Showing posts with label woke ideology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label woke ideology. Show all posts

Friday, 19 February 2021

Los Angeles replaces police officers in school with "climate coaches"

 Los Angeles Slashes School Police Budget, Replaces Officers With "Climate Coaches"

Authored by GQ Pan via The Epoch Times,

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Board of Education on Tuesday approved a plan to cut one-third of its police budget and divert the money to a program that focuses on black students achievement.

The board voted to cut 133 school police positions from the Los Angeles School Police Department, including 70 sworn officers, 62 non-sworn officers, and one support staff member. The staff reductions reduce the annual budget of the district’s police force from $77.5 million to $52.5 million.

Police officers stationed at all secondary schools will be replaced by new “climate coaches,” who are trained to, according to the plan, implement “positive school culture and climate,” use “de-escalation strategies” to resolve conflict, understand and address “implicit bias,” and eliminate “racial disproportionately” in school discipline practices.

The new plan doesn’t allow individual schools to apply to keep police officers on their campuses. Instead, officers will remain on call to respond to emergencies, with a goal of a three-to-five minute response time.

The police force reduction is part of the LAUSD’s $36.5 million Black Student Achievement Plan, which aims to provide supplemental services and support to 53 schools that have a large black student population and “high need indicators,” such as lower than average math and English language arts proficiency rates, higher than average referral and suspension rates, and higher than average chronic absenteeism.

In addition to the police overhaul, the plan would dedicate $30.1 million for improving “school climate” and reducing “over-identification of black students” in suspensions and discipline actions, $4.4 million to implement academic changes such as adding more black authors into school curricula, and $2 million for community partnership with organizations that serve black youth.

“We’ve been systematically failing black children as a country. Schools must be part of the solution, because a great education is the most important part of the path out of poverty,” Superintendent Austin Beutner said on Monday during his weekly update to the LAUSD community.

“While we at L.A. Unified don’t have all the answers, we’re committed to making change.”

The changes mark the latest move by the nation’s major public school districts in response to the “defund the police” movement. In the wake of death of George Floyd in custody of Minneapolis police, activist and organizations such as Black Lives Matter have called on local and officials to “defund” their law enforcement forces, arguing that redirecting funding from police toward other social service programs could make communities safer.

Last summer, the Minneapolis Public Schools board of education voted unanimously to terminate its contract with the Minneapolis Police Department, saying it “cannot continue to be in partnership with an organization that has the culture of violence and racism.”


https://www.zerohedge.com/political/absurd-look-marxist-ultra-woke-education-system-2021


From Mike Adams

Wokeism will DESTROY civilization... 

here's how to stop it before it's too late

Saturday, 13 February 2021

Focus on the UK

 


Anyone traveling to Britain from a country on the government’s ‘red list’ must quarantine in a hotel (which they will have to pay for), and have THREE COVID tests, under draconian new laws being implemented by the government.

The unprecedented and sweeping new rules were announced by Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who said that he makes ‘no apologies’ for such severe measures.

https://summit.news/2021/02/09/uk-covid-police-state-travellers-must-quarantine-in-hotels-at-their-own-cost-have-3-tests-10k-fine-for-going-outside-and-10-years-prison-if-caught-trying-to-avoid-the-law/


The UK government is considering a plan to despatch council staff to knock on the doors of those who have refused to take a coronavirus vaccine, in an effort to coerce refusniks into taking the shot, according to a report.

The London Metro reports that Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi told MPs he wanted to identify ‘at an individual level’ those who have been offered the vaccine but turned it down.

The report states that the plan is being hatched amid fears that a sizeable amount of the population are ‘sceptical’ of the vaccine.

Zahawi said that the role of the council staffers would be to determine why people are refusing the vaccine and then “see what might convince them” to change their minds.

Zahawi refused to confirm how the Government will know who has not taken the vaccine, but did admit during a radio appearance on the BBC that everyone who has taken the shot has been registered in a national immunisation vaccination system.

