Nobody knows how many people died as a result of the UK/US Coalition of Death led destruction of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and, by proxy, Syria and Yemen. Nobody even knows how many people western forces themselves killed directly. That is a huge number, but still under 10% of the total. To add to that you have to add those who died in subsequent conflict engendered by the forced dismantling of the state the West disapproved of. Some were killed by western proxies, some by anti-western forces, and some just by those reverting to ancient tribal hostility and battle for resources into which the country had been regressed by bombing.
You then have to add all those who died directly as a result of the destruction of national infrastructure. Iraq lost in the destruction 60% of its potable drinking water, 75% of its medical facilities and 80% of its electricity. This caused millions of deaths, as did displacement. We are only of course talking about deaths, not maiming. This very sober analysis from Salon makes a stab at 2.4 million for Iraqi deaths caused by the war.
The number of Iraqi casualties is not just a historical dispute, because the killing is still going on today. Since several major cities in Iraq and Syria fell to Islamic State in 2014, the U.S. has led the heaviest bombing campaign since the American War in Vietnam, dropping 105,000 bombs and missiles and reducing most of Mosul and other contested Iraqi and Syrian cities to rubble.
An Iraqi Kurdish intelligence report estimated that at least 40,000 civilians were killed in the bombardment of Mosul alone, with many more bodies still buried in the rubble. A recent project to remove rubble and recover bodies in just one neighborhood found 3,353 more bodies, of whom only 20% were identified as ISIS fighters and 80% as civilians. Another 11,000 people in Mosul are still reported missing by their families.
For a vivid illustration, here is a photo of Sirte, Libya, after it was kindly “liberated” by NATO aerial bombardment. NATO carried out 14,000 bombing sorties on Libya.
Sirte, Libya, after NATO bombing
The neo-con drive to dominate the Middle East, in alliance with Saudi Arabia and Israel, has caused an apocalyptic level of death and destruction. It really is very difficult indeed to quantify the number of people killed as a direct result of the policy of “liberal intervention” in these countries. Bombing people into freedom has collateral damage. There are also the vast unintended consequences. The destruction of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria launched a wave of refugee migration which led to politicial instability throughout Europe and contributed to, among many other consequences, Brexit.
For the purposes of argument, I am going to put an extremely conservative figure of 5 million on the number of people who died as a result of Western military intervention, direct or proxy, in the Middle East.
Now compare that to the worldwide death toll from coronavirus: 220,000. Let me say that again.
Western aggressive wars to coronavirus: 5,000,000 : 220,000.
Or put it another way. The total number of deaths from coronavirus in the UK so far is about half the number of civilians killed directly by the US military in the single city of Mosul.
Makes you think, doesn’t it? There are four horsemen of the apocalypse, and while of course I do not blame people for focusing on the one which is riding at them personally, do not forget the others. Coronavirus has not finished killing. But then nor have western wars.
The sight which I cannot stand is the mainstream media which cheered on the horseman of war as they argued for the invasion Iraq on the basis of lies – and still defend it as a “liberation” – who now pretend massive concern for human life. The hypocrites are disgusting.
I was wrong when I initially wrote about the coronavirus.
Before I detail where I was wrong, let me say where I believe I was right. Large general population sampling antibody studies are now just beginning to emerge, and I feel reasonably confident that I was in fact correct that the mortality rate of coronavirus is under 1%, and probably not too different from the 0.5% generally quoted for Hong Kong flu. The term “infection fatality rate” is now being used to describe this true mortality rate. The “infection fatality rate” is the percentage of those who get the disease who die.
These are very early days for whole population sampling antibody studies, and the true picture should become more plain over the next month or two. I must say I have found it alarmingly difficult to explain to people the rather simple concept that you cannot infer a mortality rate among everybody who catches the disease, from the results you get when by definition you have only been offering tests to the most acute cases presenting as needing serious treatment. Of course a fair proportion of the worst cases don’t make it through the disease. But there is a population of millions in the UK (and nobody has a serious idea how many) who have had the disease with no or mild symptoms, and who do not figure in the statistics.
The very large majority of people in the UK who have had coronavirus have never been tested. That is simply true. How many, nobody knows. That is also true.
I do not endorse the extrapolation from New York to the UK, in this Daily Mail piece, to try to calculate how many people may have had coronavirus in the UK. But buried in there is the best collection I can find anywhere of what sampling antibody studies are indicating for the “infection fatality rate” across various US and European locations, and there is a strong clustering under 1%. Now these are preliminary studies, though almost all from reputable institutions. Proper, large scale, antibody testing programmes to produce peer reviewed and authoritatively published studies are on the way, but not here yet. I repeat, though, that I think the infection mortality rate is somewhere below 1%.
Where I was wrong, was in not realising that what is different about this disease from a flu is that it is really very, very contagious. So a far higher percentage of the population get it, all at once. Over two seasons, only about 30% of the UK population got the Hong Kong flu. Unchecked, it seems this coronavirus can spread very much quicker than that. I do not know why, but it appears that it can. So the lockdown policies to prevent health services being overwhelmed are needed and do have my support.
I do not however support the level of alarmism and panic. Of course the disease is really appalling for those who get it badly. It is a painful, protracted and terrifying experience. But a similar level of scrutiny of extreme illnesses of other kinds would bring similar stories. I have had three brushes with death in my own life.
In 2003 I had multiple pulmonary emboli (bloodclots in both lungs), which left me in a coma for days, was incredibly painful and I understand very similar in terms of experience to the end phase of this coronavirus. In 1986 I was actually declared dead in a hospital in Kaduna, Northern Nigeria (salmonella paratyphoid B), and was woken up on a morgue trolley by a cockroach eating my nostril. In 1974 I had emergency surgery for peritonitis, and was in hospital for 5 weeks and then a convalescent home. Retailing the experience or images of any of these illnesses would be as capable or more of generating the terror being created by the detailed coverage of extreme cases of coronavirus.
Yes the coronavirus is horrible if you get it badly. Almost all severe disease is horrible and death very seldom consists of peacefully stopping breathing, despite Hollywood. I wonder if having lived so much in Africa has changed my attitude to death. We do not see death much in the UK. Did you know the British have a 350% higher propensity than the Italians to put their elderly into care homes? That is why the deaths in Italy were so much more visible, even though the truth is that the UK government is doing not significantly better, and quite probably worse, than the Italian government, at containing the virus. It is only now making a start at adding English care home deaths to the official statistics (Scotland has for weeks).
