Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Hospital and Care Home Visiting Restrictions Are “Cruel, Inhumane and Unnecessary”, Doctors Tell MPs

By Will Jones | The Daily Sceptic | April 29, 2022 

The Pandemic Response and Recovery All-Party Parliamentary Group met this week to hear about visiting restrictions still being imposed by many care homes and NHS Trusts. Co-chaired by Rt Hon Esther McVey MP and Graham Stringer MP, the Group listened to evidence about the devastating effects visiting restrictions in hospitals have on patients and their loved ones. MPs also heard how visiting restrictions in care homes, along with the continued use of rolling lockdowns and over interpretation of testing guidelines, is leading to isolation, neglect and abuse of the residents.

Leandra Ashton, who co-founded The People’s Care Watchdog, Dr. Ammar Waraich, a medical registrar in the West Midlands, Carol Munt, experienced Patient Partner and Advocate and Dr. Ali Haggett, community mental health and wellbeing specialist, told MPs of the obstacles still in place when trying to visit a loved one and the shocking impact on vulnerable hospital patients, care home residents and their families.

All the speakers voiced serious concerns that obstacles are still in place in some healthcare settings. Politicians heard harrowing accounts of the harmful effects of isolation and loss of social contact on physical and mental health, safeguarding problems with medication, dehydration, hygiene and lack of basic care and the failures to uphold existing legislation to protect those who lack capacity.

Leandra Ashton’s mother was arrested in November 2020 for taking her grandmother out of her care home a day before the second lockdown. Two years on, many residents are still being isolated from their loved ones. She told MPs:

When I took the video of my mum being arrested taking my nan out of her care home, I did not think it would go viral. So many families got in touch and it led to us setting up the People’s Care Watchdog. We were struck by how much legislation is in place, such as Article 8 of the Human Rights Act, Deprivation of Liberty and the Mental Capacity Act, to protect those in care homes. These laws are simply not being upheld and instead guidelines are being over-interpreted and the legislation even used to keep people in care homes and hospitals as if they were prisons. The public bodies that are supposed to uphold the protective legislation are not doing so.

There are still obstacles in place when trying to visit a loved one in a care home and the impact has been and continues to be devastating. The safeguarding issues I am seeing and hearing about are atrocious. Residents left for hours in dirty, wet incontinence pads leading to dangerous pressure ulcers. Malnutrition. Dehydration. End of life medication given to patients without their or their family’s consent. Psychological trauma, post-traumatic stress and suicides have resulted because of this. Multiple systems are failing, including Local Authorities and the CQC. It is a complex situation that needs a bold approach by both empowering families and galvanising Government action to hold public bodies to account and stop private equity firms placing profit over people.

Listening to the evidence, Esther McVey said:

I am troubled by the evidence presented by our speakers, particularly the safeguarding issues and neglect that care home residents are suffering as a result. In hospitals, we have heard about patients losing hope and refusing treatment without the encouragement of family. We know patients have much better treatment outcomes when they have support from relatives and friends around them.

Most of the infection control measures that restricted visiting in healthcare settings have been removed, most recently NHS Trusts were told healthcare workers, patients and visitors no longer need to distance in hospitals, so I fail to see why and how these visiting restrictions are still in place in any healthcare setting. I shall be writing to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to ask that he makes it absolutely clear that all patients and residents must be able to see visitors.

Highlighting how visitation is an important and necessary part of healthcare, Carol Munt said:

In the same way that we would not stop prescribed medication and treatments, we should not have stopped visits. Why were decisions taken without any consideration for the need of patients and their families to connect? Why do we still have such variation in compassionate care across the country? There is no uniformity among care homes apart from the need to be profitable for their owners. Some care homes made a superhuman effort to arrange visiting, as did the Bristol Nightingale Hospital. There was good practice in some places so there should be good practice everywhere. We should expect more of these endemic situations and we must be prepared for them.

I could not comprehend how any Minister for Health and Social Care could allow this to happen and not make the effort to get his department to look at ways that visiting could be facilitated. I heard and continue to hear the most callous reports of relatives dying alone with no visitors. The same goes for hospital patients. Ultimately, I think we need legislation to ensure that visiting rights are enshrined and protected.

Medical Registrar Dr. Ammar Waraich reported that many hospitals are still preventing visits due to the potential risk of Covid spread:

The policy is cruel, inhumane and unnecessary. Seeing loved ones can be immensely therapeutic and give struggling patients the will to survive. It is deeply traumatic for families to lose loved ones suddenly or see them go through difficult treatment without being there in person. Video calls are not a good enough replacement and we do not have the staff, the time or resources to facilitate calls for all our patients.

Most infection control measures have been lifted as the level of risk is no longer there. Hospitals can no longer function as detention centres and an inpatient stay should not become a sentence. The policy was one of the major mistakes of lockdown. Visiting sick relatives in hospital is, and must remain, a fundamental right, not to be given up.

Co-chair Graham Stringer said:

I find it extraordinary that no visiting is allowed in some healthcare settings, even to this day. It is cruel that family members are being denied access to sick and vulnerable loved ones, often not getting regular updates, living in anxiety about what their relatives may be going through, but knowing they are going through frightening and difficult treatment, often at the end of their lives, without being able to be with them in person.

“At the height of the pandemic it was understandable that there were precautions but there is no longer a basis to that argument. All the restrictions have been lifted and NHS Trusts across England have now been told to ‘return to pre-pandemic physical distancing in all areas’. The government must take action to resolve this situation.

Speaking about her experience working in the community throughout the pandemic, Dr. Ali Haggett said:

I have spent the last eighteen months with the support group Unlock Care Homes, uncovering the plight of many thousands of families who are still denied regular, meaningful contact with care home residents and hospital patients. Even before Covid, we knew that isolating people, particularly older people, has a serious impact on physical and psychological health. We have continued to isolate adults in care and in some hospitals almost continuously for two years. The effects have been felt particularly badly by those with dementia. Many residents no longer recognise their families and have been denied the most basic of human needs.

My concern is that this situation is concealing neglect and abuse on a significant scale. One of my community members sadly died and the hospital has admitted liability partly because he was completely blind and couldn’t reach his food or drink. Had his wife been allowed to visit, this wouldn’t have happened. Families I work with report numerous issues still affecting them, not just visiting restrictions. Rolling lockdowns, over-interpretation of testing, PPE requirements resulting in poor communication and fear, lack of ancillary services such as podiatry or physiotherapy leading to huge health problems, residents asked to isolate when one person tests positive, sometimes for 10 days or more and the one significant visitor recommendation being ignored or rejected. Families must be able to visit openly and check the wellbeing of residents.

