Conspiracy Theories Spreading About Coronavirus

This morning, Zelo Street put up a disturbing piece about attacks on mobile phone masts, and the Scum’s response to them. According to the Beeb, 5G masts in Birmingham, Liverpool, Melling in Merseyside, and Aigburth, have been set alight. The motive for these attacks apparently is a bonkers conspiracy theory that the phone masts spread the Coronavirus. The Street has rightly described this bizarre idea as laughable, if it wasn’t resulting in this criminal damage.

The bonkers notion is spread by a number of celebs, including Amanda Holden, one of the judges on Britain’s Got Talent, Cheers actor Woody Harrelson, Lee Ryan of the band Blue, Michael Greco, a former star on Eastenders, and others. The Street quotes the reaction of Dr Michael Head, a senior research fellow at the University of Southampton, who according to Sky News condemned the conspiracy theorists and  celebrities as

‘a public health danger who once read a Facebook page … Here, we also see similar groups of people keen to show their ignorance on a topic where they have no helpful expertise, nor any inclination to post useful public health messages … The celebrities fanning the flames of these conspiracy theorists should be ashamed’.

Zelo Street also criticised the hypocritical attitude of the Scum, which was more than happy to attack the other celebrities for spreading this nonsense, but definitely not Holden. Why? They like her boobs, having posted comments like “Amanda Holden has to wear silicone nipple covers to hide her famous golden buzzers” … “AMANDA Holden’s gravity-defying chest is pretty spectacular” … “Amanda Holden says ‘there’s been lots of complaints about my t*ts’”. It’s another instance of hypocrisy and sexism at the Scum, which obviously won’t surprise anyone.

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/04/5g-hoax-sun-and-amanda-holden.html

The idea that phone masts spread Coronavirus is not just grossly irresponsible, it’s scientific nonsense. There is a serious argument that phone masts are a threat to health because the radio frequencies they use may cause neurological damage. However, the Coronavirus isn’t caused by radiation of any kind. It’s a virus, a microbe, and so has nothing to do with radiation, whether spread by mobile masts or anything else. And among the various celebs spreading this bilge is another familiar name: David Icke. Very occasionally, the former footballer and self-declared messiah says something interesting, but it’s mixed in with a considerable amount of rubbish. Like the Reptoid aliens he has declared are secretly running the world, disguised as leading politicians and royalty. Or his claim that the Moon is artificial, and is really a giant alien transmitter which broadcasts the signals preventing us from waking up and realising that we are in the Matrix. There’s also a video on YouTube in which he’s interviewed by a journo from one of the Net news shows. Icke takes the fellow to an ancient standing stone on the Isle of Wight and tells him that Satanists are holding ceremonies there, including human sacrifice. I doubt that. I doubt that very much. There’s no evidence of such Satanic cults in Britain, and the myth about Satanic sects abusing and sacrificing children and babies was disproved long ago. There are, apparently, real Satanists around. According to a census there are about 4,000 of them. But I doubt very much they’re sacrificing people, on the Isle of Wight or anywhere else. It’s far more likely that any occult activity by the stone is kids going legend-tripping. That is, they’re going to the stone with their girlfriends, booze and possibly ouija boards in the hope of seeing something weird. But definitely not doing anything as serious as sacrificing humans.

I’m not surprised that there are conspiracy theories about the disease, however. It’s almost inevitable during this time of global fear. Thanks to the use of propaganda, misinformation and the existence of real conspiracies by governments across the world, some are absolutely paranoid about the authorities. They believe that they really are totally malign, conspiring with a terrible Other – evil space aliens, or Satan and his demons – to destroy and enslave humanity. Many people don’t feel that they have been given all the information about the disease and its spread, and it’s in what they feel is the absence of reliable information and the ingrained distrust of the government that these theories spread.

Back in the week, I noticed that a very old one had come back. It was on the BBC News, which had a piece about how the disease was affecting Russia. One of the people they spoke to was a Dr. Niklin, who blithely told the world that Coronavirus was an American germ warfare weapon. Well, it might be, but I very, very much doubt it. Because that’s what they said about AIDS when that appeared in the 80s and 90s. AIDS also definitely isn’t a bioweapon. I think it evolved from a strain of Green Monkey Disease that crossed the species boundary into humans. The story that it was an American germ warfare experiment that escaped from Fort Detrick was a lie put out by the KGB in retaliation for the Americans claiming that it was KGB who organised the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II.

