"It is too many men, too much of the time" , with too much impunity - it is the culture we live in.

If, as a male, a man, a person and my response or reaction to the calls of women on the issue of sexual harassment, sexual abuse, misogyny and gender prejudice is 'it's not all men" and if I make that statement to defend myself, if I make that statement because I feel personally insulted, slighted, labelled or that I am being made the object of prejudice, as one of a class, then it's pretty certain that I am missing the point.

More importantly it's clear that my reaction is about me, rather than the quality of the welfare, the health and and the safety of women who live with being mistreated by many men, within a culture of misogyny and sexism. women. Which is missing the point. I'm not the point here. The lived experience of women. Matters.


 A woman wanted to speak at the band stand and was impeded by police action.

The women have not said that it is all men, they have said it is too many men, too much of the time, with too much impunity.  Black Lives Matter do not say it is all white people, they said it is too many Racist police, too much of the time with too much impunity. And that is a fair point, because it is true. There are too many Racist policemen causing harm to black citizens because they hold wildly inaccurate views about Race, and too many of those who get away with the harm they are causing.

It is too many women, who too often endure gendered, sexist and sexualised abuse and never receive justice within a patriarchy rooted social power system.

Too many men, too much of the time, with too much impunity. It's not aimed at me, as a personal attack.

I know I am not that kind of person. and that it has nothing to do with the accident of my maleness.

Yes, I did not chose my born sex, nor did I chose the role dynamics the culture imposes.  It's an accident of birth. I can choose to reject those culturally imposed values and I do. Because the culture that imposes those 'values' is a rooted in patriarchal violence and bullying. I saw through that a long time ago.

That said,  I do und erstand that when meeting a woman who does not know me, that if her lived experience has shown her that some men are predators, that some men can make a predatory move when it is least expected, and that there is no accurate measure or means to predict this, and she has been hurt, wounded, terrorised by that behaviour, and she knows other women have similar experiences such that it is common place, then she will be wary of me. Well yes, of course.

If I were in her shoes, I'd be wary too.

I have been assaulted a number of times. I understand. I don't fully know what it is like to be subject to uninvited stares, sexual advances, lewd comments, 'banter' day in day out. It can't be comfortable.

-----

The men who react with "it's not all men!" have not heard the majority of women cry "It is all men!"

There may be a few women who do make that assertion. They are a minority. Elevating them to the majority in defence of a fragile sense of maleness is a logical error, and it is also a tactical play generated by the bully culture, the macho culture, the authoritarian culture. It's important to not to fall for that tactic.

"It's not all men!"  means that I am not listening and I am not hearing what is being said, and instead I am taking it personally. That aligns me away from the women who are making a fair and honest statement.

That inadvertently aligns me as a bystander, a faux neutral position that flows with the abusers and with the abuse system itself. Even if I oppose the abusers with all my heart. Unless I do so with action, I am mute.

I really must just listen to the women, and hear them, and be with that for a while. I need to understand that because most men are not active in confronting misogyny it continues. Just as most 'White' people are not actively confronting Racism, it continues. 

What women want is my fullest empathy, moral, practical and active support to confront this awful systemic misogyny. 

It is partly because I am a Survivor of childhood abuse and violence, and have also survived three physical attacks on my person in adulthood that I join with these women and say to those who are misogynists, sexual predators, gender bullies and otherwise violent men - there are too many of you, and what you do afflicts us all, too much of the time. Enough is enough. As a man I disavow your behaviour as evidence of maleness or of masculinity. It's abuse, that is all it is. Nothing more than abuse. Ugly. Dysfunctional. Harmful. Abuse.

The issue of dealing with too many men, too much of the time causing harm to women with such degrees of impunity  is also a Cultural Problem, because it is too many men, too much of the time.

And in that sense, the ubiquity of this harmful behavioural pattern means that all men and all women living within the culture are involved in this. 

Some men, too many men, are predators and bullies, other men are bystanders, they watch and do nothing, others are willing to stand with the victimised and the oppressed and a few are actively working to prevent the harm, by education, by presence, by their own learning and by seeking to enact better legislation and better practices in all areas this problem affects.

A cultural problem.

It is a cultural problem in that most incidents of sexual abuse are not reported and often that is because when they are reported, formally or informally, most reports of sexual abuse do not lead to justice. 

It is a cultural problem in that most police forces are still inadequately trained in trauma informed responses to this kind of harm causation being reported. It is a cultural problem in that known abusers of women can be elected into the highest positions of power in any democracy.

It is a cultural problem, in that the most honest histories are those that record the insight of ordinary folk who live through whatever historical patterns are driven by the decisions of the powerful -  the lived experience of those most harmed by Power tells the truth that Power dares not utter, and we see quite clearly that the Establishment narrative is blind to the truth of the lived experience. 

Johnson claims hundreds of thousands of avoidable fatalities from an infectious disease is a 'world beating' success. Keir Starmer decries the organic removal of Statues that celebrate historical abusers. Tony Blair claims Iraq is better of without Saddam Hussein, having caused more harm than Saddam Hussein could possibly have caused in Iraq and beyond. Osborne claims Austerity is a necessity. Iain Duncan Smith claims Universal Credit is a benign benefit system whilst extolling the need for sanctions against poor, disabled and vulnerable people to nudge them into better behaviour. Johnson claims the British Empire was a good experience for the world. His father claims that over population is the problem, and that the ideal population for England is 12 million.

Establishment history is a dishonest cultural hagiography.