I do support lockdown, I do support every sensible precaution being taken because the virus is so contagious. I utterly deplore the vast quantities being spent on war, the $220 billion being squandered on Trident missiles while the most basic precautions stockpiling against the much more real threat of a pandemic were not undertaken, because Tories begrudged spending a few millions on the NHS. I get all of that and I repeat it. But we must not be panicked into believing that the threat is greater than it is. You have approximately a 99% chance, (still nobody knows for certain) of surviving this disease if you catch it. If you are under 60, your chance of death is almost certainly at worst 1 in 500 if you catch it. If you are older or like me have heart and lung issues, it looks a bit bleak. But we are not immortal, nor would I wish to be.
But remember this. Your odds of survival are massively better than were those of a civilian in a country that your country chose to invade in recent years. Did you, personally, do enough to try to stop that?
Remember, there are other horsemen.
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Any chance of an update on how much your fighting fund has reached? Fully understand why you can’t comment further on the case brought against you .
It’s on Twitter Bob. £74k+ this morning. Not sure why Craig didn’t update the thread on the site here, as lots of people don’t/won’t use Twitter
Thanks Stonky. I avoid Twitter, so didnt know. Great news.
I have no ‘social media’ presence either.
Thus I can sympathize with “Not sure why Craig didn’t update the thread on the site here, as lots of people don’t/won’t use Twitter”.
sorry, thought I had!
You don’t have to use Twitter, when you Google Craig Murray Blog, and before you open that, scroll down, and you’ll see Craig’s latest comments on Twitter.
Great! I also didn’t know
Fantastic News!!
Does he need any more or is that it for now? Craig, please let us know if you do need more because I will chip in again.
This is a good article Craig and I endorse the fundamental point without reserve. I should add that I am not charitable enough not to wish that people like Blair, Campbell, Straw, Cameron, May and Johnson (to name but a very select few) contract a horrible disease and die the sort of agonising death they have infilicted on millions.
But I think you are still wrong on Coronavirus. I spend a lot of time in China. I actually came to Scotland for a week at Spring Festival and got stuck there for six. I came back just at the right time – before COVID-19 had hit the UK hard, and while China was still open and it was still possible to do your quarantine at home.
Life here (in Beijing – I believe the second-worst hit locality after Wuhan) is very different now from Scotland:
In Beijing:
1. Everybody always wears a mask when they are outdoors
2. There is no lockdown
3. There is no pointless “social distancing”
4. There is no epidemic of CIA-funded lies about how terrible China is
5. There is no epidemic of coronavirus
In Scotland:
1. Nobody wears a mask when they are outdoors
2. There is a lockdown.
3. There is pointless “social distancing”
4. There is an epidemic of CIA-funded lies about how terrible China is
5. There is an epidemic of Coronavirus
In a nut shell: it all depends how ‘virus experienced’ the people of a country are. Which is why East Asia did well with covid19. No mass gatherings at all, masks instead of distancing, only lock down of active immobile cases plus the most vulnerable – a minority.
I wish the East Asians would permanently stay away from bats for food or any other reason, also law enforced.
You have your wish Antonym. China has finally acted to ban eating all wild meats – and dog, although it is actually farmed.
But you’re mistaken in thinking the “vulnerable elderly” are in lockdown. They’re free to shuffle about on their zimmers just like the rest of us.
If that is good enough for Beijing – the seat of China’s Deep state – than it should be a good goal for the rest of us too. First everyone a good face mask and better hand touching habits. Less mass gatherings with shouting or singing will help too – like football matches or pub crowding, as corona likes to go all the way.
Dr Brownstein: “We Must Wear Face Masks? Show Me the Science Behind That!” (spoiler: there isn’t any)
https://www.drbrownstein.com/we-must-wear-face-masks-show-me-the-science-behind-that/?cat_id=654
This is the problem Tom, when you go taking the advice of “experts” on the basis that they tell you they’re an “expert”.
If you look at the actual study cited by Dr B as opposed to reading his take on it, you see that it covered 4 (four) patients, one of whom provided no data. So 3. And it covered surgical and cotton masks. Only 2 of the patients provided data on the cotton masks. So 2. It didn’t cover PP2 (N95) masks at all, which are much more effective than surgical or cotton masks.
Even so, in every single data case bar 1, and in all the total-based averages, the masks showed a measurable reduction of contamination to the environment – 20 out of 21 data points. These reductions ranged from 6% to 16% with the surgical masks, and 30% to 46% in the case of cotton masks. The overall averages were 10% for surgical masks and 38% for cotton masks. PP2 masks (which is what most people in China were wearing at the height of the epidemic) would be far more effective than either.
What the study actually shows is that masks are not foolproof. They don’t need to be. If the infection rate is higher than 1:1 (i.e. one person infects more than one other person), the number of infections will increase exponentially. If it is below 1:1 the number will decrease exponentially. If masks help to bring the number down below 1:1 then they are effective.
I’ve got metadata based on empirical evidence from 1.4 billion people in China and 60 million people in the UK that says they do. The UK has had somewhere between 25-40,000 deaths. At that rate per head of population China would have had somewhere between 600,000 and 1 million deaths.
So Dr B (and you) are welcome to your rather eccentric interpretation of a study based on 2 or 3 people. I’ll go with common sense, a proper interptretation of the study, and big numbers.
If I get five more years to shuffle my mortal coil I should be happy and content. If not, so be it, I will return to dust, composting the future’s fertility, if the new normal acknowledges that the future is a circular development, not linear as it was up to now.
This article shows the fatality that exist in the stable that directs horsemen every day of the week.
It also shows the use of the public in a disgraceful attempt to exploit their love and admiration for their health service, set up to save them and improve their lot in life, all in one slogan ‘stay home and save the NHS’. The guilt money dolled out to care workers today, doctors and nurses who died in the pursuit of their work, hastened by really bad Government incompetence, was the ultimate insult to their intelligence.
such help with bereavement and costs occurred in raising families and children of, in many cases, the only breadwinner in a family, should be paid for from Tory coffers, not taxpayers who already face massive tax rises in future to pay for their horseplay.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/coronavirus-38-days-when-britain-sleepwalked-into-disaster-hq3b9tlgh?fbclid=IwAR0aHF91cz6CLhk3Bj0omFWmL1h_lEDjtfi_La_MjqUkP5FBFnGzNaS_fww
It’s not the composting bit I worry about, it the excruciating pain of drowning in your own bodily fluids that bothers me.