Stop Press: MPs and Peers including Esther McVey, Lord Frost, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Sir Graham Brady, Emma Lewell-Buck, Graham Stringer and Sammy Wilson have written to the Telegraph to say they are “deeply concerned” that visiting is still forbidden in many institutions where “over-interpretation of testing guidelines is leading to isolation, neglect and abuse of vulnerable residents”. They point out that Article 8 of the Human Rights Act and the Mental Capacity Act “could and should have protected against this situation arising” but this legislation is being “wilfully misinterpreted as an excuse” to keep people isolated in care homes and hospitals “as if they were prisons”.

May 1, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

The UK Covid Response: A Stool with Three Legs

BY CARL HENEGHAN AND TOM JEFFERSON | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | APRIL 28, 2022

Respiratory viruses are both unpredictable and commonplace. The name of the most well-known one, Influenza, originated in 15th century Italy, and comes from the old Italian expression influenza dei pianeti or influence of the planets. They could not explain its sudden and unaccountable behavior and ascribed its capricious nature to the influence of planets.

However, influenza is just one of the many agents involved in active respiratory infections; there are scores of known ones which give a spectrum of clinical presentations, from a mild cold to severe pneumonia. We have no idea how many agents there are. Since 1970, 1,500 pathogens have been discovered – 70% have come from animals. Some authors report that up to 40% of respiratory infections have no recognised causes.

Over 30 years, we have studied physical interventions, vaccines, and antivirals for registered compounds and ones which never made it to market. In 2014 we encouraged Roche and GSK to give up the business part of their regulatory submissions for their antivirals, opening up a whole new source of clinical study report evidence that is infinitely more reliable and complete than biomedical journal publications.

So when SARS-CoV-2 struck, we watched unfolding events with curiosity. We try to understand the effects of the agent and those of our leaders’ responses. To achieve this, you need reasonably good data.

We are used to wastage, error, and poor quality research underpinning patient care. The influenza field is further affected by flawed science, pandemic conspiracies and political contamination that leads to the inevitable box thinking with the advent of a newly identified agent.

In the UK, like in most other countries, the daily situation briefings delivered by top scientific advisers who we knew had little experience of respiratory virus epidemiology set the pace of the pandemic and the subsequent hysteria.

The briefings were devised to illustrate the seriousness of the COVID-19 situation by presenting running totals of new cases, hospital admissions and deaths. We call this the three-legged stool of the COVID narrative. The stool provided the rationale for an unprecedented level of restrictions on civil liberties and governmental diktats designed to control the unruly populace in the hope of managing – or even eradicating – the agent.

After exploring aggregate data, we looked in-depth into the science of the three legs: Speaking daily, we discussed and analyzed the certainty behind the summary figures and trends presented every night. Finally, we asked ourselves: what props the stool up?

We tried making sense of the various government websites, the relevant papers in biomedical journals, and the tests applied to identify “cases.” We soon understood that the PCR was inappropriately used as a mass screening tool. Its limits were not understood by those reporting its results or those presenting aggregate data.

Even with correct specimen management and a competent laboratory process, a simple PCR test cannot distinguish active cases from those recovering from SARS-CoV-2 infection who are no longer infectious and a danger to no one.

We used our systematic review skills to analyse the studies comparing the culture of SARS-CoV-2, the best indicator of current active infection and infectiousness, with the results of PCR.

Complete viable viruses are necessary for transmission, not the fragments identified by PCR. PCR picks up minute particles which take weeks to be cleared by our immune systems, not complete viruses, so governments were locking up the contagious with the non-contagious.

Misuse of PCR underpinned the whole narrative. Its very high sensitivity and robotic acceptance as a gold standard created the illusion of many more cases (i.e. active infections) than were really present and prompted long quarantines, disrupting society and lives.

Therefore, the first leg of the stool is unstable, made worse by the absolute refusal to link PCR results to the reporting of viral load estimates, which could (coupled with accurate history and thorough epidemiology) give a likelihood of infectivity.

The second leg, attribution of death, was affected by bureaucratic bungling and PCR misuse. We discovered that UK public health bodies had 14 different ways of attributing the role of SARS-CoV-2 to a death. Some totals included deceased who had tested negative. Post-mortem examinations were uncommon, as was independent verification of causes of death. So aggregate attribution of mortality figures was questionable – the second leg started teetering too.

We are currently analyzing the last leg of the stool: hospital capacity. Hospital episodes take time to reconstruct, but they are also underscored by PCR misuse, poor definitions, and confusing messaging. A coherent dataset is unlikely to exist, so we have to piece the puzzle together.

We reported our findings in a series of web reports for a charity and the mainstream media, the only avenues that evade some censorship.

Where did our data come from? From the only section of society which had an idea of what was going on, or at least were asking questions instead of accepting the “rule of six” or supermarket trolley police checks like obedient cattle, the public.

Freedom of Information (FOI) request sites in the UK are sources of amazingly bright questions and bureaucratic and sometimes misleading answers. Here are some examples. Public Health England does not know whether hospitals have a financial incentive to classify an admission episode as COVID-related, so how can they interpret the data?

Some deaths are classified as COVID-related, even though negative. The Department of Health has no idea how many and which of the PCR kits are in use, all with a different performance which has not been standardized. So they were adding apples with trees and hay bales and reporting the consequent nonsense daily.

The power of FOI host websites like WhatDoTheyKnow is immense and underutilized. The questions and responses are public for everyone to see, and most of the public’s questions are pin-sharp.

The FOI ACT provides access to information held by public authorities who are obliged to publish certain information about their activities; and members of the public are entitled to request information from public authorities.

However, the FOI respondents show poor science, bureaucracy, delegation to juniors to respond to “nuisance” questions and a lack of coherent vision – at times, the response is dismissive. Still, there are occasional nuggets of vital information.

Why not set up a similar FOI portal in every country? We think it is the only way to make these people accountable to voters. You can follow our attempts at getting to the bottom of hospital episodes in England, Wales and Northern Ireland by following our correspondence: 1 2 3 4.

The stool’s three legs remain vital to understanding the rationale for restrictions imposed throughout the pandemic.