The British Empire was a force for good. Invading Iraq was about bringing Democracy to the Middle East. The Hillsborough Fans were drunk and disorderly and caused their own deaths. The Police Forces are innocents, doing their very best to protect and serve the communities. These are all well known establishment lies promoted as truth.

Feminism?

Women joining in in the systemic abuse of Power already entrenched and dominated by a Patriarchy is not Feminism, it is not equity. 

It is compliance with and enabling of the Patriarchy systemic abuse system. In posing as Feminism it is another culturally approved establishment lie.

The so called glass ceiling is, de facto, a see through lid on the coffin of the natural and equitable aspiration of women and men who genuinely work towards an egalitarian culture. Theresa May, Priti Patel  and Cressida Dick are part of the power structure, they are not a challenge to the power structure nor do they confront problems of this power culture in any way, shape or form.

The Culture of Power

The policing of the vigil on Clapham Common is a case in point.  

A young woman disappears on a routine walk at late evening night time. The young woman was abducted off the streets of London. Calls go out to locate her. 

Then it is discovered, a week later, that she was abducted by a serving police officer, who was already known to be an serial sexual harasser and yet was still able to wear the uniform, do shifts.

When it became clear that he murdered this young woman, there arose an emergent sense of disgust, outrage and anger that became a coalescence of the feeling among women, who as a class are exposed to so much sexualised abuse that they feel oppressed within this culture  A feeling not alleviated in any way by the sheer frequency of harassment and assault, the rareness of a conviction when they report, the lightness of sentencing and a general indifference by bystander men to their plight.

Spend a day reviewing the statistics on ONS. Spend a day listening to women tell you the truth of their lived experience. There is a cultural problem here. 

Witness

A Vigil was called to express grief at the loss of another young life, to express a collective solidarity with all women who experience sexualised assault, who are subjected to physical, psychological and emotional harm at the hands of too many men, too much of the time, and for whom justice and prevention are a foreign land, bordered by a male dominated patriarchy on permanent guard duty.

The London Metropolitan Police, advised by the Home Office, objected. On the grounds of protecting people from spreading the virus. Whilst schools are forced to re-open without the necessary systems in place to detect and suppress outbreaks. Laughable. Irrational when subjected to a critical analysis.

The Vigil people went to court to assert their right to hold a well organised, covid19 safe Vigil. The Court asserted that the Vigil was indeed lawful, that the organisers had proven they could manage it in a covid19 secure manner, and that the London MetPol interpretation of covid19 regulations as permitting them to ban the vigil  was in error and thus unlawful.  


What a respectful Vigil looks like. Even without organisation. Just women calmly grieving.

source : New York Times

The organisers had 1 steward for every 30 attendees. They had PA systems and all the infrastructure to manage the Vigil well. Local Police (Lambeth) and Council agreed. The Home Office and Scotland Yard dissented.  The MetPol conceded the point in court, and then withdrew from the case in order to avoid a court declaration that the Vigil could proceed - they did this to allow for their own 'discretion'. 

They still opposed the Clapham Common Vigil. 

Media reported that as a stalemate. That was not quite true. It was more a matter of London MetPol stonewalling a legitimate gathering, using clever tactics to leave open an act of discretionary policing.

Tactics to obscure the truth, to mute the voices of survivors.

I remind readers of the recent tactical settling a case of unfair dismissal against a senior civil servant that would, if it had been allowed to proceed, proven that the Home Secretary had bullied her staff and others below her in rank. The settlement meant she could avoid the truth being publicised. A bit like the Vatican settling with survivors of child sexual abuse by clerics. "Here's some cash, take it or we will make your life hell. Good, take it and now just Sshhhsssshhut up!"

"We have an image and status to protect!" and Institutions will and do use every tactic to do that.

The London Met Police did not stand with the women who grieve in public - they did not openly criticise the murderous man who was a team member, a team player, one of their own, they do not decry alpha male ideology, they do not train in empathy and de-escalation, and they do not prevent sexual harassment and assault. They do close ranks when ever one of their own is exposed as an abusive bully.

"How many bad apples in that barrel, Inspector?" 

"You knew he was abusive?" 

"None of your business!"

The organisers of the Vigil proceeded to cancel the Clapham Common event, and others then moved ahead with well organised Vigils elsewhere in England, Wales and Scotland. They all went really well, and as far as we know they were facilitated with sensitivity. 





Bristol

Compare and Contrast


Rangers: No arrests at Ibrox as police urge fans to follow Covid restrictions.

Apart from the Vigil on Clapham Common.

That Vigil was a respectful gathering, and it was exercised without the infrastructure the RTS organisers had been ready to put in place. Police were told that, even as the RTS organisers used all means to cancel their Vigil, used their extensive media and online presence to communicate that their participation as an organiser would not go forward, that it would not prevent people who are grieving and upset and angry from gathering. The Police acknowledged that.

Therefore it looks very much like the Police tactic was to let the gathering happen, then to use force to break it up which, given the context of the court hearing and rulings, looks like a deliberate set up.

People gathered in the late afternoon, in daylight. Peacefully, respectfully.

People in the out doors with masks, taking care to reduce virus transmission to a minimum.

A peaceful and genuine Vigil, a public prayer meeting of sorts, that was an act of respectful, grieving solidarity. It was outdoors, people were all masked and everyone was being respectful.

"No, it's not all men. 

It is too many men, too often. 

It is too many women, too often."

The London MetPol could have stood by, they could have chosen to facilitate the gathering, they could have stayed there all night, in rotating shifts, to ensure that no harm would come to anyone.

They could have done that. Given the circumstance they really ought to have done that.

