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Retracted Papers Written by Journal VIP

By Donna Laframboise | Big Picture News | June 17, 2020

The lead author of two retracted COVID-19 papers is editor-in-chief of an Elsevier medical journal.

Earlier this month, two high-profile research papers were retracted on the same day. One, published in The Lancet, had concluded that coronavirus patients treated with malaria drugs were more likely to die. Published on May 22, it was officially withdrawn 13 days later.

Another, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found no evidence that widely prescribed medications increase the death rate of hospitalized COVID-19 patients with pre-existing heart problems.

The lead author in both instances was Mandeep Mehra, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and the person in charge of the Heart and Vascular Center at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

The second listed author was Sapan Desai. An online bio describes him as an “internationally-recognized double board certified vascular surgeon.” Desai is the founder of Surgisphere Corporation, a data analytics firm which claimed to have acquired 96,000 highly-detailed electronic medical records of COVID-19 patients from 671 hospitals on six continents.

The Lancet paper’s dramatic findings interrupted drug trials and changed government policy in multiple countries. It also increased the anxiety of coronavirus patients who’d been participating in those trials.

But six days after the paper appeared, more than 100 “clinicians, medical researchers, statisticians, and ethicists” addressed an open letter to the authors, and to Lancet editor-in-chief Richard Horton, questioning the integrity of the cited data.

Why were the hospitals which supplied this data not identified? Why weren’t standard statistical practices employed? Why no ethics review? Why didn’t the paper invite other researchers to examine for themselves the underlying data and computer code?

According to these experts, the medication dose sizes discussed were odd, drug ratios sounded “implausible,” the Australian data was obviously erroneous, and the African data seemed “unlikely.”

Yet none of The Lancet‘s peer-reviewers apparently noticed. “In the interests of transparency,” said the signatories of the open letter, “we also ask The Lancet to make openly available the peer review comments that led to this manuscript to be accepted for publication [sic].”

An article in the New York Times says these events “have alarmed scientists worldwide who fear that the rush for research on the coronavirus has overwhelmed the peer review process.” Lancet editor Horton, it reports, now describes the retracted paper as a “fabrication” and “a monumental fraud.”

A headline in the UK Guardian says The Lancet has made one of the biggest retractions in modern history. How, asks the article that follows,

did a paper of such consequence get discarded like a used tissue by some of its authors only days after publication? If the authors don’t trust it now, how did it get published in the first place?…the sad truth is peer review in its entirety is struggling…

Neither of those articles mentioned an astonishing fact. Lead author Mehra is himself the editor-in-chief of The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation. Part of Elsevier’s scholarly publishing empire, this monthly journal hires editors for five-year terms. Mehra’s second term is coming to end, and last year the search for a replacement began.

As the posted job description explains, the editor-in-chief is responsible for overseeing the peer review of papers submitted to that journal. He or she is constantly evaluating research, sorting solid science from weak science. The new editor-in-chief, we’re told, must have “a demonstrated understanding of statistics and statistical methods.”

So how could a man who has spent the past 10 years in such a role have authored this pair of retracted papers? How could anyone with any statistical sophistication have taken such dodgy data at face value?

“No matter which way you examine the data, use of these [malaria] drug regimens did not help,” Mehra declared in a press release when The Lancet paper was published. But it now appears he didn’t directly examine the data at all. On the day the paper was retracted, he explained in a subsequent statement:

Dr. Desai, who served as a co-author and whose team maintained this observational database, conducted various analyses. As first author, these were provided to me, and on the basis of these analyses, we published two peer-reviewed papers…

In other words, this longtime editor-in-chief took someone else’s word for it. He failed to ask elementary questions. He took it on faith that the analyses had been properly conducted. Mehra continued:

It is now clear to me that in my hope to contribute this research during a time of great need, I did not do enough to ensure that the data source was appropriate for this use. For that, and for all the disruptions – both directly and indirectly – I am truly sorry.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the vaunted peer review system in action. Naive trust. Blind faith. By Mehra. By The Lancet. By the New England Journal of Medicine. Even when real lives, right now, hang in the balance.

Four years ago, I authored a report demonstrating that peer review is merely a sniff test. Typically performed by unpaid volunteers, it’s based on wholly subjective criteria, and is highly influenced by the pre-existing beliefs of those doing the reviewing. My report contains this paragraph:

In 2014, Science announced measures to provide deeper scrutiny of statistical claims in the research it publishes. John Ioannidis, the author of a seminal 2005 paper asserting that most published research findings are false, called this announcement “long overdue”. In his opinion, statistical review has become more important than traditional peer review for a “majority of scientific papers”.

In many places, statistical review still doesn’t occur. Even in our current situation, when COVID-19 research has the power to halt drug trials and change history, the vetting process at medical journals is a joke.

June 21, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Despite court ban, UK continues arms sales to Saudi Arabia: Report

Smoke billows following an airstrike by Saudi-led coalition in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, June 16, 2020. (Photo by AFP)
Press TV – June 21, 2020

The British government has apparently turned a blind eye to a landmark court ruling that restricts the sales of arms to Saudi Arabia for use against Yemen.

According to a report published by the British daily Guardian on Sunday, the court of appeals declared last year that British arms sales to the kingdom were “unlawful,” and accused ministers of ignoring whether airstrikes that killed civilians in Yemen broke humanitarian law.