Conflict of interest statements

TJ’s competing interests are accessible here. CJH holds grant funding from the NIHR, the NIHR School of Primary Care Research, the NIHR BRC Oxford and the World Health Organization for a series of Living rapid review on the modes of transmission of SARs-CoV-2 reference WHO registration No 2020/1077093. He has received financial remuneration from an asbestos case and given legal advice on mesh and hormone pregnancy tests cases. He has received expenses and fees for his media work including occasional payments from BBC Radio 4 Inside Health and The Spectator. He receives expenses for teaching EBM and is also paid for his GP work in NHS out of hours (contract Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust). He has also received income from the publication of a series of toolkit books and for appraising treatment recommendations in non-NHS settings. He is Director of CEBM and is an NIHR Senior Investigator.

Authors

Carl Heneghan is Director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine and a practising GP. A clinical epidemiologist, he studies patients receiving care from clinicians, especially those with common problems, with the aim of improving the evidence base used in clinical practice.

Tom Jefferson, Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford, UK

May 1, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Northern Ireland faces loss of 1 million sheep and cattle to meet climate targets

By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | April 30, 2022

imageNot only does agriculture account for a large slice of NI’s emissions (and Ireland’s too), it also accounts for a lot of its GDP, directly and indirectly.

There is a reason why Ireland is dominated by pastoral rather than arable farming. It’s because most of the land is unsuitable for growing of crops, certainly to a profitable extent. Much of the land is rocky and the climate is far too wet. That was why Ireland was so reliant on potatoes at the time of the Great Famine.

Currently only 4% of N Ireland’s farmland is arable.

Although farm labour only accounts for 7% of the country’s labour force, many more depend on the rural economy. Altogether the rural population makes up about 40% of the total in N Ireland. Destroying a large part of farming sector there would be catastrophic for the rural sector. Replacing the meat and dairy sector with, for instance, potatoes would decimate incomes and lead to mass migration out of the countryside.

Perhaps the most shocking part of the Guardian’s report is the reaction of Chris Stark, who is more interested in his modelling than in people’s lives. It also raises the question of just how all of this will be enforced. Farmers certainly are not going to give up willingly.

Shades of the infamous Soviet Land Reforms?

April 30, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | | Leave a comment

Former colony resists direct UK rule

The acting premier of the British Virgin Islands, Dr. Natalio Wheatley.
Samizdat | May 1, 2022

The acting premier of the British Virgin Islands has voiced deep “concerns” over London’s plans to assume direct governance of the Caribbean territory, following the arrest of its leader in a US drug sting operation, and a highly-critical report into alleged systemic corruption.

On Friday, shortly before the premier of the British Virgin Islands, Andrew Fahie, appeared before a US judge on charges of cocaine smuggling and money laundering, a commission of inquiry led by Judge Sir Gary Hickinbottom hurriedly published its final report, urging the UK to dissolve the islands’ elected government, suspend their constitution, and impose direct rule for at least two years.

“What this would mean in real terms is that there would no longer be elected representatives who represent the people of the districts and the territory in the house of assembly where laws are made for our society,” said Natalio Wheatley, who assumed the post of acting premier after Fahie’s arrest.

London already dispatched a Foreign Office minister, Amanda Milling, to meet the territory’s Governor James Rankin and other senior figures and discuss the terms of direct rule, ahead of a formal decision expected next week.

The acting BVI premier acknowledged “very serious matters highlighted in the report, which spanned successive Administrations,” and did not question the British Crown representative’s authority and responsibility to maintain order – but said the proposed reforms “can be achieved without the partial or full suspension of the constitution,” under already existing emergency powers.

“I urge you the public to read the report with an objective eye in terms of strengthening our systems of Government under a democratic framework of governance, as opposed to draconian measures that would set back the historical constitutional progress we have made as a people.”

Hickinbottom’s commission was established in 2021, amid claims of corruption and wasteful government spending – as well as rumors that the island leadership was engaging in drug trafficking. According to The Guardian, the British government was aware of the US undercover investigation, and decided to “rush out” the 1,000-page Hickinbottom report after Fahie was arrested.

Named by Christopher Columbus, the Virgin Islands are divided between the UK, the US and the US territory of Puerto Rico. Some 35,000 BVI residents have been British citizens since 2002. While they enjoy a limited self-governance under a 2007 constitution, the string of islands is officially designated as one of the British overseas territories, called crown colonies prior to 1983.

April 30, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

Strike off the truth tellers? No, strike out Whitty & Co!

By Angus Dalgleish | TCW Defending Freedom | April 30, 2022

THE recent announcement from the General Medical Council that doctors face being struck off for spreading fake news on vaccines and lockdowns is somewhat frightening given the recent experience of Dr Sam White, a GP in Hampshire. It has a chilling Orwellian overtone to it.

It seems to imply that fake news is anything not approved by the Government and any of its agencies such as Public Health England and the NHS plus the mainstream media, who have been bribed throughout the pandemic with lucrative advertising contracts.

It assumes that ideas and speculation from discredited sources such as Neil Ferguson and Sage were correct and accepted by the senior medical officers such as Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance, with all other inputs ignored or treated with contempt. Many of us suggested that as Covid was an airborne virus which affected mainly the old and those with other medical conditions it should be treated as such. This was based on knowledge accrued from years of treating such unknown upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs) which involves correcting the hideously low levels of vitamin D3 in the population and treating symptoms with regular gargling of aspirin and mouthwash and intranasal sprays. In short, vitamin D3 and topical anti-inflammatory medicines abort colds and flu when given early and frequently.

Why was this not made official policy? I observed severe Covid symptoms melt with such a regimen in many friends and colleagues.

Secondly, why were doctors not allowed to give dexamethasone, which is known to be life-saving in cases of lung inflammation? No, we had to wait for a trial to tell us it worked. A colleague calculated that 4,000 to 5,000 patients died unnecessarily through this decision, which the Chief Medical Officer has to own.

Also why did they stamp on any original idea such as ivermectin, which was dismissed as ‘worm treatment for horses’ when it clearly has some benefit in some Covid cases?

What I am driving at here is that common sense can be classified as fake news by the ever-increasingly power-crazed authorities. The greatest example of this ill-informed madness was the decision to enforce lockdowns not once but twice. It has been calculated that lockdown probably averted 200 Covid deaths but the advisers took no account of the effects on other conditions by denying screening and early treatment of cancer, heart attacks, strokes, not to mention the infliction of severe mental health problems and chronic stress (I personally know of four suicides, two of them medical colleagues). This is before we get on to the big picture – the destruction of young lives, education and the economy.

For what? Sweden refused to follow the lockdown route and not a single child lost a day’s education.

Our experts who felt entitled to tell us what to do and conspired to denigrate those of us with an alternative take such as Professor Sunetra Gupta, myself and other Great Barrington declarants. They cruelly derided Sweden’s state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell for refusing to back lockdown, with 2,000 of his own condemning him.