Think of the PR coup that might have represented. The Police standing with the people!

The London MetPol could have demonstrated solidarity with these women, these men, and thus by practical means have publicly condemned their team mate (and any others like him, lurking behind the cover of uniforms and institutional defence lawyers) and shown that they too stand with the people, as the protectors of the people.

Their Command chose not to do that.  They waited. Until it was dark. As people wanted to hear the speakers on the bandstand some moved in closer.  Social Distancing was reduced. Masks were being worn. People were chanting.



Witness: 


Writing in Bylinetimes Sian Norris gathered evidence of what happened during the Vigil on Saturday evening.

“There were more and more police around the bandstand and then they marched single-file into the bandstand,” she added. “That moment felt very uncomfortable. Very unnecessary. And it was not clear at all from a close bystander’s point of view why they were doing it.”

Flora told Byline Times that it was this moment when things started to shift. 

“Nothing was kicking off – it was very static, the atmosphere was unpleasant but nothing was changing,” she said. “Then, all of a sudden, they filed in – almost as if they had decided enough was enough, ‘let’s move things on’. They intervened and it changed because of their actions.” 

Sophia witnessed the police move onto the bandstand, “making themselves the focal point of our hurt and sadness,” she said. “Everyone was looking at the bandstand and then suddenly we were all looking at the police. I turned around and the police had also moved in behind this. We were caged in.”

“It was quite intimidating for the crowd,” said Katie.

Sisters Uncut said: “It’s important to be clear that the anger was felt in our bodies. It was not one we enacted. The people who were aggressive and weaponising anger were the police.”

Other Agendas

While the vast majority of women and men had come to Clapham Common, and to similar impromptu vigils across the UK, to pay their respects to women who have been killed and to make a statement against gender-based violence, “there were people there who hadn’t come to fight for women’s rights or against state violence,” Katie told Byline Times

“That really upset me,” she said, describing how some male attendees were aggressive towards the police or vandalised police vehicles. “It took away from what was happening.” 

This was typified by a man who took to the bandstand to give an uninvited speech against lockdown and the police more widely.

“The first person to speak was a man – no one asked him to,” Katie said. “People started chanting ‘not your place’.”

“As I was leaving, it became apparent that a lot of people were arriving who weren’t there for the reason I was,” Coleman said.

So what we see here is that there were people within the setting who were hijacking the event, (more about that below). People, men,  whose publicly stated opinions, beliefs and attitudes feed into more spread of the virus - anti-lockdown, anti-zerocovid,  which is aligned with the reality in outcome terms of UK Government strategic position - Herd Immunity is the way out of the Epidemic - and the Police, who are an arm of Government using force to break up a Vigil, claiming to wish to prevent the spread of the virus, whilst also citing the behaviour of the people who were hijacking the event, all co-inciding as part of the news and online media led protection of the policing as it was handled.

Power not wisdom.

What reason, what exactly gave the police the excuse to push through the crowd and break up the gathering on the bandstand, with 'reasonable force', in order 'to prevent spread of the virus'?

A gathering of mostly women, mostly in quiet mournful respect, quiet enough to listen to a non amplified female voice speaking from the bandstand, all wearing masks, all outdoors?

Was that a wise move? Who ordered it, on what basis?

Or was it because within the culture of power, to urge to be dominant (which is the driver of sexualised assault) also drives the command chain. Impose your will. Assert the Power of the command chain, from Home Office to the streets. The Home Secretary's power will not be challenged!

Compulsory Education is every child's introduction to the realities of Institutional Hierarchy, Authority and Power. 

You are compelled to be educated.

Compelled by a greater power than any parent or child can muster. Dominance.

No Child Left Behind.

Compulsion Education instructs children what to think, in ways that ensure that they never learn how to think. School children who leave secondary school and who do not know what the English Civil War was about. School children who leave secondary school and who do not know what their Human Rights are, and why and how they are enshrined in Law. School children who leave secondary school and who do not know that Racism was invented, as a legal instrument, in Virginia in 1681. That's just irresponsible in educational terms.

That is the utilitarian instrumentalization of education as a part of how oppressive bully cultures function.

Self education is every child's responsibility - removing that response ability by coercion is key to the maintenance of the bully cult. 

Bullying in schools.

1 in 5 school children in England report being bullied on School premises in 2018.

Compulsory Education is key to maintaining the practices of nationalist indoctrination, is key to sustaining the myth of a benign patriarchy and essential to the inculcation of approved gender role identifications and behaviours that separate men and women as persons, and classifies us as separate genders, with exclusive  lingo, behaviour and memes rather than unite us as persons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisonous_pedagogy

"Poisonous pedagogy, in Katharina Rutschky's definition, aims to inculcate a social superego in the child, to construct a basic defense against drives in the child's psyche, to toughen the child for later life, and to instrumentalize the body parts and senses in favor of socially defined functions. " Boy's don't dry. 

Thus compulsory education is a toxic mime of self directed education and it serves to undermine the person in favour of approved persona. Look to the celebrity role models. Persona. Images. Faux Reality.

Power and powerlessness entrenched by disempowering dynamic structures.

Hence the inability of parents, teachers and students to unite even as they are being abused by Government and News Media in the midst of an epidemic. Gavin Williamson bullies millions of people by virtue of the Office he holds and gets away with repeat offences that cause thousands of deaths.  The Media refuse to confront his obvious gaslighting. Starmer refuses that analysis and supports the Government.

Power

Sexualised Assault, Misogyny and Racism are all extreme bullying behaviours rooted in false premises. 

