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US funds Ukraine outlets that censor and smear pro-peace Americans – report

Brigadier-General Oleksii Hromov, Deputy Chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (Photo by Vladimir Shtanko/Anadolu Agency)
RT | April 11, 2024

A “sprawling constellation” of supposedly independent organizations and fact-checkers bankrolled by Washington has been behind labeling Americans who disagree with Kiev Russian propagandists, according to an investigation published on Thursday.

Journalist Lee Fang and RealClearInvestigations have looked into outfits such as New Voice of Ukraine, VoxUkraine, Detector Media and others, finding that in many cases they “promoted aggressive messages that stray from traditional journalistic practices” to support the Ukrainian government and “delegitimize its critics,” both at home and abroad.

Americans they have gone after range from economist Jeffrey Sachs and University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer to journalists Tucker Carlson and Glenn Greenwald. Some of these outfits have also denounced a factually correct New York Times article about the battle of Avdeevka as a “Russian psyop” and “disinformation.”

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) have funded scores of Ukrainian organizations. Some of them act as fact-checking partners for Meta’s Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp platforms, helping Ukraine censor critics under the guise of fighting “Russian disinformation.”

The London-based Zinc Network has been paid by USAID to “undermine Kremlin information operations” and help Ukraine with its own “strategic communications.”

According to another investigative journalist, Jack Poulson, Zinc’s Open Information Partnership in Ukraine has defined disinformation as “verifiable information which is unbalanced or skewed, amplifies, or exaggerates certain elements for effect, or uses emotive or inflammatory language to achieve effects which fit within existing Kremlin narratives, aims, or activities.”

Asked about the “anti-disinformation” groups in Ukraine targeting Americans, the State Department told Fang and RealClear that it “provides funding to credible independent media organizations to strengthen democracies in the countries we work in around the world.”

“We do not control the editorial content of these organizations,” the State Department insisted. According to documents Fang has reviewed, however, the US government and its contractors have “directly set the agenda” for Ukrainian outlets.

The US is “an active participant” in the information war between Russia and Ukraine, George Beebe, a director with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told Fang. “The US government has been trying to shape perceptions, and it’s very difficult to separate what’s intended for foreign audiences from what seeps into the Anglosphere media,” he added.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has accused Russia of influencing US lawmakers and society at large. While he has offered little evidence for his claims, Fang’s investigation has revealed that much of the content generated by US-funded Ukrainian outlets “explicitly targets American foreign policy discourse.”

April 11, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine and the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant: The Samson Solution

Sputnik – 11.04.2024

Ukraine continues its attacks on Zaporozhye nuclear power plant. International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi warned that it came “quite close” to a nuclear accident on Sunday after it was attacked by drones.

Dr. Chris Busby, a physical chemist and scientific secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, shares his opinion about what the non-stop Ukrainian attacks on the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant could result in with Sputnik.

We all know the Biblical story of the end of Samson. Having been betrayed and captured by the Philistines, Samson ends his life, and all the others around him, by exerting his great strength and pulling down the pillar he was chained to. The building falls down, killing him and all his captors. This has always been my worry about what I will call the Ukrainian conflict.

As the developments go against Ukraine, there is an increasing tendency to abandon direct engagement with the Russian forces (lack of weapons, poor air cover, army losses) and rather to move to a kind of Terminator 2 warfare. Action at a distance, using robot drones and cruise missiles. A move towards a spiteful kind of warfare that is relatively cheap but results in politically spectacular results.

Well, so what – you may say. For me, as someone who has studied the effects of radiation and radioactive contamination, the possibilities relating to the six reactors and associated waste cooling ponds of the Zaporozhye nuclear site represent something which would have more effect on Europe and Ukraine and indeed the world than anything that has occurred so far.

For individuals in Ukraine, motivated by hatred and spite, the site is a tempting target. Do these people know what it is they are doing, or may do? I think they don’t. Or maybe, like Samson, they don’t care. They want to pull the house down. In this case, Europe, Russia, the world.

