Greenland to Receive NATO Representation for First Time Ever
By Igor Kuznetsov – Sputnik – 21.03.2023
In recent years, the Arctic has once again risen to one of the top priorities for the US and NATO. The region, rich in natural resources, has been designated as a potential corridor for strategic competition, particularly with Russia and China, and is seeing massive military investments.
Greenland’s government, Naalakkersuisut, and the Danish Foreign Ministry have for the first time agreed to send a Greenlandic diplomat to NATO to represent the remote part of the Danish Realm.
“It is important that Greenland increases its insight into the security policy development in the High North and NATO’s focus on the region,” Greenland’s Department for Foreign Affairs, Business and Trade said in a statement.
“It is also important that NATO increases its understanding of the special conditions of our region and our society, and familiarizes itself with our interests, our values and priorities,” Greenlandic Minister for Foreign Affairs, Business and Trade Vivian Motzfeldt said.
Lida Skifte Lennert, who has 25 years of experience in Greenland’s central administration behind her, will become the island nation’s first permanent representative at the US-led alliance’s headquarters in Brussels.
Greenland, the remotest part of the Danish Realm, has recently become a key area of US and NATO interest amid the military build-up in the far north. The US opened a consulate in Greenland’s capital Nuuk and has shown a keen desire to secure access to the rare minerals found in the Greenlandic depths. In 2019, former US President Donald Trump notoriously shocked Denmark with an surprise offer to buy Greenland, but received a cold shoulder from Copenhagen.
In recent years, the Arctic has returned to the top of the US security and defense agenda. Already in the Pentagon’s 2019 Arctic strategy the region was designated as a potential corridor for strategic competition, particularly with Russia and China. Denmark, too, has placed a greater emphasis on the military upgrade of its faraway territories, the Faroe Islands and Greenland.
The world’s largest island has notoriously harsh weather conditions, a dramatic lack of infrastructure and a slim 55,000 population, in which native Inuit comprise a majority. Nevertheless, it has since World War II repeatedly hosted US military bases, most notably the Thule Air Base, the northernmost US military installation, located some 1,500 kilometers from the North Pole, and the now-defunct Sondrestrom Air Base, which was turned over to the Greenlandic government in 1992. The Thule Base remains intact and plays a key role in the US military’s ability to detect and provide early warnings for ballistic missile attacks. It also harbors the world’s northernmost deepwater port and was promised an upgrade in 2022.
Camp Century that operated between 1959 and 1967 at the height of the Cold War, was yet another sign of US involvement on the island. The ice-cap base was intended as a platform for nuclear launches that could survive a first strike from the enemy. However, the missiles were never fielded and the necessary consent from the Danish government to do so was never achieved. Subsequently, the project was aborted as unfeasible as the ice sheet was realized to lack the necessary stability. Nevertheless, the project ran a nuclear reactor that was later removed. Still, hazardous waste buried under the ice has since become an environmental concern, particularly in recent years.
Earlier this year, Denmark Proper and the US were reported to be negotiating a new defense cooperation agreement, which was confirmed by Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen. He also said that the agreement should create “the possibility of a permanent American presence.”
Greenland received home rule in 1979 and passed a self-rule law in 2009, which would allow the island to declare full independence, but it would have to be approved by a referendum among the Greenlandic people. There are several parties in Greenland pushing for full independence from Denmark. A string of polls have consistently indicated that while there is a clear majority for full independence among Greenlanders, there is clear opposition to it, if it were to imply a fall in living standards. Currently, Greenland is dependent on an annual subsidy of around $600 million from Copenhagen, which accounts for about two-thirds of the island’s budget and one-quarter of the nation’s entire GDP. The rest of the economy relies on fisheries and tourism. Payments from the US for the network of military installations also play a part.
Putin: Russia Will be Forced to React if West Starts Using Weapons With Nuclear Components
By Fantine Gardinier – Sputnik – 21.03.2023
UK Minister of State for Defense Annabel Goldie said on Tuesday that London would provide Ukraine with armor piercing shells for the Challenger 2 main battle tanks it has decided to send to Kiev, including depleted uranium ammunition.
“Today it became known that the United Kingdom, through its deputy head of the ministry of defense, announced not only the supply of tanks to Ukraine, but also shells with depleted uranium,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said, adding that “it seems that the West really decided to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian, not in words, but in deed.”
“I would like to note in this regard that if all this happens, then Russia will be forced to react accordingly – I mean that the Collective West is already starting to use weapons with a nuclear component,” Putin added.
His comments came after meetings with a delegation of high-level Chinese officials, including Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Depleted uranium is a byproduct of the uranium refining process composed of uranium-238, which is not useful for generating nuclear chain reactions but which is extremely dense and used to make armor-piercing ammunition. However, it still possesses radioactive properties that can be very harmful to humans and is highly toxic, making it a dangerous weapon long after the engagement in which it was fired.
Sites in Iraq and Yugoslavia which US forces used depleted uranium to attack have been associated with increases in birth defects and rare forms of cancer associated with exposure to radioactive materials, including depleted uranium and related radioactive isotopes.