These are scary times indeed without anyone pushing stupid and dangerous nonsense about mobile phone masts, germ warfare or anything else. Coronavirus is a threat, but it’s an entirely natural phenomenon. Of that I’m very certain. We need to believe and trust the real medical experts on this, like Dr. Head, and ignore anyone else telling us otherwise. And that includes celebs not named and shamed by the Scum.

 

‘I’ Newspaper on Rowling and Riley Planning to Launch Blairite Party

Today’s I for 12th February 2019 also carried the news that J.K. Rowling, Rachel Riley and Tracey-Ann Oberman were in a meeting with former members of Blair’s staff to launch this new, Centrist party that has periodically been mooted for the past year or so.

The article by Jane Clinton, ‘Rowling and Riley ‘plotting Blairite party’, on page 26 of the paper, runs

Countdown’s Rachel Riley and former EastEnders actress Tracy Ann Oberman have joined forces with advisers from Tony Blair’s government and JK Rowling’s agent to create a centrist breakaway Labour party.

Riley and Oberman, who are both Jewish, have been attacked by Labour supporters for criticizing Jeremy Corbyn’s handling of the anti-Semitism row that has engulfed the party. Riley revealed last month that Channel 4 bosses ordered extra protection following her comments.

They met Blair’s former chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, and his former speechwriter, Philip Collins, last Tuesday at the London offices of Ms Rowling’s agent, Neil Blair. There were 50 supporters present.

Details of the event, confirmed by I, include the creation of a pro-European centrist party which would appeal to the left of the Conservative party and the right of Labour.

Observers believe its creation would be the death knell for the Liberal Democrats.

At the meeting, during discussions as to who should be leader of the new party, Rowling’s name was shouted out to applause.

The Harry Potter author has been critical of Mr Corbyn, but leadership is not believed to be her ambition. Instead, it is thought shemay offer financial backing or fund a think-tank.

The good peeps over at Zelo Street have already critiqued this piece of Blairite aspiration, and pronounced the new party DOA. They note that such a party has been mooted several times, the names of various right-wing Labour MPs have been suggested in connection with it. And each time take-off has been aborted or not even attempted.

They point out that people have been proclaiming the death of the Lib Dems since the 1950s, but each time such predictions have been greatly exaggerated. The article goes on to mention the serious matter of Riley’s and Oberman’s conduct, which makes them totally unsuitable as leaders for any new party. Oberman threatened to sue blogger Shaun Lawson because he mentioned her in one of his tweets and in an article. Why? Because Riley, Oberman and their followers had viciously attacked and smeared a 16-year old schoolgirl and her father with false claims of anti-Semitism. The girl, who suffers from anxiety anyway, was threatened and harassed. Zelo Street concludes

Well-documented and cringe-inducing harassment, to boot. If that is the depth of the political talent pool available to the new Centrist party, it’s going to look more like a puddle.

Right now, it looks as though this new venture is DOA. No surprise there, then.

See: http://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/02/new-centrist-party-looks-doa.html

Mike was also on the receiving end of the wrath of Riley and her army of fanboys for a piece he did reporting Lawson’s article and Riley’s and Oberman’s bullying of the teenager. And yes, they tried smearing him as an anti-Semite. Rowling’s also tried attacking Mike over social media, and got her rear end handed to her as a result. If I remember correctly, Rowling, Riley and Oberman are part of a little circle with Z-list actress Frances Barber, Al Murray and David Baddiel, who believe that they are genuinely tackling racism. They’ve been quoted as joking with each other about whether this is 1936 or not. Of course it isn’t. If this really was anything like 1936 there’d be no question of it. Real anti-Semitic mobs wearing Fascist uniforms, like Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts would be goose-stepping into Jewish and working class areas trying to provoke fights and intimidate the people there. You would hear speech from bigots and Nazis telling everyone that Jews were an unassimilable threat, and that further Jewish immigration should be curbed. And the same Nazis would also talk openly about Jews being ‘the money power’ behind capitalism and communism and plotting to destroy the White race. And as for Germany, Jews would be progressively banned from getting jobs or entering the universities, their businesses closed, and themselves publicly beaten and humiliated. while trade unionists, socialists, communists, anarchists, recidivist criminals, neurotics, the long-term jobless, sex workers and other dissidents and individuals the Nazi state decided were undesirable and ‘dysgenic’ would be rounded up to be worked to death in the concentration camps. The Alternative Fuer Deutschland are a bunch of Nazi goons, and there is the spectre of read Fascism and Nazism in eastern Europe – in Poland, Hungary, the Baltic States and Ukraine. But here in Britain is very much not like 1936. Not yet.

