News Round-Up: Assange Recognised As 'Political Prisoner', Boris Johnson On 'Medieval Lockdowns' and Covering Up Migrant Crime
Every week, the editorial team of Freedom Research compiles a round-up of news that caught our eye, or what felt like under-reported aspects of news deserving more attention.
Over the past week, the following topics attracted our attention:
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) recognises Julian Assange as a ‘political prisoner’.
Former UK PM Boris Johnson not sure any more lockdowns worked against Covid.
UK: migrant crime covered up, says ex immigration minister.
DNA contamination in mRNA vaccines presents a “substantial risk” of cancer, 52 scientists say.
US: no money for hurricane damage, lots of it for migrants.
PACE recognises Julian Assange as a ‘political prisoner’
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), which brings together parliamentarians from 46 nations, approved a resolution this week based on a report by Thórhildur Sunna Ævarsdóttir (Iceland), that says WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange’s treatment 'for what was – in essence – newsgathering and publishing' warranted his designation as a 'political prisoner'. PACE expressed deep concern at 'the disproportionately harsh treatment' faced by Assange and said this has had a 'dangerous chilling effect' which undermines the protection of journalists and whistleblowers around the world.
Assange and WikiLeaks came to international prominence in 2010 when they released a video of a US attack helicopter opening fire on civilians and killing several of them, including a Reuters journalist in the Iraq capital Baghdad in July 2007. In the months following the video's release, a series of other information was published on the portal, providing evidence of both possible war crimes and human rights violations by US troops. The leaker, Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning, was sentenced to 35 years in prison in the US in 2013 for leaking these materials but was released in 2017.
Among other materials, WikiLeaks has published information about secret prisons set up by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as part of the fight against terrorism in several parts of the world, including European countries Poland and Lithuania. In these detention facilities, which lay completely outside the court system, people who were involved in or suspected of involvement in terrorist activities or the fight against the United States were taken for interrogation and often tortured.
Shortly after WikiLeaks’ initial publications of classified material, Julian Assange became a person of interest in a criminal investigation in Sweden, concerning alleged sexual misconduct. These charges were dropped several years later. At the same time, the United States had also begun its investigations, and in 2012 Assange, who was in London, decided to seek political asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy there. Assange stayed at the embassy until 2019, when Ecuador forced him to leave, following WikiLeaks revelations about the country's president, Lenín Moreno, and the British authorities arrested Assange. Assange was placed in a high-security Belmarsh prison and his representatives then fought his extradition to the US, where he was accused of violating the Espionage Act and could face up to several life sentences if convicted. In June this year, the US authorities reached an agreement with Assange that he would plead guilty and his sentence would be deemed to have been served. He was released and allowed to return to his native Australia.
For Assange, speaking at the ENPA meeting in Strasbourg this week was his first public appearance since his release. He said he had to choose between justice and freedom, and admitted that by pleading guilty he had finally chosen freedom. He stressed that he was free today not because the system (in the sense of the rule of law – HS) had worked. “I am free today because, after years of incarceration, I plead guilty to journalism. I plead guilty to seeking information from a source. I plead guilty to obtaining information from a source. And I plead guilty to informing the public what that information was. I did not plead guilty to anything else,” he said.
In his speech, Assange also gave clear examples of abuses of power used against him by the CIA. According to him, by 2017, they had exposed through WikiLeaks the CIA's infiltration of French political parties, its spying on French and German leaders, its spying on the European Central Bank, and European economics ministries, and its standing orders to spy on French industry as a whole. They also revealed the CIA's vast production of malware and viruses, its subversion of supply chains, and its subversion of antivirus software, cars, smart TVs, and iPhones. “CIA Director Pompeo launched a campaign of retribution. It is now a matter of public record that under Pompeo's explicit direction, the CIA drew up plans to kidnap and to assassinate me within the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and authorized going after my European colleagues, subjecting us to theft, hacking attacks, and the planting of false information. My wife and my infant son were also targeted. A CIA asset was permanently assigned to track my wife and instructions were given to obtain DNA from my six month old son's nappy,” Assange said. “This is the testimony of more than 30 current and former US intelligence officials speaking to the US press, which has been additionally corroborated by records seized in a prosecution brought against some of the CIA agents involved,” he added.
"I am not yet fully equipped to speak about what I have endured – the relentless struggle to stay alive, both physically and mentally, nor can I speak yet about the deaths by hanging, murder, and medical neglect of my fellow prisoners," Assange said.
Former UK PM Boris Johnson not sure any more lockdowns worked against Covid
Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, under whom the country, like many others, used strict movement restrictions and other 'lockdown' measures to combat Covid, writes in his memoirs that he now doubts the effectiveness of these methods.
Johnson writes that he initially believed in the ability of lockdowns to limit the spread of the virus. It was only later that he began to look at the curves of the pandemic around the world, and noticed that similar ups and downs were everywhere and did not depend much on the steps governments took, reports The Telegraph. “There were always two waves, whether you were in China, where lockdowns were ruthlessly enforced, or in Sweden, where they took a more voluntary approach,” he writes. According to Johnson, he is not saying that the lockdown measures had no effect at all. “I am sure they had some effect. But were they decisive in beating back the disease, turning that wave down? All I can say is that I am no longer sure,” he adds.