It has now been accepted by all bar the CCP in China that lockdown was an absolute and avoidable disaster. Yet those of us who were right would be persecuted and prosecuted and struck off by this new emanation from the GMC. Dr Sam White also thought that masks were a waste of time, something every one of the government advisers has agreed with at some time, but they were insisted upon by the Department of Fear, Intimidation and Control of the Population.

Next comes the ‘vaccine’ project. In spite of our warning that a good vaccine needs a powerful T-cell adjuvant, and that the 80 per cent of the spike which mimicked human sequences and was likely to induce side-effects should be omitted, we were dismissed as not important or eminent enough to heed. The vaccines that the establishment backed were experimental medicines designed to reduce morbidity and death in the older population and of course to save the NHS.

So why were they imposed on the whole population without testing to see if they were needed? Even the BCG vaccine was given only to non-tuberculin reactors after a test.

My colleagues started to see serious reactions especially in those below 55 years, which have now been accepted to be real, such as blood clots, strokes, heart inflammation and death. Our original report highlighted the sequence in the spike similar to a neurological protein and severe neurological damage has now been officially recognised. For pointing this out early we were accused of being anti-vaxxers. No, we were not! We were just trying to save people from serious side-effects from a disease with an 0.085 per cent fatality rate.

Presumably the GMC would now strike off anyone, such as Sam White, trying to do the best for their patients. No, they should be looking at the real culprits for this mayhem and whether they had the skills and experience to make these decisions (they did not).

Bizarrely, in this brave new world they were given knighthoods.

April 30, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Vaccine Rollout Correlates With 25% Spike in Cardiac Arrest Emergency Calls for Young Adults, Study Finds

By Will Jones | The Daily Sceptic | April 29, 2022

Emergency calls for cardiac arrest and acute coronary syndrome in young people in Israel were significantly associated with the vaccine rollout, both first and second doses, spiking 25% higher than in earlier years, but not with COVID-19 prevalence, a study in the Nature journal Scientific Reports has found.

Using data from the Israel National Emergency Medical Services (EMS) from 2019 to 2021, the study looked at the volume of cardiac arrest and acute coronary syndrome EMS calls in the 16-39 year-old population. It found an increase of over 25% in both call types during January-May 2021, compared with 2019-2020, but no significant increase in calls correlating with COVID-19 infection rates.

The main finding of this study concerns with increases of over 25% in both the number of CA [cardiac arrest] calls and ACS [acute coronary syndrome] calls of people in the 16-39 age group during the COVID-19 vaccination rollout in Israel (January-May, 2021), compared with the same period of time in prior years (2019 and 2020). Moreover, there is a robust and statistically significant association between the weekly CA and ACS call counts, and the rates of first and second vaccine doses administered to this age group. At the same time there is no observed statistically significant association between COVID-19 infection rates and the CA and ACS call counts. This result is aligned with previous findings which show increases in overall CA incidence were not always associated with higher COVID-19 infections rates at a population level, as well as the stability of hospitalisation rates related to myocardial infarction throughout the initial COVID-19 wave compared to pre-pandemic baselines in Israel. These results also are mirrored by a report of increased emergency department visits with cardiovascular complaints during the vaccination rollout in Germany as well as increased EMS calls for cardiac incidents in Scotland.

While several studies have found severe myocarditis to be a rare adverse effect of the vaccines, the study authors note that myocarditis is often missed, and in fact has been found to be likely responsible for 12-20% of unexpected deaths in adults under 40 in normal times.

Myocarditis is a particularly insidious disease with multiple reported manifestations. There is vast literature that highlights asymptomatic cases of myocarditis, which are often underdiagnosed, as well as cases in which myocarditis can possibly be misdiagnosed as acute coronary syndrome (ACS). Moreover, several comprehensive studies demonstrate that myocarditis is a major cause of sudden, unexpected deaths in adults less than 40 years of age, and assess that it is responsible for 12-20% of these deaths. Thus, it is a plausible concern that increased rates of myocarditis among young people could lead to an increase in other severe cardiovascular adverse events, such as cardiac arrest (CA) and ACS. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this might not be only a theoretical concern.

The results, shown visually in the following graphs, are unmistakable, with clear corresponding spikes in vaccination numbers and emergency calls.

The study does not look at death rates in the age group, but data elsewhere show a clear spike in deaths during the period.

SPR/CBS

Surely it’s well past time these experimental vaccines (in Israel’s case, Pfizer), rushed to market in record time, are withdrawn for younger people.

April 30, 2022 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Study: Lockdowns Drove 60,000 Children in UK to Clinical Depression

By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | April 28, 2022

A new study published in the Royal Society Open Science journal found that lockdowns in the UK caused around 60,000 children to suffer clinical depression.

Researchers detected a 27.1 per cent prevalence of depression amongst their sample, a number significantly higher than would have occurred without lockdowns.

According to a report by the Telegraph, the percentage equates to about 60,000 extra kids who suffered clinical depression thanks to COVID-19 restrictions.

“After controlling for baseline scores and several school and pupil-level characteristics, depressive symptoms were higher in the COVID-19 group,” the study found.

“These findings demonstrate that the COVID-19 pandemic increased adolescent depressive symptoms beyond what would have likely occurred under non-pandemic circumstances.”

Figures show that 400,000 British children were referred to mental health specialists last year for things like eating disorders and self-harm.

Once again, the study underscores how those who vehemently promoted lockdowns, while demanding voices of dissent be silenced, were on the wrong side of history.

As we previously highlighted, a shocking outbreak of hepatitis cases in children was likely caused by lockdowns and social distancing, which served to weaken immune systems, according to health experts.

Many infants are also suffering from cognitive developmental and speech disorders due to adults wearing face coverings during the pandemic.

According to speech therapists, mask wearing has caused a 364% increase in patient referrals of babies and toddlers.

A major study by Johns Hopkins University concluded that global lockdowns have had a much more detrimental impact on society than they have produced any benefit, with researchers urging that they “are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.”

April 28, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Doctors Could Be Struck Off For Questioning Government Line on Lockdowns and Vaccines Under New Guidance

By Will Jones | The Daily Sceptic | April 27, 2022

Doctors who criticise vaccines or lockdown policies on social media could face being struck off if regulators rule they are guilty of spreading ‘fake news’, according to new guidance from the GMC. The Telegraph has the story.

The core guidance for medics has been updated for the first time in almost a decade to cover media such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. The rules on use of social media include a duty to be “honest” and “not to mislead”, as well as to avoid abuse or bullying.