Tony Greenstein has repeatedly pointed out that while there has been an increase in anti-Semitic incidents, Jews in Britain as a group are very comfortably middle class and most definitely do not suffer the real persecution of other ethnic minorities. For example, they are not being forcibly and unjustly deported, like the Windrush migrants. Other groups, such as Blacks, Asians and Muslims suffer far higher levels of violence and abuse. I haven’t heard any mainstream politician attacking the Jews or demanding that Jewish immigration be stopped. But there have been any number of Conservative and Kipper MPs making racist comments about Muslims and suggesting that they are incompatible with the British way of life.

As Riley’s and Rowling’s friends, Frances Barber also weighed in to accuse Mike and Owen Jones of being anti-Semites, while David Baddiel seems to have swallowed the Integrity Initiative black propaganda about Corbyn. I found a video on YouTube commenting on him declaring that Corbyn was an agent of Putin.

They’re spouting dangerous nonsense. The vast majority of the people accused of anti-Semitism in the Labour party were smeared because they were Corbyn’s supporters, members of the party’s left-wing, or critics of Israel. It was part of the campaign by the Blairites to hang on by attacking ordinary Labour party members. The Jewish establishment and the Zionists in the Labour party got involved because they support the Israeli state’s policy of ethnic cleansing and the construction of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. That was clearly shown in the Al-Jazeera documentary, The Lobby, when Joan Ryan attempted to get an ordinary Labour party member thrown out as an anti-Semite because she had the temerity to ask Ryan a question she couldn’t answer. She wondered what the Jewish Labour Movement was doing to promote the two-state solution, and what would be done about the illegal settlements in Palestine if the solution was successfully put into operation. As for this country’s Jewish establishment, the Board of Deputies declares itself in its constitution to be a Zionist organization, and the other year former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sachs led a party of British Jews to the March of the Flags. This is an annual event where the Israeli equivalent of skinhead boot-boys march through the Muslim quarter vandalizing homes and property and threatening its people. Liberal Jewish organisations urged Sachs not to go, but he ignored them. They were ‘the wrong kind’ of Jews, you see.

As for the rise of Fascism in eastern Europe, this is being assisted and defended by Israel, whose supporters, like Stephen Pollard, the far right editor of the Jewish Chronicle, declare them to be ‘good friends of Israel’ because they buy Israel arms. And so are the remaining Jews of eastern Europe put in danger through lack of support from Israel. All while Israel proclaims itself to be the protector of Jews worldwide.

As for this supposed Centrist party, I can remember it being touted last year, when it was supposed to have millions of pounds in funding ready for, along with legions of corporate donors. At one point Blair’s son, Euan, was discussed as a founding member and possible leader. Then it all collapsed again. It had no members, no policies, and one of the founders walked out after a disagreement with the others.

All this Centrist party represents is continuity Blairism. Which means more privatization, more NHS privatization, more attacks on the welfare state, meaning more homelessness and starvation, and more corporatism. Which means that in exchange for funding, private industry can have their chairmen and senior management appointed to positions in government and the civil service.

Rowling, Riley, Oberman and Barber are a disgrace. The Centrist party Rowling and her friends Riley and Oberman are expected to lead represents nothing but further corporate exploitation and misery. It has collapsed several times before, and will do so again. No matter how much it is puffed by the papers.