At the time, the court barred the UK government from approving any new license to Saudi Arabia and ordered then Secretary of State for International Trade Liam Fox to hold an immediate review of at least 4.7 billion pounds’ worth of arms deals with Saudi Arabia.

British international trade authorities said at the time that the process would take “up to several months.”

Nevertheless, arms exports continue without properly assessing the risk to civilians, a year after the verdict, and fighter jet components as well as aircraft maintenance services are being offered to the Riyadh regime.

British multinational defense, security, and aerospace company BAE Systems, which is recognized as the UK’s largest arms exporter to Saudi Arabia, confirmed in its 2019 report that it continues to provide the kingdom with support services for twin-engine and multirole Eurofighter Typhoon warplanes under a contract struck in 2018.

Lately, Shadow Secretary of State for International Trade Emily Anne Thornberry, together with members of other opposition parties, wrote a letter to Secretary of State for International Trade Liz Truss in protest at the arms licenses that continue to operate.

“We are left to assume that – despite being ordered to review these licenses by the courts, and having 12 months to do so – your department has simply chosen not to comply,” they argued.

They warn that the British government’s expected failure to comply “creates the illogical situation where a UK company that applies for a license today will have that application rejected, but another company that was granted its license prior to 20 June last year may export exactly the same arms without restriction.”

Andrew Smith, of the Campaign Against the Arms Trade, said, “The UK government has consistently put arms company interests ahead of the rights and lives of people in Yemen. The government has proven that it cannot be trusted to implement its own rules.”

The United Kingdom has reportedly licensed the sale of arms worth over 5.3 billion pounds to Saudi Arabia ever since Riyadh and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating war on Yemen in March 2015 in order to bring former President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crush the Houthi Ansarullah movement.

The US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the war has claimed more than 100,000 lives over the past five years.

June 21, 2020 Posted by | War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Were COVID-19 and COVID-20 Created in a US Lab?

By Larry Romanoff | Moon of Shanghai | June 21, 2020

It was amusing to watch the emergence of this debate on the US-China stage. The Chinese were understandably unwilling to be blamed for the emergence of a virus in which they had no part, and thus reacted strongly to accusations the virus originated in a Wuhan lab. The Americans proved to be even more terrified at the possibility of scientific proof that the virus escaped from one of their bio-labs, and resorted to the only weapon they had which was to turn up the volume on blaming China. There were two main reasons for this state of affairs: (1) The US was the only country known to contain all the varieties that were being spread worldwide. (2) The US is the only nation in the world known to have repeatedly used biological weapons on other countries, beginning with North Korea and never ceasing. Of even more damning consequence is the known locations of about 400 American bio-weapons labs spread throughout the world, to say nothing of the pathetically-lax institution at Fort Detrick. (1) (2) (3)

Moreover, Trump recently claimed he could kill the entire population of Afghanistan within days. “Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the Earth. It would be gone and this is not using nuclear. It would be over in – literally, in 10 days.” Biological weapons would seem the only alternative. Hemorrhagic Fever and Hantavirus worked for the US in North Korea; perhaps also Afghanistan. (4) (5) (6) Mr. Trump later denied intention to carry out his threat, but let’s dispense with the fiction of the US having no biological weapons and that Fort Detrick and the 400 foreign labs  are performing only benevolent “peace medicine” functions. If it were China with the above history and SARS, MERS, AIDS, EBOLA, bird flu, swine flu, and COVID-19 first erupted in the US, the Americans would claim this as 100% proof that China was responsible. It cannot be a surprise that much of the world today is naturally tending to lay these outbreaks at America’s doorstep.

But returning to our topic of man-made COVID-19 or COVID-20, it seems everyone has been a little too eager to dismiss the possibility (or probability) of these viruses having a (human) helping hand.

Dr. Mae-Wan Ho of the Institute for Science in Society cites a Journal of Virology report (Feb 2000) (7) that described a method for inducing desired mutations into coronavirus to create new viruses. “Manipulating viral genomes is now routine, and it is easy to create new viruses that jump host species in the laboratory in the course of apparently legitimate experiments in genetic engineering. It is not even necessary to intentionally create lethal viruses, if one so wishes. It is actually much faster and much more effective to let random recombination and mutation take place in the test tube. Using a technique called ‘molecular breeding’, millions of recombinants can be generated in a matter of minutes. These can be screened for improved function in the case of enzymes, or increased virulence, in the case of viruses and bacteria. In other words, geneticists can now greatly speed up evolution in the laboratory to create viruses and bacteria that never existed in all the billions of years of evolution on earth.” (8) It wasn’t widely publicised, but Dr. Ho called for a full investigation into the possible genetic engineering and dissemination of the SARS virus. (9)

Then another article in which the author explained that scientists eager to dispel the notion of an artificial origin, do so by pointing out that these new coronaviruses didn’t reflect their computer simulations, the author stating, “To put it simply, the authors are saying that SARS-CoV-2 was not deliberately engineered because if it were, it would have been designed differently.” However, the London-based molecular geneticist Dr Michael Antoniou commented that this line of reasoning fails to take into account that there are a number of laboratory-based systems that can select for high affinity RBD variants that are able to take into account the complex environment of a living organism. “So the fact that COVID-19 didn’t have the same RBD amino acid sequence as the one that the computer program predicted in no way rules out the possibility that it was genetically engineered.” (10)

The article further states that “[The] authors of the Nature Medicine article seem to assume that the only way to genetically engineer a virus is to take an already known virus and then engineer it to have the new properties you want. On this premise, they looked for evidence of an already known virus that could have been used in the engineering of SARS-CoV-2. Since they failed to find that evidence, they stated, “Genetic data irrefutably show that SARS-CoV-2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone.” But Dr Antoniou told us that while the authors did indeed show that SARS-CoV-2 was unlikely to have been built by deliberate genetic engineering from a previously used virus backbone, that’s not the only way of constructing a virus. A well-known alternative process that could have been used has the cumbersome name of “directed iterative evolutionary selection process”. In this case, it would involve using genetic engineering to generate a large number of randomly mutated versions of the SARS-CoV spike protein receptor binding domain (RBD), which would then be selected for strong binding to the ACE2 receptor and consequently high infectivity of human cells.