The draft regulations from the General Medical Council (GMC) – which the watchdog describes as a 21st-century version of the Hippocratic Oath – also say doctors must speak out if they encounter “toxic” workplace cultures that threaten patient safety. And they say medics must take action if they encounter workplace bullying, harassment or discrimination.

The watchdog regulates doctors, who can face a range of sanctions – including being struck off the medical register – if they are found to have failed in their duties.

Charlie Massey, the Chief Executive of the GMC, said… the fundamental principles of the guidance remained the same, but had been updated to reflect the modern world.

“We’ve had feedback that doctors want more clarity on using social media. We are already clear that doctors must be honest and trustworthy in their communications, and are now emphasising that this applies to all forms of communication. The principles remain the same whether the communication is written, spoken or via social media,” he said.

The use of social media by medics has become an increasingly vexed issue during the pandemic, the report adds.

In December a judge ruled that the GMC’s interim orders tribunal had made an “error of law” when it ordered a GP accused of spreading misinformation to stop discussing Covid on social media.

Dr. Samuel White, who was a partner at a practice in Hampshire, raised concerns about vaccines and claimed “masks do nothing” in a video posted last June.

The GMC’s Interim Orders Tribunal imposed restrictions on Dr. White’s registration as a result. But the High Court said this decision was “wrong” under human rights law.

He had claimed “lies” around the NHS and Government approach to the pandemic were “so vast” that he could no longer “stomach or tolerate” them.

In August, the tribunal concluded Dr. White’s way of sharing his views “may have a real impact on patient safety”. It found Dr. White allegedly shared information to a “wide and possibly uninformed audience” and did not give an opportunity for “a holistic consideration of COVID-19, its implications and possible treatments”.

But the GP’s barrister, Francis Hoar, argued the restrictions imposed on his client’s registration were a “severe imposition” on his freedom of expression.

The draft guidance says doctors can be held accountable for promoting misleading information or stepping outside areas of their expertise. They are told to “be honest and trustworthy … make clear the limits of your knowledge… [and to] make reasonable checks to make sure any information you give is not misleading.

“This applies to all forms of written, spoken and digital communication,” the draft guidance states. And doctors are warned that online rows and trolling could jeopardise their professional futures.

It is of course outrageous that medics should be at risk of losing their career for questioning on Twitter the Government line on its draconian public health interventions. If there’s one thing we were lacking during the pandemic it was not an excess of conformity amongst doctors. The right of medics to ‘informed dissent’ should be strengthened, as per the High Court ruling in favour of Dr. White, not weakened.

On the other hand, there are plenty of Government advisers I can think of who could do with being penalised for “stepping outside areas of their expertise”. Somehow I doubt anything similar will ever be applied to them, however.

Worth reading in full.

Stop Press: The GMC guidance is still the subject of a public consultation – and anyone can contribute. Click here to begin the process.

April 28, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Political West mulls reshaping UN and what’s left of international law

By Drago Bosnic | April 27, 2022

In order to understand the prelude to World War 2, one cannot ignore the failures of the long-defunct League of Nations, which was a UN-like structure aimed at being a forum of countries resolving disputes through dialogue rather than war. Although just another noble idea before World War 1, in the immediate aftermath of the sheer death and destruction resulting from that conflict, it became an urgent necessity. The League of Nations was supposed to make sure nothing of sorts ever happened again.

Sadly, as we all know, it failed miserably, with an even worse conflict erupting less than 20 years after the Paris Peace Conference was completed. Now, nearly 80 years since the horrors of WW2, we have reached a hauntingly similar point as we realize the UN didn’t just inherit the League of Nations flag, but also many of the same faults which ultimately led the world into yet another disaster of global proportions, one which resonates to this very day.

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is the pillar of the UN and its veto power mechanism serves as a balancing tool which takes into account the interests of world powers and thus provides the UN with relevance which no other international organization or forum of sovereign nations in known history ever had. Currently, the five permanent members of UNSC (China, France, Russia, the UK and the US) can veto any resolution put forth by the body. The council’s other 10 rotating members do not have such powers.

This veto power has especially been a source of frustration for the United States, NATO and the EU. Due to their dominance in the UN General Assembly (UNGA), where there is a swarm of Western client states and statelets, many of which were created through deliberate and oftentimes forceful disintegration of larger and more sovereign nations (for instance, Yugoslavia was split into 6 states and one illegal state-like entity), the political West wants this UN body to be more prominent than the UN Security Council.

By pushing the UN General Assembly to the forefront of decision making, the West could then simply force these countless vassal states and statelets to vote in a way which would be beneficial to the US, EU or NATO and give these decisions a sort of “international community” touch which the political West needs in order to build what they see as a much-needed facade of “international legitimacy”.

Because of this, Western political elites and the mainstream media often try to portray the UNGA as a “more democratic” body than the UNSC. How truly democratic is up for debate, given the sheer amount of US pressure and arm-twisting used to coerce countries into voting not just in line with Western interests, but oftentimes at the expense of their own. And in terms of population distribution, we see that these states and statelets, despite oftentimes being the majority or close to a majority in the UNGA, actually represent less than 20 or even 15 percent of the world’s population. This also explains the Western obsession with forceful fragmentation of larger nations into smaller ones, echoing the ancient Roman policy of divide et impera.

To meet this goal, the UNGA is now considering introducing a provision that would require permanent members of the UN Security Council to justify their use of veto powers. It was tabled by Liechtenstein in mid-April and presented at a closed-door discussion panel last Tuesday. The discussion supposedly “turned out to be quite positive” and the initiative “received additional co-sponsors”, the mission of the microstate to the UN said after the meeting.

“We had a strong turnout and positive engagement on the Veto Initiative in open format this afternoon. We will continue our work to get the strongest possible political support for our text which now has 57 cosponsors,” it stated.

If adopted, the initiative would mandate convening the UNGA within 10 days after a permanent member of the UNSC uses their veto power. At the meeting, the state would have to justify its decision to use the veto. According to Liechtenstein, adopting the provision would “empower the General Assembly and strengthen multilateralism.”

Quite unsurprisingly, so far, the initiative has been openly supported only by one permanent member of the UNSC – the United States. Washington co-sponsored the provision, openly acknowledging the drive is aimed at Moscow and its use of the veto power to block a resolution on the ongoing Russian special military operation in Ukraine. Announcing the co-sponsorship, the US envoy to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield accused Moscow of “misusing” its veto powers.

“We are particularly concerned by Russia’s shameful pattern of abusing its veto privilege over the past two decades,” she stated, adding that, in the latest alleged abuse, Moscow had used the veto power to “protect President Putin from condemnation over his unprovoked and unjust war of choice against Ukraine.”