“We absolutely will look at how we are addressing the issue of refusal rates,” Zahawi said.


https://summit.news/2021/02/08/report-uk-government-considering-knocking-on-doors-of-vaccine-refusniks/

Britain’s crippled economy suffered its biggest crash in economic output in 311 years after it slumped by 9.9%. Last year’s fall in output was the biggest since modern official records began after World War Two. Longer-running historical data hosted by the Bank of England suggest it was the biggest drop since 1709, when Britain suffered a “Great Frost”.


The GDP fall was steeper than almost any other big economy’s, though Spain - also hard-hit by the virus - suffered an 11% decline. It also means that the market cap of AAPL is now roughly equivalent to the entire output of the UK.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/uk-economy-crashed-99-2020-biggest-drop-311-years



More than a third of a subset of people who received the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine in the U.K. in December reported experiencing side effects, a study released Thursday suggests, though symptoms were largely confined to local reactions and rarely lasted beyond a few days.


According to the findings from Zoe, a British health science company that built a phone app that researchers are using to study the pandemic, 37% of a group of roughly 40,000 vaccine recipients who were mostly healthcare workers reported they experienced local side effects such as swelling or pain near the injection site after their first vaccine dose, and that the figure rose to 45% of people after the second dose.

Systemic, or full-body side effects like fatigue, headaches, chills or shivers, were more rare: 14% of respondents reported at least one systemic side effect after the first dose, but that number rose to 22% after the second dose.


Women (19%) were slightly more likely than men (13%) to report feeling a systemic side effect within a week of their vaccine, and people over 55 years of age (14%) were less likely than someone younger than 55 (21%).

The side effects reported in the Zoe study occurred at a far lower rate compared to FDA trials for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which found 84% of people experienced injection site reactions and also reported higher proportions of people also had systemic side effects like fatigue, headache and muscle pain (63%, 55% and 38%, respectively).

Given that the Zoe study was largely of healthcare workers, there may have been population differences between it and FDA trials

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2021/02/04/more-than-one-in-three-people-in-uk-study-report-side-effects-from-pfizer-coronavirus-vaccine/?sh=5f0e8e1639ef

The "immaculate infection") as opposed to the "immaculate conception"



The Kent coronavirus variant may become the most dominant strain in the world, the director of the UK's genetic surveillance programme claimed today.

More than 50 countries have already spotted the mutant B.1.1.7 strain, which evolved to become more infectious than the original virus. 

Professor Sharon Peacock, head of the Covid-19 Genomics UK (Cog-UK) Consortium said the variant 'is going to sweep the world, in all probability'.

It is already the dominant strain across the UK but all the evidence suggests current vaccines work against it. 

But there are fears the variant has started to mutate further to become more like the one that evolved in South Africa, which is better able to resist immunity developed by past infection or from the current vaccines.

Professor Peacock said her work sequencing variants could be needed for at least 10 years.

The Kent Covid variant (top left) could become the most dominant strain of the virus in the world, according to the director of the UK's genetic surveillance programme

The Kent Covid variant (top left) could become the most dominant strain of the virus in the world, according to the director of the UK's genetic surveillance programme

Professor Sharon Peacock from the Covid-19 Genomics UK (Cog-UK) Consortium said the variant has been detected in more than 50 countries and 'it's going to sweep the world'

Professor Sharon Peacock from the Covid-19 Genomics UK (Cog-UK) Consortium said the variant has been detected in more than 50 countries and 'it's going to sweep the world'

The Kent variant was first detected in in September 2020 and its rapid spread across the country spooked No10 into tougher action in December.

Analysis suggests it is up to 70 per cent more transmissible than the previous strain that was dominant in the UK. No10's scientific advisers also fear the variant is slightly deadlier.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9248751/Kent-Covid-variant-going-sweep-world-scientists-warn.html




https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/13945800/lockdown-summer-over-50s-normal/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9248999/Bristol-Covid-variant-reinfect-vaccinated-Britons-SAGE-expert-warns.html


https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9241217/Hospital-tells-midwives-use-terms-like-birthing-parents-human-milk.html













https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9247505/Motorists-flock-drive-vaccination-centres-Covid-19-jab-car-window.html



Afirm owned by a family associate of Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock was awarded a Government contract for the supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) worth £14.4 million.