While Moscow has repeatedly warned about the creeping danger of some kind of nuclear exchange as a result of NATO’s support for Ukraine in its conflict with Russia, Western governments and media have tried to spin such warnings as being threats about the use of nuclear weapons. Putin has since made it explicitly clear that Moscow intends to maintain its no-first-use policy regarding nuclear weapons.
Russia launched its special operation in Ukraine in February 2022 after months of negotiations with Kiev and NATO failed to yield a situation that respected Moscow’s security red lines, most especially regarding Ukraine’s prospective membership in the alliance and the possibility of NATO weapons being stationed on Russia’s borders. The operation aims to neutralize that possibility.
Lavrov: Such Actions Undermine Stability
The decision of the United Kingdom to provide Kiev with depleted uranium tank ammunition undermines stability in the world, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday.
“I will not be surprised by this, because they have already lost perspective in terms of how these actions undermine strategic stability around the world,” Lavrov told a Russian broadcaster.
The minister added that this decision shows that the UK is ready to not only just take risks, but also commit war crimes.
“If this is true, then they [UK authorities] are ready to not only just take risks, but violate the international humanitarian law, as it was in 1999 in Yugoslavia, and many other things, including war crimes, crimes against humanity,” Lavrov said.
Hungary gives Ukraine ultimatum on EU and NATO membership
RT | March 21, 2023
Ukraine will not be allowed to join the EU or NATO until it restores the rights of ethnic Hungarians living in its Transcarpathian Region, Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Tuesday.
Speaking at a press conference in Brussels, Szijjarto added that the US-led military bloc was violating its own rules by pushing ahead with a set of meetings involving the Kiev government despite Budapest’s objections.
“I would like to say that we will not support any significant integration movement of Ukraine towards the EU or NATO until the rights of the Hungarian ethnic community that it had prior to 2015 are restored in Ukraine,” the foreign minister told reporters.
Around 150,000 ethnic Hungarians live in modern Ukraine’s Transcarpathian Region, just across the border from Hungary. Budapest will not give up on them “under any circumstances,” despite pressure from both sides of the Atlantic to do so, Szijjarto added.
He also objected to the convening of the NATO-Ukraine Committee on ministerial level despite Budapest’s objections.
“This decision violates NATO’s unity and procedures for the unity of will,” Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said on Tuesday, referring to the bloc’s consensus requirement.
Szijjarto has voiced his objections to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, but agreed to attend the April 4 meeting for the “opportunity to discuss minority protections.”
Hungary became a member of NATO in 1999 and joined the EU in 2004. In recent months, Brussels has withheld funding from Budapest in an attempt to compel the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban to implement a set of policies championed by the bloc, which he has rejected as harmful.
Hungary has consistently argued for a negotiated end to the hostilities in Ukraine. Budapest continues to prohibit any transit of weapons or ammunition through Hungarian territory, and has not agreed to supply Kiev with arms or ammunition.
US, EU agree on major weapons shipments to Ukraine
Press TV – March 21, 2023
The United States and the European Union have announced new shipments of military aid to Ukraine.
The US government announced on Monday a new package for the Kiev forces fighting Russian troops in pro-Moscow regions in eastern Ukraine. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington will send Ukraine $350 million in weaponry and equipment.
Separately, a group of 17 EU member states plus Norway said they have agreed on a two-billion-euro plan to deliver artillery rounds and other ammunition to Ukraine over the next year.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell had called on member countries to provide Kiev with one million artillery rounds, including from their own stockpiles. Borrell described the move as “a historic decision” for the 27-nation bloc and Norway.
“We are taking a key step towards delivering on our promises to provide Ukraine with more artillery ammunition,” he said, noting 18 countries had signed up to a European Defense Agency (EDA) project to place joint orders for ammunition with the defense industry.
In the meantime, Kiev has complained its forces are compelled to ration firepower as Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, which kicked off more than a year ago, has turned into an exhaustive war of attrition.
The secretary general of the NATO, however, says Ukraine’s Western allies are having a hard time keeping up with Kiev’s ever-increasing demand for ammunition.
“The war in Ukraine is consuming an enormous amount of munitions, and depleting allied stockpiles,” Jens Stoltenberg told reporters last month.
Russia launched the war after Kiev’s failure to implement the terms of the 2014 Minsk agreements and Moscow’s recognition of the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Since then, the US and its European allies have imposed unprecedented economic sanctions against Moscow while supplying large consignments of heavy weaponry to Kiev, flooding Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars of weapons and munitions. Moscow has condemned the West’s weapons shipments to Kiev, warning that it will only prolong the war.
Polish diplomat believes Warsaw might join conflict in Ukraine
By Lucas Leiroz | March 21, 2023
Escalation and internationalization may be very close to happening in the Ukrainian conflict. In a controversial and irresponsible statement, a leading Polish diplomat announced that his country may send troops to the battlefield if Kiev fails to prevent a Russian victory. The official’s words sound like a frontal threat and could have drastic consequences, considering that such a scenario would represent a direct confrontation between Russia and a NATO country – it just remains to be seen whether the Atlantic alliance would be concerned with defending its Eastern European proxies.
