number of barristers and solicitors โ€“ itโ€™s almost unheard of. They're all useless though. I get no replies to my emails to the High Court. So in November 2025, I requested the Hearing transcript. On 12th December 2025 โ€“ over 5 months after the substantive hearing โ€“ I received an Order (not a Judgement). It was a bare order โ€“ simply stating โ€œUpon the Court hearing the substantive hearing on this matter on 10 July 2025 And upon following consideration of the documents lodged by Respondent on 15 July 2025 confirming revocation of the Interim Order pursuant to Section 41A of the Medical Act 1983, the application is dismissed.โ€ No reasons whatsoever as to why the Judge had contradicted her own position in Court. I replied to the Court and file an application for permission to appeal โ€“ not just to McGowan (the system is so barmy that you have to ask the same judge for permission to appeal) but also to the Court of Appeal โ€“ the latter for both permission to appeal and the appeal itself concerning McGowanโ€™s bare unreasoned order. McGowan now responds (miraculously) via the Court staff wanting a 30-minute hearing for permission to appeal โ€“ that is set for Tuesday 13 January 2026. So, yet again I am at the High Court now requesting permission to appeal. To be honest, I wasnโ€™t expecting much. McGowan had shown she lacks the spine to address the issues โ€“ and has zero integrity. You donโ€™t get a DBE in the UK for nothing. In fact, she started this hearing by asking the GMC to interpret the Section 41A of the Medical Act!!! Then she turned to me โ€“ the Claimant โ€“ and asked if โ€œI understood what was being saidโ€. I replied that I understood full well. English after all is my first language and Iโ€™m a Cambridge graduate. I can understand basic English. She clearly has difficulties though โ€“ I later learnt that she dropped English at Manchester University for Law. At the expense of sounding very snobbish, I just knew she wasnโ€™t Oxbridge materialโ€ฆ. I present my arguments โ€“ including case law. The GMC has no relevant case law โ€“ their arguments are โ€œit is written in the present tenseโ€ (I did correct them that in actual fact, it was written in the simple present tense to be more precise) and that the decision of the High Court โ€œis finalโ€. Of course, I point out that finality is based on two aspects โ€“ firstly, getting a reasoned Judgement! I never got a judgement. I effectively got a blank piece of paper. On no grounds, could that be considered โ€œa decisionโ€. And secondly, if there were any errors of law, procedural irregularities โ€ฆthey were always appealable. Appeal however was not automatic โ€“ all that meant was that one had to request permission to appeal. Can you imagine a system where a Judge makes an error but you canโ€™t appeal it?! I point out that every issue remains live. I even simplify it for them โ€“ I point out that in the case of rape, and using GMC logic, weโ€™d never prosecute the rapist โ€“ after all, the rape was no longer in progess. That is not justice. The High Court seized jurisdiction by having a substantive hearing and had to produce a judgement. Of course, I understood that had I appealed after the revocation, the application would have been dismissed. McGowan sat there clearly not listening. This was merely an exercise to show thereโ€™d been a hearing. She tried to claim she has โ€œno powerโ€!! She then had the audacity to say โ€œYouโ€™ve had a success. Why arenโ€™t you satisfied with that?โ€ I point out that I was suspended unlawfully โ€“ I had 20 years of an impeccable record and it states โ€œmisconductโ€ on my record. I have a right to get that unlawful suspension struck from my record and remedy with regards to the consequences I had suffered. The GMC โ€“ a public body โ€“ should be held accountable not just for my sake but for other doctors and I remind her of her own words โ€œfor the wider public interestโ€. In fact, I quote liberally from the transcript and point out her contradictions. At no point did she ever state โ€“ because itโ€™s not possible โ€“ that the High Court lost jurisdiction. Thatโ€™s the legal principle: โ€œOnce seized, always seized.โ€

DR REHIANA ALI BA MB BCHIR (Cantab) MA MRCP PhD

18,659 ๆฌก่ง‚็œ‹ โ€ข 7 ไธชๆœˆๅ‰

Zack Polanski on BBC Radio 4's Today prog calmly knocking back everything Nick Robinson throws at him across 17 minutes NR (00:00.2), "Delighted to say that Zach Polanski is here in the Today programme studio, for the latest, indeed, for the last of our party leader interviews. Morning to you and thanks for coming in." ZP (00:09.2), "Thanks for having me." NR (00:09.8), "Nick, I want to talk to you about what your party would do if it does indeed gain some power after the votes on Thursday. But I want to begin by putting to you one of the latest storeys about you. A Times investigation says that you've made a series of false or disputed claims about jobs you've had in the past with." NR (00:31.8), "Why, for example, did you say you were a spokesperson for the British Red Cross when they are absolutely clear that, though a supporter of theirs, you were never a spokesperson for