"I have a right to your female body because I have a Penis, Men are Superior to Women, White skinned people are Superior to Black skinned people, Disabled people are freaks, the Poor are lazy." All falsehoods.

This is all about power, a pecking order of who exercises power over others.

Co-opting the Vigil 

Bylinetimes published an article showing how some of the people attending the Vigil had other agenda's to promote, exploiting the situation for their political viewpoints. Anti-lockdown, anti-vaxxer, right Libertarians among them.

"Toby Young, general secretary of the Free Speech Union and editor of the Lockdown Sceptics site, has also used the events of Saturday night to promote an anti-lockdown narrative. 

Writing on Lockdown Sceptics, he said that the people criticising the police response were “the very same people who’ve enthusiastically supported the lockdowns, including the suspension of the right to protest, and who’ve condemned anti-lockdown protestors for being ‘selfish’ and ‘irresponsible’”. Young stated that the arrests of women in Clapham “were on you”.

A woman who attended Saturday’s vigil told Byline Times that the Metropolitan Police’s decision not to engage with the grassroots organisers of the event was, in part, responsible for how she believed it could be co-opted by those with different agendas.

“When the Metropolitan police refused to work with the organisers, and the organisers stepped back, that left a vacuum which was filled by people who had a different agenda,” she said.


Again the dishonesty of those who claim to oppose abuse of power yet whose own actions amount to an abuse of their position, status and power that favours more abuses of power is made clear. Misogyny is shameless.

We want to change the culture?

Tell the children the truth. Stop lying to the boys and girls.

Prevent people like Michael Gove and Gavin Williamson from leveraging institutional power to cause harm to our children, our teachers, our families.

Tell the truth about Power Hierarchy. Tell the truth about Oligarchy, Plutocracy, Externalised Costs, Patriarchy, Racism, Conquest, Misogyny and Gender Roles.

Make telling lies in Parliament a criminal offence, with a mandatory custodial sentence. Make publishing misinformation and lies as 'News' a criminal offence.

Thus we will be better situated to prevent the youth growing into the kinds of dysfunctional adults that are exploited by power, to sustain power over the people. Ensure children leave school equipped with critical analysis and thinking skills.

Brexit, the parachute that opens on impact - Brexit was of course a vast political grooming exercise, exploiting vulnerable people, exploiting people who lack accurate information. Austerity was a national scale act of deliberate abuse of vulnerable people, protected by gaslighting the public about lack of Government funds due to 'debt', which was a lie.

Zero Community Transmission is dismissed as 'impossible' - that is a lie.
 
Critical thinking would make such lies unlikely to survive more than a few days at most.

There is no truly single issue - there is one cultural issue, we are ruled over by bullies. That fact distorts all of our lives. 

Tell the truth.

The truth is essential to the Working of Mutual Democracy.  WMD.

Obviously lacking an equitable voice across English Institutional Power, obviously lacking an equitable voice in the English News Media, nonetheless the truth of the lived experience of the powerless is everywhere among the decent people, who stand apart from the minority of bullies, the politically groomed, the woo woo woolly eyed, the nativists, the xenophobes, the Racists and the misogynists who largely defer to the systems of power, who walk in our midst.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

https://patreon.com/corneilius

https://www.reverbnation.com/corneilius

https://www.corneilius.net

https://www.soundcloud.com/coreluminous

COVID-19 : Opinion is lethal, Evidence saves lives.



The World Health Organisation and many other eminent expert bodies are saying that the COVID19 Pandemic is still a long way from being dealt with, 15 months on from the first proven cases of the disease.

Estimates vary depending on who is presenting a narrative and where they are presenting from.

People in New Zealand and Australia are more confident of an end to the pandemic than people in USA, Germany or UK. People across East Asia are confident they will remain with low fatalities, yet are not so confident the pandemic will cease in the West and other places where zero community transmission is not chosen as a strategy, anytime soon. This chart lays out in bleak lines the background to the variance of opinion. It is of course incomplete, and does not reflect the full scope of the situation. It is indicative. 

More cases is always the result of increased transmission, lower cases is always the result of lowered transmission. It is that simple.


source for this graphic : zerocovid.uk

Right now, as I am typing, zero community transmission strategies are protecting the lives and economies of 1.8 billion people across East Asia and Oceania. In these countries deaths from COVID-19 have been kept to a minimum. In these countries they have not been subjected to repeated National level shutdowns.  In these countries the people's economies are robust and thriving, given the global circumstances. These are the effects of zero community transmission strategies.

Granted international tourism is shut down. International passenger travel is shut down.  Some people's livelihoods in  tourism are adversely impacted, and they are mostly getting support from their governments to get through the pandemic.

Across East Asia and Oceania children are attending school, young adults are attending universities,  the bars and restaurants are open,  local tourism is open,  shopping malls are open. Weddings, funerals and wakes are happening. Life goes on, pretty much as 'normal'.

1.8 billion people.

Protected by an evidence led set of strategies, without the utility of a vaccine.

People still wear masks. People living in East Asia and New Zealand are aware that any outbreak that occurs must be suppressed, and they are well are informed and fully engaged thus when outbreaks do emerge, they and their Governments, local and national, take the appropriate action and suppress the transmission until all cases are traced, all contacts quarantined, the ill are given best possible treatment and all of this is carried out until the virus dies out due to finding no new hosts.

Zero Community Transmission not complicated, it is complex, it is expensive yet cheaper than high fatalities, high long covid rates and repeated economic shocks - it is epidemiology and public health practice at its best, and it is not an extreme set of actions and behaviours, it is mostly a matter of common and collective caring. 