Of course, they have no idea what could happen if one of the reactors went up. Or a spent fuel pond. And let’s be clear, if one goes up, like the domino effect at Fukushima, probably they all go up. That is because nuclear fuel is hot. Even spent nuclear fuel is hot. The fuel in the reactor in shutdown, or in the spent fuel ponds, has to be cooled. If it is not cooled (by pumping water round it, or cooling the water in the ponds by spraying) then it gets hotter and hotter. Then it melts.

When nuclear fuel melts together it forms a critical mass. The neutron flux increases and increases. It turns into a kind of nuclear bomb. That explodes and sends radioactive material up in the air, as with Chernobyl, as with Fukushima.

The winds carry this Pandoras box contents for hundreds, even thousands of kilometres. The Chernobyl radiation went west, after contamination of an enormous tract of land and water courses, sending the contamination through Kiev, down the Dnepr to Zaporozhye and beyond. Studies of cancer and infant mortality, congenital malformations along the water route found significant effects, children died, from cancer, from heart attacks, the population of Belarus, the entire country showed a sharp increase in adult deaths, at the same time a sharp reduction in births.

As far away as Wales and Scotland children died from leukemia; I know this, I studied the numbers which were released to me when I was part of the UK Committee examining Radiation Risk from Internal Emitters, CERRIE. Babies developed leukemia in Germany and Greece. And the explosion of one reactor at Zaporozhye is a much bigger deal than Chernobyl.

How could this happen? There are a number of possibilities. First, a cruise missile attack on one of the reactor buildings could theoretically result in the penetration of one of the reactors. There are penetration warheads in existence now that can cut through concrete; using depleted uranium (DU) penetration.

Do we know what Ukraine has in the way of cruise missiles? I don’t. I read that France and UK have given Ukraine cruise missiles. Also depleted uranium weapons. Some of these went up at Khmelnitsky, as I wrote about. The material went north west to Poland, Belarus and Germany, round Scandinavia, and ended up (and was measured) in England. Ukraine has (it seems) promised not to use these cruise missiles to attack distant targets in Russia, or the Crimea bridge. But Zaporozhye is not a distant target. It is just across the river (indeed there was an attack by boats).

Then there could be a fatal destruction of the control room and control facilities, so that the reactor goes mad and can’t be controlled. Then the cooling system could be knocked out. The electricity supply, the stand-by generators. Nuclear power stations are a very big target. They were never built to survive a war. It is no wonder that Rafael Grossi, the IAEA supremo, is worried.

The substances released by such an explosion include Caesium-137 with a half life of about 30 years. That means it’s around for 100 years or more. This causes cancer but also affects muscles, as in children’s heart muscles. They get arrythmias and die of heart attacks. The rate of arrythmias in children in Belarus is 15 %. In the rest of the world the background rate is 2%.

The contamination includes Strontium-90, which binds to DNA, causes cancer and kills children in the womb, or causes malformations. There are (of course) enormous amounts of Uranium particles. Uranium has a half life of billions of years. There is Plutonium. I can go on and on. And on. The radiation, focused inside the body, or the people, the animals, the plants, will destroy everything slowly.

But what about Chernobyl, you say, that hasn’t destroyed Europe. Well, just look at the cancer rates in Europe from 1986 onwards. In England, in the 1990s, about one in 6 developed cancer. In 2022 it was closer to one in 3. It is predicted (by WHO) to be soon 1 in 2. And this is adjusted for age. No one is asking why this epidemic has developed (except me).

The Samson option, will destroy the health of the population of Ukraine, Europe, Russia, and further afield. It would poison the productive land, crops would fail or else be poisonous.

The Samson option, it seems to me, is a possibility which I put in the same box in my head as Global Nuclear War. Ukraine has no nuclear weapons. But this can be done.

April 11, 2024 Posted by | Nuclear Power, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | | Leave a comment

Zelensky’s New Counteroffensive Will Spell Disaster for Ukraine – Senior Russian MoD Source

Sputnik -11.04.2024

Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky told German newspaper Bild on Tuesday that his country already has a new plan for a counteroffensive against Russian forces but needs more advanced Western weapons.

A high-ranking source in the Russian Ministry of Defense has stated that the new counteroffensive will end in complete disaster for Ukraine with the ultimate defeat of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

“Due to such non-trivial approaches in military planning, there is no doubt that the implementation of Zelensky’s new plan for a counteroffensive will end in a complete disaster for Ukraine with the final defeat of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the beginning of the path to peace on Russian terms,” a senior Ministry of Defense source told reporters.