“This selection can be done either with purified proteins or, better still, with a mixture of whole coronavirus (CoV) preparations and human cells in tissue culture. This preparation of phage, displaying on its surface a “library” of CoV spike protein variants, is then added to human cells under laboratory culture conditions in order to select for those that bind to the ACE2 receptor. This process is repeated under more and more stringent binding conditions until CoV spike protein variants with a high binding affinity are isolated. Once any of the above selection procedures for high affinity interaction of SARS-CoV spike protein with ACE2 has been completed, then whole infectious CoV with these properties can be manufactured. Such a directed iterative evolutionary selection process is a frequently used method in laboratory research.”

There is, incidentally, another possible way that COVID-19 could have been developed in a laboratory, but in this case without using genetic engineering. This was pointed out by Nikolai Petrovsky, a researcher at the College of Medicine and Public Health at Flinders University in South Australia. Petrovsky says that coronaviruses can be cultured in lab dishes with cells that have the human ACE2 receptor. Over time, the virus will gain adaptations that let it efficiently bind to those receptors. Along the way, that virus would pick up random genetic mutations that pop up but don’t do anything noticeable. “The result of these experiments is a virus that is highly virulent in humans but is sufficiently different that it no longer resembles the original bat virus. Because the mutations are acquired randomly by selection, there is no signature of a human gene jockey, but this is clearly a virus still created by human intervention.”

Notes

(1) https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/virus-biological-us-army-weapons-fort-detrick-leak-ebola-anthrax-smallpox-ricin-a9042641.html
(2) https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/02/gary-d-barnett/the-u-s-is-the-world-leader-of-bio-weapons-research-production-and-use-against-mankind/
(3) https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-military-bio-labs-in-ukraine-production-of-bio-weapons-and-disease-causing-agents/5605307
(4) https://www.globalresearch.ca/did-trump-tacitly-threaten-use-biological-weapons/5687936
(5) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-24/why-did-donald-trump-say-he-could-kill-10-million-afghans/11342794
(6) https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/08/21/604070/US-President-Donald-Trump-Afghanistan-war-win-without-nuclear-weapons
(7) http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/10627550
(8) https://www.i-sis.org.uk/SAGE.php
(9) m.w.ho@i-sis.org.uk
(10) https://gmwatch.org/en/news/latest-news/19383-where-did-the-covid-19-virus-come-from

Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com.

June 21, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

‘Destructive course’: US seeks space superiority by making up threats – Russian Foreign Ministry

RT | June 19, 2020

Washington’s Defense Space Strategy is provoking an arms race in outer space and threatening international security while trying to blame a nonexistent Moscow threat, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) has said.

“To justify the implementation of this destructive course, which provokes an arms race in outer space and destabilizes the international security situation, Washington has resorted to the usual tactics of blaming others,” the MFA said in a statement on Friday.

In the US Defense Space Strategy, the declassified summary of which was published on Wednesday, the Pentagon simply asserts that “China and Russia have weaponized space and turned it into a warfighting domain.” Without offering any evidence or specifics, the Pentagon references the 2014 Russian military doctrine as envisioning the possibility of challenging the US operations in orbit.

“Of course, there is nothing of the kind in the Military Doctrine of Russia,” the MFA says, adding that the document is freely available to anyone who wishes to check that. The doctrine focuses on countering the attempts of other states to achieve military superiority by placing weapons in outer space, which would be in violation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.

While the US says it wants to “promote standards and norms of behavior in space” favorable to its interests, Washington has refused to discuss Russian and Chinese proposals for a legally binding international instrument to prevent a space arms race, the MFA added.

According to the Defense Space Strategy, the US “relies on space-based capabilities to project and employ power on a global scale” more than any other country, to the point where “space capabilities not only enhance, but enable our way of life and way of war.”

“US national security and prosperity require unfettered access to and freedom to operate in the space domain.”

President Donald Trump established the Space Force as the sixth service branch of the US military in December 2019. The fledgling operation is currently a subset of the US Air Force.

June 21, 2020 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Iran parliament: IAEA resolution proof of structural discrimination within UN nuclear watchdog

Press TV – June 21, 2020

The majority of lawmakers at the Iranian parliament have denounced an anti-Iran resolution recently passed by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Board of Governors, saying the document is another indication of “structural discrimination” within the UN atomic watchdog.

In a statement read out on Sunday by Ali Karimi Firouzjaee, a member of the parliament’s presiding board, 240 MPs argued that the IAEA resolution — introduced by the three European signatories to a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, namely France, Germany, and Britain — explicitly demonstrated the trio’s “excessive demands.”

The Islamic Republic has voluntarily implemented the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and allowed the IAEA to conduct the most rigorous inspections of its nuclear sites in the history of the Vienna-based agency, read the statement.