It is not rocket science.

Right now, in the USA and UK and EU and Brazil, a different set of strategies are being deployed and these strategies and policies have caused millions of avoidable horrific deaths, millions of avoidable long term chronic disease cases (1 in 10 of all disease level infections), vast economic harms all of which have disproportionally impacted and afflicted the low income, the poor, the destitute, the chronically unwell and the vulnerable and disabled cohorts of their populations.

Evidence ignored, opinion and belief promoted, every single wheel re-invented turned out to be square, appalling death tolls, long term sequalae for hundreds of thousands of people, vast economic harms.

These slow spread herd immunity strategies are causing immense psychological and emotional harm to hundreds of millions of people through badly managed lockdowns, followed by openings, surges of transmission  and yet more lockdowns, with no end in sight and barely 20% of the UK population  (where I live) exposed to the virus, as these governments push their populations towards a mythical herd immunity in order to 'protect the economy'. It's utter nonsense to claim they are protecting their economies with these strategies.

These strategies have cause wholly avoidable economic damage - from small businesses to self employed, from the live entertainment industry to international tourism we see millions of job losses, businesses going to the wall, entire industries failing.

Here, in the UK where I live, rocket science is nowhere to be seen, and neither is common sense epidemiology. 

There is a pattern where those in power and others online cite the harms caused by bad management to argue for worse management rather than better management as in epidemiologically sound, proven and reliable zero community transmission strategies.

Behavioural Science, Data Modelling and Economics.

Government Scientists and Advisor cite behavioural science and data modelling as the source of their policy strategies. They do not cite epidemiology, they do not cite virology and they do not cite best practice public health.  The UK Government have claimed all along that they are protecting the British Economy, that "having a strong economy is the best way to ensure a strong National Health Service".

They are failing even in that simplistic task.

Here where I live we have seen multiple waves, shutdowns followed by opening up while community is active, followed by shutdowns as hospitals are over whelmed, and the death toll rises. Cycles of death and harm, all totally avoidable. Yes, the NHS has managed to deal with being pushed to it's limits again, but at the cost of the general service that it provides. Meanwhile American insurance firms buy up local health providers paving the road of insurance schemers 'good intentions'.

Each and every death by covid19 is a horrific, tortured death. 140,000 and rising horrible, painful and very stressed lonely deaths. 

Long Covid is estimated to affect 1 in ten of disease level cases. 

Asymptomatic cases account for 20% of infections, and these people spread the infection without knowing they are doing so. 

There is, within the UK, no effective localised contact trace system.

There is, within the UK,  no effective, localised quarantine support system.

There is, within the UK,  no effective, localised isolation treatment system.

Some people are being paid to not go to work, others must work and be exposed to risks because they are 'key workers' - shop staff, services staff, police, fire brigade, ambulance, sanitation staff, meat processing staff, Amazon staff, factory workers and builders, and many others.

And there are others who are forced to work because the economic support systems are inadequate for low wage earners - people who are low earners who become symptomatic choose to work because the support for quarantine is inadequate, slow and cumbersome. Food banks are feeding hundreds of thousands of families. The charities and their workers are forced to take risks.

This week, 8th March, 2021, we see the UK Government coercing students, parents and teachers to return to fully open schools whilst community transmission is at levels above 23rd March 2020 when the first shutdown was imposed. 

A year later we see no shift to an evidence based epidemiologically sound strategy. A year  later we see the continuation of policy options that are causing avoidable fatalities and long term harms to the people of the UK and to our economies.

The evidence of the lived experience in the UK is that the policies of the UK Government are causing vast harms, and when compared to countries following zero community transmission strategies, the variation in policy and outcome is clear.

In simple terms the difference is between opinion and evidence.

Opinion is lethal, evidence saves lives. 

Opinion, belief and ideology is lethal, honesty and evidence saves lives.

Gavin Williamsons opinion is that schools are safe for full attendance re-opening. Williamson cites a .002% case rate among students during the September re-opening period. Sounds like a small figure. .002% of 8.9 million students is 17,800+ cases. That is not a small number. Factor in the inadequacies of a centralised contact tracing system that has failed on almost every metric then we have a situation where were do not know how many infections are linked to those cases, what their index cases were, where the virus was transmitted... Gavin Williamson is playing tricks with numbers to push a deliberately egregious policy. 

A recent study on school safety makes this clear. 

"On Feb 22, 2021, the UK Government announced that schools in England would fully reopen on March 8, 2021. 

While returning to school as soon as possible is imperative for the education, social development, and mental and physical welfare of children, not enough has been done to make schools safer for students and staff. 

Without additional mitigations, increases in transmission are likely, this time with more infectious and possibly more virulent variants, resulting in further lockdowns, school closures, and absenteeism. Even when schools were supposed to be fully open, at points of high community transmission, 22% of secondary school children were not attending due to self-isolation. 

In some areas, attendance was as low as 61%.
Arguments that schools do not contribute to community transmission and that the overall risk to children from COVID-19 is very small have meant that mitigations in schools have received low priority. Yet the evidence cited for these arguments has serious limitations.  
Primary and secondary school closures have been associated with substantial reductions over time in the effective reproduction number (Rt) across many countries (including England) and time periods.  
In contrast, data from the Office for National Statistics' (ONS) 2020 COVID-19 Infection Survey show that the prevalence of infection among children aged 2–10 years (2%) and 11–16 years (3%) rose above the prevalence for all other age groups before the 2020 Christmas break (appendix p 4). 
Both modelling and real-world data in preprint showing rising cases in regions where the SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.7 variant was prevalent during the lockdown in November, 2020 (when schools were open),  suggest that opening all schools now without robust mitigatory measures in place will probably lead to Rt rising above 1 in almost all scenarios. Modelling data by the University of Warwick and Imperial College London suggest that at least 30 000 more deaths from COVID-19 are estimated under the proposed reopening scenarios. 
Throughout February, 2021, despite fewer students being in school at this time, teaching staff were at higher risk of infection. Recent school outbreaks in northern Italy, where the B.1.1.7 variant is prevalent, are also concerning."