The threat was made by Poland’s ambassador to France, Jan Emeryk Rosciszewski, on March 18, during an interview with the French media. Rosciszewski accused Moscow of being solely responsible for the hostilities, echoing the Western hegemonic narrative. According to him, no NATO country is to blame for the fact that the conflict is prolonging, if not the Russian government itself, which would be deliberately increasing international tensions. As expected, however, he did not show any evidence to support his narrative.
The main problem is that Rosciszewski did not limit himself to accusing Moscow of being the “wrong side” of the conflict, but also said that Poland may be “forced” to send troops to Ukraine. For Rosciszewski, Russian victory is unacceptable as it would represent the end of the “values” that form the basis of the European civilization.
“Either Ukraine will successfully defend its independence, or we [the Polish people] will be forced, in any case, to join this conflict (…) Otherwise, our principal values, which are the basis of our civilization and our culture, will be in fundamental danger, so we will have no choice”, he said.
As expected, the case generated a scandal and many newspapers around the world announced the ambassador’s words as an official declaration that his country would be in combat readiness to face Russia. The attitude was praised by Western warmongers, who support that as many countries as possible join the conflict and engage in a total war on Russia.
The Polish Embassy in France, however, felt pressured in the face of the irresponsible acts of its own head and released a note clarifying that his intention was not to state that Poland would be ready to face Russia – but to warn about the possible consequences of a Ukrainian defeat.
“Listening carefully to the entire conversation allows us to understand that there was no announcement of Poland’s direct involvement in the conflict, but only a warning against the consequences of Ukraine’s defeat – the possibility of Russia attacking or dragging into the war more Central European countries – the Baltic states and Poland”, the Embassy’s statement reads.
Despite the effort, the Embassy was unable to reduce the seriousness of the situation with its note. Rosciszewski was very clear in his words. He literally said that his country would be “forced” to fight if Ukraine was not capable to defend itself. In a scenario of evident Ukrainian defeat which is already beginning to be admitted even by the Western media, this obviously sounds like a declaration of combat readiness. There is no room for other interpretations.
Among Russians, despite not having much repercussion, the case was commented on by Senator Alexey Pushkov. According to him, the Ambassador only said what Polish politicians “have long had on their minds”. However, he warned that Polish “courage” is motivated by the certainty of US support in an eventual war with Russia. Pushkov questioned this conviction, suggesting that there would be no real mobilization on the part of Washington.
“A very presumptuous statement by the Polish ambassador in Paris. For the first time, an official representative of Poland said what its leaders have long had on their minds. However, all the ‘courage’ of the Poles is based on the support of the United States. Is Warsaw sure that Washington is ready to fight?”, he said.
The senator’s alert is very important because it raises a question that has also been put by many military experts around the world. It is visible that, incited by the US, Poland and the Baltics have taken hasty and absolutely irresponsible actions, suggesting that they want to enter into open war with Moscow. They do so because they are certain that they would receive support from the entire Atlantic alliance, as foreseen in the fifth article of the NATO charter.
However, many analysts doubt this. On several occasions, the US has already demonstrated that its unilateral will prevails over NATO’s partnership. It would be very naive to believe that the country that bombed the Nord Stream pipelines in a deliberate act of sabotage against Germany would engage in a war of catastrophic consequences just to support Poland and the Baltic states.
In fact, what many Eastern Europeans still do not understand is that they are just serving as an instrument in proxy wars in which the US does not want the alliance to be directly involved. The American objective is to prepare its regular troops for a war with a greater possibility of victory than one with Russia. For this, NATO wants to multiply fronts and distract Russian forces on different battlefields. In this sense, it is unlikely that Poland’s joining in the conflict will change anything in the status of the war – on the contrary, it is much more possible that such a situation definitively reveals that NATO is not an alliance based on common principles and interests, but a mere instrument of war submitted to the unilateral will of the US.
Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
Political West doubles down on ‘Russia kidnapping children’ propaganda narrative
By Drago Bosnic | March 21, 2023
With any credible evidence of alleged Russian mass kidnappings of children from former Ukraine sorely lacking, in order to justify this propaganda narrative, as well as give at least some ostensible “credence” to the recent ICC indictment against Russian President Vladimir Putin, the mainstream propaganda machine is mobilizing all of its forces. Supposed “horror stories” of the “ordeal” these kids and their parents “have to go through” are aiming to cause an emotional reaction and present Russia and its leadership as “monstrous” as they could possibly be. One such “horror story” was published by The Guardian on March 19, just two days after the Hague-based “court” issued an arrest warrant for Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights.