The lawmakers further complained about the hypocrisy of the European trio, saying they devised “the illegal anti-Iran resolution” contrary to their claims to remain committed to the Iran deal and to make efforts to salvage the deal.

The IAEA resolution clearly indicates, the MPs warned, that the three European states “have once again fallen into the trap of the United States and the Zionist regime, and joined forces with them in the failed US project of exerting maximum pressure against Iran, hence dealing another blow to international multilateralism.”

Passed by a 25-2 margin with seven abstentions, the IAEA resolution called on Iran to “fully cooperate” with the IAEA and “satisfy the Agency’s requests without any further delay,” including by providing “prompt” access to two nuclear sites.

Tehran has rejected allegations of non-cooperation with the IAEA, arguing that the mentioned sites are totally irrelevant to its current nuclear program, and that the agency’s insistence on inspecting the two locations comes on the basis of fabricated information provided by Israel.

“Iran’s parliament strongly condemns the IAEA Board of Governors’ resolution, which was adopted against Iran’s national interests based on a proposal by three European countries, Britain, France and Germany, under pressure from the US regime and the fake Zionist regime on June 19, 2020,” the statement read, adding that the resolution was “another sign of structural discrimination within the IAEA.”

The Iranian lawmakers also expressed their gratitude to China and Russia for voicing their opposition to the biased resolution, which they called “an obvious attempt at political extortion.”

“In addition to expressing gratitude to the states that did not support the move, the parliament considers the non-binding resolution another sign of the culture dominating the IAEA, which allows nuclear-armed member states not honoring their own NPT commitments to block other states’ access to peaceful nuclear technology.”

June 21, 2020 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Bank of England Set to Decide Who Venezuela’s President is. How Did It Come to This?

Sputnik – 21.06.2020

What was a typical withdrawal request from a customer to a depository bank has turned into a political controversy, given that the government that owns the bank does not recognise the customer.

London’s High Court is scheduled to hear an unprecedented case on Monday regarding Venezuela’s attempts to extract its gold bullion from the Bank of England.

Venezuela’s central bank (BCV), controlled by the government of Nicolas Maduro, has around $1.8 billion worth of gold at the Bank of England. BCV has recently demanded that €930 million ($1.04bn) in gold be released to help Caracas fight the coronavirus outbreak.

The heavily-sanctioned Latin American country is among the 135 nations with beleaguered public health systems which are attempting to secure vital medical supplies under a major initiative led by the United Nations Development Programme.

BCV had wanted to transfer the proceeds from selling the gold directly to the UNDP to acquire medical equipment, medicines and foodstuffs, but the Bank of England “refused to confirm” that it would hand over the bullion, according to court documents filed last month. BCV in response launched legal action.

The UK government, which wholly controls the bank, does not recognise President Nicolas Maduro and backs the self-declared interim president, Juan Guaido. The UK-held assets of two dozen Venezuelan officials linked with Maduro, but not those of BCV, have been frozen.

The Bank of England denied a similar request for the withdrawal of gold in November 2018; at the time, a cabinet minister said that dealing with a customer’s request is up to the bank and not to the government.

Guaido, who appointed a parallel board of BCV directors, last month warned that the bank would effectively be “financing torture” in Venezuela if it honoured its obligations. His lawyers argue that a decision to release gold should be taken by Venezuela’s legislature rather than by the central bank. They also question whether the BCV board has a buyer lined up for the gold.

Lawyers representing BCV maintain that the request in question is meant to deal with a public health emergency and that the Bank of England’s lack of action is “putting lives at risk”.

“Venezuela has been denied access to its resources during an international crisis,” said London-based lawyer Sarosh Zaiwalla. “In effect, the nation’s gold reserves in the BoE are being held hostage to political factors dictated by the foreign policy of the United States and certain of its allies.” The high court ruling is expected before the end of July.

June 21, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

The American Retreat from Vietnam

Tales of the American Empire | June 18, 2020

Supporters of the American empire proclaim the U.S. military invincible unless stabbed in the back by politicians. They say the US military won the war in Vietnam, but claim victory was lost after politicians cut off aid to South Vietnam. This is fake history. The Vietnam war was lost by 1963 after the CIA failed to establish a new nation that became known as South Vietnam. The arrival of American troops prevented a defeat, but only caused more death and destruction until they left.

Soon after the Americans departed, the fragile, corrupt puppet regime of South Vietnam collapsed. After this retreat, supporters of the American empire began to spread lies that South Vietnam collapsed in 1975 only because Democrats in Congress cut military aid. This deception begins with the half-truth that the 1968 Tet Offensive was a major defeat for the Vietnamese. This was true on the tactical level but it was a strategic disaster for the US military.

__________________________________

Related Tale: “The Illusion Called South Vietnam”; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B9BM…

“MACV The Joint Command in the Years of Withdrawal 1968-1973; Graham A. Cosmas; US Army Center for Military History: https://history.army.mil/html/books/0…

“Vast Aid From U.S. Backs Saigon in Continuing War”; David Simpler; New York Times; Feb. 25, 1974; https://www.nytimes.com/1974/02/25/ar…

“Why Vietnam Was Unwinnable”; Kevin Boylan; New York Times; Aug. 22, 2017; https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/op…

“The Myth That Congress Cut Off Funding for South Vietnam”; Ken Hughes; Fatal Politics; April 28, 2010; https://historynewsnetwork.org/articl…

“Fatal Politics”; Historical videos by Ken Hughes proving needed aid was provided; http://www.fatalpolitics.com/videos/

June 20, 2020 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

Victoria Nuland’s plan for US policy on Russia is dumb, delusional and dangerous

Victoria Nuland and Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt distribute pastries at Independence square in Kiev, December 11, 2013. © REUTERS/Andrew Kravchenko/Pool
By Nebojsa Malic | RT | June 20, 2020

Victoria Nuland, the infamous State Department diplomat who “midwifed” Ukraine’s 2014 coup, has outlined a Russia strategy for the Biden administration. It is based on fantasies and projection, offering nothing of value to anyone.