The Government today released details of the contract awarded to CH&L Limited in April for isolation gowns. The owner of the firm has told Byline Times that, due to “unforeseen logistical circumstances,” the contract was not fulfilled and the deposit paid by Hancock’s department was returned to the Government.

CH&L Limited was incorporated in January 2020 with one director – a Mr Chun Lei Li. In June that year, Frances Stanley was appointed as the second director of the firm, and later in the year appears to have become the sole person with significant control of the company.

https://bylinetimes.com/2021/02/10/friend-of-matt-hancock-wins-14-4-million-ppe-contract/


The mayor of London Sadiq Khan has appointed a rogues gallery of woke partisans as a ‘task force’ to review whether statues and other landmarks in the city are ‘diverse enough’.

The selection is chocked full of people who have previously declared their disdain for Britain’s history, prompting warnings that unelected activists with an axe to grind are being placed in charge of erasing history.

https://summit.news/2021/02/09/london-mayor-appoints-woke-activist-brigade-to-review-statues-for-diversity/




https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9240197/Sadiq-Khan-unveils-taskforce-review-capitals-landmarks-ensure-reflect-diversity.html


China’s broadcasting regulator taken BBC World News off air in the country for “serious content violation”, Chinese state media have reported.

The news has been reported by both the state-run agency Xinhua News and the official broadcaster CGTN.

https://www.euronews.com/2021/02/11/china-says-bbc-world-news-taken-off-air-for-serious-content-violation

PROFESSOR DOLORES CAHILL: WHY PEOPLE WILL START DYING A FEW MONTHS AFTER THE FIRST MRNA VACCINATION


The PCR Test Can Kill You & Can Be Used To Vaccinate You – Dr Vernon Coleman


By Dr. Vernon Coleman. This article first appeared on http://www.vernoncoleman.com

 

We all know now that PCR tests are useless for finding cases of covid-19 but very good at helping governments keep us in our own homes under house arrest. In some parts of the world the PCR tests are banned as utterly useless. I explained precisely what’s wrong with these misused tests in a an article on this website subtly called `The PCR Test Is Useless for Covid-19 (But Useful for Crooked Governments).

The big problem, of course, is that the British Government, for example, deliberately ignores the WHO guidelines and does the test in a crooked way which would, in a just and sensible world, result in Johnson, Hancock and their advisors crowded into the dock.

You’d get as good a result if you just divided people into two groups: those with a vowel in their surname and those without a vowel, and then announced that the ones with the vowel all had covid-19 and the rest all needed to change their names within seven days or pay a huge fine.

So, everyone with functioning brain tissue knows that the PCR test is useless, except for political reasons, and that the whole testing programme is an outrageously expensive and disruptive shambles. Only government ministers, scientific advisors and pseudo-journalists at the wretched BBC think that PCR tests are valuable. Did you know, by the way, that the Government has allegedly hired 900 consultants to help with the test and trace scheme? The consultants are being paid £1,000 a day each though what they do for that I cannot imagine. That’s £900,000 a day. I suspect that 99.99% of the population would be happier if the £900,000 a day were spent on dentists.

But that’s not the half of it. Most people seem to have accepted the need for regular PCR testing. Indeed, people in the UK queue up to have it done as often as possible – as though they get some sort of thrill out of having a complete stranger stuff something into a bodily orifice – pushing it in as far as it will go, twizzling it about a bit, and then pulling it out and buggering off without so much as `a thank you very much I’ll give you a ring tomorrow and we’ll have dinner and then do it again’.

There is talk of children having daily tests though I haven’t been able to find any evidence that this would be a good idea for anyone other than the hugely profitable industry now involved in making and looking at the swabs .

What no one ever mentions is that the PCR tests are dangerous and can, if done improperly, cause excrutiating pain. This is probably why some countries don’t like them. There is indeed a great deal of confusion about how far the swab should go. (Or should that be the Klaus Schwab) In Australia the guidelines are that the swab should only go a few centimetres up the nostril but nasopharyngeal swabs can go much further. The United States Department of Health and Human services says that the swab should reach a depth equal to the distance from the nostril to the outer opening of the ear. That’s a huge distance. In Ottawa, Canada, the recommendation is half that distance.