According to The Guardian, Yevhen Mezhevyi, a 40-year-old Ukrainian citizen now living in Riga (Latvia), claims his children were “abducted and forcibly transferred” to Russia last year. Mezhevyi’s children were apparently taken while he was serving prison time in the DNR (Donetsk People’s Republic) due to his three-year service in the Kiev regime forces (2016-2019), including in the notorious Yavoriv military base in the west of the country, infamous for the training of various openly Neo-Nazi units. According to his own admission, Yevhen Mezhevyi knew that the Russian military would be apprehending all former and current members of such Nazi-inspired cohorts, so he tried to hide his past and even threw away his uniforms in an attempt to leave no trace of his time in the Kiev regime forces.
However, despite his attempts to hide, Mezhevyi was caught and sent to a prison near the town of Olenovka, approximately 20 km southwest of Donetsk, where he remained for 45 days. He claims that after Russian forces entered the city, Mezhevyi, his son Matvii (13) and daughters Sviatoslava (9) and Oleksandra (7) were “taken” by Russian soldiers and evacuated to Vinogradnoye, a village to the south-east of Mariupol. There, humanitarian volunteers offered assistance to Mezhevyi and his family, so they “stayed there for a while” (Yevhen didn’t specify for how long). “… but then, one day, after we were taken to a checkpoint and searched, a Russian official saw something in my documents,” he lamented, obviously referring to the fact that the official found evidence of Mezhevyi’s time in the Neo-Nazi junta forces.
Despite the fact that he could have easily been sentenced to long-term prison time for this, Mezhevyi was released after 45 days. In the meantime, his children were evacuated to Russia, as the Kiev regime forces, in which he served for three years, never stopped shelling the Donbass republics and other areas. Mezhevyi claims to have tried to get a job, but gave up after his son Matvii called him, allegedly saying that “the camp” he and his sisters were in “was closing in five days” and that “we have to either go to a foster family or an orphanage”. Using the word “camp” for the facilities Mezhevyi’s children were housed in is quite intentional, as the obvious goal is to present Russia in the worst light possible. Apparently, the alternative was to leave the children completely alone in the DNR, where they would’ve been targeted by the Neo-Nazi junta forces, in the case of which Moscow would also be “guilty” for not evacuating them. It seems you can’t win if you’re Russian.
“I understood there was no time to look for a job. I needed to take the risk, travel to Russia and get them out of there, as soon as possible,” Mezhevyi claims, adding: “Thank God, there are volunteers who helped me get to Moscow. It was very hard to cross into Russia from the occupied territories and I was interrogated, again and again, even though I had already spent 45 days in their prison and I just wanted to get my children. But no one cared about that. Eventually, I crossed into Russia and got on a train to Moscow.”
It’s quite interesting how the apparent “Mordor of our time” let Mr. Mezhevyi cross the border and undertake the “risky journey” where the “Evil Empire” even lets “volunteers” help people find their children, “kidnapped” for whatever reason. After he arrived in Moscow, Mezhevyi was contacted by Alexey Gazaryan, an official working at a children’s ombudsman office, managed by Maria Lvova-Belova, for whom the ICC issued an arrest warrant, along with President Putin. Apparently, Gazaryan told Mezhevyi that “he didn’t mind him taking his children back, but that he needed to get a permit” from DNR social services.
The head of DNR social services, Elena Maiboroda, called Gazaryan and agreed, so on 20 June, around 11:00 PM, Mezhevyi arrived at “the camp” on the outskirts of Moscow. He claims he was “interrogated” by at least five people, including Gazaryan, a psychologist, a nurse and the head of “the camp”, who “made him” fill out dozens of papers. Mezhevyi “managed” to cross into Latvia with his children with the help of “volunteers”. The Guardian claims he “still struggles” to understand how, among the documents that the Russians “forced” his son to sign, there was also a certificate asking the child to transfer the custody of himself and his sister back to their father.
The wording is obviously a pitiful attempt to portray Russian officials as supposed “monsters” for following their own legal procedures, which, in fact, are less strict than in most Western countries. The article claims that Mezhevyi’s family has been reunited, “but only after he undertook a risky journey over the border to rescue them”. This implies that they had to be “rescued”, given his “ordeal”, including the “incredibly risky” task of “forced” signing of documents. It seems only in Russia “genocide” is conducted by getting the children safely evacuated from an active warzone to a summer camp and then helping the father, an enemy combatant, to pick them up and go wherever he pleases.
Report Linking Fluoride to Lower IQ in Children Made Public After CDC, HHS Tried to Block It
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | March 16, 2023
The National Toxicology Program (NTP) on Wednesday released a draft report linking prenatal and childhood fluoride exposure to reduced IQ in children, after public health officials tried for almost a year to block its publication.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) initially blocked the NTP from releasing the report, according to emails obtained via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
But a court order stemming from a lawsuit filed by Food and Water Watch against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) forced the report’s release this week.
The NTP, an interagency program run by HHS that researches and reports on environmental toxins, conducted a six-year systematic review to assess scientific studies on fluoride exposure and potential neurodevelopmental and cognitive health effects in humans.
The report, containing a monograph and a meta-analysis, went through two rounds of peer review by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Comments from reviewers and HHS and NTP’s responses also were included in the report released Wednesday.