them?" ZP (00:42.3), "So I hosted, various fundraisers for the British Red Cross and indeed I would go on stage and speak for them about the amazing work they do tackling humanitarian crises, on the climate crisis and indeed for refugees all around the world. I use the wrong word and I accept that." ZP (00:57.5), "But I would essentially take words on stage with me and speak. It's important, though, and I accept this, that, you know, I don't support any political party and I've made sure that's been taken down." NR (01:06.5), "You say this sort of storey is a fuss about nothing, that you get your facts wrong because it comes up with other examples." ZP (01:11.7), "Well, I think it's totally fine to ask me questions about my past. I would also say in the same breath, though the Times published a pretty anti Semitic cartoon of me last week. I asked them to apologise. And it feels some of these storeys feel like scraping the barrel to kind of go back 10, 15 years. I've had so many friends, I'm literally talking maybe 20 or 30 in the last few weeks who have phoned me and said, a Times journalist has been phoning and they've been desperately trying, trying to find things about your past." ZP (01:36.5), "They asked me lots of questions and seemed disappointed that I didn't have some juicy, dirty gossip." NR (01:41.6), "Yeah, well, there was. Whether you call it juicy or dirty, and it wasn't gossip, it was a fact. The fact that you claimed that as a hypnotherapist, you could enlarge women's breasts using the power of thought. People are entitled to say, what's this guy really about?" ZP (01:57.2), "People are totally entitled to say that. And that's an important part of politics, that people ask you questions. What I would say is that, you know, this was 13 years ago. It was a Sun journalist's idea. I've apologised for that. Because even though it was a son journalist idea, I was an adult and I should have said no, you went along with it." NR (02:12.6), "Yeah." ZP (02:12.9), "It's important to say I wasn't a politician. And I've apologised for it repeatedly." NR (02:16.7), "And the BBC showed that some days later, in fact, you repeated the claim that you could do it. But let us not get bogged down in the past. It is striking, though, that on X last night, when, let's be honest, people who are critics of you are having a go. The Daily Mail calls it the Green Menace on its front page." NR (02:34.1), "How did you react? You said you were under relentless attacks because they, your critics don't want a wealth tax, don't want public ownership. They're trying everything in their power to stop us, you said. It's a curious thing to say, isn't it? Ahead of local elections, Green councillors will not have the power to implement any of those policies, will they?" ZP (02:54.8), "Well, I think the relentless attacks on the Green Party in this election, for a local election have partly been about the local election, but really they're about the bigger picture right now. The bigger picture is when I ran to be leader of the Green party, we had 50,000 members, we've now got 225,000 members. So we are rising." ZP (03:11.1), "And I think lots of people are worried about the prospect. And when I say people, people who own, right wing media, multimillionaires and billionaires who are worried about the prospect that they might have to pay a little bit more tax. And so I think it's important that I focus on the vision and the hope and our actual plan." ZP (03:27.4), "I also think it's a complete reality, though we've seen it in the past before with left wing leaders, that there's no secret, there's no love lost between me and the right wing media. And almost every single day they print things that just aren't true." NR (03:38.8), "But just address the point I raised. Wealth tax councils won't get to do that. Public ownership councils don't get to do that. Well, not entirely. We'll come to that in a second. You are running on a national platform of change that the people who are elected on Thursday, whether in the Welsh Parliament, you don't run candidates in the Scottish one, or in English, local councils simply cannot do." ZP (04:03.2), "Well, I think it's about what are your values as a party? And whilst other party leaders and other parties take donations from oil and gas companies or arms trade companies, private healthcare or gambling, Green Party councillors only have two vested interests and Those vested interests. We want to protect the communities we seek to serve and we want to protect the environment." NR (04:21.6), "Well, let's come to that, then, because most interesting, perhaps, is to look at what Greens say who are running for office. You are not. You are a member of the London assembly, you're not a Member of Parliament, you're not running in these elections. Now, you live in Hackney. Hackney happens in northeast London to be a top Green target for taking control from the Labour Party." NR (04:41.9), "So let's look at protecting communities. For example, on crime, the manifesto calls the Metropolitan Police institutionally racist, homophobic, sexist and misogynists. It goes on to say, greens