In October last year I reported on at least one case where a healthy individual had noticed cerebrospinal fluid pouring out of her nose after an invasive PCR test. That really isn’t something you want happening. The woman concerned, who was in her 40s, had a PCR nasal swab test and later went to see a doctor complaining of vomiting, a runny nose, a headache and a stiff neck. The pseudo-journalists at the BBC can, if they are interested in facts, find the details in the JAMA Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery. Surgeons found that the fluid running down her nose was cerebrospinal fluid – the fluid that protects the brain.

Then there was the case which was accepted for The Medical Journal of Australia on the 4th December but which I don’t think has been published yet. This reported a healthy 67-year-old woman who had cerebrospinal fluid coming down her nose and the symptoms of meningitis. This followed a covid-19 swab test. How many are being killed – especially in care homes – by this useless and dangerous test?

The authors of the paper stated that the `techniques for deep nasal and nasopharyngeal swabs may be easily confused’. They offer instructions for those conducting the tests. Here’s one part of their instructions: `it involves swab insertion into the nasal cavity at a plane between the opening of the nose and the external ear canal on the patient, which can be considered as the horizontal plane for the purpose of relationship to surface anatomy. This will allow the swab to be inserted parallel to the nasal floor which would avoid injury to the middle turbinates. Swabs inserted in an upward orientation into the nasal cavity, (greater than 30 degrees) not only have a risk of failing to achieve an adequate diagnostic sample from the desired nasal mucosa and nasopharynx but also puts the patient at greater risk of injury to the thin and delicate areas of the skull base (attachment of middle turbinate and cribriform plate) which are superior and anterior to the sphenoid sinus ostium.’ There is then an illustration for swabbing and the authors conclude: `We urge that this angle is not exceeded when performing diagnostic tests as it places the patient at greatest risk of serious adverse events.’

I suggest that anyone having a PCR test should ensure that the person holding the swab has studied and understood these instructions – and will follow them.

In Tripura, a three-day-old boy bled to death after a nasal swab test. In Saudi Arabia an eighteen month old child died after a test swab broke inside his nasal cavity. These are not safe tests. Children are being traumatised by these incredibly invasive tests. These are not safe procedures and they’re often being done by people who know as much about medicine and human anatomy as I know about running a submarine – though I have seen Ice Station Zebra with Patrick McGoohan, and that film with Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington in it. And there was Red October with Sean Connery. Actually, come to think about it, I probably know far more about submarines than the average test and tracer tester knows about anatomy.

Quite a few things have puzzled me about the PCR test.

First, why the devil do they have to push the swab so far up your nose – and so close to your brain. Where is the indisputable scientific evidence that all the little covid-19 bugs are gathering up there for some reason? Do they like out of the way places? Normally, if you have a bug in your nose it will be in your nose. Where is the solid proof that the test only works if a sample is taken from a spot so far up your nose that the tissue up there probably speaks another language and only gets home once a year? Since these tests are now being performed by people who aren’t doctors or nurses or probably even boy scouts, we need some evidence that the test is essential. Actually, since the tests produce more false positives than real positives they are clearly a waste of time anyway and it would make as much sense if the testing swab were inserted into the umbilicus and given a good twizzle there.

Second, researchers at Johns Hopkins University in the US published a study describing a device which has been developed. It’s a tiny, star shaped micro-device capable of delivering a drug. The devices are no larger than a speck of dust but contain a metal core coated in heat sensitive paraffin wax. At the centre of the core there is the drug.

Now, we know that around half of Americans are reluctant to have the covid-19 vaccination.

I think that this hidden injection technology could be used to vaccinate people through nasal or anal PCR swabs. Is this why anal swabs are being introduced? The procedure works best on intestinal tissue.

This could be used to deliver a vaccine to people without their knowledge or consent.

People who think they are just being tested could be receiving the mRNA jab.

Is this going to happen? Is it going to happen?

How the hell would we know?

The authorities are already collecting the names and details of people who have declined the vaccine. Are they planning to use the PCR test to those who refuse the vaccination?