The policy of the US to destabilise middle east nations benefits them, it’s not ‘freedom’ they seek to give, it really IS instability. It ensures a high oil price, benefitting both them and the Saudis. The resultant instability arising in Europe from the flow of migrants also benefits the US as does the UK leaving the EU. A destabilised and damaged middle east also suits Israel as it sees enemies in all it’s neighbours and can dominate when they are in disarray. If anything Israel is even more hawkish than the US, increasingly expansionist too and US policies will ensure that this can continue unabated as those who would seek to defend the rights of their neighbours will have too many of their own problems to deal with.
The US, at an international level, is a thug. A mugger and an extortionist too. If the UN had teeth it could do something…
Warlordism a-go-go
Doesn’t your description of US apply to any country that is imperialist in any way? The UK, Germany,France,Russia/USSR,China, Japan, even Australia, Buddhist,Myanmar. Indeed any asymmetry in power/arms/technology is usually expressed in warfare and slaughter. So the US simply conforms to a pattern seen with all hegemony, or shows the features of all competition for dominance/resources.
Is there any way out of this apparently eternal characteristic of human potential.
An excellent, well articulated article, Craig. Thank you very much for all your good work.
An out-dated corporate, elite, view is that we live in a dog-eat-dog world. That you have to be an aggressive alpha-type to succeed, that there is a limited cake to be divided up between us and the more I get, the less you get.
That sick, psychopathic world-view is not sustainable and does not work. It is like a virus living off the human host – it only succeeds at the expense of the host. It is ironic that we are afraid of the biological virus but not the more dangerous psychological one.
Human beings have the capacity to build a beautiful world. Without compassion, sharing, empathy and the gift of giving, we would not have survived this far.
Thank you, very well said!
Brilliant article. One of your very best. I think of Trump calling countries shitholes but those places value their elderly relatives. I think we live in the shitholes…
Did I personally do enough to try to stop that?
I went to Hyde Park with my Iraqi friend , who explained to me that you couldn’t get rid of Saddam without an Intervention.
The supporters of that intervention say proudly from the pulpits that they were the ones who brought about freedom from Saddam, and soft power for themselves under US franchise.
I have no idea why Obama created Daesh, unless it was to exploit this enthusiasm for destruction inside political Islam.
I am tired of trying to explain here that much of that enthusiasm for destruction was manufactured by the process of torture brainwashing by drugs, which is something Britsin does to it’s own troops to harden them to fight.
God sees everything and assures us that every criminal act that is done for the purpose of gaining power, will soon land the perpetrator in hell, which is after all only one step after death, the thing we are so scared of now.
Happily I am not the Judge, nor were the prophets peace be upon them. God does not share his authority with anyone. But there is absolutely no doubt that especially the infamous war criminals of our time , basking in millions, are destined for punishment. Or as Jesus pbuh told those asking about people who were crushed by a building, don’t worry about that, put your mind to the possibility of a worse thing.
A scholar from Africa recently said online that anything which made people think about their relationship with God, cannot be a punishment, because thinking about God is what removes the eternal punishment. Mercy is written on God’s being. He is not an enemy to any of His creation. Only to bring them back to His remembrance before their Meeting with Him.
Holy Maroley!
NURSE!
Insulting Islam I take it , is allowed, even if jokes are not.
My head hurts Mr Gumby!
Jesus Giyane, you are a nut sometimes! ?
Highly unlikely there is a God.
There is no consciousness greater than your own.
Get used to it.
We currently have a Union which seeks a Trident replacement. That has Two Aircraft Carriers, Several Long Range Astute Class nuclear submarines. These are all about “Force Projection”
The Foreign policy and overseas Aid are designed to manipulate other Nations in a way the benefits the UK.
The U.K. Arms industry is designed to bring wealth to the UK no matter what misery it causes abroad.
We align with the USA as a loyal dog to a Master.
The people of Scotland need to get out of that arrangement first. To do so needs a great deal more than asking nicely. Nothing will change until we change it.
“The U.K. Arms industry is designed to bring wealth to the UK”
I agree but for the last word.
Kingdom?
Elite.
Great article! One Q, Why does Scotland have a, roughly, 20% mortality rate from Covid 19?
TonyM, the only reason I can think of is that Scotland has done exceptionally little to test or otherwise identify those with the virus. If only people who are seriously ill are identified as “infected”, it is perhaps conceivable that 20% of them die. Especially if they are put on ventilators (which requires them to be drugged into a coma) or given various speculative combinations of extremely dangerous drugs.
The true mortality rates for Covid-19 are only just emerging from a fog of fear, confusion and deliberate disinformation. It seems that, while perhaps more contagious than flue, Covid-19 is, if anything, less lethal.
A lot of real experts who have the true facts and figures have spoken or written about mortality rates online. E.g.
https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwPqmLoZA4s
https://off-guardian.org/2020/04/29/watch-dr-erickson-covid19-briefing-censored-by-youtube/
TonyM, I think you need to read Craig’s blogpost again and try thinking about it.
Have we?….https://www.travellingtabby.com/scotland-coronavirus-tracker/
Craig,
I think that all you have said can fit into a global systemic problem.
That problem is well articulated here by Professor Michael Hudson. His analysis focuses on what Post World War 11 global US hegemony translates into in economic terms. You are describing in your article the consequences of what such a system levels as costs in human terms. Here:-
https://michael-hudson.com/2020/04/the-hard-fist-of-american-imperialism/
For anyone interested in a background to how the Scottish and Westminster governments so wilfully left us underprepared for the virus crisis under-noted is a link to an analysis by Dr Allyson Pollock and Louisa Edgar Harding into the policy failures.
It’s grim reading.
https://www.scer.scot/database/ident-12745
Old Tories, New SNP it reinforces why the leadership needs outed if we are ever to make any progress.
It isn’t a policy failure, it’s the consequence of a fifty years’ campaign to re-colonise the working class. The state’s response is no more and no less than that needed to avoid temporary diversions away from extracting ever more wealth from us.
Willie, Thanks for the link to the piece by the estimable Professor Allyson Pollock, whose superb work I have followed for many years. She makes many important points, but none more so than this one (a rhetorical one to I’m sure she knows the answer):
“Perhaps, the most surprising aspect of the British COVID crisis is that the Scottish Government has allowed its strategy and the operations to be directed by Westminster, which has taken a London-centric approach to the epidemic and with respect to the lock down. And yet the COVID pandemic is not just one big homogenous epidemic.”