Beeb’s Newsnight Brings on Actress and Internet ‘Pastor’ to Promote May’s Brexit

More Tory bias from the Beeb, which is now angling to be the channel that hosts the debate between Tweezer and Jeremy Corbyn. On Monday, 26th November 2018, Newsnight held a studio debate over Brexit. Taking the government’s side was Lynn Hayter, wearing a dog collar, who, we were informed, was a vicar. She declared that she had been a Tory all her life, and believed the government was far better informed than we are, and so backed May.

However, the people on the Net, including Evolve Politics, soon found out that Hayter wasn’t quite what she appeared. She was an actress, who had appeared in various bit parts in EastEnders, Dickensian, The Dresser and The Chronicles.

As for being a vicar, well, no, she wasn’t. She was the Pastor of an internet church with a congregation of 69. The Rev Stevie pointed out that Pastor just meant that she was head of a church, which anyone can set up without any official registration or accreditation. And her church was ‘Seeds For Wealth Ministries’, which describes itself as a religious organization which can help people “realize, release and walk into your financial freedom in Christ. To Educate, Equip and Empower the saints.” Yes, it’s more Prosperity Gospel.

This is the name given to the type of theology which appeared in the 1980s, along with Thatcherism, Reaganomics, Yuppies and all-out corporate greed. It’s best described as a Gospel for the rich. In my experience, it’s mostly been pushed by the Evangelical, non-denominational churches. You know, the type whose members say they’re just ‘Christians’, as against all the other churches from Roman Catholics, the Orthodox churches, right down through Anglicanism, Methodism, Lutherans and the Reformed churches as all counterfeit. The idea is that if you’re a Christian, God will reward you with wealth and material goods. There’s also a New Age, pantheistic version, called Prosperity Consciousness, pushed by Deepak Chopra among other snake-oil merchants.

The Rev. Jim Bakker was also peddling this pernicious nonsense in the US before he got sent to the slammer for financial irregularities at his church. Apart from the fact that he was also having affairs with various female members of his congregation. Bakker was released from jail a few years ago, and wrote a book, denouncing Prosperity Gospel as a heresy. One of the priests at my local church here in Bristol had zero time for it. He was a prison chaplain, and he was disgusted with the way the Pastors preaching this stuff turned up, and promised the inmates that when they got out they’d have expensive cars, good housing and loads of money. But when the cons were release, they’d find there was no car, no fine house and no money waiting for them. And then somebody from the mainstream churches had to clean this psychological and theological mess up after these dodgy Pastors had done their pernicious work.

Christ doesn’t promise His followers wealth and possessions. He promises that the Lord will listen to their prayers, but He consistently condemns the rich for their greed and neglect of the poor, and champions the poor against them. As did the prophet Amos in the Old Testament/ Hebrew Bible. Other passages in the Bible, both Old and New Testaments also praise the poor against the rich, like this verse from the Psalms, which used to be recited during Evensong in the Book of Common Prayer.

He hath exalted the humble and meek
The rich he hath sent empty away.

Not a verse that would appeal to the Prosperity Gospelers, I would imagine. And some mainstream theologians will argue that Christ had very different intentions for His community and its moral life, which was at 180 degrees to the materialistic values of Roman society. As demonstrated by Christ Himself washing the feet of his disciples at the Last Supper, this was supposed to be a faithful community where indeed to be the first was to be the last, whose leaders were meant to serve their followers in humility, as against the kings and princes of the Roman world, who lorded it over their peoples. In fact the morals of the early Christian church were so different from that of the pagan Roman world that one Christian writer has talked about ‘the Christian Revolution’.

Back to Lynn Marina Hayter, Newsnight responded to these revelations by saying that

Claims that Lynn appeared on #newsnight as a paid actor are false. Lynn is a pastor and was a genuine participant of our Brexit debate. She carries out work as an extra using her middle name but this is not relevant to the capacity in which she appeared.

But Mike on his blog rightly described her as

So: Not a genuine priest, if by that we mean a member of a recognised church. But a genuine actor, and one known to the BBC. And the BBC is unlikely to admit trying to deceive us, so we have reason to doubt its claims.