According to its website, the NTP “removed the hazardous classification of fluoride” in response to comments in the peer-review process. Yet, the report states:
“Our meta-analysis confirms results of previous meta-analyses and extends them by including newer, more precise studies with individual-level exposure measures.
“The data support a consistent inverse association between fluoride exposure and children’s IQ …
“The results were robust to stratifications by risk of bias, gender, age group, outcome assessment, study location, exposure timing, and exposure type (including both drinking water and urinary fluoride).”
“These findings fly in the face of the empty, unscientific claims U.S. health officials have propagated for years, namely that water fluoridation is safe and beneficial,” said Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Children’s Health Defense chairman and chief litigation counsel. “It’s past time to eliminate this neurotoxin from our water supply.”
The controversial report will play a key role in determining the outcome of a lawsuit brought in 2017 by several nonprofits against the EPA to end fluoridation of drinking water, plaintiffs’ attorney Michael Connett told The Defender.
“We had to fight hard to have this report even made public,” Connett said. “They [CDC and HHS] buried this. If they had gotten their way, this report would have never even seen the light of day,” Connett said.
Since the trial began in 2020, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen has been waiting for the NTP to complete a systematic review of fluoride’s neurotoxicity before ruling on the case.
Groups like the American Dental Association publicly pressured the NTP to “exclude any neurotoxin claims” from the reports.
Connett said during the trial, the EPA repeatedly claimed that the plaintiffs’ allegations about toxicity could not be verified because there was no “systematic review.”
The documents released Wednesday fill that gap.
Connett said:
“So now what do we have? We have a systematic review by one of the pioneering, leading, most authoritative research groups on toxicology in the world.
“They just completed a systematic review that took them six years to complete, so if that’s not enough to demonstrate a hazard under the toxic substances control act, then how would any citizen group ever be able to meet the standard?”
The findings: fluoride and lowered IQ in children
According to the NTP report:
“The current bodies of experimental animal studies and human mechanistic evidence do not provide clarity on the association between fluoride exposure and cognitive or neurodevelopmental human health effects.”
Yet, the report’s summary contradicts this statement by summarizing the evidence informing this conclusion, stating that nearly all studies examined for this literature review found evidence of cognitive or developmental issues associated with fluoride.
According to the report, 8 of the 9 “high-quality studies examining cognitive or neurodevelopmental outcomes reported associations with fluoride exposure.”
Of the 19 high-quality studies assessing the association between fluoride and IQ in children, 18 reported an association between higher fluoride exposure and lower IQ in children. Forty-six of the 53 low-quality studies also found evidence of that association.
The meta-analysis also states:
“The body of evidence from studies on adults is also limited and provides low confidence that fluoride exposure is associated with adverse effects on adult cognition. There is, however, a large body of evidence on IQ effects in children.”
The monograph and meta-analysis found that fluoride exposure at levels equivalent to 1.5 mg/L is associated with lower IQ in children. The abstract concludes:
“This review finds, with moderate confidence, that higher fluoride exposure (e.g., represented by populations whose total fluoride exposure approximates or exceeds the World Health Organization Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality of 1.5 mg/L of fluoride) is consistently associated with lower IQ in children.”
Levels of fluoride found in drinking water in the U.S. are typically 0.7 mg/L, which is lower than the 1.5 mg/L levels found to be neurotoxic by the reports.
On that basis, HHS’ review of the reports recommended the NTP revise its assessment such that, “all conclusory statements in this document should be explicit that any findings from the included studies only apply to water fluoride concentrations above 1.5 mg/L.”
The NTP responded:
“We do not agree with this comment. Our assessment considers fluoride exposures from all sources, not just water.
As discussed in the pre-publication 2022 NTP Monograph, because fluoride is also found in certain foods, dental products, some pharmaceuticals, and other sources, individual behaviors are likely an important determinant of actual exposures.”
Rick North, former CEO of the American Cancer Society’s Oregon division and Fluoride Action Network board member told The Defender that “people consume large amounts of fluoride through tea and other drinks and processed foods made with fluoridated water, not to mention pesticide ingestion and fluoride from air pollution.”
He also said that people’s fluoride exposure can depend on how much water they drink.
“Think about it,” North said. “Your level of risk depends upon, incredibly, how thirsty you are. That’s how absurd the entire premise of water fluoridation is,” he said.
The NTP confirmed that people exposed to levels of fluoride lower than 1.5 mg/L in the water system could have high levels of fluoride in their systems. It stated:
“Even in the optimally fluoridated cities [fluoridated at 0.7 mg/L] in Canada studied by Green et al. (2019), individual exposure levels, as documented by repeated urinary measurements, suggest widely varying total exposures from water combined with fluoride from other sources.”
It added, “our moderate confidence conclusion is primarily based on studies with total fluoride exposure that approximates or exceeds what is generally associated with consumption of optimally fluoridated water [0.7 mg/L] in the United States.”
“We have stressed in our monograph that our conclusions apply to total fluoride exposures rather than to exposures exclusively through drinking water.”
“What the NTP is pointing to here is that in some communities, where the dose of fluoride in the water is 0.7 mg/L, the NTP has found levels of fluoride found to be associated with lower IQ,” Connett told The Defender.