I worked some years ago at the Scottish Health Department, in St Andrews House. Although nominally devolved, it became pretty clear to me that, in reality, they were very much a subsidiary of the UK Dept of Health. No decision of any importance (and some of little importance) was taken without reference to them, and in every case I was aware of, they deferred to them slavishly. They had no separate identity and were executively subsidiary to the UK “Head Office” – as it was quite openly referred to.
Now Ms Sturgeon very properly states- and I don’t doubt adheres to – the principle that she is following medical and scientific expert advice. Bt where does that advice originate?
I have no doubt that that advice originates in Whitehall – as it has always done. In my time, no-one at the Scottish Health Department would as much as fart, without referring to the “Head Office” – the DOH.
I have no reason – from what I hear from former colleagues – to believe that this has changed.
The “Scottish” civil service, after all, reports to the Cabinet Office, NOT to Ms Sturgeon.
Recent events have given ample evidence of that fact. Sturgeon is Whitehall captive!
Until that changes – nd it can only do so with independence, Scotland will have no real autonomy in anything important.
Pity the SNP has forgotten that lesson.
“Perhaps, the most surprising aspect of the British COVID crisis is that the Scottish Government has allowed its strategy and the operations to be directed by Westminster”
Talk about “get a life”.
I have no idea what that is supposed to mean.
I don’t think Ms Sturgeon is a captive in the slightest, I think she is part of it.
Hi thanks for that description of the relationship with Westminster. It reminded me of the relationship of our `scottish’ education system, where the major forms and important elements are derived from an ‘English’ interpretation of what is important. It is a kind of subservience but we hold on to the idea that we have a ‘distinctive’ system because there differences in names, exact sequences, timings etc which are largely trivial in terms of outcomes. For instance if Scotland decided to place a much greater emphasis on (say) European languages and culture in our education, it would be suppressed by the dominating influence of the much larger power base in England, where the education system is based (still) on producing compliant individuals educated on a diet of convenient falsehoods, modest technical skills, and jingoistic nationalist ‘little Englanderism’. The Scottish counterpart focusses on a diet of similar, if distinctive trivialities intended to inhibit expansive or radical thinking.
So glad you got up off that morgue trolley. You enlighten and inform and state truths that are verboten in ruling class media.
There was no electricity in the hospital that day. I woke up in pitch darkness, naked on a steel trolley up against other steel trolleys which all had bodies on, with a cockroach on my face. The trolleys were all wheeled and mine of course moved under me in the dark as I tried to get up, pitching me onto another body. Edgar Allen Poe had nothing on my life…
He had the luxury,and ability, to imagine such desolation.
That is his enduring fascination, not his education.
That episode sounds like something out of a Tom Sharpe novel, horrendous!
Reminds me of what I read today: ‘Woman digs herself out of a grave after being ‘tortured and buried alive in a cemetery by her neighbours’ in Ukraine.’
This is yet another country detrimentally affected by the satanic usa’s interferrence there, and it has maybe 15 (out of hundreds worldwide) biological labs there withOUT ukrainian government involvement/oversight, and, of course, having diplomatic immunity.
@ craig Post author April 29, 2020 at 13:45
Lucky they hadn’t done a post-mortem!
On the murderous slaughter in Iraq by the West, I recall George Galloway bringing a young injured Iraqi girl to Scotland to receive a vital operation, of which Galloway generously paid for out of his own pocket.
However what struck me was the ill feeling towards Galloway from the media, such was the strength of the propaganda aimed at Iraq as the evil bogeyman.
The nefarious oil for food programme in Iraq, also pointed out the depths of which the greedy self serving Western neoliberal ideology will go to, to make a profit.
As for your conservative estimate of 5 million deaths, easily I’d say. On Covid-19 though, by the time we count up the deaths from the virus, then the deaths from the knock on consequences, such as cancers, other diseases pushed into the long grass to deal with this virus, starvation due to economic hardship because financial resources were diverted to fight this virus, and of course, internal conflict for the remaining resources and that figure could easily rival your conservative estimate I think.
The Four Horsemen, look theyll reap a huge human harvest in 2020.
Thank you Craig for highlighting again the immeasurable, unbearable, and incessant human misery caused by these catastrophic wars, including surely worst of all the mutilation and unhealable trauma of so many children due to cynical bombing of civilian infrastructure.
One important typo (your predictive text is clearly intent on obfuscating your robust promotion of truth!) — The first sentence below the photo of Sirte should obviously read “an *apocalyptic* level of death and destruction”, and not “an *apocryphal* level of death and destruction”.
—
[ Mod: Thanks. Fixed. ]
This is Craig’s equally memorable piece on the destruction of Libya which I am sure used the same photograph shown above.
Sirte – the Apotheosis of “Liberal Intervention” 217 comments
26 Aug, 2011
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2011/08/sirte-the-apotheosis-of-liberal-intervention/
Thanks, mods. You may remove this one and its parent 😉
I confess to being a tad puzzled by many peoples’ expectation that the UK economy can simply be restarted like a DVD on pause. As a father and grandfather I am particularly concerned for the outlook facing the young – the true economic cost to the country of this lockdown has yet to become apparent and I fear that we should be prepared for some quite dreadful developments. I pray I am wrong.
I am with you 100%, Caratacus, we must see to feed the soil, dig up the lawn and get the means to grind corn into flour. Grow seeds behind glass, on roof tops and on common land.
Maybe buy some wheat and make ‘a mother, flour and water with a dash of yoghurt and 5 inches of rhubarb cut up into 6 or 8 pieces. Into kilner jar, leave lid open without shutting it. Keep for two days on windowsill but not direct sunshine. You fèed by adding flour and water, daily until day four, when you take out your ruhbarb pieces and add one last lot of flour and water. It will be ready to make sourdough bread as you prefer.
Easy and without yeast. Many recipice online . But we have to re learn and teach our children how to grow food, fish and make do by thinking ahead.
I share your rather cautious view of our childrens future, bar the praying.
Time to govern ourselfes and time to do the believing in our very own human abilities.
Caratacus – sold duffer with old duffer name says old duffer thing. Does anyone even remember DVDs?
There are wily people and there are old people, but not many wily old people – I am of their number and will still be here when you are sitting hunched under a scrap of canvas contemplating your ever-decreasing navel as the soup-kitchens run out again at thirteen o’clock.