cannot accept this system. It calls for safe spaces for, heroin users to shoot up, to end cautions for street prostitution and to end what the manifesto calls discriminatory policing of delivery riders." NR (05:08.8), "This is an agenda for an endless fight with the police, isn't it?" ZP (05:12.0), "I don't think so. Baroness Casey, in the last couple of years, did a review into Metropolitan Police and it was actually the findings that found it institutionally racist and misogynistic. Something that Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, to his credit, accepts. It is noticeable that Mark Rowley, the Commissioner of the Police, doesn't accept that, yet they continue, to work together in that way." ZP (05:31.1), "On the issue of drug harm, we have the highest drug deaths, of any country in Europe. And every single year for the past 13 years, drug deaths have increased. So I think the question anyone has, and we have in Hackney, is that the war on drugs has clearly failed. It's failed in cities right across this country, and more and more people are, often taking dangerous drugs." ZP (05:50.3), "So do we want people to buy them on the black market or on street corners? Or do we want people to go to a pharmacy or a medical health professional where, if they have an addiction to dangerous drugs, we can work with them to take a public health approach based in harm reduction." NR (06:02.7), "Public health approaches to. Is to legalise hard drugs and to legalise prostitution, you say to legalise and regulate and the regulators. It's still legalised, isn't it?" ZP (06:11.5), "No, the point is you can't just go into a shop and buy drugs, which is how it's presented in the press. Again, because I can keep talking about what councillors can do, rather than what" NR (06:18.3), "you would do if you were Prime Minister, because that's for another interview. Are you saying councillors should cut the police budget? Because that's what it seems to imply when you say, we cannot accept this system, let the council spend Money on crime reduction. Don't give that money to the police." ZP (06:33.7), "It's about reprioritizing. So it's." NR (06:35.5), "Does that mean cut in English?" ZP (06:36.7), "No. So let's look at example. We're straight back onto drugs. A lot of police time is spent on stop and search for cannabis use, for instance. It doesn't escape people's notice that that is often, in the politics of racism, if you're a young black person, I think it's something like you're 18 times more likely to be stopped and searched than your white peer, despite the fact there's no evidence that they're more likely to be dealing or using drugs." ZP (07:00.8), "And so I think it's important that we make sure the police time is spent properly, which I think is about community prevention, about cohesiveness and bringing communities together, particularly in, like, whether it means redirecting the budget." NR (07:11.4), "Does it mean the police budget?" ZP (07:12.9), "Well, it means redirecting within the police budget, so making sure that the time police are spent is spent on community safety." NR (07:18.2), "Well, it's interesting that we talked about police because, as you know, you've come under serious criticism for retweeting criticism of the action of the police officers who stopped the alleged attacker of Jews in Golda's Green. Now, you apologised for retweeting that." NR (07:34.1), "You said you should have a meeting with the head of the Met. You sent him a letter. I want to ask you a different question. You've not apologised for the content of that. Why did you empathise with the attacker, and not with police officers who feared for their own lives and were trying to protect other people's lives?" ZP (07:53.3), "I think there's two things in that that I, really clearly want to say. The first is my very first response to the attack was to be horrif, as everyone was, I'm sure. And the first thing I posted was solidarity to the victim, to the family and indeed, to people who are suffering right now, including as a Jewish man, where Jewish safety is not abstract." NR (08:12.0), "But then you posted that officers were repeatedly and violently kicking a mentally ill man in the head when he was incapacitated by a Taser, caused extreme offence to those officers, to the head of the Met and to many people. I ask you again, why did you empathise, Empathise with the attacker, not with the police officer." ZP (08:28.9), "As I said, there's two things I wanted to say, so that was the first. The second, what I want to say is two things can be true at the same Time officers are incredibly brave when they run towards scenes of crimes that most people, including myself, would want to run away from. At the same time, I think it is accurate, and that I was also traumatised, by seeing, someone handcuffed and completely, repeatedly kicked in the head." ZP (08:51.7), "Now, sure, if you'll forgive me, it is an answer," NR (08:54.4), "but it's not an answer to the question. You posted something with the power that you have, with the number of people who follows us, and not empathising in that post