News Round-Up: US Funding at Wuhan Virus Lab, Criticism of the Human Rights Court Climate Ruling and Humza Yousaf's 'Personal Experience of Racism'
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:
Back in the spotlight: US grants at Wuhan lab's gain-of-function research.
Scientist on the European Court of Human Rights climate ruling: states cannot guarantee a better climate.
Scottish Hate Crime Law: Police Scotland issues a guide on how to defend the First Minister against hate speech complaints.
Gang violence in Sweden: a father cycling with his child shot dead.
The Cass Review: child psychologists are needed in case of gender dysphoria instead of puberty blockers, hormones, and surgical interventions.
Back in the spotlight: US grants at Wuhan lab's gain-of-function research
In the United States, thanks to the persistence of Senator Rand Paul on the subject, the issue of the origin of Covid-19 is back on the agenda. In fact, Paul has been taking a hard look at a 2018 funding request for a project to conduct gain-of-function research on coronavirus at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, essentially manipulating a virus from bats to work well in humans. Such a request was made in 2018 to the US Army's military technology research agency, DARPA (The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), by an association called the EcoHealth Alliance, and the desired outcome described in the request is similar to the SARS-Cov-2 virus that eventually caused the pandemic. DARPA decided not to fund the project, but that doesn't mean EcoHealth wasn't already working on it with US taxpayer money. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a sub-agency of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), headed by Anthony Fauci, who later became the White House's Covid policy coordinator and essentially the 'face' of the pandemic policy in the US, had been funding EcoHealth projects in Wuhan since 2014. This funding was renewed in 2019.
While all of this has been known before, as new information, Paul now revealed that 15 US federal agencies had been informed of this research project, but had not previously released information about it. “In fact, 15 agencies with knowledge of this project have continuously refused to release any information concerning this alarming and dangerous research,” Paul wrote in an op-ed published on Tuesday.
Paul added that the Fauci-led Rocky Mountain Lab was listed in the same application alongside the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a partner in the project.
However, the participants in this project have so far preferred not to talk about it, while at the same time considerable efforts have been made, led by Fauci, to deny the possibility of the virus being of laboratory origin and to say that it originated in a market in Wuhan city, jumping to humans from an animal.
Responding to questions from Senator Paul in the United States Congress in May and July 2021, Fauci denied his agency's involvement in gain-of-function research. While this was clear before, it is confirmed by new information now that Fauci's claims were false at the time.
We have written more extensively about what happened at the Wuhan Institute of Virology before the pandemic broke out, and how the lab's role has been sought to be played down, here.
Scientist on the European Court of Human Rights climate ruling: states cannot guarantee a better climate
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on Tuesday that states have a duty to protect their people from the consequences of climate change. The ruling comes in a case brought by a group of elderly women – their average age is 74 – against the Swiss government. The group demanded government action to counter climate change, arguing that older women are particulary affected by it and most vulnerable to extreme heat which is becoming more frequent.
While two other similar appeals were dismissed for different reasons, the Swiss decision is seen by many commentators as setting a precedent and now gives citizens of other countries the opportunity to take their governments to court and put pressure on them to implement climate policies. For example, star climate activist Greta Thunberg was in the courtroom at the time of the ruling, which she said was a call to action to everyone to take their governments to court over climate.
Commenting on the ruling, climate scientist Dr Judith Curry writes that the basis for the decision remains unclear. Firstly, she says, it is important to note that although the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN in 1948, contains 30 very important points, it does not include a right to climate protection. She points out that efforts have been made to update the declaration to include climate issues, but so far this has not been successful.
However, the question is not whether or not it will be stated in a document that climate is a human right. The question, according to Curry, is what can states actually do to prevent climate change? The solution to climate change that is currently being promoted is Net Zero, which means, in simple terms, getting off fossil fuels. However, according to Curry, achieving Net Zero targets by 2050 would have no impact on climate. Climate change, she writes, is a natural phenomenon, caused, for example, by volcanic eruptions, solar activity, large-scale oscillations of ocean circulations, and other geologic processes.
Curry also points out that global extreme weather related mortality, or the number of such deaths per 100,000 people, has fallen by 99% since 1920. In 2016, there were 6.5 times fewer deaths caused by extreme weather events than in 1980, she says. Curry says this does not mean that extreme weather events are less frequent or intense, but that the world is much better able to cope with them. However, better coping has been driven by the growth of wealth based on fossil fuels, which has enabled better infrastructure, greater reserves, advance warnings, and greater recovery capacity.
According to Curry, the arguments of those calling for a right to safe climate are significantly weakened by a realisation of what the current policy of achieving Net Zero represents. For example, what would be the impact on food production if fossil fuels, including the fertilisers produced based on them, were to be abandoned and arable land were to be drastically reduced? “In addition, climate and energy policies have significant environmental impacts and cause environmental degradation. For instance, forest biomass-based fuel causes deforestation, and on-shore and off-shore wind turbines and solar parks may (and, in fact, do) harm the social fabric, real estate prices, nature, biodiversity, the scenery, and human health. The mining and manufacturing required for batteries, and other renewable energy-related goods and infrastructure cause adverse environmental and human health impacts, and renewable energy also causes CO2 emissions. Given that European Human Rights Court has taken the position that the right to life also protects against environmental degradation and health risks, these adverse environmental and health impacts associated with any policies to respond to the Court’s judgment would have to be taken into account.”