Dear Craig ,
Hi , thanks for your honest endeavours and I’m very sorry to hear of your serious illnesses , which I hope for all our sakes are not too incapacitating . With regard to some of the comments here I think it’s a pity that you don’t take a lesson to fund raise more inline with the people at Change.org , who for good causes start off with a target , and where the appeal goes viral , have no qualms about issuing updates and raising the bar . Administratively you may feel compromised , but I’m sure that you could have helpers or employees who could help organise this work for you , and identify additional appropriate goals . A CEO need not do all of the work .
With regard to corona the Tories as ever reveal their mindset in their choice of slogans : ‘Protect the NHS’ (ie we didn’t appreciate a pandemic could overwhelm the NHS in the short term , casting obloquy on us , but we’ll arrange it so the Public will still ‘Take it on the Chin’ in smaller doses ) . How much more proper would be ‘Protect the Public’ , although that’s something that the selfish greedy sods will never do . Great article on neo-con warmongering mindset , no wonder the USA/UK establishment are desperate to silence you
Best Wishes Derek
“So the lockdown policies to prevent health services being overwhelmed are needed and do have my support.”
So tell me: how many people do you think the “lockdown” measures will save and how many people do you think the “lockdown” measures will kill?
I think that the briefings given by Dr Dan Erickson and Dr Artin Massihi, and (second link) Dr John Ioannidis strongly support the belief that lockdowns save no lives at all. Indeed, they may even cause more deaths from the virus than would have happened otherwise.
That’s quite apart from the hideous, irreparable economic and social damage they will cause. It almost seems as if, tired of destroying Asian and African countries and unable to destroy Russia, China, Iran or Venezuela, our governments have turned on their own people in a fit of insensate, carpet-chewing rage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwPqmLoZA4s
https://off-guardian.org/2020/04/29/watch-dr-erickson-covid19-briefing-censored-by-youtube/
Covid-19 reached Taiwan in mid-January. Since then the territory has managed to rid itself, and remain free, of the virus without resorting to lockdowns or social distancing and has kept fatalities within single digits. That of course leaves the territory, like its neighbours mainland China, South Korea and Hong Kong, vulnerable to re-infection, but by putting all international flight arrivals into 2 weeks quarantine they can probably hold the fort until a vaccine is available. See https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/04/29/taiwan-how-to-manage-a-pandemic/
I think we need to examine the role of the mass-media in all of this… ‘hysteria.’ Their ‘model’ is to dramatise virtually everything that happens way beyond what’s scrictly necessary in a form of macabre theatre where horror seems to sell better than anything else. The media’s extraordinaryly bad, wrong and superficial coverage of all the wars we’ve been involved in recently is an example of this, as is their style when they cover the Covid outbreak.
I read recently on twitter “when telling the truth becomes a crime then it’s a sign you’re governed by criminals” I’ve no idea who, or if anyone of note said it, or it was some geez on the internet, but I can’t fault the logic. It’s stuck with me lately, so I thought I’d pass it on.
Yes, absolutely.
One thing that seems very important is the historical context.
Governments (of whatever form) have outlawed saying the truth since thousands of years.
In the past century and a half, very slowly, two totally contradictory trends have developed simultaneously:
1. An awakening of the public to this fact
2. A deepening of the government’s lying through psychological warfare
Both developments have been growing at the same time, and we now live through the pinnacle of that development: the government’s lies have become insane absurdities canvassed ubiquitously 24/7, while the public is waking up and seeing through the lies in unprecedented numbers.
@ Shatnersrug April 30, 2020 at 01:02
There are plenty of other signs as well!
Struggling to define a direct linkage between an influx of refugees from Middle East conflicts and Brexit. Perhaps the almost daily news reports from the Jungle in Calais to some small, undefinable degree heightened a fear of “the other” in the English but that fear pre-existed in the English psych and applied to all non-English speaking continentals (wogs start at Calais and all that).
It’s easily arguable. In fact, it’s equally arguable that the flow of refugees, begining with Afghanistan (and predicted by critics since 2001) was the primary force in the neo-liberalisation of France, culminating with the presidency of Macron.
1) Deaths
The figure of “220000 deaths from coronavirus” is the sum of official figures calculated in different ways but which generally speaking are figures for those who have died not necessarily FROM Covid-19 but WITH it. (Certainly in Britain that is the case.) The number of those who have died FROM Covid-19 is smaller.
BUT…the number of people to whose deaths the Covid-19 upheaval has CONTRIBUTED is larger. For example, it has had effects on mental health, obesity, and so on. Most people aren’t doing strenuous exercises while watching celebrities on their smartphones. They are getting much less than the (in many cases) small amount of physical exercise they usually get. Some people will be eating worse quality diets than usual too, notably not consuming so much in the way of fresh fruit and vegetables. Crap diets and insufficient exercise are killers. (Arguably those who pick their phones all day long have already killed off their minds anyway…)
Meanwhile, here are some figures:
Britain, China, Russia: reported C19 cases: ~160K, ~80K, ~100K
Britain, China, Russia: reported C19 deaths: ~22K, ~5K, ~1K.
Britain, China, Russia: C19: reported deaths / reported cases: ~1/8, ~1/16, ~1/100.
(Source.)
2) Biological warfare
Most people don’t have a clue about biological warfare. Most can’t even distinguish it from chemical warfare, let alone think properly about the LARGE difference in psychological effect between those two forms of warfare.
A strong working hypothesis is that
a) there has been an attack on the west by China, AND
b) this attack is supported by western rulers and was prepared for both at Event 201 and in the framework of “Crimson Contagion”.
Rise of China, y’know. No prizes for guessing what Thucydides would have thought.
I have heard people say “Oh, China wouldn’t have done this because some of their own people got killed”. How the hell do such idiots think war has always been fought?
And of course if people have problems of understanding a), they are a long way from getting their heads around b), from a realisation that the rulers of a territory can deliberately carry out military (including terrorist) attacks on their “own” populations.
When the rulers keep on telling us how much they care for our health, even to the point of asking us all to stand and be silent in some kind of pseudo-religious ceremony to demonstrate our unthinking acceptance of what they’re saying about themselves,… believe me, they have SOMETHING ELSE in mind…something that is VERY different from the surface impression.
3) Famine
Let’s not forget the red horse, famine. He will be with us shortly.
Hoard food.
The whole discourse regarding toilet paper (or “TP” as it is lovingly called on the internet by many) was probably a deliberate misdirection from the prospect of shortages of far more important stuff: FOOD.
When the rulers deny that food shortages are coming, food shortages are coming.
N_
BBC world service interviewed a British scientist who has worked at the Wuhan laboratory. He said conspiracy theories were annoying because scientists were only trying to help.