We cannot trust the government or its advisers. We cannot trust the mainstream media. We definitely cannot trust the BBC which has financial links to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and which long ago betrayed us. We can only trust one another.

Giving vaccines nasally is nothing new. Children sometimes have the flu vaccine sprayed up their noses – that’s a live attenuated vaccine, by the way. Attenuated means it’s weaker. But it could still kill granny, of course. Personally, I might use the stuff to clear the drains but I wouldn’t squirt it up a child’s nose.

And you should perhaps know this: nasal vaccinations are already used on cattle.

Copyright Vernon Coleman February 9th 2021

Vernon Coleman’s book `Anyone Who Tells You Vaccines Are Safe and Effective is Lying: Here’s the Proof’ is available on Amazon as an eBook and a paperback. His book `Superbody’, also available as a paperback and an eBook explains how to stay healthier in an unhealthy world.

Thursday, 11 February 2021

Jordan Peterson asks himself why he (stupidly (?)) agreed to an interview request from the Sunday Times

This is about the most egregious example of 'cancel culture' I have encountered.  You invite someone who has done nothing but good, and who is coming back from Hell and very vulnerable and you write a disgusting attack piece which is then repeated throughout the media.

 Jordan Peterson vs The Times


HERE'S the link if you really want it

The Daily Mail, at least, is free

RT, by contrast, has a connection with normal human values.



Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson and his daughter Mikhaila recently sat for a Zoom interview with a Sunday Times reporter to discuss the Toronto professor’s health struggles over the past two years following a physical dependency he had developed to benzodiazepine, an anxiety-relieving drug he had been prescribed.

Mikhaila Peterson, the daughter of psychology guru and writer Jordan Peterson, slammed a newly-published Sunday Times article as “the most insensitive piece of journalism” she has ever experienced.

The remark was made on her father’s Instagram page, as the Canadian professor published an unedited audio recording of the interview he and Mikhaila held with The Sunday Times’ reporter Decca Aitkenhead before the article saw the light on Saturday.

In the piece, Aitkenhead recounts Mikhaila’s account of the health issues her father had experienced in the past over his use of benzodiazepine, a drug he was prescribed back in 2016 after an unusual response to food left him sleepless for days. The usage of the drug was then increased after Peterson’s wife was diagnosed with untreatable cancer, but instead of helping the Canadian, the medication and attempts to drop it left him in a restless and nearly suicidal state.

According to the article, at one point Peterson was even “diagnosed with schizophrenia” by doctors in Toronto. This diagnosis, attributed to Mikhaila’s recollection of the events, was widely reported by the media worldwide, with the New York Post bluntly putting that the famous professor “has schizophrenia”.

But the published audio of the conversation the two had with Aitkenhead reveal that it was not exactly what the psychologist’s daughter was relating to the reporter during their talk: Peterson indeed heard a number of diagnosis from doctors during his fight with akathisia, a movement disorder that had emerged as a side effect to his benzodiazepine withdrawal. “Schizophrenia” was just one of them. But his family had never believed this to be the case and maintained that it was a misdiagnosis.

“One of the conversations we had with the psychiatrist he has he goes ‘Well, we think it’s schizophrenia’. And I was like, these symptoms didn’t even start until he started the medications,” Mikhaila could be heard uttering.

“Okay, so you’re telling me like a mid-50-year-old man with no previous symptoms of schizophrenia suddenly gets schizophrenia, which generally happens late teens, for men,” she went on. “It’s not like we’re uneducated on these things, right? I was like, what?”

According to Mikhaila Peterson, who popularised the carnivorous Lion Diet, it was only this summer when her father was finally diagnosed with akathisia, after he had already gone through detox treatment in Russia to relieve him from the physical dependency on the drug and make his condition bearable. He had to make a few hospital and rehab stops before getting better (although the condition still catches him from time to time) and finishing his “Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life” which is to be published in March.

​But the journalist, who described the interview with the Petersons as “very strange”, spared no energy scrutinising Mikhaila’s words, describing the professor’s daughter as “glossy, pouting Barbie blonde” who “talks with the zealous, spiky conviction of a President Trump press spokeswoman”.