The study goes on to outline a series of mitigation steps to suppress transmission within the school community.

None of which is currently provided as logistical support or funded by central government at this time. 

A former OSTED chief urged teachers to put their lives on the line, for the future of the children they are teaching.

I saw the interview and to my mind he was impatient and dismissive rather than attentive to the needs of the teachers and the students. He was not calmly presenting evidence. 



Mary Bousted, of the NEU, corrected his assertion that schools were not functioning, which was a deliberate misrepresentation of the facts - she pointed out that teachers are in already in schools teaching key workers children and vulnerable children, and are helping children in a variety of ways to make up for the fall off in social services provision, as well as running remote online tuition.

Ideology, belief and opinion are lethal, honesty and evidence saves lives.

More from the study...

"
Although COVID-19 is unlikely to cause severe disease in children, estimates of the prevalence of long COVID symptoms based on the ONS Infection Survey suggest that 13% of children aged 2–10 year and 15% of those aged 12–16 years have at least one persistent symptom 5 weeks after testing positive.

Given uncertainty around the long-term health effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection, it would be unwise to let the virus circulate in children, with consequent risk to their families. Reopening fully in the setting of high community transmission without appropriate safeguards risks depriving many children of education and social interaction again, worsening existing inequalities.

By contributing to high community transmission, it also provides fertile ground for virus evolution and new variants."

What kind of person demands that children take these risks? The same kind who launched a war against a country based on a careful set of obvious lies, claiming that they are bringing Democracy to an oppressed people? That went well.... not!

Ideology, belief and opinion are lethal, honesty and evidence saves lives


This country really needs a Union of Teachers, Parents and Students who are studying the evidence, who are learning about the evidence base for zero community transmission strategies, because it directly affects their lives now and into the future to confront this situation and to support the NHS by confronting MPs, local councils, local media, national media and any other arena's of influence with the evidence.
We cannot leave that study to the News Media or The Government. They are deliberate in their failure to present accurate and timely evidence since last December 2019.

We need the 8.9 million school children, the 2.38 million university students to be studying the evidence that exists on zero community transmission strategies. We need their parents to be on board, as learners in this.

We cannot trust the UK Government to be honest, so we must be the voices of honesty within the UK.

We need this cohort to engage with NHS staff and with other representing organisations to co-ordinate a push back at every level of society, aware that the Government and Media will not support this push back and will actively resist the most honest, evidence based analysis.

If I have repeated myself, and I have, it is only because the frustration of seeing what is possible being deliberately ignored by so many for such little purpose with so much harm attendant that I persist.

Not yet blue in the face, not yet breathless, I will continue to posit zero community transmission strategy until it is in place. It is the only strategy that makes humane sense.


Kindest regards

Corneilius


Womb with a View - International Womens Day

I do not and never have accepted the culturally imposed definitions of Masculine and Feminine. Oddly enough.

 

source : the origins of unhappiness by david smail


In my youth it was, for me, a matter of a un-verbalised feeling that the behaviour of men towards women was 'odd', that it lacked personhood. It seemed like people were taking sides where no sides existed, in my mind, as a person. Men and Women as strangers.

The personhood - the happening inside is what I mean by 'person', it is not the 'personality' and it is not the culturally approved patterns.
Person to me means the emergent sensory being, the embodied being, the what it is I feel like, moment to moment
Often times look in a mirror and not recognise what I see - this to me is because the happening within of me is not on the skin, it is within, below the skin, and so of course the mirror cannot reflect that, and the within being cannot be seen by the mirror.

Today is International Women's Day. What if we have no mirrors?

https://www.internationalwomensday.com

What does that mean? Well for one thing it is about this - 80% of frontline health provision is provided by women. Internationally women provide most of the expert care for their communities, beyond mothering. This video clip shows Mike Ryan of WHO talking about who delivers health care, globally. 



That's one part of the meaning of International Women's Day and Month - why is there even such a date, such a need to express solidarity?  Because sex/gender based oppression is real. 

And this week in the UK the Male Patriarchy Bullying Conservative Government trolls the nation with a derisory 1% pay rise for health care workers in order to dim public discourse about their deliberate coercion of parents, teachers to return children they care for to COVID19 unsafe schools in the midst of a lethal epidemic.

The News Mefia rage about Meghan Markle combining Misogyny and Racism as further deflection from the truth if the situation we are in, and the deliberate mismanagement of this epidemic that has taken 140,000 lives in utterly horrific manner.

Well, for me it also means that and all of the following and much, much more. After all I am a man, a bloke, a male and I am not a woman. I do not have to endure the stares, the cat-calls, the sexualised banter, the gropes and leers, the assaults on my dignity and person that almost every woman I know endures in this culture. So yes, there's a lot more to this than my minute 'as a male' perspective could ever articulate.

Somethings are too big to fully articulate as one person. Many important subjects are too big to fully articulate as one person - thus the community that integrates all of it's perceptions, be they accurate, evidence based or intuitions or dreams or otherwise, gathers the most data. Listening works. Speaking in turn works. Speaking to one another, rather than at one another, works.