According to the source, “In the absence of volunteers in Ukraine willing to further Zelensky’s madness with their lives and health, the Kiev regime is filling the huge personnel shortage in the Ukrainian Armed Forces with fresh cannon fodder, advancing a law on mass compulsory mobilization of citizens.”

Moreover, Zelensky fully relies on the West to provide the necessary weapons for hundreds of thousands of conscripts. There’s nothing left of their own in Ukraine for a long time. Besides, in the West, they’re already down to stripping their troops naked.

The outcome of President Zelensky’s previous counteroffensive plan in 2023, euphemistically referred to by him as “not so successful,” resulted in the deaths and serious injuries of over 166,000 Ukrainian soldiers, as well as the loss of 789 tanks, 2,400 other armored vehicles, and 132 aircraft.

April 11, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

EU state to give Ukraine fixed share of GDP annually

RT | April 11, 2024

Riga has resolved to supply Ukraine with military aid amounting to $120 million (€112 million) this year and will continue giving the equivalent of 0.25% of Latvia’s GDP in aid annually for the next three years, under a new agreement between the two nations.

The document was signed on Thursday by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics on the sidelines of a summit of 13 EU nations in Lithuania, and by Ukraine and Moldova.

Under the agreement on “long-term support and security obligations,” Riga will allocate the same portion of its GDP for military assistance to Kiev in 2024, 2025 and 2026. The aid could come in the form of equipment, weapons or military training, according to the text of the document published by Kiev.

The Baltic nation also pledged to back Ukraine’s NATO and EU aspirations. Zelensky praised the development as a “concrete result” of his trip to Vilnius, host of the 15-nation summit. He also thanked Latvia for its “readiness to help” for as long as necessary. Riga has not commented on the agreement so far.

Earlier, another Baltic State, Estonia, vowed to spend the same share of its GDP on annual aid to Kiev. In January, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas told local media outlet ERR that her nation would spend 0.25% of its GDP on assistance for Ukraine for the next four years. She also called on other Western nations to follow suit.

However, Tallinn and Kiev have not yet signed any deals relating to the initiative. In early March, the Baltic nation said that the two states had begun developing a corresponding agreement. Later that same month, Ukrainian media reported that work on the treaty was “in its final stages.”

Estonia has been one of the most hawkish of Kiev’s backers amid its ongoing conflict with Russia. In March, Tallinn backed French President Emmanuel Macron after he raised the prospect of potentially sending NATO troops to Ukraine, with Kallas saying her country would not rule out deploying forces to Ukrainian territory.

Later in March, a poll showed that public trust in the Kallas-led government of Estonia stood at just 17%, down from 21% in February.

Latvia has taken a more moderate stance. In March, Prime Minister Evika Silina said that NATO was not ready for talks about sending troops to Ukraine and called for the focus to remain on military and financial assistance to Kiev instead.

April 11, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Hungary refuses to submit to EU’s migration pact

MAGYAR HÍRLAP | April 11, 2024

The European Parliament approved on Wednesday the EU’s controversial New Pact on Migration and Asylum, but Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó was quick to reiterate Budapest’s opposition to its implementation and vowed to maintain existing border restrictions.

“This pact would give the green light for tens and hundreds of thousands of migrants to come to European countries and would extend to Central Europe the problem of Western Europe, which started when they gave up the protection of their own identity, their own culture, and their own society, letting in illegal migrants, creating a double society, and increasing the threat of terrorism,” Szijjártó warned.

“We will not allow this in Central Europe. We Hungarians, no matter what pressure we are under, no matter what kind of migration pact the MEPs vote for, we will not give up on the physical border. We will protect the border,” he added.

The new asylum and migration package was passed largely with votes from lawmakers affiliated with the European People’s Party, the Socialists and Democrats (S&D), and Renew Europe, with MEPs being urged to swallow their criticisms of the scheme and vote for the compromise legislation.

Szijjártó stressed that Hungary has been protecting the external borders of the European Union and the Schengen Area from illegal immigrants for nine years now, for which the government has not only received no support from Brussels, but has also been under constant pressure to abandon the borders and thus the protection of Hungarian culture and identity.