The lockdowns, or movement and assembly restrictions, were introduced in the UK three times during the Covid crisis, in 2020 and 2021. These included social distancing, limits on the number of people who could gather, strong advice not to go out unless there was an urgent need, school closures, reduced access to medical care, etc. Johnson now calls this approach “literally medieval in their savagery and consequences”. Johnson is surely right in this, as such an unprecedented policy of restriction did indeed have serious consequences for people's physical and mental health, see e.g. here.
It is also important to note that Johnson himself did not take the restrictions and other rules imposed by his own government seriously. This was demonstrated by the behaviour of him and his close associates during the period of restrictions. It emerged that, while the public were being told to stay at home to limit the spread of the virus, and the police were making sure that no more than six people were together at any one time, Johnson and his entourage continued quite freely to celebrate birthdays and other events in large groups. He was later fined for this, and the revelations were one of the reasons he resigned in July 2022.
Johnson also touches on the topic of the origins of Covid in his book. “The awful thing about the whole Covid catastrophe is that it appears to have been entirely man-made, in all its aspects,” he writes. “It now looks overwhelmingly likely that the mutation was the result of some botched experiment in a Chinese lab,” Johnson adds, pointing to the possibility that the virus originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. Although initially this possibility was presented as a conspiracy theory, suggesting that the pandemic originated in a market in the same city, the laboratory origin has been considered the most likely by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), for example. We have written more about the origin of the virus here.
UK: migrant crime covered up, says ex immigration minister
The former UK immigration minister Robert Jenrick says that the current Labour Government is hiding the truth about crimes committed by migrants, according to The Telegraph. Jenrick added that the public “deserved to know the truth” as he pledged that if he became prime minister he would publish data identifying the migrant nationalities with the highest crime rates.
The UK Home Office, Ministry of Justice (MoJ), and Office for National Statistics (ONS) say they do not publish such data, although they could, by linking information from Government and police databases. “Under lax immigration controls, we are importing serious and violent crime. The data from Denmark shows certain nationalities are more likely to commit crimes,” Jenrick argued. “We urgently need this data so we can carry out stronger checks at our border. The institutional cover-up of this data is a scandal. The public deserves to know the truth,” he added.
The former minister has proposed legislation that would require the Government each year to present a report to Parliament detailing the nationality, visa, and asylum status of every offender convicted in English and Welsh courts in the previous 12 months. It would mirror an approach by some US states and Denmark, where league tables compiled from government data show the crime rates of the top four nations – Kuwait, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Somalia – are eight times those of Danish nationals.
DNA contamination in mRNA vaccines presents “substantial risk” of cancer, 52 scientist say
In a letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Russell Broadbent, independent Australian MP, said that “immediate action through a suspension of these products is critical to mitigate further risk”, after an independent testing of Australian vials of modified RNA (mod-RNA) Covid vaccines detected residual synthetic DNA at levels up to 145 above the legal limit, The Daily Sceptic reports.
The letter, circulated to all Australian MPs and Senators, is co-signed by 52 scientists and academics, many at the top of their field, including Professor of Oncology Angus Dalgleish, Emeritus Professor and an expert in chronic disease Wendy Hoy, Emeritus Professor, immunologist who developed a bronchitis vaccine Robert Clancy, geneticist Professor Alexandra Henrion Caude and microbiologist Professor Sucharit Bhakdi MD.
An accompanying science summary describes the concerns of Broadbent and co-signatories, who are asking the PM to adopt a “precautionary approach”, with the recommendation that “the Minister for Agriculture initiate a Biosecurity Import Risk Analysis of these products, potentially leading to the suspension of these products due to the risks they pose to human health”.
“Excessive synthetic foreign DNA encapsulated in lipid nanoparticles can integrate into human cells, potentially leading to genomic instability, cancers, immune system disruption and adverse hereditary effects,” explains the summary, which details the results of independent testing of the vaccines to date.
Residual synthetic DNA, a byproduct from the mod-RNA vaccine manufacturing process, is allowed under TGA regulations in levels of up to 10 nanograms (ng) per vaccine dose, a regulatory limit that was set for traditional vaccines and was not amended for mod-RNA products using lipid nanoparticles (LNPs). The summary goes on to explain why the LNP packaging of residual synthetic DNA makes these products different to traditional vaccines that may contain “naked” residual DNA. “Crucially, naked DNA has no ability to cross cell membranes and enter cells. In contrast, synthetic DNA encapsulated in LNPs possesses a high transfection efficiency, meaning, the LNP-modDNA complexes are efficient at delivering synthetic DNA into human cells,” the summary states.
The summary cites research indicating that the presence of foreign DNA within the cell alone can induce cancer, but the risk is increased if the DNA enters the cell nucleus. Once synthetic DNA is inside the cell nucleus, genomic integration is possible, the summary explains. And, “when genomic integration of foreign DNA occurs at the wrong place within the genome, it frequently induces malignant diseases, cancers, especially leukaemia”.