It does seem strange that scientists are not 96% ready to make a vaccine if they knew straightaway that this virus is 96% the same as one of their samples or virtual samples.
It also seems odd that Cummings was allowed to support Eugenics. I can’t be the only one to borrow that sticking plaster on my horror at the statistics. Tories saved money on everything else. What about all those pension pots and death duties that will gravitate back to Tory pockets.
The most sinister of my daft thoughts is the soothing idea that if Labour had been so drugged and gagged over the last decade not to have pinned the last crash on Thatchernomics they would have been like Craig in the morgue if cockroach 19 had appeared while they were in office. If all Labour MPs swallowed the Skripal lies, and swallowed the peter lilley lies, then at least our present government is only making the covid 19 lies, not swallowing them.
@ N_ April 29, 2020 at 13:36
‘…A strong working hypothesis is that
a) there has been an attack on the west by China…’ ????
A far more reasonable ‘working hypothosis’ would be putting it round the other way, and I think you would agree if you read ‘WUHAN OUTBREAK: CHINA DEMANDS AN HONEST ACCOUNTING’ (Aletho News).
Also bear in mind that Bill Gates & cronies’ ‘Coronavirus’ simulation in Baltimore occurred on the 18th October, the very same day the Wuhan World Military Games opened.
I presume you are aware of the PTB’s habit of rubbing our noses in it by virtually always having a ‘drill’ or ‘simulation’ on or around a ‘terrorist attack’.
Bravo.
Craig said, “If you are older or like me have heart and lung issues, it looks a bit bleak. But we are not immortal, nor would I wish to be.”
I’m with you on your first sentence in the quote, I’m older and have multiple heart issues and a lung issue too and so should be feeling some anxiety over coronavirus, yet I have none. I look at the Guardian and despair at the articles of fear-porn they are producing on a daily basis, Christ it is unbelievable. In the beginning I read some of the articles but then gave up, pointless, in the gutter fear-mongering. Now I just scan their headlines and shake my head — I know all I need to know from the headlines alone, not about the coronavirus but about the sad, irredeemable state of the Guardian. I even got permanently banned from making comments when I tried to point out to others what the Guardian is doing — ah well, good riddance to that. I have though found that the offGuardian website produces much more considered critical analysis of what is going on with matters coronavirus, well worth a read.
As to the first clause of your second sentence in the quote, “But we are not immortal…” Well this is true of the physical body, but not of us. In my teenage years I had a fairly comprehensive near-death experience (NDE) can be read here for anyone interested: Peter N NDE. Take my word for it, we definitely do not die. We are, as best as I know from experience, quite immortal and we are that whether we choose to believe otherwise, or not, while in material existence.
None of the above is to say that death doesn’t matter. It matters a great deal. The aftermath of death and its ramifications for the living can be crushing, and that needs to be given due respect and concern. And everything you write on the issue is proper much needed concern.
Keep up the good work, Craig.
“These are very early days for whole population sampling antibody studies, and the true picture should become more plain over the next month or two. I must say I have found it alarmingly difficult to explain to people the rather simple concept that you cannot infer a mortality rate among everybody who catches the disease, from the results you get when by definition you have only been offering tests to the most acute cases presenting as needing serious treatment.”
No, but you can infer it with a lot of accuracy from a small well-chosen sample of a few thousand people
Both the authorities and the big financial firms in the City will have known this mortality rate for several months.
The alternative hypothesis rests on the assumption that there is no secret testing of samples of the “whole population”. That would basically mean that neither Britain nor any other country has ever developed any proper defences against biological warfare, as if BW comes out of nowhere to hit military commands who are not simply surprised but who didn’t even think it was possible…rather as a typical mug-punter smartphone user “can’t believe” what’s happening in the world right now.
That would make you wonder what on earth they teach at Sandhurst.
I don’t need to have “proof” to know that BW is certainly on the curriculum.
A lot of sh*t that goes on in the “health service” is SECRET and never gets talked about in the media.
The only reason they’re talking about infection rates now is to propagandise for
1) mass testing,
2) mass vaccination, and
3) the principle that you’re an antisocial wrecker saboteur if you want to leave your house without certification on your compulsorily-carried smartphone saying you’re allowed to.
Those who are sceptical will soon see that I’m right…
My hospital trust is Frimley,
very close to Sandhurst Royal Military Academy, many of the doctors are current serving officers in the armed services.
To suggest there is no “to-ing and fro-ing” of “intel” would be wrong.
As N suggests Biological warfare has been with us for at least a century.
What do people think Porton Down is for?
Why do people think, people were flown back from Wuhan to land at Boscombe Down, just one mile from Porton Down?
What role do people think Porton Down played in the Skripal nonsense, six miles between the apparent poisoning with Novichok and Porton Down.
What role do people think Porton Down took with the 2018 Amesbury poisonings, three miles apart?
In fact Salisbury, Amesbury, Boscombe Down and Porton Down are all within walking distance of each other.
So what I am suggesting is, that we should not just dismiss, this covid-19 as being biological warfare or perhaps a precursor/accident of getting ready for biological warfare.
It seems in the South West of China, there are many bat caves, with different bat caves harboring different “species”
of coronavirirus in their different bat populations.
Bats are collected from these caves and transferred to the Wuhan Institute of Virology
http://english.whiov.cas.cn
They want to try and isolate as many different viruses as possible from these bats.
Possibly this is so China can be aforwarned of viral epidemics of the human population of China
but to pretend they are not experimenting with biological warfare, would be akin to saying Porton Down is only in existence for the National Health Service.
“Why do people think, people were flown back from Wuhan to land at Boscombe Down, just one mile from Porton Down?”
What does this refer to? What people — when? how?
Thank you Peter for your NDE link. Very very interesting!
Hi Peter. I read you NDE story too. It was extremely well written, genuinely fascinating, and as convincing as any such story could ever be when it’s coming from someone who has been through that experience, and directed at people who haven’t. Thanks for posting the link.
Thank you so much, Peter N, for your very insightful comment and sharing your wonderful experience!
Craig, re: “I must say I have found it alarmingly difficult to explain to people the rather simple concept that you cannot infer a mortality rate among everybody who catches the disease, from the results you get when by definition you have only been offering tests to the most acute cases presenting as needing serious treatment.”
You are referring to selection bias. Off-Guardian did a good little article on this statistical error. See here: https://off-guardian.org/2020/04/11/coronavirus-fact-check-3-covid19-is-20x-deadlier-than-the-flu/
Seriously, as if Britain’s military command doesn’t know about selection bias that is taught at GCSE level!