“Today in Brussels, there is a pro-war and pro-migration leadership that is putting pressure and launching attacks against any country that wants to preserve its own security, its own identity, and stand up for peace,” he said.

The minister expressed his regret that the most important issues for the future of Europe are now being debated on ideological grounds, including migration.

“Today, the vast majority of debates are politicized, ideologically based, and dogmatic, and it is difficult to have a normal discussion on important issues,” he said.

April 11, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

Switzerland’s Largest Party Calls for Return to Neutrality in All Conflicts – Statement

Sputnik – 11.04.2024

The Swiss People’s Party (UDC), which holds the majority in parliament, has said on Thursday that the country should return to holding neutrality in all conflicts.

“Switzerland must strictly return to its perpetual and armed neutrality,” the statement said.

Armed neutrality means that Switzerland must be able to protect and defend itself, while the perpetual neutrality means that the country will be credible only if it remains neutral without any exceptions, the UDC explained.

The UDC also demands that all sanctions that have not been adopted by the UN Security Council are lifted, the statement said.

April 11, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | | Leave a comment

Had UN condemned Israel, there’d be no need for retaliation – Iran

RT | April 11, 2024

Iran feels obligated to punish Israel for its attack on the diplomatic mission in Syria because the UN Security Council has failed in its duty, Tehran’s mission to the world body said on Thursday.

The April 1 airstrike killed seven Iranian officers, including two generals of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force. Israel did not officially claim responsibility for the attack.

“Had the UN Security Council condemned the Zionist regime’s reprehensible act of aggression on our diplomatic premises in Damascus and subsequently brought to justice its perpetrators, the imperative for Iran to punish this rogue regime might have been obviated,” the mission posted on X.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said that Israel “must and shall be punished” for what it did. Israeli and US intelligence has fueled speculation that possible reprisal could entail anything from drone attacks to ballistic missile strikes.

Israel has been bracing for some kind of response for over a week, with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) canceling all leave and starting to spoof GPS signals.

Reports on Wednesday, sourced to anonymous US intelligence officials, spoke of an imminent Iranian strike within 24-48 hours, following the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the feast of Eid-al-Fitr. Brent oil futures rose above $90 a barrel in anticipation.

British-based media have reported that Israel has been preparing to attack Iranian nuclear program facilities in case of a missile strike. The US government has declared it would back West Jerusalem against Tehran, but anonymous claims that American jets would join Israeli strikes have not been officially confirmed.

April 11, 2024 Posted by | War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Brits should not be part of the genocide in Gaza

By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | April 11, 2024

How likely is it that the Israeli air force jet which killed three British aid workers in Gaza took off from our base in Cyprus? How much longer can our own government deny that there is a genocide happening each day in Gaza with not only the tacit blessing of the government but in some cases it actually goes the distance and provides the full package of support to murder women and children?

The murky dividing line between the British so-called neutral position on Gaza and the reality of what even our own MPs recently admitted was a genocide which broke a tome of internal laws – seems to be getting more opaque by the day.

The Conservative party is very confused about where it is on the Gaza war and while David Cameron recently admitted that he was “worried” about international law being broken, it is the prime minister who is now in the firing line demanding enquiries about the death of the three nationals killed.

Three of the seven who were killed were British nationals named James Henderson, John Chapman and James Kirby. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak demanded a concrete investigation into the deaths from the Netanyahu government.

But he won’t get concrete investigations from the Netanyahu government as this body has shown the world in recent months that there is no level of depravity which it is not prepared to stoop to as it still continues to shock us each day with video clips on social media breaking new boundaries of poor taste.

Yet IDF soldiers playing with women’s underwear is one thing; it is quite another thing for us to imagine that Britain could be pulled into a massive international law black hole which could go on for years via the ICJ in the Hague.

Surely the deaths of these three should be the right moment to have a re-think on a government level if we can’t have one as a society. Israel has gone over a line on “defending itself” and Britain has been dragged into that quagmire which has made us look like the amateurs we are on the international diplomatic circuit.

But where to draw that line?