“After 80 minutes on Zoom, the one thing of which I’m certain is that, were I as close to death as she assures me her father repeatedly was, this is not the person I would entrust with saving my life,” Aitkenhead wrote in the article.

Following the publication of the piece, Mikhaila Peterson heavily grilled The Sunday Times on social media for its misleading tone and other outlets for straightforwardly assuming that her father had schizophrenia.

She told the Post Millennial that "we were misrepresented in a very disturbing way and that's causing serious stress to our family."

After the full recording of the conversation the Petersons had with the journalist was published by the professor, social media users went on to support the psychology guru while shaming the “awful, condescending and insensitive” piece by The Sunday Times, that had presented the renowned author and his daughter in a rather dim light.

https://sputniknews.com/viral/202102011081945119-jordan-peterson-unveils-unedited-interview-with-the-sunday-times-following-schizophrenia-claims/

Jordan has linked the entirety of the audio of the interview - something you can rely on


And from Jordan himself

Why I (stupidly (?)) agreed to an interview request from the Sunday Times

Jordan Peterson

I was recently the subject of a Sunday Times cover story written by Decca Aitkenson. Non-subscribers who wish to read it can sign up for two free articles a week here.  I released the full audio of the interview on YouTube here so that anyone interested could find out for themselves what was actually said.

Given the tenor of the piece (very critical of me and even more of my daughter Mikhaila) and the fact that I have been subject to very similar unflattering coverage many times in the past it appears reasonable for even those inclined to my defense to ask: how could I possibly have been stupid enough to agree to the interview and story?

The same question has been plaguing me. In consequence, I went back to the original letter of invitation I received from one of the Sunday Times’ acquisition editors, Ms. Megan Agnew. Here it is in its entirety:

 


From: Megan Agnew

The Sunday Times Magazine

London, UK

 

Hi Mikhaila

I hope you’re well. I don’t think we’ve worked together before – I’m a commissioning editor at the Sunday Times Magazine in London, I wanted to get in touch about a potential interview, when the time is right, with your father, Jordan Peterson.

We have been following his story closely over the past weeks – and hoping that he is doing better. It is such an exhausting, uncompromising virus. It must be an incredibly stressful period for you all. When the time feels right, we would love to send one of our writers to speak with him for the Magazine. I like to think we tell difficult stories with generous space, time and objectivity. We run longform features, telling the whole story, rather than short flashy headlines.

The interview would cover his life and career to date, family life, illness, recovery, and upcoming plans and projects for the future. It would allow you to clear up any factual inaccuracies that might have been reported in the press, telling his side of the story, as well as celebrating his life and career so far.

Let me know what you think. I have attached some interview examples here, so you can get an idea of what it might look like.

It would be great to talk.

Best wishes
Megan

Megan Agnew

The Sunday Times Magazine

I sent the following query to Ms. Agnew yesterday. It contains an explanation of my motives for agreeing to the interview.


Dear Ms. Agnew:

I reread this polite, positive, and hopeful interview request letter of today after the promised Sunday Times piece on my daughter and I was published.

I can’t help but be struck by the vast gap between what was offered and the resulting interview, which no reasonable reader could possibly consider “celebrating (!) my life and career so far” (as indicated by an overwhelming majority of the readers of this piece, at least as indicated by their public comments, already numbering in the hundreds). In consequence, I have decided to write you and ask you for your opinion on what has happened as a consequence of your invitation.

The words you chose in your invitation – for example, “hoping that he is doing better,””such an exhausting, uncompromising virus,””it must be an incredibly stressful time for you all,””when the time feels right” were couched in such markedly friendly and supportive language that I allowed myself to trust the Times to deliver the story in the manner you proposed. I believed in good faith that my life and career as well as my health would be discussed fairly and without prejudice. My editors and publishers at Penguin Random House evinced the same faith, relying on their belief in the integrity of your paper.