There can also be selection bias in choosing one’s statistics provider.
“Let a thousand statistics providers bloom”?
Craig, thanks for injecting a bit of commonsense into the current nonsense pushed out by the government and the MSM. Will there be any repercussions or job losses for the absolute chaos inflicted on us ? No, I expect some of the worse offenders to get huge awards and honours.
Lockdown for those proven infected or at high risk, yes. Lockdown for everyone, no. Look at Sweden !
Stop the uncontrolled comings and goings at all airports, definitely.
There is no ‘cure’, eventually everyone will get the virus. Vaccinations take time to develop and in the meantime the virus mutates. Natural immunity is the only guaranteed protection. Everyone dies. If you are sick, old or unfit that will happen sooner rather than later.
Help the NHS – fund it properly, provide adequate staff and equipment. All the ‘claptrap’ on Thursday nights doesn’t change a damn thing, and stop using charity to shore up the governments failings.
There is always money available to kill foreigners but never enough money to help our own citizens.
STOP VOTING TORY – how much evidence do people need to see that they are utterly incompetent and dangerously selfish, at best ?
The best reaction to the Thursday night “Love the Tories because they love the NHS” would be if people turned their backs [1] and had a mass fart-in [2].
Let Thursday night be baked beans night!
And don’t ever believe a word the Tory scum say about the NHS. [4]
Notes
1) British survivors of Japanese prisoner of war camps during WW2 in which terrible crimes against humanity were committed have sometimes gathered to turn their backs on the Japanese emperor when he has been feted by the British royal family in London.
2) The “fart-in” may have been invented by Saul Alinsky, the brilliant left-wing author of “Rules for Radicals” whose work no left wing oppositionist should be unaware of.
3) The Tory party opposed the creation of a universal free-at-the-point-of-use health service, which is to say, the NHS. So did the medics’ union called the BMA, until it was made clear to them that they could line their pockets from it by using it as a recruiting sergeant for private patients.
“So the lockdown policies to prevent health services being overwhelmed are needed and do have my support”. What if many hospitals are half empty as is widely reported? Lockdown was to “flatten the curve” and reduce concurrent cases not total cases…let the fit (who have very low risk by any account) back out there and concentrate on protecting the vulnerable (unless they actually want to see their grandchildren etc). Deaths caused by lockdown could dwarf those that we think we are saving. We are ruining the immune system of our children from lack of natural interaction
“What if many hospitals are half empty as is widely reported?”
This is certainly so. All non-urgent ops have been cancelled.
“Lockdown was to ‘flatten the curve’ and reduce concurrent cases not total cases…let the fit (who have very low risk by any account) back out there and concentrate on protecting the vulnerable (unless they actually want to see their grandchildren etc). Deaths caused by lockdown could dwarf those that we think we are saving. We are ruining the immune system of our children from lack of natural interaction.”
What do you think the rulers are up to? Making a big error based on believing the guff they say to camera, or in the course of effectively achieving an aim they haven’t said?
Many if they knew how much of the “news” is Big Pharma propaganda would faint.
“What do you think the rulers are up to?” it would be nice to think they are just idiots making a mistake that could be rectified…unfortunately we have to consider that the people pulling the levers might know full well what they are doing
@ Uzmark April 29, 2020 at 16:14
‘Coronavirus patients admitted to Queens nursing home — with body bags’ (New York Post)
‘…Since March 25, the Queens nursing home has admitted 17 patients from hospitals who tested positive for coronavirus, but in a bitter irony, most of them have fared well, the exec said. Those who have died passed away without a test or while awaiting the results from one.
“The rest of the people are dropping like flies — literally like flies — and most of them have been with us for years,” the exec added.
COVID-19 has killed at least 3,540 residents of New York’s nursing homes and adult care facilities as of Wednesday, according to the most recent state Health Department data.
The Queens story is painfully repeating at a Manhattan nursing home…..’
These people are ghouls, like Madeleine Albright: ‘I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it’ when asked about the death of 500,000 Iraqi children from sanctions.
Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bliar, the list is endless.
Why relatives don’t try to sue the ass off Cuomo and his ‘Health Department’ I don’t know – maybe they will.
” …let the fit (who have very low risk by any account) back out there and concentrate on protecting the vulnerable ”
Agree, except the government seems to have adopted the Shipman doctrine.
a) If an elderley person in hospital has the virus, move them to a care home (to infect other residents)
b) GP’s don’t visit care home – if an elderley person would benefit from a GP visit and possible hospitalisation (for an heart attack say), it doesn’t happen.
c) Various stories around do not resuscitate notices . Steve Topple on the Canary ran a story about DNRs for learning disabled people who are otherwise perfectly fit
d) Care homes fill in own death certificates without need for GP to visit patient
I’ve noticed that Cold War Steve has been putting Shipman into some of his collages recently
https://www.hsj.co.uk/coronavirus/unprecedented-number-of-dnr-orders-for-learning-disabilities-patients/7027480.article
“Agree, except the government seems to have adopted the Shipman doctrine”.
Dr Shipman was an amteur who practiced murder.
Our governments are professionals; as Craig highlights in his excellent article, they deliberately killed at least 5 million people in the Near and Middle East just in the last few years – equivalent to about one eighth of the UK’s total population.
Whoops! Make that one in thirteen – really not so many after all.
FranzB…almost like a sick joke: close everything down to protect elderly, but when the elderly need help they don’t seem to give a flying ( ) about them
Thank you, Craig. I, too, find it ‘alarmingly difficult’ to explain basic facts about the incomplete and in many cases totally meaningless ‘data’ being presented by some outlets.
May I recommend Hector Drummond’s excellent blog, which features very frequent, accurate and well-analyzed numbers?
https://hectordrummond.com/
I’ve decided, with your permission, to repost this where it will be better seen – because I think (in all modesty) that it is quite important -and needed some typos corrected)
Willie, Thanks for the link to the piece by the estimable Professor Allyson Pollock, whose superb work I have followed for many years. She makes many important points, but none more so than this one (a rhetorical one to which I’m sure she knows the answer):
“Perhaps, the most surprising aspect of the British COVID crisis is that the Scottish Government has allowed its strategy and the operations to be directed by Westminster, which has taken a London-centric approach to the epidemic and with respect to the lock down. And yet the COVID pandemic is not just one big homogenous epidemic.”