with the Jewish community or critically with the police officers, you empathise with the attacker. Look what they're doing to the alleged attacker." ZP (09:11.1), "I don't think it was your choice. As I say, the first thing I did was show solidarity to the victims and I thank the officers. Second, though, I think the sign of a compassionate society is how we treat people, even people who have done horrific things, because actually, the way we do justice in this country is in court." NR (09:26.0), "You said a key value of the Greens was protecting communities. What are your proposals for protecting the Jewish community?" ZP (09:33.5), "The Jewish community is not safe right now. And as I said, as a Jewish man, this isn't abstract for me. In fact, in the last six weeks alone, two people have been arrested. So how would you protect anti Semitic attacks towards me? I think there's lots that needs to happen in this country. The first is community cohesion and community building. Some of the work that I'm proudest of in London, that I see Londoners do, is where I see the Jewish community working alongside the Muslim community." NR (09:55.1), "What would you do? What would Zach Polanski do in order to reduce attacks on the Jewish community?" ZP (09:59.9), "So, first of all, to invest in that work, that community, faith work, to make sure communities stand together. Second, to make sure that the Jewish community, give them the investment that they need. In fact, what the Prime Minister has been doing to make sure that happens. I do think a police response is the last response when everything before it has failed." NR (10:17.6), "I still think you're not really answering the question about what you would do. Let me ask you this." ZP (10:21.0), "I think I do." NR (10:21.6), "Would you deal with, for example, a candidate who says Jewish people fear hate because they know they should be hated. Another one who suggested that the attacks on the ambulances was a false flag and carried out, presumably by Israel. Another of your candidates who blamed Israel for the Bondi beach terrorist attack." NR (10:41.0), "A fourth candidate who said Donald Trump was, quote, owned by Jews. And most horrifying of all, although this individual has now been arrested, one of your candidates who Reposted something saying ramming a synagogue isn't anti Semitism, it's revenge." NR (10:56.8), "What are you, Zach Polanski doing to end these disgusting messages?" ZP (11:03.5), "Those messages are all unacceptable and it's important to condemn that. The Green Party are an anti racist party and it's important that we stick to our values." NR (11:11.0), "We can't just say the words were an anti racist bar to. And I've just read you out five of the most revolting comments at a time when, according to an independent advisor, we face a national emergency of anti Semitism. I'm asking you, you're not responsible for everything they say. Of course you're not." NR (11:26.3), "You can't be." ZP (11:27.3), "I am responsible, actually." NR (11:28.2), "What are you going to do about it?" ZP (11:29.0), "I am the leader of a party. I was about to finish my sentence." NR (11:31.5), "Forgive me. Go on." ZP (11:32.4), "We're an anti racist party. And so what I've already committed to doing is making sure that we have a standardised vetting process in future. And also make sure that we have compulsory training of all our candidates to make it clear that anti Semitism is completely unwelcome in the Green Party as it is in society. It is also important to say one case of anti Semitism is one too many." ZP (11:50.5), "This is a handful of cases and actually we have over 4,500 candidates, the vast, vast majority of which are doing amazing work in their communities right now, going out there to tackle the cost of living crisis, to make sure that we're funding public services and making sure that it's about people power and community, grassroots power." NR (12:05.1), "You can dismiss one or two as, just, unrepresentative. I've just read five. I could have read 20 cases of revolting anti Semitism posted by your candidates. Now you're a new leader, how are you going to avoid becoming the new Jeremy Corbyn of British politics?" ZP (12:21.5), "Well, I think me and Jeremy are very different people and there's much, you know, the question was almost inviting me to condemn Jeremy Corbyn. I think there was lots that Jeremy Corbyn was putting forward to this country that I think was really positive. We've talked about wealth taxes, about public ownership. I also think it's important, speaking, for myself right now, that we make sure that we have this vetting process, that it's really clear that anti Semitism, Islamophobia, any form of hatred or hate, crime is not welcome." NR (12:47.3), "Do you believe that Palestine is, to coin a phrase, on the ballot this Thursday?" ZP (12:52.3), "I think lots of things are on the ballot this Thursday." NR (12:54.6), "But is Palestine on the ballot? This." ZP (12:56.2), "I think it's one of the elements, as is the climate crisis. As is." NR (12:58.7), "What does it mean Palestine is on the ballot? Because. The