You may remember ‘Tori’ Nuland from the so-called “revolution of dignity” in Ukraine, in particular the publicity stunt in which she doled out pastries to “peaceful protesters” on Kiev’s Independence Square. Standing next to her was US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, who will be recorded some weeks later discussing with Nuland which protest leader will be allowed to form a government. Soon thereafter, the people they named led an armed coup against the government in Kiev and set up their own.

That was the zenith of her diplomatic career, however, as she resigned from the State Department after the inauguration of President Donald Trump and went into the private sector – currently working for Madeleine Albright’s consultancy group in Washington. Now Nuland is making a comeback, with an article in the July-August edition of Foreign Affairs titled ‘Pinning Down Putin.’

Between re-airing the usual mainstream Washington accusations against Russia and projecting US and NATO wrongdoing on Moscow, Nuland is basically outlining a policy for the Biden administration, should Democrats capture the White House this November as the US establishment hopes. Bear in mind as you read on that Nuland isn’t necessarily partisan – she worked for Bill Clinton’s Russia guru Strobe Talbott as well as George W. Bush’s grey eminence Dick Cheney. If there is an embodiment of the bipartisan US establishment consensus on Russia, that’s her. That’s the main reason her essay is worth a look.

Her actual policy advice is trite and predictable, calling for “consistent US leadership at the presidential level, unity with democratic allies and partners, and a shared resolve to deter and roll back dangerous behavior by the Kremlin.”

According to Nuland, President Vladimir Putin has “cut off his population from the outside world” and the US needs to “speak directly to the Russian people about the benefits of working together and the price they have paid for Putin’s hard turn away from liberalism.”

Far from being “cut off” though, Russians have greater access to news and opinion than your average American – including news and opinions Nuland disagrees with, which is obviously the problem here. Someone is clearly salty that Putin has made it more difficult for US-backed “civil society” activists and NGOs to operate in Russia.

Nuland argues that the US and NATO have “tried to persuade Moscow that NATO was a purely defensive alliance that posed no threat to Russia” but then has the gall to invoke the “independence” of Kosovo as an example of a “democratic struggle” and talks about how “a belt of increasingly democratic, prosperous states around Russia would pose a challenge” to Putin’s leadership!

Yet Kosovo is proof positive of NATO’s perfidy, and it was the 1999 war there that “lost” Russia, which had previously uncritically looked up to the West – something Nuland hopes to replicate. If she believes places like Ukraine or Georgia are either democratic or prosperous, she’s clearly delusional. Note that Washington praised Putin’s “democratic” predecessor Boris Yeltsin when he sent tanks to bomb the parliament in 1993. US allies like Poland and Hungary are being denounced by the EU as “undemocratic” these days. Perhaps “democracy” means only US-backed parties are allowed to win, along the lines of what happened in Serbia after the 2000 color revolution?

No less delusional are Nuland’s expectations. She describes matters in terms of “the carrot and the stick,” as if Russia were a donkey. Even if we get over the offensive metaphor, her “carrot” is patently ridiculous: Joint investments? Free trade? Lower tariffs? Energy partnerships? A toothless and pointless “pan-European security dialogue” proposed 12 years ago? Meanwhile, Russia would have to “demonstrate its commitment to ending its attacks on democracies” – in other words, prove a negative. Quite a bargain!

What Nuland really wants is to get around the Russian government and win the hearts and minds of the people, using the academia, “civil society” activists and students. She even proposes visa-free travel for Russians “between the ages of 16 and 22, allowing them to form their own opinions before their life paths are set.” Because the kind of graduates that come from US college campuses these days are really an example for the whole world to aspire to!

Nuland was a Sovietologist, so it’s not a surprise her proposals are still stuck in the Cold War mindset. But the 1980s propaganda was based on American opulence, prosperity and Reagan-era confidence. Soviets who bought into it ended up with what Nuland herself recognizes as the “years of chaos and impoverishment during the 1990s.” Putin is the product of that disillusionment, and while one may argue things might have been better this way or that, there is zero argument that his rule hasn’t been vastly preferable over the 1990s to everyone – except the oligarchs and the activists on the payroll of the National Endowment for Democracy.

What does the US offer now, though? Russians look at the scenes from American television, and see a remake of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. They see race riots and self-proclaimed Communists calling for a revolt. They see “science” that says one thing one day and something completely different the other, based solely on political considerations. They see the destruction of monuments and renunciation of the nation’s history and heritage.

Can one blame them if all of this reminds them of Russia’s own past from 1917 onward? As the very American expression goes, “been there, done that.” Also, “no thanks.”

Nebojsa Malic is a Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now senior writer at RT. Follow him on Twitter @NebojsaMalic

June 20, 2020 Posted by | Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

EU’s Aviation Deal with Israel ‘The Pinnacle of Hypocrisy’

By Stuart Littlewood | American Herald Tribune | June 20, 2020

I had barely finished my rant against the British Government for showering new rewards on the Israelis (see Do Palestinians’ lives matter? ) when the EU voted to do the same.