Of course, it would require an entirely separate analysis to dissect US envoy’s statements, which are filled with “liberal interpretation” of facts. But the statement does confirm the assertion that the political West, and the US in particular, are trying to reshape the UN to their liking, which would result in sidelining US competitors. In doing so, the US might be successful in turning the UN into another footnote of its belligerent foreign policy and even use it to justify sanctions and wars of aggression anywhere in the world.

However, even though this may seem like a victory to the aggressive planners in Washington DC, it may spell a disaster for world peace. By sidelining countries like Russia, China or even India, Brazil, South Africa and many others in the foreseeable future, the US is incentivizing these countries to ignore or even leave the UN, which would bring about the de facto end of international law.

At best, it would result in the creation of another UN-style organization led by those same sidelined countries, bringing about a deeply divided world where there would be at least two blocks – the political West (plus its vassals) and the rest of the world composed of sovereign nations. The last time such a division happened, the world suffered up to 80,000,000 dead in just 6 years.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

April 27, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , | Leave a comment

5 signs they are CREATING a food crisis

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | April 25, 2022

It’s no secret that, according to politicians and the corporate press, “food shortages” and a “food supply crises” have been on the way for a while now. They have been regularly predicted for several years.

What’s really strange is that despite its near-constant incipience, the food shortage never seems to actually arrive and is always blamed on something new.

As long ago as 2012, “scientists” were predicting that climate change and a lack of clean water would create “food shortages” that would “turn the world vegetarian by 2050”.

In 2019, UN “experts” warned that “climate change was threatening the world’s food supply”.

Later the same year, the UK was warned that they could expect a food shortage as a result of “post-Brexit chaos”.

By early March 2020 supermarkets were already “warning” that the government had been too slow to act on the coronavirus outbreak, and they might run out of food. (They never actually did).

A month later, in April 2020 when the “pandemic” was less than three months old, “officials” warned Covid was going to create a global food crisis. Three months later it had ballooned into “the worst food crisis for 50 years”.

In the Summer of 2021 the British press was predicting the “worst food shortages since world war 2” and “rolling power cuts”, allegedly due to a lack of truck drivers blamed equally on Covid and Brexit (neither the shortages nor power cuts ever really materialised).

By September 2021, the UK was told the gas price spike would create a shortage of frozen food, and just a month later, that we may have to ration meat ahead of Christmas, due to the gas crisis. (There never was any rationing)

In January 2022, Australia saw “empty supermarket shelves” blamed on the Omicron variant crippling the supply chain, while the US had the same empty shelves blamed on bad winter weather.

Moving into the spring of 2022, the food crisis is still on its way…only now it’s because of the war in Ukraine, or China’s “Zero Covid” policies, or the bird flu outbreak.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that – since the food crisis is always expected but never arrives, and is always blamed on the current thing – that it doesn’t really exist. That it’s nothing but a psy-op designed to spread panic and give suppliers an excuse to jack up their prices in response to fake “scarcity” created by the press.

However, there are indications that this may be about to change.

In a Brussels press conference on March 25th of this year, Joe Biden said…

Regarding food shortages – yes, we did talk about shortages, and they’re going to be real.”

… which is a decidedly odd thing to say.

Most of the time the only reason to strongly affirm something is “going to be real” from now on, is that up to that point it was not.

Indeed, there are a few signs that the food supply is about to genuinely come under attack.

1. UKRAINE WAR & WESTERN SANCTIONS

It’s well documented that Russia’s “special operation” in Ukraine has driven up the prices of oil, gas and wheat. Partly due to disruption on the ground, but mostly due to Western sanctions.

Russia is the largest exporter of wheat and other grains in the world, and these products are used not just for making food for humans, but also as animal feed. Western nations boycotting Russian wheat will therefore potentially drive up the price of a huge variety of foodstuffs.

We have already seen rationing of sunflower oil (a major Ukrainian export), with reports that this could extend to all kinds of other products including sausages, chicken, pasta and beer.

This war did not need to happen, it could have been prevented (and could still be stopped) by a simple agreement on Ukrainian neutrality. Combine that with the sweeping nature of the anti-Russian sanctions – unmatched in recent history – and you can reason that the chaos on the ground and concomitant increase in food prices is part of a deliberate policy serving the Great Reset agenda.

2. INCREASING THE PRICE OF OIL

The increased price of oil has natural and obvious knock-on effects for every industrial sector – most especially transport, logistics and agriculture. Despite fears of a cost of living crisis, warnings of food shortages and Russia’s status as the largest exporter of oil and gas in the world, Western nations and their allies have made virtually zero effort to lower the cost of oil.

The high oil price has already seen the Russian ruble bounce back to pre-war strength, and yet Saudi Arabia has been increasing their prices, not flooding the market to tank the price as they did in 2014/15.

Keeping the cost of petroleum high is a deliberate policy decision, and one that shows the cost of living crisis – and any resultant food shortages – are being engineered on purpose.

3. BIRD FLU

The press is claiming there is a major bird flu outbreak going on. As we published last week, the dynamics of “bird flu” seem to be identical to Covid. Birds are tested for the virus using PCR tests, culled if they are “positive”, and these culls are then labelled “bird flu deaths”.

This process has already seen at least 27 million poultry birds destroyed in the US alone, the world’s largest exporter of both chicken and eggs. France, Canada and the UK have also culled millions of birds.

Bird flu has already (allegedly) caused the price of chicken and eggs to skyrocket.

(As a potentially important aside, a new report has also warned that pigs can pass “superbugs” to humans, so pigs may be for the chop sometime soon, too)

4. UK & US PAYING FARMERS TO STOP FARMING

Going back to last May, the Biden administration began pushing farmers to add agricultural land to the “conservation reserve program”, a federally funded program allegedly aimed at preserving the environment. The program is essentially paying farmers not to farm. A very odd policy decision, given the widely predicted food shortages.

A state-level plan in California is going to pay farmers to grow less, this time in the name of saving water.

Interestingly, the UK has a similar program going on for (again, allegedly) totally different reasons. Starting this past February, the British government is paying lump sums of up £100,000 to any farmers who want to retire from farming. Again, a strange policy during a period of geopolitical unrest impacting the food supply.

5. MANUFACTURED FERTILISER SHORTAGES

Russia and Belarus are two of the biggest exporters of fertiliser and fertiliser-related products in the world, accounting for around 10 billion dollars worth of trade manually. So, the war in Ukraine (and the sanctions) are already hitting the fertiliser market hard, with prices hitting new all-time highs in March.