I worked some years ago at the Scottish Health Department, in St Andrews House. Although nominally devolved, it became pretty clear to me that, in reality, they were very much a subsidiary of the UK Dept of Health. No decision of any importance (and some of little importance) was taken without reference to them, and in every case I was aware of, they deferred to them slavishly. They had no separate identity and were executively subsidiary to the UK “Head Office” – as it was quite openly referred to.
Now Ms Sturgeon very properly states- and I don’t doubt adheres to – the principle that she is following medical and scientific expert advice. But where does that advice originate?
I have no doubt that that advice originates in Whitehall – as it has always done. In my time, no-one at the Scottish Health Department would as much as fart, without referring to “Head Office” – the DOH.
I have no reason – from what I hear from former colleagues – to believe that this has changed.
The “Scottish” civil service, after all, reports to the Cabinet Office, NOT to Ms Sturgeon.
Recent events have given ample evidence of that fact. Sturgeon is Whitehall’s captive!
Until that changes – and it can only do so with independence – Scotland will have no real autonomy in anything important.
Pity the SNP has forgotten that lesson.
You are very welcome to repost.
…..’Or put it another way. The total number of deaths from coronavirus in the UK so far is about half the number of civilians killed directly by the US military in the single city of Mosul.’
Your figures are way off, Craig. Even high estimates of deaths, from Amnesty International, put the Mosul civilian death toll at around 11,000, – still an inexcusable figure, nonetheless. The population of Mosul is around 650k, so the idea that 440k were killed by the coalition doesn’t add up. Don’t forget it wasn’t just US forces involved, several other coalition members, principally Britain, were involved in a sort of sadistic live fire / weapons test free for all. At least the US fessed up to killing civilians, the RAF have consistently and laughably denied that any of the more than 3400 bombs dropped on Syria and Iraq had killed civilians You always knew when they were bombing, for some unbeknownst reason RAF voyager refuelling tankers would shown up on flightradar24 and could be tracked from RAF Brize Norton to Northern Iraq.
…actually there’s a RAF refuelling exercise going on over the North Sea right now. Check it out.
https://www.flightradar24.com/TARTN38/246c4d61
Spencer Eagle
It is you who are way off. The number of dead from coronavirus in the UK is 20,000, not 200,000. 200,000 is the worldwide total. The 40,000 figure from Mosul is from the linked Salon article, where it is justified.
Hah, sorry, I misread 220,000 from the preceding paragraph. The 40k figure for Mosul is an exaggeration, though.
You also said 440k @14:23. Pot, kettle, black etc.
“The number of dead from coronavirus in the UK is 20,000, not 200,000.”
With, not from.
The admitted figure of U.K. covid-19 deaths is 26,097
however some say it is probably double that.
What about the depleted urainium used by the satanic shit usg in Iraq? That will be killing Iraqis for a long time.
Absolutely. The death toll of the US and UK empires will beat anything in history when taking into account the fact that they impacted about every single country in the world.
If these empires hadn’t spent immense fortunes and resources into worldwide wars and destruction, all that money, time and energy could have been spent on peace and positive development which would have saved lives and created happiness.
“Your odds of survival are massively better than were those of a civilian in a country that your country chose to invade in recent years.”
“your country”:
I hate being a smartar5e but my country does not have any powers over defence or foreign policy.
https://www.parliament.scot/visitandlearn/12506.aspx
Neither does the UK.
My go-to site for war casualties is Necrometrics (https://necrometrics.com/), a site that doesn’t come up in ‘general’ DuckDuckGo or Google searches unless one narrows down the parameters significantly. A mystery, just like the absence of the Prism-Break site (https://prism-break.org/en/) from ‘general’ searches for computer/online security/privacy software – it is also never cited in either MSM or ‘specialist’ articles on the subject. A case of doing their jobs “too well”?
I do suppose the software it mentions is discussed frequently in Bruce Schneier’s blog (which I haven’t looked at for some time now).
Thank you, Phil, for the prism website in particular. It is an eye-opener!
Phil Williamson
April 29, 2020 at 14:43
Useful links. Thanks.
Since we’re all online more now, some useful software in areas that Prism-Break does not cover:
Anti-virus: AVG free (https://www.avg.com/en-se/free-antivirus-download) and VirusTotal (https://www.virustotal.com/gui/home) – the latter to test downloaded programs before they are installed.
Firewall: used Comodo free for many years, despite it periodically screwing up my computers, but it now breaks Windows 10 so I have reverted to ZoneAlarm (https://www.zonealarm.com/) which is a lot better than it was 10+ years ago.
System configuration: WinPatrol (https://www.winpatrol.com/) offers functions in addition to the excellent ProcessExplorer and ProcessMonitor programs from the SysInternals (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/) suite.
E-mail: HaveIBeenPwned (https://haveibeenpwned.com/)
Browser security: BrowserSPY (https://browserspy.dk/) and Panopticlick (https://panopticlick.eff.org/), the latter from the excellent Electronic Frontier Foundation (https://www.eff.org/). If using Firefox, go to the ‘Options’ item on the ‘Tools’ menu, scroll to the bottom of the ‘General’ page to the ‘Network Settings’ item, click ‘Settings’ and tick the Enable DNS over HTTPS box.
Firefox add-ons not mentioned by Prism-Break: Cookie AutoDelete (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autodelete/), Disable WebRTC (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/happy-bonobo-disable-webrtc/), Disconnect (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/disconnect/).
Paranoia special: Detekt (https://www.softpedia.com/dyn-search.php?search_term=detekt).
And not security/privacy related:
Firefox add-ons: Similar Sites (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/similarsites/) and Video DownloadHelper (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/video-downloadhelper/). KeepVid (https://keepvid.works/) downloads some video streams that Video Downloadhelper doesn’t. GGSofts TubeMaster++ (https://www.softpedia.com/publisher/GgSofts-12162.html) was brilliant 10+ years ago for overcoming one technique streamers use to prevent recording (fractional-second delays) but I’m not recommending it now because I haven’t tried it on either Windows 7 or 10. Twitter videos can be downloaded with SaveTweetVid (https://www.savetweetvid.com/).
Software updater: PatchMyPC (https://patchmypc.com/home-updater-download).
Best search engine for free movie/TV series viewing/downloads: Alluc (https://alluc.co/) (All You Can See – get it!).
Downloading BBC programmes DRM free: GetiPlayer (https://www.squarepenguin.co.uk/).
The best general software libraries: FileHippo (https://filehippo.com/) for freeware and SourceForge (https://sourceforge.net/) for open-source software.