The UK-Israel Trade and Partnership Agreement signed last year comes into force next January. The Government says it loves this relationship and is committed to strengthening it. “We will seek to work with counterparts in the new Israeli government to host a bilateral trade and investment summit in London.” This will “identifying new opportunities and collaboration between Israel and the United Kingdom”.

Not to be outdone, the EU has now decided to hand Israel a juicy aviation agreement, the latest in a long line of goodies awarded to the apartheid regime for its crimes against humanity. And that’s after the EU had voiced condemnation of Israel’s latest annexation plan.

Not only that, the European Investment Bank, the EU’s financing institution, has just agreed a 150 million euros loan for a seawater desalination plant – one of the largest in the world – for Israel “in one of the world’s most water-stressed regions”. So water-stressed that Israel long ago stole the Palestinians’ aquifers and deprived them of access to their own supply. And it made no difference that the criminals were now gearing up to annex even more Palestinian territory.

According to this report 437 MEPs (that’s 62%) from EPP, REG, ECR voted to ratify the EU-Israel Aviation Agreement even though MEP Clare Daly from Ireland warned that doing so “would be perceived as an upgrade in bilateral relations with the state of Israel”. So who are these confused people?

The EPP (European People’s Party) Group, the oldest and largest, says: “We must continue to promote human rights and democracy in our relations with third countries.” So, naturally, they have no objection to promoting the Israeli regime in its policy to permanently deny Palestinians their human rights and self-determination.

The REG (Renew Europe Group) would have us believe: “At a time when the rule of law and democracy are under threat in parts of Europe, our Group will stand up for the people who suffer from the illiberal and nationalistic tendencies that we see returning in too many countries.” Oh really?

The ECR Group (European Conservatives & Reformists) declare: “We are the voice of COMMON SENSE.”

As if their behaviour wasn’t bizarre enough, these MEPs then held a separate debate with High Representative Joseph Borrell to discuss EU measures to deter Israel from declaring annexation.

The aviation deal builds on a 2013 agreement. Back then scheduled direct passenger flights connected Israel and 18 EU Member States and the EU was said to be the most important aviation market for Israel, accounting for 57% of scheduled international air passenger movements to and from Israel, and that Israel was one of the most important aviation markets for the EU in the Middle East with a strong growth potential.

The aim now is to take EU-Israel aviation relations to a new level. Higher volumes of tourism in both directions will create additional jobs and economic benefits on both sides. Of course much of the benefit of increased tourism to the Holy Land rightly belongs to the Palestinians if only they were permitted their own airport, but the EU doesn’t seem to care that all visitors to and from the Holy Land are forced through Israel’s Ben Gurion airport – or should we call it Lydda? Thereby hangs an interesting tale….

Growing airline traffic rewards Israeli terror

Strictly speaking Ben Gurion, near Tel Aviv, belongs to the Palestinians. It was formerly Lydda airport; and Lydda, a major town in its own right during the British mandate, was designated Palestinian in the 1947 UN Partition Plan. In July 1948, after Britain left and Israel declared statehood, Israeli terrorist troops seized Lydda, shot up the town and drove out the population as part of the ethnic cleansing and territorial expansion programme set out in their infamous ‘Plan Dalet’. In the process they massacred 426 men, women, and children. 176 of them were slaughtered in the town’s main mosque. See here for the gory details.

Those who survived were forced to walk into exile in the scalding July heat leaving a trail of bodies — men, women and children — along the way. Israeli troops carried away 1,800 truck loads of loot. Jewish immigrants then flooded in and Lydda was given a Hebrew name, Lod.

So Israel has no real right to Lydda/Lod/Ben Gurion airport — it was stolen in a terror raid, as was so much else. And it’s Israeli terror that is being rewarded by increasing airline flights and boosting tourism and trade.

Today the airport is the international gateway to Israel… and indirectly to Palestine. And what happened to Gaza’s airport? The Oslo II Agreement of 1995 provided for one to be constructed. The Yasser Arafat International airport was built with funding from Japan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Germany and Morocco, and cost $86 million. Arafat and US President Clinton attended the opening in 1998. Owned and operated by the Palestinian Authority it was capable of handling 700,000 passengers a year.

In December 2001 Israel destroyed the radar station and control tower, and cut the runway.

Back to the fiasco with the 437 MEPs who plainly don’t give a four-X about adding to the Palestinians’ misery. Aneta Jerska, the coordinator of the European Coordination of Committees and Associations for Palestine (ECCP) says: “Those same political groups whom we heard expressing concern about annexation had just made annexation possible by voting in favour of the EU-Israel Aviation Agreement. This is by any standards the pinnacle of the EU’s hypocrisy. European citizens need to see no more crocodile tears from their elected politicians. The EU must impose sanctions on Israel, as member states once did against apartheid South Africa, including a military embargo on Israel, a ban on trade with illegal settlements and the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement. Only by ending ‘business as usual’, will Israel feel pressure to change its criminal behaviour.”

June 20, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | Leave a comment

France’s test of nuclear-capable ballistic missile inconsistent with NPT obligations: Iran

Press TV – June 20, 2020

Iran has voiced concern over a recent test-firing of an intercontinental nuclear-capable ballistic missile by France, saying the test is in clear violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and inconsistent with the European country’s commitments vis-à-vis nuclear disarmament.