While it is commonly viewed as acceptable for British nationals to fight ISIS in Syria and Iraq, or indeed, it was more than alright for young Libyans in our society to fight against the terror cell in Libya (MI6 officers at Heathrow airport wished them luck when they left and then welcomed them back into the country), it has become an unthinkable crime with the gravest of punishments for any UK subjects to be linked to ISIS – the recent appeal case of Shamima Begum losing her right to British citizenship as one good example.

But many of these incidents are illogical and often end up betraying their original ethos. In the case of the Libyans known to MI6 who fought ISIS in Libya, one such young man came back radicalised and carried out the appalling terror attack on the Manchester arena attack at the concert of Ariana Grande in May of 2017. The case was a major own goal for the security services but it did at least shed light on the tawdry subject of how the intelligence services pay terrorists around the world to do our dirty work. Some might argue that Shamima Begum should have a second chance as she was indoctrinated as a minor when she left for Syria to be an ISIS bride. Seems an excessive decision given there is no evidence against her of actual terrorist activities.

The real issue is that we can’t effectively navigate around international wars and decide each one on its merits, in terms of who we allow to get involved in them. If we are not in control of our own government getting too involved in the Gaza slaughter, not to mention citizens, then we can only expect having to pay a very high price for it which will make Boris Johnson’s 40bn euro divorce from the EU look like chicken feed. We will soon no doubt see British doctors shot in cold blood by British soldiers in IDF unforms.

Just recently an Oxford-educated Jewish Brit was fired from his job as working as a spokesperson for Israel’s army. What no one seemed to ask in the UK, is what on earth was Eylon Levy doing there in the first place? It’s a similar story with how British journalist Douglas Murray failed to even raise an eyebrow of disdain when he was planning to be part of a fundraiser on behalf of Israel. Astonishing that in overregulated Britain, a country where we have rules for even how we are allowed to think on social media, that these two gentlemen found no resistance to their wartime activism.

Recently, the French government announced that it would take legal action against French citizens who leave the country and go and fight for the Israeli army in Gaza. Currently it is believed there are almost 100 British subjects who have “volunteered” to fight in Gaza with an IDF uniform. I would argue that it is high time that we follow the French model and stop this practice altogether of allowing our citizens to fight in any overseas wars, anyway unless they are dual nationals and are prepared to surrender their British passports at Heathrow when they leave.

April 11, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

How Big a Factor is Iran in the War on Gaza?

By Ted Snider | The Libertarian Institute | April 10, 2024

In both Ukraine and Gaza, the Joe Biden administration has adopted the dangerous doctrine of war management in which, while not stopping a war diplomatically, it attempts to contain it and prevent it from becoming a wider war into which the United States might get drawn.

This difficult to calibrate policy is being threatened in both theaters.

In the Middle East, two Israeli actions have escalated the calibrated strikes between Israel and Iran, up to the threshold that Iran could absorb without feeling the necessity to respond.

One was an airstrike in southern Lebanon that killed Ali Ahmad Hassin, an important Hezbollah commander. The more significant and volatile one was the April 1 attack on an Iranian embassy compound in Damascus that killed seven Iranian officers, including General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, the top Iranian Quds Force commander in Lebanon and Syria.

Zahedi is the most senior Iranian commander to be killed since war broke out on October 7. But what made this strike escalatory and dangerous is that it targeted an embassy compound under Iranian sovereignty. “When they attack our consulate,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech on April 10, “it is as if they have attacked our soil.” Khamenei called the decision to escalate to such an attack a “mistake” that “must be punished.”

A direct response by Iran against Israel could risk the nightmare scenario the United States has sought to avoid through its policy of managing wars. In that scenario, Iran retaliates in kind against Israel and Israel responds, drawing Iran and Hezbollah into the war in a manner that pulls in the Houthis as well as militias in Iraq and Syria. A Houthi source told Responsible Statecraft that “In case a full-scale war was to erupt between Hezbollah and Israel, Yemen and its leadership will stand with the party [Hezbollah] militarily, politically and economically” in a way that could even include “sending foot soldiers.” Such a force aligned against Israel could risk drawing the United States into the war.

In a speech on April 5, Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah called the attack on Iran’s Damascus embassy “a turning point” and said that it is “certain that the Iranian response to the [bombing] of the Iranian consulate is coming without a doubt.”