Also, different people have different risk levels, he said. Pregnant women and bottle-fed babies, for example, are some of the populations at highest risk.
On this point, the NTP responded to a different HHS critique, writing, “We have no basis on which to state that our findings are not relevant to some children or pregnant people in the United States.”
“The margin of safety here just doesn’t exist — it is precariously small,” Connett said. He added that the lawsuit is “basically a risk assessment of fluoride.”
Under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which is the law at stake in the lawsuit, the EPA carries out risk assessments for potential toxins.
To do a risk assessment, the EPA first identifies a hazard and determines at what dose — what level of human exposure — that hazard harms human health.
Then the agency determines in a given case whether the margin between the existing hazard levels and the human exposure levels is unacceptably close, which would make a toxin pose a risk to human health.
Connett said that in EPA’s previous risk assessments for other chemicals, such as methylene chloride or bromopropane, evaluated according to the 2020 risk evaluation method that guides this case, the agency found the hazard level exceeds the human exposure level by much higher margins — “usually in a range of ten to 20 times higher,” yet it has deemed those chemicals to present an unreasonable risk to human health.
In other words, the substances were found to be toxic to humans at levels significantly higher than what people may be exposed to in regular use, yet the EPA determined them to be risks.
When it makes that determination, the EPA must then take steps to mitigate the risk.
That can also be the finding in this case. According to a pre-trial document, both sides in the case agreed to the “undisputed fact” that the “EPA does not require that human exposure levels exceed a known adverse effect level to make an unreasonable risk determination under TSCA.”
The NTP documents also raised flags about the implications of seemingly small neurotoxic effects:
“Research on other neurotoxicants has shown that subtle shifts in IQ at the population level can have a profound impact on the number of people who fall within the high and low ranges of the population’s IQ distribution.
“For example, a 5-point decrease in a population’s IQ would nearly double the number of people classified as intellectually disabled.”
Top HHS and CDC officials tried to ‘water down’ and block the report
In 2016, a group of six nonprofit organizations and several individuals petitioned the EPA to end fluoridation of drinking water in the U.S. based on evidence of health risks associated with fluoride, namely neurotoxicity.
The EPA rejected the petition.
In response, Food and Water Watch, Fluoride Action Network and others sued the EPA in 2017, seeking an end to water fluoridation.
The plaintiffs argued that water fluoridation violates the EPA’s Toxic Substances Control Act and that fluoride is neurotoxic and lowers children’s IQ.
They based their initial claims on dozens of studies and reviews demonstrating fluoride’s neurotoxicity. Studies have also linked fluoride to a variety of other health risks in both children and adults, and evidence shows it to be an endocrine disruptor.
The EPA denied water fluoridation causes harm.
A seven-day trial took place in federal court in San Francisco in June 2020, but Judge Chen put the proceedings on hold pending the release of NTP’s systematic review of research available on the neurotoxic effects of fluoride.
The report, slated for release in May 2022, was delayed several times and sent for several rounds of peer review.
“The people on the [NTP] committee were experts in their fields who put years into this study, going back and forth with one external review after another,” North said. “You couldn’t ask for more peer review than what it already had. There were constant attempts to delay it, to water it down.”
In late October 2022, Judge Chen ended the stay on the NTP review, ruling that the parties involved could view the NTP review in its unpublished form to better inform his final decision.
However, due to concerns from the EPA, he also ruled the report could not be made public unless the NTP released it.
In December 2022, the plaintiffs filed several exhibits with Judge Chen, including a redacted version of the NTP’s assessment of fluoride’s neurotoxicity and internal emails between the CDC and the NTP obtained through FOIA demonstrating that HHS blocked the release of the long-delayed review, the plaintiffs argued.
The documents showed that on May 11, NTP notified the agencies that it was going to release the report on May 18, but the CDC opposed the release.
Emails also indicated that HHS Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine was going to “get involved,” and, “the May 18 release date for [the monograph] is almost certainly not going to happen,” the Defender reported.
Connett said:
“It was only because we were tipped off by someone with knowledge on the inside that something was amiss that we went and did extensive FOIA requests and we were able to get documents showing that the NTP scientists considered this report to be complete and ready for publication last May, May of 2022.”
North said it was clear the agencies were blocking the release of the report, which was ready for publication.
“This was a clear case of stonewalling,” North said. “The National Toxicology Program, after over six years of research and numerous outside peer reviews, had completed its state-of-the-science report.”
Connett added:
“We have emails showing that Levine is the one who put it on hold. Rachel Levine said not to publish this report at this time. Then we got the FOIA emails showing that and NTP said they may not publish this [the report] at all. They may not publish it in final form but we did get them to agree to at least post a draft report. They will consider it a draft report.”
On January 20, Judge Chen denied the EPA’s request to add another six-month period to the stay he lifted in his October ruling.
The monograph and meta-analysis released yesterday on the NTP’s website are both labeled “draft.”
“Unfortunately, fluoridation promoters and high-level government officials have continued to label it a draft,” North said. “It wasn’t.”