I am trying to write not as 'a man', and not as 'masculine' - I think both those terms are meaningless cultural gibberish - but as a person. What is 'masculine' other than a ludicrous fairy tale of culturally approved behaviours from within a violent hierarchy cult.

We are all citizens of the Womb. That is where I start. That is where we all start.


ani di franco - inside out

There are no exceptions to this. Everyone is a person who started out in the Womb.

Womb is evolutionary nurturant physiological neurochemical endocrinological bio-logical reality.

Bio-logic. The Logic of Life. The Logic of Nurture.

Womb is about nurture so that the child can grow, safely.

Womb is about a mother in safety, a mother who is not subject to chronic stress, a mother who is cared for as part of a whole community of socially partnered people, of all ages, working and living and growing together.

There is no competition within Womb. Womb is egalitarian.

There is no hierarchy of power within Womb.

Womb knows no nation though it does know the sound of language.

Womb knows no race though it does know the sounds of song, of breathing, of farting, of walking, of sleeping. Womb knows laughter and tears. Womb knows mystery and learning.

Womb is more common to all of us humans, primates, mammals than many other things.

And yet, in this culture there is no room for Womb in the corridors of power. 

Womb is not considered when combustion engines burn fossil fuels releasing tiny particulates that the mother breathes in and absorbs and carries to the Womb through her blood, where those particulates concentrate in the tiny foetus's blood and tissue.

Womb is not considered in the economic thinking of how to support the best possible nurturing parenting across a whole population.

Womb is not revered, Womb is not central, Womb is not celebrated, Womb is not venerated and all too often Womb is seen as a distortion of the approved shape of  woman. 

Powerlessness :  the foetus in the Womb has no view that is integrated into the deliberations of how to organise a healthy society. 

COVID19 and the chronic stress of women who are pregnant as the epidemic is wilfully mismanaged - what impacts will we see emerge in those children as infants, toddlers, children and adults?

Here, Allan Schore talks about the biology of emotional self regulation. His research, and that of many others, draws on Neuroscience, Endocrinology, Developmental Behaviour, Evolutionary Psychology to examine the critical period from Pregnancy to the stage where the child is able to walk, and thus able to explore the new world he or she is in, independently. What the biology tells us is that self regulation of emotion must be matured by that stage of increased mobility. The last thing an explorer of a new world needs is inability to self regulate his or her emotional state - tantrums are really dangerous to any explorer and biology is not stupid.

We know from a vast data set that 'the terrible twos' is a condition unknown in egalitarian and pre-conquest cultures. What we now understand is that 'the terrible twos' is a dysfunctional state crafted by motherhood that is under severe stress - it is not the mothers fault, it is the expected outcome of mothers under immense evolutionary distress.

The safety of the womb is compromised by the lack of safety in the culture. The safety of the womb that is continued by the safety of the family and safety of the extended family is compromised in this Industrial Hierarchy of Violence culture, which is historically a Patriarchy of trauma. This is historic fact. 



The difference between men and women in this culture is about power. Who mediates power and why?

It is not the genitals that are the greater difference between men and women, it is the Womb. It is not hairy chests and breasts that define us as different. It is not that the brains of men and women are different.

It is that the culturally imposed roles that impose difference in behaviour and social conditioning upon our brains are dull and oppressive, they are utilitarian roles mediate by power relationships. It is that the culture that pretends  that Womb is not central to all of everything about us is impossibly weirdly off key to the meaning of life.

We are a womb species.

And in any case, we are persons first and foremost - and for that reason I think it is an error to categorise either of us by the secondary nature of our bodies, not least by imposing cultural gender roles that ignore the meaning of the Womb of all things, that first place we are truly nurtured, that place that speaks to the nurturant truth of biology as a whole system of nurturing living activity, the place that suggests this is how it starts and long may it continue.

Womb is Life. Wombs do not need to be occupied or full to be of and for life. An un-used, empty Womb is still a womb and it is in use nonetheless. Women are not defined by being wombish. Persons are not defined by their bodies alone.

War is anti-womb.

War is child abuse.

Aristocracy exploits the womb as a utilitarian device of inheritance, alliance and power structures.

Poverty is anti-womb.

Misogyny is anti-womb.

Imposing poverty is collective child abuse.

These are some of my thoughts on International Global Earth Woman's Day.

One day is not enough, 365 days is not enough, Wombs are for the future - by nurturing the present we bring hope and beauty into the future.

By nurturing in the present we send love into the future.

I am in awe of Womb. Womb is already more than Space Exploration can ever be. 

Jacinda Ardern speaks about kindness as though it is political.

She is correct.

Cruelty is also political.

I have had enough, already, of the politic of cruelty. Haven't you had enough of that , already?

If we have a future, it is the politic of kindness, the politic of nurture  that is the continuation of Wombing - nurture, nurture, nurture.

The profit of nurture is happy wombs, happy mothers, happy fathers, happy children, happy communities, happy societies.

I do not care that 'bullying is the the way it is' - I do not care for the Alpha Male, the Power, the Empire, the Billionaire, I don't care that they are everywhere declared an inevitable imposition, a product of the struggle for survival, that this is how it is, accept it, get over it, get on with it - these cults are nothing but trouble. We don't need them. We never did. They have no real human value.

I don't see any value in women behaving like the men who are bullies in Power, carrying weapons. I don't see any value in the men who are bullies in power, carrying weapons. That is neither equality nor is it equity. It just cruelty and violence. It is stupid, venal, dumb, idiotic, cruel, callous and nasty.