He said, perhaps clearly for the first time, that Hezbollah could intervene in the event of a full-scale Israel-Iran war. “Everyone must prepare themselves, arrange their matters and be careful,” he said, “when the Iranian side responds to the targeting of the Iranian consulate and to the Zionist enemy’s possible response to the Iranian response.”

Nasrallah said that an Iranian response is inevitable and seemed to caution against the size of the Israeli counter-response, saying, not only that “everyone must prepare themselves,” but reminding that Hezbollah has “not used the main weapons nor the main forces and we have not called in the reserves.”

Nasrallah may have been leveraging a fuller Hezbollah entrance into the war to caution Israel and the United States against an even more escalatory Israeli counter-response to the response Iran feels it must deliver. Iran may have gone one step further, leveraging its entrance into the war in an attempt to stop the war altogether.

As Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute first reported, an Arab diplomatic source told Jadeh Iran that Iran will respond to the Israeli attack on its embassy with a direct attack on Israel unless the United States orchestrates a ceasefire in Gaza. According to reporting in Jadeh Iran, “Iran has vowed to respond to the assassination of Zahedi.” However, in an “exchange of messages between Tehran and Washington” whose aim is “to contain escalation,” an Iranian proposal “stipulated a ceasefire in Gaza as a price” for not striking Israel in retaliation.

Though a causal line cannot be drawn, it is interesting that, in an interview recorded on April 3, President Joe Biden said, “I think what [Netanyahu’s] doing is a mistake. I don’t agree with his approach,” and then said, “So what I’m calling for is the Israelis to just call for a ceasefire, allow for the next six, eight weeks, a total access to all food and medicine going into the country.”

It is also interesting that the United States is participating in the latest round of ceasefire negotiations in Cairo. In an April 8 press conference, National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby said that CIA Director Bill Burns was in Cairo for the talks. He said that the Biden administration “is doing everything possible to broker a deal that secures the release of all the hostages and leads to an immediate ceasefire. And there’s simply no higher priority.”

CNN went further, reporting that Burns wasn’t just present or participating, but that he “presented a new proposal to try to bridge the gaps in ongoing negotiations to broker a deal to bring about a ceasefire.”

Hezbollah may be responding to the killing of one of their commanders by leveraging the threat of its entering the war to prevent the war from entering an uncontrolled series of escalations. Iran may be responding to the airstrike on its embassy that killed a general by leveraging its entering the war to stop the war altogether. How big a factor Iran is, and how powerful its leverage, may help determine what comes next, how big the Israeli counter-response to Iran’s promised response is and even, perhaps, the prospects of a future ceasefire.

April 11, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

China tells US it won’t be bullied on Russia

RT | April 10, 2024

Relations between Beijing and Moscow are their business alone, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning has said, responding to veiled threats by a senior American diplomat.

US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said on Tuesday that any further Russian advances in Ukraine will “have an impact” on the US-China relationship.

“China and Russia have the right to carry out normal cooperation. Such cooperation should not come under external interference or constraint,” Mao said, when asked about Campbell’s comments at Wednesday’s press briefing. “China will not accept the accusations and pressuring.”

Speaking to the nonprofit National Committee on US-China Relations, Campbell – who recently took over from Victoria Nuland – said that recent Russian gains could “alter the balance of power in Europe in ways that are, frankly, unacceptable” to Washington, and that the State Department has told Beijing as much.

“On Ukraine, China has always taken an objective and just position and played a constructive role in actively promoting peace talks,” Mao told reporters. “If certain countries truly care about peace and want an early end to the crisis, they should reflect on the root cause of the crisis and do something that will actually help bring about peace, rather than deflect the blame to China.”

Beijing has repeatedly resisted US pressure to side with Kiev and join the Washington-led embargo against Moscow.

Campbell’s remarks echoed the statements made by US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen during her visit to China earlier this week. Mao responded by saying that China would “take resolute measures to safeguard our legitimate rights and interests.”

On Wednesday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman also condemned US travel warnings as “totally unwarranted,” “wrongful” and “groundless,” noting that they have “deterred many Americans” who wanted to visit the country.

China and other members of BRICS have helped Russia mitigate the “illegal policy of unilateral sanctions” by the West, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday, after meeting his counterpart Wang Yi in Beijing.