Scottish Hate Crime Law: Police Scotland issues guide on how to defend the First Minister against hate speech complaints
The new Hate Crime Law, which came into force in Scotland on April 1, prompted thousands of complaints to the police in its first week, with a lot of them made against Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf, reports The Telegraph.
Yousaf, who was justice minister at the time of the law's passage in 2021 and was involved in pushing it through parliament, found himself the target of his own law because of a speech he gave back in May 2020, in which, in the wake of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, he suggested that white people held too much power in Scotland. Among other things, he noted that he is often "the only non-white person in the room " and then listed the various office holders, all of whom are white in Scotland. No doubt this could be construed as a racist statement if one wished.
Due to the high number of complaints about the speech, Police Scotland decided to produce a separate guide to respond to them. It states that Yousaf referred to his 'own personal experience of racism' in the speech and that 'nothing said in the speech was threatening, abusive or insulting'. The guidance adds that when the minister referred to ‘white people’ he was 'pointing out a matter of fact'. “There was no malice or ill will towards any person or group displayed in anything said, and so it does not meet the threshold to be recorded as a non-crime hate incident.” Yousaf's speech is therefore protected under his right to freedom of speech.
There have also been numerous complaints from trans activists against writer J.K. Rowling, who refuses to call men who call themselves women 'women'. Gender identity as a protected characteristic was one of the main additions to the hate crime law. A situation where a person refuses to treat a man who calls himself a woman as a woman, or call him a woman, could now lead to criminal proceedings for incitement to hatred. In Norway, for example, this has been the case for many years and has led to absurd proceedings.
Gang violence in Sweden: a father cycling with his child shot dead
On Wednesday evening, a man in his forties was cycling with his 12-year-old son towards a local swimming pool in Skärholmen, southern Stockholm, when he got into an altercation with a gang of young criminals who killed the man, Remix News states, quoting the Swedish newspaper Expressen. According to Expressen, the gang threatened the man and his son, after which the father asked the son to keep his distance and returned to the gang. An altercation ensued, during which a gang of three or four young criminals shot the man. The man tried to grab the gun but was shot in the head. Emergency responders who arrived on the scene were unable to save the man's life. “I don’t know if they said anything about his son, if that’s why he turned around. It doesn’t matter anymore,” the victim’s sister told Expressen. “He could have just continued into the bathhouse, not turned back. But he was like that. Didn’t like injustice. It cost him his life.”
We've also previously highlighted the fact that Sweden is once again being hit by a brutal wave of violence, driven by drug trafficking gangs fighting for territory. At the beginning of February, there were bomb explosions almost every day in the country. The number of fatal shootings in Sweden has also soared. In 2022, a total of 391 shootings were reported in Sweden, 62 of which were fatal. In 2021, there were 45 fatal shootings. Wednesday's shooting was the third in Skärholmen in the last month alone, and locals are afraid to leave their houses.
Understandably, such a brutal killing provoked public protests and calls for action against the criminals. For example, Jimmie Åkesson, leader of the right-wing Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna - SD), who supports the current centre-right government, called for a full-scale war against criminal gangs.
This rise in gang violence and organised crime in Sweden is directly linked to large-scale immigration. Gangs involved in drug trafficking are fronted by criminals of foreign origin, who typically recruit young people with an immigrant background into their gangs.
The problems of uncontrolled immigration in Sweden and the labelling of citizens who draw attention to the problems as misinformation spreaders was also a topic in a recent analysis we published.
The Cass Review: child psychologists needed in case of gender dysphoria instead of puberty blockers, hormones and surgical interventions
An independent review of gender identity services for children and young people led by Dr Hilary Cass and commissioned by NHS England has published its final report on problems related to these services. The review was commissioned because of a significant increase in referrals to the NHS Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), or Tavistock Clinic. While a decade ago, the number of referrals was less than 250 per year, in 2021/2022 it was over 5,000. The review led by Cass also produced an interim report in 2022, and changes to gender identity services were already being made on its basis. For example, we recently wrote that the NHS announced the end of puberty blockers for children. These preparations inhibit the production of sex hormones and stop physical changes in children during puberty, such as breast development or facial hair growth. It was also recommended that instead of one big clinic, regional units should be developed to better support children. Tavistock was closed at the end of March.
However, the final report highlights a number of disturbing aspects of what gender reassignment medicine for children really is. It is stated that as there were a large number of referrals, the staff of the gender reassignment clinic tried to prescribe medical interventions for the child as quickly as possible. These intervention include puberty blockers and hormone treatment, and even surgeries as children grow. For example, it emerged that puberty blockers and hormones were given to children as young as 12. When the children turned 17, many were referred to the adult gender service for surgical interventions such as mastectomies. Of course, blockers, hormones and surgeries cause irreversible damage to the health of children and young people.
The final report calls for such methods to be discontinued, among other reasons because there is no evidence of their effectiveness, and many whose health is damaged in this way later experience traumas and regret everything.
Instead of such interventions, the final report makes a series of proposals. Among other things, it recommends that children who become confused of their gender should start to be treated by a child psychologist or a paediatrician. It is also seen as a problem that parents of children experiencing such confusion fear being labelled transphobic – this is often done by militant trans activists.