Feminism is not advanced by female combat troops, by female grunts.

These are my thoughts in international women's day.

Women being bullied in public - that is the story of Diana and Meghan.

Diana and Meghan - reveal the misogynistic bullying that is the very core of the concept of Aristocracy and the functional utilitarian objectification of The Womb as a tool of hereditary Power.



Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."




Letter : Zero Community Transmission is a practical, pragmatic strategy that is protecting 1.8 billion people and their economies.



Dear Editor

There are Governments, lobbyists and others who are citing harms caused by bad management of the epidemic locally, and of the pandemic globally, to argue for opening up whilst community transmission is still very much active, which amounts to worse management, rather than arguing for best management that achieves zero community transmission.

Zero Community Transmission was dismissed as and 'not credible' by the English PM, and 'impractical' in the UK Parliament this week

This is untrue - Zero Community Transmission is protecting the health and welfare and the economies of 1.8 billion people across East Asia and Oceania. They are pragmatic States.

Zero Community Transmission is a series of practical, common sense measures that are not by any measure extreme, and which avoid repetitive cycles of open and shutdown, as well as reducing the possibility of variants emerging from within virus laden communities.

I, and many others, would appreciate it if you could publish this letter to correct this misinformation coming from the UK Government, and others.

Yours sincerely

Corneilius Crowley

Please withhold my address and phone number from publication.


Exploiting the Harms caused by bad management to argue for worse management, rather than for better management aka zerocovid

Some misanthropic governments, malign lobby groups and misinformed citizens are using the harms caused by deliberately bad management to argue for worse management rather than for better management  and this is lethal. It is venal avarice exhibited those who should behave better, given the duty of care inherent in the position of power they occupy. An old story, perhaps, corrupt Governments imposing malign policy upon entire peoples under the guise of help yet does it have to be this way?




#BodgJoh #BodgeJohnson

Associating the success (and by extension, failure) of a public health response with an appeal to an exceptional national character can be dangerous. It can make learning from others less likely, and make changing course, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, a painful – perhaps impossible – process.

source: 
https://theconversation.com/sweden-and-japan-are-paying-the-price-for-covid-exceptionalism-151974

Ordinary people who are using the harms caused by deliberately bad management to argue for worse management rather than better management are misinformed, some are mislead and there are others, a minority who are content to remain wilfully ignorant.

1.8 billion people and their economies are being protected by zero community transmission strategies, and have been for over a year.

The news media, the government and their sponsors and blinded supporters and the 'freedom' mob (who pretend to themselves they oppose the Governments bad policy) are all refusing to follow the Science,  and what they are doing is arguing for worse management, whilst deliberately ignoring the evidence, the science and the lived experience of 1.8 billion people?

1.8 billion people in China, Taiwan, South Korea, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Cambodia, Laos, Finland, Norway and a bunch of other countries following the science and the best public health practice is a huge evidence base.

Zero community transmission is a series of  mostly fairly straightforward policies, they are not extreme actions, they are common sense, science led actions that suppress a virus in a community and then maintain a situation where community transmission is not allowed to erupt.

The key elements of best public health outbreak management in no particular order include:

1. generalised mask wearing,
2. general attention to hand hygiene,
3. physical distancing where necessary,
4. localised person to person contact tracing,
5. fullest support to anyone who has been in contact with a known case to quarantine,
6. testing for presence of the virus and for antibodies on a community level around outbreaks,
7. fullest support for treatment of symptoms in isolation, away from the community,
8, Fever clinics to protect general hospital systems.
9. tightly quarantined borders,
10. full support for all workers if and when they need to isolate,
11. clear  timely information available on outbreak status to citizens in their locality,
12. clear and consistently science grounded communications from Government and Health Authorities 32. and an absence of profiteering - meaning the profit is the outcome for the whole community or population.

In essence chasing down the virus as a behavioural dynamic supported by national and local governance and health systems.

This is what Governments and 1.8 billion people are doing across East Asia and Oceania and it is working.

These actions are all being done without a vaccine - it's great that a number of vaccines have been developed and are helping, yet they are not the solution to a virus that mutates in order to over come barriers placed in it's way.

The solution is to stop the transmission of the virus. A virus that does not meet human host dies. Slowing transmission down is not that. Stopping transmission achieves that goal.

How could people I personally know ally with the UK Ruling Faction and ignore that evidence?

How could people I personally know appeal for opening up without the better management?

What kind of myopia is that?

New Zealand, Vietnam and Taiwan and UK had the same Science and Evidence on February 2020 - NZ, Vietnam and Taiwan chose to follow the science, closely.




UK decided to ignore the Science.

The different outcomes are VERY clear.

www.zerocovid.uk for more information on what zero community transmission science is.

I argued for zero community transmission back in March 2020 and again in April 2020, without understanding the role that slow spread and variants were going to play - now we know more about variants and the fact that they are part of the same problematic behavioural dynamic.

The longer the virus has to play within any given population the more likely it will generate variants that survive what ever we throw at it. Especially within countries that have medically advanced treatment for AIDS and other immune disease states, where the virus can live within a human body for months on end.

"These questions are especially important at a time when environmental pressures, such as expanding herd immunity, vaccine-induced immunity, antiviral therapies, and public health intervention strategies, may — through selective pressure — promote virus survival and escape."

Source : 
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMcibr2032888


Has any heard of the Vietnamese or New Zealand Variants?

Exactly!

Kindest regards 

Corneilius 

 "Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."