Moscow’s trade with the rest of the world has surged over the past two years, more than offsetting the embargo by the US and its allies, imposed over the Ukraine conflict.

April 11, 2024 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

Still Trying to End the Vietnam War Killings

By Adam Dick | Peace and Prosperity Blog | April 10, 2024

The Vietnam War ended nearly 50 years ago. Still, the killing and maiming is not over. People continue to suffer from and succumb to injuries from the war long past. And others, often people born since the war’s end, are killed or injured by the explosion of some of the many bombs from the war that now clutter Vietnam.

A March 15 New York Times article profiles Chuck Searcy who, as a United States Army intelligence analyst in Vietnam, became disillusioned with the war. Years later, writes Seth Mydans in the article, Searcy is working in Vietnam on ameliorating the harm from the left behind bombs. Project Renew that he cofounded has been “deploying teams of de-miners, teaching schoolchildren how to stay safe, and providing prosthetics and job training to victims” for over 20 years. You can read the article here.

It is inspiring that people are dedicated to trying to minimize the long-term damage of the US government’s wars. It is unfortunate, though, that, since the Vietnam War, Americans have been suckered into allowing their government to pursue a series of devastating wars across the world. These wars, like the Vietnam War, have killed and maimed many people and then, after their conclusion, left behind new streams of suffering that flow into the future.

The world would do much better if there were a big uptick in one “illness” in America: the Vietnam Syndrome.

April 10, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

‘Low Credibility’ Study Claims No Link Between Cellphone Use and Brain Tumors

By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 9, 2024

A new peer-reviewed study concluded that heavy cellphone use was not associated with an increased risk of developing brain tumors. But some critics questioned the results, citing methodological flaws and bias from industry funding.

The authors of the COSMOS study (Cohort Study on Mobile Phones and Health) promoted it as the world’s largest multinational prospective cohort study on the potential health risks of cellphone use.

They said the study, published in Environmental International, found “no evidence” of increased risk for developing three common brain tumors linked to heavy cellphone use.

“Our findings to date, together with other available scientific evidence,” the authors wrote, “suggest that mobile phone use is not associated with increased risk of developing these tumours.”

Dr. Lennart Hardell, a leading scientist on cancer risks from radiation, told The Defender the study “lacked scientific integrity.”

Hardell, an oncologist and epidemiologist with the Environment and Cancer Research Foundation who has authored more than 350 papers — almost 60 of which address radiofrequency (RF) radiation — said he found multiple shortcomings in its methodology and representation of the scientific literature.

“This is a product defense study, not suitable for a scientific journal claiming to have conducted a credible review of a submission,” Hardell said. “Obviously the referees have not done their proper job or have not been listened to. In the latter case, it casts doubt on the scientific credibility of the very journal.”

What Hardell found “most remarkable” was that the study authors failed to cite or reference important studies documenting an increased incidence of brain tumors among those who heavily used a cellphone, he said.

“It is hard to believe that the study authors are so incompetent and/or perhaps so biased towards the ‘no risk’ paradigm,” he said. “One may rightly ask what results they are hiding — at least a clarification is needed.”

“One must also ask if there is influence by industry,” he added.

Mona Nilsson, co-founder and director of the Swedish Radiation Protection Foundation, said there is reason to suspect that industry influenced the COSMOS study.

In an article critiquing the study, Nilsson said telecommunication companies were the ones who initiated the study and provided some of the study’s initial funding. “They have an interest in showing that mobile phones do not have negative health effects.”

Additionally, the researchers who conducted the study “have a long history of dismissing evidence of health risks,” she said. In her opinion, their results have “low credibility.”

Despite the study’s faults, Nilsson predicted it will be used “as effective evidence for the telecom industry” in lawsuits regarding brain tumors alleged to be caused by mobile phone use.

“The study will also be used in expert opinion reports as an argument that radiation from wireless technology does not cause cancer … So the telecom industry’s investment in the COSMOS study has been successful,” Nilsson told The Defender.

Methodological flaws underestimate risk

The COSMOS study included 250,000-plus participants from Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden and the U.K.

The researchers recruited participants between 2007-2012 and had them complete a detailed questionnaire about their lifetime mobile phone use.