This is the second letter sent to the PM on the contamination issue by Broadbent, who is known for his advocacy for the Covid vaccine injured.
In the previous letter, sent to the PM on September 20th, Broadbent criticised the Department of Health (DOH) and the TGA for “ignoring repeated warnings by experts” over the synthetic DNA contamination, which was first detected by genomics scientist Kevin McKernan in early 2023. McKernan’s findings were subsequently replicated by scientists in Germany, the U.S., Canada and most recently Australia, by Dr. David Speicher.
US: no money for hurricane damage, lots of it for migrants
Hurricane Helene has severely damaged several US states, especially South and North Carolina. The regions need immediate assistance, but the US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters on Wednesday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) 'does not have the funds' to see Americans through the rest of the Atlantic hurricane season, The New York Post reports.
“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have,” Mayorkas said during a press gaggle on Air Force One en route to tour damage from Hurricane Helene in South and North Carolina.
“We are expecting another hurricane hitting,” he added. “We do not have the funds. FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season and what — what is imminent.”
This statement and the federal government's position have angered a lot of Americans. The thing is that the same agency, FEMA, has spent more than $1.4 billion (EUR 1.27 billion) since the fall of 2022 to address the migrant crisis, i.e. on illegal immigrants. Critics pointed out that the Department of Homeland Security allocated $640.9 million (EUR 583 million) this year in FEMA-administered funds to aid state and local governments coping with the influx of asylum seekers. Mayorkas’ office has claimed that those funds couldn’t be used for hurricane relief because Congress authorized them specifically for the migrant crisis.
With Zero LIABILITY being a fiercely guarded 'Get out of jail Free' opportunity, why should Big Pharma bother about making clean or effective vaccines and other DEADLY INJECTIBLES?
ZERO LIABILITY equates to ZERO Quality Control, ZERO INTEREST in SAFE medicines, Zero concern regarding contaminants. As long as the excessive profits to roll in - No problems need be addressed.
Do Big Pharma's statistics of Excess Deaths of Vaxxed vs Unvaxxed include their magic con trick of regarding all injected recipients as 'UNVAXXED' until a 14 or 21-day 'post-jab' period has elapsed? This is an important question, which could hide millions of sudden VAX RELATED deaths - POST VAX!
Nobody listens to the defunct corrupt World Health Organisation any more! They lie to create opportunities for lunatic Gates, Pfizer, Moderna, etc, to further profit from pretend health emergencies.
Sometimes, even the most ludicrous nonsensical suspicions come to be reality. I suspected the dangerous injections they 'knocked up' "at the speed of science", were at best USELESS, Now it seems they were even more dangerous than we could have imagined. Useless AND deadly!
This could have been predicted as soon as we learned that BIG PHARMA (Pfizer, Moderna, etc,) demanded that NO LIABILITY came with EVERY DEATH SHOT! Such a ridiculous condition should have alerted everyone of the potential dangers of these magically quick cures being created within just months of the release of Fauci's Coronavirus Scamdemic! Apparently, some still accepted Death Shots!
'Excess Deaths' are part of Big Pharma's mercenary business plan!
Unjabbed mick (UK) We live longer without dangerous intervention by corrupt (just for profit) medical companies.
What we know of Sars-Co-2 began DURING the spread of the man-made modified bat-virus. Medical experts are not clairvoyant, we gather data from the real world and share it amongst all levels of scientific and clinical medical practitioners. Only a small number of mainland Chinese military people knew of its existence and what it was doing in the early days of spreading amongst their own population and the one honest one died very quickly and I suspect foul play.
All liability rests at the feet of the Wuhan laboratory personnel and it has not been established how much the US people involved in developing the Chinese laboratory knew and when they knew it.
The CCP bears enormous responsibility for the virus getting out of the city and out of the country, maybe - we are still guessing who knew what and when.
So, experienced health professionals and public health professionals had to use the knowledge and experience they had gained from OTHER RNA virus infections in animals and humans to advise the civil and military authorities on how to minimise the spread, minimise the death rate and minimise the chance of developing new variants which could reinfect people who had already been infected once before.
It was NEW. Never been on the planet while human beings were on the planet. Its most important properties were unknown; those are -
Infectivity: How easily a pathogen can infect a host.
Pathogenicity: The ability of a pathogen to cause disease.
Virulence: The severity of the disease caused by a pathogen.
Sars-Co-2 had nasty surprises for us in all three important properties.
So, the advice given to rulers by experts based upon past experience was not very effective due to the germ, not to the experts or the rulers.
Distancing, nose and mouth masking, quarantine, lock-downs, attempts at getting a safe and effective vaccine were all good ideas, the new life form was unpredictable and it beat so many of the efforts based on past experience that is killed millions and is still doing so today.
If you think you have a right to be totally safe, free from fear and live forever you are placing impossible expectations on other people and you are cowards in failing to face your own vulnerability and mortality.