And the internet made great sport of the fact that anyone can get themselves ordained as a Pastor over the Net, including George Galloway. Galloway described himself as ‘Monsignor’ George Galloway, parish of nowhere, diocese of Brigadoon. In this respect, Hayter’s credentials as a member of the clergy remind me of one of the characters in the Illuminatus! conspiracy novels by Michael Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, who sends out to people cards declaring that they are a genuine Pope or ‘Mome’, according to gender, and so should be treated right.

Tom Pride and others argued that such deception was a matter for resignation, and destroys any confidence that the Beeb is impartial. And Brexitshambles made the point that this was only one such incident. They said

Week after week we have a procession of scam artists appearing on @BBCNewsnight @bbcquestiontime and @SkyNews under the guise of audience participants or official commentators from opaquely funded lobbyists masquerading as educational charities….who checks these people out?

And Mike concluded his article about it by stating that following this, he doesn’t think the BBC will be at all impartial if it wins the decision to host the debate between Tweezer and Corbyn.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/11/30/the-strange-tale-of-the-vicar-of-brexit-why-the-bbc-shouldnt-host-the-brexit-debate-part-1/

As for Prosperity Gospel, I would strongly advise anyone with a Christian faith, or feels a calling towards Christianity, to give this fraudulent theology a wide berth. It’s not traditional Christian doctrine and the churches pushing it are, in my experience, very right wing. They do want the welfare state destroyed and the NHS privatized. And I’d go so far as to say that the Pastors running this theology are scamming people.

For proper spiritual nourishment, go instead to one of the mainstream churches, like the Roman Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, Baptists, Methodists, Reformed, Quakers, whichever church, doctrinal theology and form of worship appeals to you. But make sure they teach the traditional Christianity doctrine of genuinely taking care of the poor. The Non-Denominational churches despise the traditional churches in my experience, saying that they teach ‘a social Gospel’. Well quite. This means that they hate them because they’re socially engaged, with a left-wing view of empowering the poor and minorities through state action.

If you go to a church that tries to tell you that joining them will make you rich, and you shouldn’t use the welfare resources of the state, walk out, and go to someone better.

There are plenty of churches, which are working to transform our world for the better, which haven’t swallowed and thoroughly reject this Thatcherite rubbish.

Blog of Interest: Depression’s Collateral Damage

I’ve added a new blog to the links here. It’s Depression’s Collateral Damage. It’s the blog of two people, who live with depressed spouses and have written books about coping with the situation. I’ve added it because unfortunately depression is rising in the UK. As I’ve blogged about before, there have been recent reports that depression is increasingly affecting children. According to a report in the Independent, some kids as young as eight now have thoughts of suicide. A few years ago there was a report that one quarter of university students will suffer from depression at some time during their studies. This is taken seriously by the universities themselves. On some university lecturer training courses they include this for those students wishing to pursue careers teaching in academia. It’s one reason why a student’s work may be poor. Rather than being lazy, which also occurs, they may actually be ill and finding life and work difficult.

The condition affects all manner of people, from all sections of society.The scientist and atheist polemicist, Lewis Wolpert, for example, has written an account of his own experience with depression following the death of his mother, A Malignant Sadness. The perception that people with genuine depression are somehow malingerers can also be very harmful. I’ve known individuals with a very strong work ethic, who have found it at times difficult, if not impossible to work. This has actually exacerbated their condition, as they’ve panicked, fearing that they will never get a job. There are campaigns here in the UK to encourage greater understanding of mental illness, which obviously includes depression. I also recall that a few years ago, the BBC soap Eastenders ran a series of stories in which one of the characters suffered from depression. After the episodes a voice stated that there was an advice line open for those, who had been touched by this story. I have to say that if there is anything more likely to make you even more depressed and miserable than you already area, it’s probably the unending squalor and misery in Eastenders and the other soaps. The BBC was, however, providing a service here, and attempting to make people take the disease seriously. This is always welcome. There are some very good books to help sufferers, and I strongly advise those with it to seek medical help. It is not like ‘feeling a bit down’, and sufferers cannot ‘pull themselves together’ and get over it. To return to the above blog, I don’t know how helpful it may be, but I’ve included it just in case.