Roughly seven years later, the researchers looked at cancer registries to see if any of the participants had developed one of three kinds of brain tumors: glioma, meningioma or acoustic neuroma.

Through statistical analyses, the researchers examined whether heavy cellphone use was associated with an increased risk of developing a brain tumor.

But the way they conducted their analyses was flawed, Nilsson said.

Rather than compare those who were heavily exposed to RF cellphone radiation with those who weren’t exposed, the study authors compared those who were heavily exposed with those who were just less exposed.

The authors simply split their participants into two groups based on total call time — the 50% who used their cellphones more versus the 50% who used their cellphones less — and compared those two groups.

“This leads to an underestimation of the risk,” Nilsson said, “because the exposed people were not compared with unexposed people but with a group of other exposed people.”

Hardell agreed and noted several other ways in which the analyses may have inaccurately minimized the risk of developing a brain tumor from RF radiation exposure.

For instance, the researchers didn’t analyze which side of the head participants said they held their phone in relation to the site of the brain tumors they later detected in some participants.

“These questions are vital for studying the association between use of wireless phones and brain tumor risk,” Hardell said.

They also didn’t include data on cordless phone use in their analyses, even though they asked the participants detailed questions about their cordless phone use.

“This is scientific misconduct,” Hardell said, “It is a shame to the participating individuals who gave of their time to answer the questionnaire.”

Prior research has shown that RF radiation from both cellphones and cordless phones — which were still very much in use during the study period — can be a risk factor for developing brain tumors, so researchers must look at people’s use of both, Hardell said.

Moreover, the study authors dropped 629 participants from the study because they had brain tumors before the start of the study. This could have further affected the analyses, Hardell said.

The study authors even failed to report “basic information,” including how many people were initially invited to participate and the breakdown of their gender, ages and country of origin, he said. “It is remarkable that the study was published in the current version.”

The COSMOS study is ongoing, meaning the researchers will follow up with the study cohort in the future.

In this first follow-up report on the COSMOS cohort, participants reported using mostly phones on a 2G and/or 3G network.

“Future updates of the COSMOS cohort on cancer outcomes will provide additional information on potential long-term effects of RF-EMF from more recent technology,” the authors wrote.

Telecom industry provided money, input

Three Swedish telecommunications companies — Ericsson, TeliaSonera and Telenor — provided funding for the COSMOS study data collection, according to the authors’ funding statement.

“The study appears to have been initiated by Ericsson and the Swedish scientists at KI,” the Karolinska Institutet, a major medical university in Sweden, Nilsson said.

Ericsson representatives in 2005 contacted Karolinska Institutet researchers Anders Ahlbom and Maria Feychting, she said. “They agreed to collaborate on a research project, with industry paying 50% of the costs.”

A 2012 report by the Swedish weekly magazine, Ny Teknik, revealed that the industry representatives and researchers had discussed arrangements and funding before turning to Vinnova, a Swedish governmental research agency, to draw up an agreement that ostensibly guaranteed COSMOS’ scientific independence from the industry, Nilsson said.

“In 2005,” she continued, “when the researchers and Ericsson started meeting, Ericsson made certain demands on ‘quality criteria’ and had views on the design of the study, according to Christer Törnevik, head of research at Ericsson.”

According to the funding section, the authors who were involved in acquiring funding for the study also contributed to the study concept — meaning that researchers who secured the money made seminal decisions about what the study would look at and what it would not look at.

Moreover, initially COSMOS was supported for five years by the U.K.’s Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research program, jointly funded by the U.K. Department of Health and the mobile telecommunications industry, the funding section said.

Several other telecom industry entities — including Nokia, Elisa and the Mobile Manufacturers’ Forum — also contributed to COSMOS.

The study also received funding from the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare, the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority, the Danish Strategic Research Council, Finland’s National Technology Agency, the Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation, the Kone Foundation, the U.K. Department of Health & Social Care, and the U.K.’s National Institute for Health Research Health Protection Research Unit and The Netherlands Organization for Health Research.

Feychting, the study’s lead author, did not respond when asked by The Defender what she would like to tell people who are concerned that industry influences may have biased the research.

She also did not comment on the allegation that the study’s findings lacked credibility.

Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa.

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.

April 10, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

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