reason I ask you is because your candidate for mayor of Lewisham says Palestine is on the ballot this Thursday. Haringey Green Party campaign launch video. You might think it'd be about bins, you might think it'd be about schools, hospitals, it might be about cleaning up the roads." NR (13:17.2), "It is a series of councillors saying, as a council, I will take all appropriate steps to, uphold the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. Do you think council elections really should be about Palestine?" ZP (13:29.8), "I think they can be about all of those things. And I think what people have seen in this country is a genocide for two and a half years that our government is still arming, are still sharing intelligence with. And I think lots of people feel very strongly both about their local services, as they should do, and feel equally strongly about the fact that there's a reprehensible genocide happening." ZP (13:48.5), "And they vote, but the way they vote in local elections" NR (13:52.6), "should be determined by their views of Israel and Palestine." ZP (13:56.0), "I wouldn't tell anyone how their vote should be determined, but I think it's an element for lots of people in how they vote." NR (14:00.1), "And do you think that will contribute to community cohesion? Do you?" ZP (14:02.7), "I think yes, because I think, we shouldn't pit Jewish safety against a genocide in Gaza. That's conflating anti Semitism and criticism of the Israeli government. That's something Benjamin Netanyahu does regularly. And as a Jewish person, that makes me feel less safe." NR (14:16.4), "Sure. But there are lots of Jewish people who would say to you they feel unsafe if they feel that their counsellors are motivated first and foremost by Palestine. And if somebody gives that speech, for example, about Palestine being on the ballot, they are likely to think that." NR (14:34.6), "We looked for, example at Barnett Greens, where one in seven residents identify as Jewish. And it includes in its manifesto the fact that, you're standing up for Palestine. Do you think that's going to help?" ZP (14:49.0), "Well, I walk regularly on Palestinian marches with hundreds and hundreds, in fact, thousands of people, many of whom are Jewish. And there have been rabbis who have spoken out on this too. I accept, though, there are Jewish people whose views are equally as valid who, don't agree with those views." ZP (15:04.0), "And I think the job of all of us who are in public life right now is to de. Escalate tensions. And look, how do we bring people together? And I accept that's a huge challenge. And I think one of the ways we could do that is by ending our complicity in the genocide." NR (15:15.4), "Let's turn finally to another issue. We'll talk at greater length when, we're talking about the possibility of you being Prime Minister, which you have said that you would like to do. One thing that is very high on the agenda now is the soaring cost of government borrowing. What would the Greens do to cut it?" ZP (15:30.6), "Well, I think we need to make sure that we're investing. So I think there's two ways of doing that. The first is, wealth taxes, which I know we've rehearsed before, but I'll just say that's for first place." NR (15:38.4), "How does that cut government borrowing?" ZP (15:40.2), "Because ultimately it means you need to borrow less if you're." NR (15:43.0), "If you're ultimately about cutting the cost of government borrowing." ZP (15:45.5), "Yes." NR (15:45.8), "Which is soaring. It's higher than it's been any time this century because people are nervous about high spending, high taxing governments that are politically unstable." ZP (15:54.7), "I think someone who speaks brilliantly on this, who I've spoken to, is the economist Mariana Matsicatu, and she talks about the fact that a government should have a mission that should be a very clear plan of how you tackle the climate crisis, how you reduce inequality. Now, if you have a clear plan and you're borrowing for that, you're taking the market with you because they can clearly see what the return on investment is and how you're bringing money back into the." ZP (16:15.2), "That's how you reduce borrowing levels. If we don't have a plan and continue to borrow, then it feels very, very scattered, and that's why things are getting worse. We need to make sure that there's a consistent plan in place that's set out carefully that can make sure we're putting money back into our communities and investing in those communities." NR (16:29.3), "Do you think you're ready to be Prime Minister?" ZP (16:31.1), "I'm not ready right now, no. I've been leader for eight months, and there's lots of skills and lots of knowledge to get, and I think that's fine. I think I'm a human being. I'm not perfect." NR (16:38.5), "But give it two years, you will be." ZP (16:40.0), "Well, we'll see in two years time, won't we? But I'll certainly be putting in the work." NR (16:43.2), "Zach Polanski, leader of the Green Party in England and Wales, thanks very much for coming into the." ZP (16:46.3), "Thank you, Nick."

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