Experts associated with the lawsuit against the EPA will now analyze and interpret the report in future hearings and then Judge Chen will rule.
The next hearing date is scheduled for April 11, 2023. At that time, the judge will set a date for the next phase of the trial.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
U.N. Is A Climate “Disinformation Threat Actor”
By Michael Shellenberger | March 20, 2023
The United States government’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), within the Department of Homeland Security, is raising the alarm about the threat of “foreign influence” that is “leveraging misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation.” CISA defines “malinformation” as information “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.” In 2021, CISA, along with the White House and private sector partners, successfully persuaded Facebook and Twitter to censor accurate information about the origins of the SARS-2 coronavirus and covid vaccines.
And yet CISA is failing to do its job when censoring malinformation, misinformation, and disinformation about climate change, including by “threat actors,” often funded or employed by foreign governments. A Google survey of over 2,300 people conducted last year by the nonpartisan research organization Environmental Progress, which I founded and lead, found that 53% of people surveyed in the U.S. agree with the false statement, “Climate change is making hurricanes more frequent,” while 46% agree with the false statement, “Climate change threatens human extinction.”
I strongly oppose efforts by the U.S. government to censor American citizens by ordering social media platforms to remove content, sometimes while threatening to end Section 230, the federal law that makes companies like Facebook and Twitter possible. Such censorship is a violation of the First Amendment. The journalist Matt Taibbi, former State Department official Mike Benz, and I have all pointed to the emergence since 2016 of a censorship-industrial complex operated and funded by the U.S. government. It should be defunded.
But it’s notable that the censorship-industrial complex has shown no interest in censoring climate misinformation that has led people to believe that climate change is making hurricanes more frequent and threatening human extinction. “An example of malinformation is editing a video to remove important context to harm or mislead,” writes CISA. And yet that is precisely what foreign disinformation threat actors like Greta Thunberg, her allies at the German government-funded Potsdam Institute, and even the U.N.’s own Secretary-General Antonio Guterres routinely do when they share videos of people in poor countries suffering from flooding, which is a direct result of lack of flood management infrastructure, not slightly more precipitation from climate change.
Moreover, the censorship-industrial complex has sought to censor accurate information about climate change and energy. Last June, former Biden Administration Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy demanded censorship of those who criticized the failure of weather-dependent renewables during the blackouts in Texas in February 2021, even though such criticisms were factual. “The tech companies have to stop allowing specific individuals over and over again to spread disinformation,” said McCarthy.
In her interview, she went on to falsely claim that critics of renewables are funded by “dark money” fossil fuel companies — the same false claim that Democrats made of the world’s most influential scientist studying hurricanes and climate change, Roger Pielke, Jr. of the University of Colorado. As such, McCarthy spread disinformation in order to undermine the legitimacy of her opponents.
The U.N. continues to wage its disinformation campaign against the people of the world, as today’s headlines about its new report show. “‘The climate time-bomb is ticking,’” reads the CNN headline. “Scientists release ‘survival guide’ to avert climate disaster,” says BBC. “Earth to hit critical warming threshold by early 2030s, climate panel says.” The U.N. most journalists are implying that scientists have determined that a temperature increase beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels would be catastrophic.
The U.N. report is malinformation. The supposed 1.5-degree “threshold” is political, not scientific, as Pielke and others have shown. Global warming causes incrementally greater risk. Temperatures are expected to rise less than most thought as recently as 10 years ago, thanks to abundant natural gas. And humankind’s physical security is assured, given our success at adapting to more extreme weather and producing more food on less land.
All of this raises a question. Why, if the U.N. and U.S. governments are so committed to censoring disinformation, are they themselves spreading it? Why, in other words, do U.N. officials perfectly fit their own definition of “disinformation threat actors,” and often foreign ones at that?
Yemeni prisoner exchange deal reached
The Cradle | March 20, 2023
The head of the National Committee for Prisoners’ Affairs, Abdul Qader al-Murtada, announced on Monday, 20 March, that a deal to exchange prisoners had been reached between the Ansarallah resistance movement and the Saudi-led coalition, with implementation to take place in three weeks, Al-Masirah TV reported.
Al-Murtada stated that “Today we concluded the latest round of negotiations in Switzerland regarding prisoners, and it was agreed, praise be to God, to implement a broad prisoner exchange deal that includes 706 of our prisoners in exchange for 181 prisoners of the other side, including Saudis and Sudanese.”
“The deal will be implemented after three weeks, hopefully, and another round will be held after the month of Ramadan to complete the implementation of the rest of the agreement,” Al-Murtada added.
The latest round of negotiations began 10 days ago under the auspices of the United Nations.
The prisoner exchange deal comes amid renewed hopes for a broader end to the Yemen conflict.
UN Special Envoy to Yemen Hans Grundberg told the UN Security Council on 15 March that “Intense diplomatic efforts are ongoing at different levels to bring the conflict in Yemen to an end” and that “we are currently witnessing renewed regional diplomatic momentum, as well as a step change in the scope and depth of the discussions.”