China, the third biggest exporter of fertiliser in the world, has had a self-imposed export ban on the product since last summer, allegedly in an effort to keep domestic food prices low.

Given that, it is very strange that America’s Union Pacific Railway has suddenly placed a limit on the number of fertiliser deliveries it will make, informing fertiliser giant CF Industries they will need to cut their train car use by as much as 20%.

In their public response, CF Industries stated:

The timing of this action by Union Pacific could not come at a worse time for farmers…Not only will fertilizer be delayed by these shipping restrictions, but additional fertilizer needed to complete spring applications may be unable to reach farmers at all. By placing this arbitrary restriction on just a handful of shippers, Union Pacific is jeopardizing farmers’ harvests and increasing the cost of food for consumers.”

BONUS: FIRES AT FOOD PROCESSING PLANTS

This get’s a bonus slot, not an official spot, because of the multiple unknowns in this case.

In the strangest and most ephemeral story on the list, it seems there has been a rash of fires at food processing plants all over the United States in the last six months. Since August 2021 at least 16 major fires have broken out at food processing plants all across the country.

In September last year a meat processor in Nebraska burned down, impacting 5% of the country’s beef supply. In March of this year fire shut down a Nestle frozen food plant in Arkansas and a major potato processing site in Belfast, Maine was almost levelled by a huge fire.

The examples just keep on coming.

In just the last week two different single-engine planes have crashed into two different food plants, causing major fires. One at a potato processing plant in Idaho, another at a General Mills plant in Georgia.

Right now we can’t prove this is a deliberate campaign, or even statistically unusual, but it certainly warrants some further investigation.

There’s a good write-up on this story on Tim Pool’s website, and an in-depth twitter thread covering all the recent events from Dr Ben Braddock here.

*

In summary …

  1. A war which did not need to happen is driving up food and oil prices.
  2. Sanctions which did not need to be put in place are also driving up food and oil prices.
  3. Western allies are intentionally raising their oil prices.
  4. Despite warning of a food crisis, US and UK are paying farmers not to farm.
  5. A “bird flu epidemic” very much like the fake Covid “pandemic” is driving up the price of poultry and eggs.
  6. Western companies are actively making the fertiliser shortages worse.
  7. Bizarre fires are crippling large sections of the US food industry.

Taken individually maybe these points could all be seen as mistakes or coincidences, but when you put them all together it’s not hard to spot the pattern. The press may claim we are “sleepwalking” into a food crisis, but it looks more like they’re running head-first into it.

After years of saying there’s a food shortage on the way, it looks like they might be about to finally actually create one.

April 25, 2022 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , | Leave a comment

Sending heavy weapons to Ukraine in German interests?

By Lucas Leiroz | April 22, 2022

Political polarization in Germany continues to increase. Currently, there is strong pressure for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to take a more incisive stance on the Ukrainian issue. The opposition insists on the need to send weapons to support Zelensky, endorsing the speech spread by NATO and the EU. It is evident that by refusing to take such positions, Scholz is trying to look for the interests of his country, but it remains to be seen whether he will be really strong enough to deal with the pressure coming both externally, from Brussels and London, and internally in Berlin.

Recently, Scholz met in London with his British counterpart Boris Johnson to discuss the Ukrainian conflict. During the conversation, Johnson clearly pressed Scholz to go along with the UK and the rest of the West in their stance of absolute opposition to Russia in the conflict. The Chancellor, however, avoided giving clear answers and maintained his ambiguous position on the possibility of supporting Kiev militarily, preventing from doing more incisive statements and preferring silence.

What happened next was even more remarkable and symbolic: the British prime minister traveled to Kiev to meet with Zelensky while Scholz returned to Germany in order to promote electoral campaign. The international mainstream media took advantage of the fact to intensify its pro-NATO propaganda, claiming that Scholz is concerned only with his internal political condition, ignoring the current international situation, while the Western world is supposedly “concerned” and takes the Ukrainian issue as a “humanitarian” priority.

In Germany, Scholz’s opponents are also increasingly agitated to criticize the chancellor, taking benefit of international pressure to intensify polarization and generate a crisis of legitimacy against him. Obviously, this was a predictable attitude on the part of opposition groups, but the main problem currently is that Scholz is losing support within his own coalition. The Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the Green Party are deeply dissatisfied with Germany’s unwillingness to send weapons to Kiev and use the case as a pretext to point to Scholz as a “big problem” to be solved through an electoral overthrow. And, in this sense, his situation is really worsening day after day.

In general, Scholz’s enemies demand that he takes a more active stance on the German role in the conflict. The chancellor is characterized by an extremely passive posture, avoiding making decisions until they become inevitable. Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, a member of the FDP and head of the Defense Committee in parliament, for example, recently commented that Scholz needs to “take the baton in his hand and set the rhythm.” In other words, opponents are asking Scholz to guarantee Germany a leading role on the European stage, as might be expected from the continent’s greatest economic power.

The central problem in this topic is that Scholz already seems to have realized that the most strategic thing for Germany is to remain as neutral as possible and away from any involvement in activities that harm the partnership with Russia, which is a very important commercial pillar for Germany. Scholz did not want to adhere to large-scale economic sanctions, especially regarding the SWIFT ban and the energy boycott. But he was forced to slowly accept such measures as other Western countries implemented them. This has been his typical behavior: postponing but, in the end, passively adhering to all Western measures when he finds himself “isolated”.

In this sense, the opposition is right on one point: Scholz has to change his attitudes and assume a leadership position, since this is what is expected from a country like Germany, which for years has consolidated itself as one of the “leaders” of the European bloc. The oppositionists’ problem is that they are pressuring Scholz to assume a leadership stance that is as damaging to German interests as his current indecision and passivity.

It is naive to think that sending heavy weapons to Ukraine benefits German interests in any way. On the contrary, it only extends the abyss between Moscow and Berlin even further, and with practically no benefit in return for the Germans: neither Ukraine will be sufficiently strengthened to win the conflict by receiving such heavy weaponry, nor will Germany reassume a supposed role of “leadership” in Europe.

It is not by chance that the greatest pressure on the Germans so far has been exerted precisely by Boris Johnson. The UK is not part of the EU and therefore does not care about the German role in the bloc, but, on the other hand, it is one of the most important members of NATO and tries to elevate its status in the military alliance as a way of boosting its international image in this post-Brexit context. In fulfilling British requests, Scholz would only be pursuing non-German and non-European interests.