“The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran expresses its concern over the move and believes that the French government should not overlook its international obligations enshrined in Article 6 of the NPT and the NPT Review Conferences,” Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Abbas Mousavi said on Saturday.

He added that France must fully comply with its international obligations regarding nuclear disarmament.

The Iranian spokesperson emphasized that nuclear weapons pose a threat to global peace and security, and said testing such weapons would undermine the NPT as the basis for international non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament.

The French Ministry of Armed Forces announced on June 12 the launch of an M51 submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) from Le Téméraire, a Triomphant-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine.

“The nuclear-powered Le Téméraire successfully fired an M51 strategic ballistic missile off Finistère,” Defense Minister Florence Parly announced in a Twitter post.

The launch was carried out without a nuclear warhead off France’s Western coastal region of Brittany. The missile was tracked throughout its flight phase by radars and by the missile range instrumentation ship Monge (A601), landing several hundred kilometers away in the North Atlantic.

The M51 – which replaced the M45 in 2010 – weighs 52,000 kilograms with a 12-meter length and a diameter of 2.3 meters. Its operational range is reported to be 8,000 to 10,000 kilometers with a speed of Mach 25. The three-stage engine of the ballistic missile is directly derived from the solid propellant boosters of the European Ariane 5 space rocket.

Moreover, the M51 carries six to ten independently targetable (Multiple Independently targeted Reentry Vehicle) TN 75 thermonuclear warheads which, since 2015, have been replaced with the new Tête nucléaire océanique (TNO or oceanic nuclear warhead) warheads. The new warheads are reportedly maneuverable (Maneuverable Re-entry Vehicle) in order to avoid potential ballistic defenses.

June 20, 2020 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

The Unheard Message

Ayesh Shat, 23, was killed by an Israeli sniper while protesting for Palestinian refugees’ Right of Return in 2018. (Photo: Supplied)
By Haneen Shat | The Palestine Chronicle | June 20, 2020

Dear “israel”,

How are you? Do I have to ask this question? I am sorry for I do not know how to start. Would you like me to ask another one?

Dear “israel”,

Do you really know what the word “loss” means? Do you really understand the meaning of sorrow and sadness? You know nothing of that and all that you know is the terror, blood, wars, massacres, and genocides that you commit against innocent people who did nothing to you except demand their rights as human beings. “Loss” is when you talk and laugh with one of your beloveds at your home in the morning, and you do not know if you will see them again in the evening. “Loss” is the voice you used to hear that no longer exists.

“Loss” is that day, October 26, 2018, when my brother, like hundreds of other Palestinians, went out in the Great March of Return to call for his right to return. He went out to tell the whole world our cause and that we are still here. He cried loudly that we as Palestinian refugees want to remind the international community of our demand for implementation Paragraph 11 of UN Resolution 194 calling for the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes at the earliest possible date. He cried, but the Israeli soldier did not want to hear his voice, so he shot my brother dead. The Israeli bullet penetrated my brother’s body and murdered him.

When they brought his body home, they did not know how to show it to my mama. My mama, like thousands of Palestinian mothers, was ready to sacrifice her son for the sake of our homeland, yet, at least, she wished that she could have a last look at him while he was alive.

My brother’s body laid in front of my mama’s eyes; she could not move; she was looking at him and her heart was bleeding. Her tears were falling silently. Everyone surrounded her and tried to calm her by saying words such as, “Be patient. God has chosen him to reward with paradise!” However, I am sure mama’s mind was just with my brother. She could not hear anything. She was looking at him for the last time. After this moment, there will be no kisses, no hugs, so she had to live every second with him.

When they were about to take his body, with a broken heart mama cried, “Leave him. Leave him. Let me see him more. Let me kiss him more.” They left him for a minute; she did what she asked for. How can a minute separate staying and leaving, death and life? The last words mama said were, “Ma assalama, ya habibi– goodbye, my love.” Then she blacked out.

His name was Ayesh, which in Arabic means “he is alive.” But you “israel”, you murdered him at a very young age. He was just 23. He went. Without return, he went. He will never come back, yet he is still alive in our hearts, and in the message he left behind him.

Do you not remember my brother as you have slaughtered thousands of Palestinians in cold blood? My brother is not a number you count. This letter is not a message you hear.

“Loss” is that moment when my mother, in a very cold winter night, took the picture of my martyr brother off the wall, put it next to her and covered it with her comforter so that he would not feel cold. And with tears, repeated, “Ma assalama, ya habibi.”

Dear “israel,”

They say that Gaza is a prison. Do not believe them. In prison, there is a specific period that the prisoner spends and then he is free. Here in Gaza, which they claim is a prison, this does not happen. Here, we are trying to get out but we fail. We are trying to fly but before we start, you, “israel”, break our wings. Gaza is more than a prison.

Last year, two other youths from Gaza and I were selected to represent Palestine in the “Youth Forum in the Arab Region” which took place in Tunisia. I was eager to see what the world looks like outside, to know what the word “Abroad” means. I had so many plans for what I would do there, outside of Gaza. Yet, my dream was shattered; we could not travel because of you, “israel”. You did not give us permission to pass Erez, the crossing you created to isolate Gaza from the rest of Palestine.

You did not want the voice of Palestine to be there; her voice disturbs you, as you always try to wipe her map and flag. But still, do not be happy. If we cannot fly, it is enough that the birds fly in the sky of Palestine.