Much of this momentum has resulted from a recent agreement between rival Islamic powers Saudi Arabia and Iran to resume diplomatic relations and work toward peace in the region. As part of this reconciliation, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi is set to visit Saudi Arabia for talks with Saudi King Salman in the coming weeks.
Since the beginning of the Saudi-led war in Yemen, which began in early 2015, an estimated 377,000 Yemenis have died, according to a UN Development Programme report issued in late 2021.
Some 60 percent of these deaths were caused by the indirect effects of the war, such as lack of safe drinking water, hunger, and disease, while fighting has directly killed more than 150,000 people.
Most of those killed by the war’s indirect effects were “young children who are especially vulnerable to under- and malnutrition,” according to the report.
During the same period, the US government provided $54.6 billion of military aid to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to a report issued by the US Government Accountability Office. The report noted that the US has 140 military advisers working in Saudi Arabia on training missions and to facilitate weapons sales.
The New York Times reported that the internal government report concluded that the US State Department and Department of Defense “failed to assess civilian casualties caused by a Saudi-led coalition in the catastrophic war in Yemen and the use of American-made weapons in the killings.”
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Israel Would Have No Qualms About USS Liberty-Style FALSE FLAG If Iran Campaign Falters – Analysts
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 18.06.2025
Donald Trump is mulling whether or not to join Israel’s aggression against Iran as Tel Aviv faces problems sustaining its defenses against growing counterstrikes, and apparently lacks a realistic game plan for an end to hostilities after failing to achieve its goals. Analysts told Sputnik how the US could be ‘nudged’ into the conflict.
“The US is already assisting Israel with supplies, intel, refueling support, etc. One of the many US posts in the region could be attacked for a casus belli,” former Pentagon analyst Karen Kwiatkowski explained.
“If Trump doesn’t comply with Israel’s demand” and join its aggression voluntarily, “a false flag may be needed” to drag the US in, Kwiatkowski, retired US Air Force Lt. Col.-turned Iraq War whistleblower, fears.
Netanyahu has a diverse array of options at his disposal, according to the observer, including:
- a false flag against US assets abroad blamed on Iran or one of its Axis of Resistance allies, like the Houthis
- a US domestic attack or assassination blamed on Iran
- Iranian air defenses ‘accidentally’ hitting a civilian jetliner carrying Americans
- use of a dirty bomb or nuclear contamination somewhere in the region blamed on Iran
- even blackmailing by threatening to use nukes against Iran if the US doesn’t join the fight
Kwiatkowski estimates that Israel probably has “enough blackmail power” against President Trump and Congress to avoid the necessity of a false flag operation, but a “USS Liberty-style” attack, targeting the soon-to-be-retired USS Nimitz supercarrier that’s heading to the Middle East, for example, nevertheless cannot be ruled out entirely, she says. … continue
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- War on Iran threatens global Gulf capital flows: FT analysis
- Mossad De Facto Admits To Inciting Riots In Iran
- Tehran: World grown thoroughly exhausted with US-Israeli ‘false flag storylines’
- Trump ‘stuck between a rock and a hard place’, lacks Iran war strategy: Ex-CIA chief
- Trump’s bombardment of fake news so far is working quite well. But where is it heading?
- If Americans Knew
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- Child denied life-saving bone marrow transplant by Israel ‘because he is from Gaza’
- Raffi Berg: BBC Middle East Editor Exposed as CIA, Mossad Collaborator
- Jerusalem Archbishop Rebukes Netanyahu’s Statements on Christianity
- US to embed Palantir AI across entire military: Report
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- Lebanon deaths top 1,200; Palantir AI to be embedded across US military – Not a ceasefire Day 163
- Israel’s assassination game: Take all pragmatists off the board
- Food shortages return to Gaza as Israel tightens aid restrictions under the cover of its war on Iran
- Trump demands trillions in payments from Gulf countries, billions from Harvard – Not a ceasefire Day 162
- No Tricks Zone
- Devastating Assessment Of Comirnaty Vaccine By Former Senior Pfizer Europe Toxicologist
- New Study: CO2 Is ‘Effectively Negligible’ As An Explanatory Climate Change Factor Since 2000
- Former Pfizer Toxicologist Dr. Helmut Sterz Tells Bundestag Hearing Pfizer Vaccine Should Have Never Been Approved
- Energy Expert: Germany’s Nuclear Phaseout Was A “500 Billion Euro Mistake”
- New Research: South Australia’s Mid-Holocene Sea Surface Temperatures Were 4°C Warmer Than Today
- Storing Green Energy To Last Germany 10 Days Would Require A 60-Million Tonne Battery
- New Studies: UK Sea Levels Were 4 Meters Higher Than Today During The Mid-Holocene
- Destructive Green New Deal: German Energy And Metal Group Warns Of Drastic Crisis
- New Study Documents A 20-Year Pause In Arctic Sea Ice Decline – Driven By Internal Variability
- Wake-up Call: Survey Shows Majority Of Germans Now Favor Postponing Climate Targets!
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