It is obvious that there is also pressure within Europe and within Germany itself, but this pressure belongs to an outdated view of what the role of Germans and Europeans in the Western world should be. Scholz’s opponents apparently still expect a totally submissive stance on NATO from Berlin. This is also a very active thought in Brussels, with a strong tendency to see the entire European continent as a mere annex of the American military umbrella, ignoring that Europe has its own interests, which can often collide with those of the Western military alliance. That is why, in trying to prevent Germany from getting actively involved in the Ukrainian case, Scholz proves to be a really pragmatic politician who prioritizes the interests of his own country, but without the political force necessary to guarantee them.

In addition, there is a topic that needs to be mentioned, which is the German military passiveness of the last seventy years. Although it is active within NATO and has been trying to reform its defense forces in recent years, Berlin remains a virtual-demilitarized country, with an army of low offensive potential, outdated weaponry and a low-investment war industry.

In order to send heavy weapons to Ukraine, Germany would have to start a broad military industrial investment, which would cost it not only millions of euros, but a change in its international image, returning to being a nation of effective participation in international conflicts. Of course, improving its military status is a German right, but it must be taken into account in the name of what Berlin intends to do so. Would it really be strategic to break with seventy years of pacifism to defend the interests of the Maidan Junta in a conflict where Russian victory is highly predictable?

Scholz needs to be strong and active in defending German interests. His posture of passivity and silence demonstrates weakness and damages the image of both him and his country. But his stance must not be to subject Germany even more to foreign interests: on the contrary, he must assert what is in Berlin’s interests and pragmatically defend it, even if he has to clash with the NATO’s plans to do so. If Germany is interested in neutrality and maintaining good relations with Russia, Scholz must not only refrain from adhering to the new Western sanctions but also revoke those taken so far.

Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and a geopolitical consultant.

April 22, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

NATO seeks to punish Belgrade’s Ukraine War policy by arming Kosovo

By Paul Antonopoulos | April 21, 2022

After supplying equipment and emboldening a militarized Ukraine, Britain has now started arming Kosovo’s Albanians with Javelin and NLAW anti-tank missile systems. The British Embassy in Belgrade said that some Serbian media published fabricated claims of arms exports from the United Kingdom to Kosovo and claimed that there was no truth to those allegations. However, Serbian Minister of the Interior Aleksandar Vulin insists that the UK did transfer weapons to Kosovo, stating: “You are creating an army, arming them, giving them armored vehicles, anti-tank systems, drones, conducting training, we hear that you are sending them to trial courses in Turkey and Albania,” adding that the integration of Kosovo into NATO is only intended to “provoke Serbia.”

London seemingly wants to use the situation in Ukraine to increase pressure on the Serbs over the issues in Kosovo and Bosnia & Herzegovina (BiH). Before the Russian military operation commenced in Ukraine, Britain was already heavily involved in security issues in the Balkans. It is recalled that Boris Johnson warned of an extremely dangerous situation in the Balkans as early as December last year and appointed Air Marshal Sir Stuart Peach as the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy to the Western Balkans.

Following Brexit, the UK did everything it could to keep its presence in Europe, including in the Western Balkans where the roots of conflict already exist and threaten to boilover. The UK advocated for the maximum strengthening of Operation Althea (formally the European Union Force Bosnia and Herzegovina), the strengthening of the NATO contingent in the country, and even coordinated the unilateral arrival of British contingents and forces on the territory of BiH.

Such British (and NATO) militarization awakens anxieties and counters the security of both Serbia and the Balkans, with the violent wars of the 1990’s still fresh in the memory. The UK will likely continue to deliver equipment to the Balkans and also encourage other NATO members to strengthen anti-Serbian militaries in the region.

This comes as Montenegro seems synchronised in terms of Russophobia and pointing to Serbia as a disruptive factor in the region. This is ironic when considering Montenegro has no independence itself and follows the interests of the UK and US instead. Albania is also another key to Anglo designs over the Balkans, especially as they enthusiastically express their willingness to take practical steps to strengthen NATO forces in the Balkans.

The Western arming of Kosovo, bolstering of BiH, and encouragement for Montenegro and Albania to militarize is a warning to Serbia that it should not be so close to Russia, especially in the context of the Ukraine War.

The fact that foreign instructors are arriving with military systems in Kosovo is not a novelty because they have so far trained Kosovo Albanian soldiers in special forces, support units, telecommunications, anti-armour, PVO systems and more. However, this is likely just elementary training and an incomplete process with a future aim of fully equipping Kosovo’s forces with much more powerful weapon systems.

London is making such a decision to arm Kosovo even though there is no complete consensus in NATO regarding the status of the territory, with Greece, Romania, Slovakia and Spain refusing to recognize its illegally declared independence from Serbia. Despite a consensus not being reached, London and Washington are working timelessly to assist Pristina and construct some kind of Kosovo Army.

In effect, the Anglo Alliance are further radicalising Kosovo’s Albanians and encouraging destabilisation in the Balkans. Instead of punishing Kosovo’s de facto Prime Minister Albin Kurti for banning Kosovo Serbs from voting, they reward him with weapons and further integration into NATO.

Lightweight anti-missile and Javelin anti-tank systems, most commonly mentioned as part of a Western “support” package for the Ukrainian Armed Forces against Russia, have become part of the arsenal of Kosovo’s so-called security forces. The acquisition was agreed at a meeting between Albin Kurti and Boris Johnson in February this year, and according to Serbia but denied by the UK, the first contingent of 50 systems was delivered in April.

At the same time, the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee will hold a session to discuss a draft resolution that will invite Serbia to harmonise with EU decisions in foreign and security policy, including sanctions on Russia. A draft resolution proposed by EP rapporteur for Serbia, Vladimir Bilczyk, expressed regret over the fact that Serbia failed to comply with EU sanctions following Russia’s military operation in Ukraine and urged Serbian authorities to show “a real commitment to EU values.”

The draft resolution reminds Serbian authorities that progress in the dialogue on normalising relations with Kosovo will determine the pace of EU accession negotiations. The proposed text is to be adopted by the European Parliament at a plenary session this year.

In effect, the EU and the Anglo Alliance are working in tandem to move Serbia away from Russia. The EU provides the carrot of bloc membership while the Anglo Alliance provides the stick by arming, training and militarizing Kosovo’s Albanians against Serbia. Given that Serbia has already experienced the full horrors of NATO and could do little as Europe divided the Serbian people by establishing new countries and not allowing them to be in the borders of Serbia, it is unlikely that Belgrade will be intimidated into abandoning its long, tried and tested relationship with Moscow.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

April 21, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »