In the early stages of the full-scale invasion, Ukrainian ingenuity and ability to adapt commercially available equipment helped stem the Russian advance. It proved less useful on the eastern front line, when Ukraine needed heavy weapons. But a year after the invasion, there’s little doubt that Ukraine’s DIY ingenuity has left a lasting mark on modern warfare.
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NHS Paid Billions for Private Hospital Beds to Prevent a Backlog But Never Bothered to Use Them
Back in the scary but innocent days of March 2020 the Government and NHS sought to maximise hospital capacity. This was surely the right thing to do, given the uncertainty of the pandemic, but many of its efforts backfired badly.
First, NHS Hospitals decanted bed-blockers without testing them for SARS-CoV-2. Some were infected, igniting lethal nursing-home outbreaks. Secondly, the Government commissioned Nightingale Hospitals to great fanfare. Unfortunately, as it should have perceived beforehand and soon discovered, there weren’t enough doctors and nurses to staff these facilities. The Nightingales quietly closed over the subsequent months, having treated derisory numbers of patients. Some treated no one at all. Half a billion of taxpayers’ money went pop. Third, the Government spent £2 billion to buy-up capacity at private hospitals, which did have staff, beds and expertise. The BMJ, whose article is worth reading in full, has managed – after multiple FOI requests – to analyse how this turned out, and it isn’t pretty.
In the BMJ’s words:
The major deal bought the entire capacity of 200 private hospitals, including 8,000 private beds, 1,200 ventilators, 700 doctors and 10,000 nurses, to help the NHS care for patients with COVID-19, with cancer, or needing urgent operations…
The national contract block booked beds, equipment, and staff… It allowed NHS teams to take over whole departments of private hospitals if necessary. NHS England agreed to pay for the bulk of the hospitals’ operating costs, including staff, consumables, rent, capital expenditure, building modifications and infrastructure.
According to the BMJ, the March 2020 plan was for this extra capacity to be used for Covid patients, but this changed in May 2020, with the independent sector told to concentrate upon elective patients whose surgery had been delayed whilst the NHS concentrated upon Covid. I believe that this was true of provincial England but that, from the start, the London plan was that the NHS would handle Covid whilst contracted private sites remained ‘Covid clear’ and undertook medical and surgical treatments that would otherwise be delayed.
Minnesota Bar Owner Faces $350,000 In Fines For Defying State COVID-19 Restrictions
A Minnesota bar owner lost her business, liquor and food service licenses, and is facing up to $350,000 in fines for violating a governor’s executive order. But the Minnesota Attorney General’s lawsuit doesn’t list any actual harm caused by her actions.
“I didn’t break the law; I defied the executive order,” Lisa Monet Zarza told The Epoch Times.
Zarza’s attorney, Richard Dahl of Brainerd, Minnesota, did not respond to a request for comment by The Epoch Times. Nor did the Minnesota Attorney General’s office.
The lawsuit was filed in Minnesota District Court in Dakota County. It alleges that Lionheart LLC, doing business as Alibi Drinkery of Lakeville, Minnesota, opened for business illegally from Dec. 16–30, 2020.
This is a Ticking Time Bomb
Frightening Poll Shows Half of Britons Support Tony Blair’s Proposal for National Digital ID Cards
Sir Tony Blair, together with ex-Tory leader William Hague, has called on the Government to introduce a digital ID that people can have on their phones that would hold details such as their passport, driving licence, tax records, qualifications and right to work status. Frighteningly, a poll by YouGov (who else?) showed that more than half of respondents supported such an invasive and high-risk surveillance project. The Mail has more.
Sir Tony – who attempted to introduce ID cards while in Downing Street – insisted that new biometric technology would overcome concerns about online dangers.
He and Lord Hague have insisted that a “fundamental reshaping of the state around technology” is needed amid a “radically” shaping world.
Critics hit back at the push for digital IDs, with ex-Tory chairman Sir Jake Berry branding it “a creepy state plan to track you from the cradle to the grave”.
Campaign group Big Brother Watch condemned Sir Tony for “reviving failed proposals for an intrusive mass digital identity system and a database state”.
But a snap poll by YouGov revealed more than half of Britons (54%) would support the introduction of a system of national ID cards in Britain.
According to the survey of more than 4,000 adults today, almost a quarter (23%) said they would strongly support national ID cards, with 31% saying they would tend to support such a plan.
This compared to 13% who said they would tend to oppose the introduction of national ID cards and 14% who said they would strongly oppose such a plan. Almost one in five (18%) replied “don’t know”. …
Outlining their proposals [in a joint article for the Times] for a shake-up of Whitehall – including digital IDs for every citizen – they also called for “a national health infrastructure that uses data to improve care and keep costs down, and sovereign AI systems backed by supercomputing capabilities”. …
In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, Sir Tony highlighted how countries “as small as Estonia and as large as India’ are moving towards digital IDs. If you look at the biometric technology that allows you to do digital ID today, it can overcome many of these problems,” he added.
US Judge Says Families of 9/11 Victims Not Entitled to Afghan Central Bank Funds
A US judge has determined that families of the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks are not entitled to Afghan central bank funds that the Biden administration has seized.
During the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and the US withdrawal in 2021, the Biden administration froze $7 billion in Afghan central bank reserves that are held by the Federal Reserve. Biden signed an order to make half of the funds available for 9/11 families even though the people of Afghanistan had nothing to do with the attacks.
US District Judge George Daniels in Manhattan said that allowing the money to go to 9/11 families would amount to recognizing the Taliban as the legitimate government. Daniels said he didn’t have the power to do so since the Biden administration doesn’t recognize the Taliban-led government that holds power in Kabul.
Without Digital ID The 4th Industrial Revolution falls, Hold Your Line
TONY BLAIR – Backed by the UN Agenda 30, WEF, NATO, WHO AND UNICEF now in the final push for Digital ID.
Without Digital ID The 4th Industrial Revolution falls!
Their reset of society absolutely depends on it!
Hold. Your. Line!
— Bernie’s Tweets (@BernieSpofforth) February 22, 2023
Cenotaph on Scotland Yard’s Secret List of Suspect Statues
Statues of Winston Churchill, Horatio Nelson, Earl Mountbatten of Burma and Oliver Cromwell, as well as the Cenotaph, are on a list of ‘contentious’ statutes compiled by Scotland Yard. The Telegraph has more.
The Cenotaph, Britain’s chief national war memorial, has been placed on a secret Scotland Yard list of “contentious statues” prone to attack because of their links to war, imperialism or slavery.
The former Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s statue in Parliament Square is also included on the list because of his claims that British imperialism was for the good of the “primitive” and “subject races”, although he is wrongly accused in it of murdering three million Indians.
The list has been uncovered by the think tank Policy Exchange through freedom of information requests as part of an investigation into what it claims is declining law and order and increasing squalor around the Palace of Westminster.
The report, Tarnished Jewel, cites police data that shows violent crime has risen two and a half times faster in the streets around Parliament than in London as a whole, and three times faster than in the borough of Westminster as a whole.
It says police have allowed serious potential security threats to develop in the area, while extreme right and left-wing protesters have been able to threaten MPs, ministers and journalists.
The report’s author, Andrew Gilligan, a former political aide to Boris Johnson and a journalist, said: “Nowhere else in Europe, with the possible exception of the Eiffel Tower, is more famous, or more emblematic of its nation. Yet what should be a showpiece has declined into a degree of squalor and disorder.”
The list of statues explains why they might be targeted by protesters including the Cenotaph, which it says “functions as the UK’s official national war memorial”.
Read More: Cenotaph on Scotland Yard’s Secret List of Suspect Statues
Boris Johnson “Now is the moment to accelerate our support for Ukraine and give the heroic Ukrainian military the tools it needs to finish the job”
Now is the moment to accelerate our support for Ukraine and give the heroic Ukrainian military the tools it needs to finish the job.
Putin must and will be defeated. pic.twitter.com/gBDHUQI7CI
— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) February 21, 2023
Transhumanism: What Is It And Why Is It Evil?
Transhumanism is a very strong trend among the Western élites. Its aim is to overcome the natural limitations of human biology using technology.
Proponents of transhumanism, including Yuval Harari and Klaus Schwab, believe in ideas such as these:
that we can improve the human body to create cyborgs, which are fictive organisms in which human organs and technology are seamlessly combined;
that properties such as human intelligence can be genetically enhanced by germline genome manipulation;
that mRNA technology will soon allow us to “write circuitry for cells and predictably program biology in the same way in which we write software and program computers” (as worded in President Biden’s Executive Order on biotechnology);
that we will soon cure cancer using genetic or even nano-mechanic (tiny machine) therapies;
that machines will shortly be able to read thoughts;
that there is no free will because the mind is a collection of biochemical processes;
that soon we will obtain digital immortality by “uploading our minds to the cloud”;
that “artificial intelligence” (AI) will soon lead to machines more intelligent than humans;
and either
that AI will make most humans useless to society because all their work will be taken over by machines,
or
that we will be able to genetically reprogram the sex of adult humans in the near future—
to name just a few of the ideas they espouse.