I do not think that it is mere thin-skinned sensitivity on my part to believe that I would have fared no worse had I discussed my affairs with an avowed enemy. And what was done to my daughter–who uprooted her husband and small daughter more than a dozen times to accompany and care for me in four countries in the last year while simultaneously dealing with her own severe health issues (skeptically described by your author) and the near death of her mother–was brutally unfair, callous and cold. Her illness, thoroughly documented over multiple years at the Toronto Hospital for Sick Children, resulted in the shattering and painful disintegration of her right hip and left ankle and their surgical replacement of both before she was seventeen. She had 38 joints afflicted with degenerative arthritis, suffering from one of the most severe cases of juvenile RA her attending physicians had ever encountered. Her prognosis at age eight was continual, multiple joint replacements if exactly the sort that eventually occurred. In her teenage years, she walked around on what were essentially two broken legs for more than a year while we arranged for corrective surgeries, whole her mother and I desperately searched for medical expertise across many countries. And she managed to stay in school and forged forwards unstoppably despite all that. There is simply no excuse for Aikenhead to imply that the reality of all this is somehow questionable, as she clearly did when she opened her discussion of Mikhaila’s illness with the words “according to her website.” No. Not “according to her website,” with the sly intimation of falsehood hinted at by such phrasing. Actually. In painful reality. Over many long years and immediately verifiable – or not – by a simple request to the medical authorities involved.

I am frankly stunned by the degree of sheer cruelty and spite manifested by your journalist, Decca Aitkenhead and by the degree of misrepresentation (if that’s what it was) necessary to entice me into speaking as I did with her, with no intention on my part other than to answer the questions she put to me as clearly and honestly as my deeply flawed self could manage. Given the manner in which you crafted your invitation to me, I can’t understand how you can in good conscience accept what transpired.

Sincerely,

Dr Jordan B Peterson


I have not yet received a response to this letter. I haven’t received a response–but it was only sent yesterday. I will post whatever I receive.

Was I unforgivably careless in the trust I chose to show to the Times? Perhaps. I believed (as did my editors and publishers at Penguin Random House) that my story was invariably going to be told and that it was therefore appropriate to provide the details in as truthful and complete a manner possible to the most reliable and credible possible source. We all took the offer from the Sunday Times at face value and held that paper in high regard. Hence, our decision — which was considered over months.

Now, the situation is complicated by the fact that I have a new book coming out March 2 (described here). This means that the decision to participate in the Sunday Times interview was also motivated by a desire not so much to publicize the book as to clear the stage so that the book might be made the central topic of any other interviews I might give around its launch time (instead of issues such as my health). I certainly feel an obligation to work with and for my publishers so that the book’s existence is publicized, and there’s obviously an element of self-interest in that, as well. I want to act such that the book has the highest possible chance of success. I hope that people will find it as useful as they appear to have found my previous book, 12 Rules for Life.

So, what would a wise man do?

Learn my lesson, and avoid the press at all cost? But I don’t know how to distinguish that from turning my tail and hiding, and I think that would be worse for me, even in my currently compromised state, than continuing to engage as I have.

Only choose to make myself available to outlets that will produce positive coverage? First, how do I know which outlets are trustworthy. I could only talk to people with whom I have become friendly, such as David Rubin and Joe Rogan. But I don’t think it’s right to stay inside what risks becoming a mere echo chamber.

Was it a mistake for me to conduct the now-infamous Channel Four interview with Cathy Newman? Or the almost equally-viewed GQ interview with Helen Lewis? Both of those were markedly hostile. Were they failures, or successes? I don’t think it is unreasonable to note that they are markedly of our time, and perhaps indicate something important–whatever that might be–about our time. Both have garnered some 25 million views. There’s something of broad public interest about the tension that characterizes both conversations….

GQ, motivated by the success (?) of the Helen Lewis interview, plans to produce a profile on me in the near future. I have been asked to make myself available for an interview. Should I do it? I haven’t decided. If it goes badly, will I only have myself to blame? Should I therefore avoid it?

I hope to be judicious in my decisions about when and where to speak. I hope that I can stick to the truth when I do so, and believe that there is no better defense (and, indeed, no better offense) than that? Do I trust myself to tell the truth? Will my ego invariably get in the way? Has that already happened?

As the man says: You pays your money and you takes your chances.