Dear “israel”:

Do you remember what happened in 1948? Wait! Am I still calling you “dear”? I apologize. I apologize to myself. I apologize to my mama, to my papa, to my beloved ones. I apologize to my “Falasteen – Palestine”, my dear “Falasteen“. I apologize for calling you “dear”. That word which implies love and respect, for you do not know love, dignity, or peace. You do not know any of these. You only know torture and massacres that do not respect human rights. Have you noticed that I have not capitalized any of your letters? It is because you say “israel” means “to wrestle with God.” But you do not wrestle with God in Palestine. There is no God in your army. I will use the upper-case I in “israel” when you decide to stand up for God, for justice, for human beings, and let us return to our homes.

There are no best wishes.

(Edited by Nicholas Vincenzo Barney. Barney is on Twitter: https://twitter.com/nictamerr) 

– Haneen Shat is a young journalist from Gaza City. After graduating from Gaza University in English Literature, Haneen has begun a career in journalism, hoping one day to be able to travel outside of Gaza and share the Palestinian cause with the world. Haneen is on twitter: https://twitter.com/Haneen_Gaza1998.

June 20, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Canada’s Security Council defeat is a win for Palestine

By Yves Engler · June 20, 2020

Canada’s defeat in its bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council is a major victory for Palestinian solidarity. It also puts Canada’s Israel lobby on the defensive.

Israeli politicians and commentators have begun to publicly bemoan the loss. Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, told the Jerusalem Post, “we are disappointed that Canada didn’t make it, both because we have close ties with the country and because of the campaign that the Palestinians ran against Canada.” In another story in that paper headlined “With annexation looming, Canada’s UNSC upset is bad news for Israel, US” Deputy Managing Editor Tovah Lazaroff labels Canada’s loss “a sharp reminder of the type of diplomatic price tag Israel’s allies can suffer on the international stage.”

Inside Canada the Security Council defeat is a blow to the Israel lobby. While the Canadian media has generally minimized the impact Canada’s anti-Palestinian position had on the vote, the subject is being raised. In a Journal de Québec column titled “Why did Canada suffer a humiliating defeat at the UN?” Norman Lester writes, “it is the support of the Trudeau Liberal government for Israel, like that of Harper before him, that is probably the main reason for Ottawa’s two successive setbacks. Ireland and Norway have more balanced policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than Canada.” He concludes the article by noting, “Canada has no chance of returning to the Security Council in the foreseeable future unless there is a radical change in its position regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

By acquiescing almost entirely to the ‘Israel no matter what’ outlook of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and B’nai B’rith, the Trudeau government undercut its bid for a seat on the UN’s highest decision-making body. The Israel lobby’s point people in the Liberal caucus, Anthony Housefather and Michael Levitt, are no doubt hoping to avoid too much blowback for their role in this embarrassment. Housefather ought to be prodded on his contribution to the Trudeau government’s anti-Palestinian voting record at the UN since he repeatedly boasted that it was more pro-Israel than Stephen Harper’s.

Canada’s voting record at the UN was at the heart of the grassroots No Canada on the UN Security Council campaign. An open letter launching the campaign from the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute noted, “since coming to power the Trudeau government has voted against more than fifty UN resolutions upholding Palestinian rights backed by the overwhelming majority of member states.” A subsequent open letter was signed by over 100 civil society groups and dozens of prominent individuals urging countries to vote against Canada’s bid for a Security Council seat due to its anti-Palestinian positions. That letter organized by Just Peace Advocates stated, “the Canadian government for at least a decade and a half has consistently isolated itself against world opinion on Palestinian rights at the UN. … Continuing this pattern, Canada ‘sided with Israel by voting No’ on most UN votes on the Question of Palestine in December. Three of these were Canada’s votes on Palestinian Refugees, on UNRWA and on illegal settlements, each distinguishing Canada as in direct opposition to the ‘Yes’ votes of Ireland and Norway.”

Just Peace Advocates organized 1,300 individuals to email all UN ambassadors asking them to vote for Ireland and Norway instead of Canada for the Security Council. In a sign of the campaign’s impact, Canada’s permanent representative to the UN Marc André Blanchard responded with a letter to all UN ambassadors defending Canada’s policy on Palestinian rights.

Not only has Canada’s voting record on Palestinian rights undercut its standing within the General Assembly, the Canadian public doesn’t want the government pursuing anti-Palestinian positions. A recent Ekos poll found that 74% of Canadians wanted Ottawa to express opposition to Israel’s plan to formally annex a large swath of the West Bank with 42% of the public desiring some form of economic and/or diplomatic sanction against Israel if it moves forward with annexation. “The Trudeau government has not only isolated Canada from international opinion regarding Palestinian rights at the UN, but its positions contravene the wishes of most Canadians regarding the long-beleaguered Palestinians,” explained Karen Rodman of Just Peace Advocates.

While the impact of the loss shouldn’t be exaggerated, Justin Trudeau’s brand is linked to the idea that he is liked internationally. Additionally, the Liberals’ base supports the UN and the international body is closely connected with how they market their foreign policy.

Kowtowing to CIJA, B’nai B’rith and Israeli nationalists such as Housefather, Levitt, etc. on Palestinian rights at the UN helped scuttle Canada’s Security Council bid — that’s a fact Trudeau and the Liberals must face. More important, the international community’s rejection of a government enthralled to the Israel lobby weakens Israel diplomatically and is a victory for Palestine solidarity.

June 20, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

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