UK contemplating sending troops to Ukraine – ex-ambassador
RT | December 17, 2023
British military leaders are making contingency plans for sending troops to Ukraine in case a disastrous turn of events on the battlefield necessitates their deployment to help fight Russian forces, Kiev’s former ambassador to the UK has claimed.
Despite public opposition, the UK government would directly join the fight in Ukraine if there’s a “catastrophic development of the war,” such as “the continuation of the occupation,” ex-diplomat Vadym Prystaiko said on Friday in an interview with the Ukrainian branch of US state-run broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).
The possibility of military deployments to Ukraine is a well-kept secret among Kiev’s Western allies, Prystaiko said. “No one will ever admit it, especially politicians. Every time they are asked, they will say, ‘no, no no way, come on, we’d rather give them everything they need.”
However, Prystaiko added, British officers are making plans “for the worst” – circumstances dire enough to prompt elected leaders to order a direct military intervention in the former Soviet republic. “In reality, the military is making calculations that, God forbid, they will have to use armed forces. That’s why the military and diplomats are there, to plan for the future.”
Prystaiko, who also served a stint as Kiev’s foreign minister, was fired as ambassador last July, after he criticized Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. His career downfall began when Zelensky responded sarcastically to a suggestion by the UK’s then-defense chief, Ben Wallace, that Ukraine should show more gratitude to its Western benefactors. Asked by Sky News about the tone of Zelensky’s remarks, he said, “I don’t believe that this sarcasm is healthy.”
Wallace’s successor as UK defense chief, Grant Shapps, hinted in September at deeper British involvement in the Ukraine crisis, including protection of commercial shipping traffic in the Black Sea. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak later said there had been “misreporting” when Shapps also seemed to suggest that London might send military instructors to Ukraine.
Russian officials have repeatedly described the conflict as a battle between Moscow and the “entire Western military machine.” British special forces have reportedly operated covertly in Ukraine, and Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed last year that there were entire military units in the country “under the de-facto command of Western advisers.”
Polls have shown consistently strong UK public opposition to deploying troops to Ukraine. Prystaiko said that given the mood of voters, none of Kiev’s backers is ready to fight the Russians directly. “It’s very difficult for democratic states that depend on the reelection cycle, that depend on their voters, that have to explain themselves a hundred times to make the first step.”
Hamas: US and Britain back Israel’s genocide in Gaza
Palestine Information Center – December 17, 2023
The Hamas Movement has accused the Israeli occupation army of using different types of internationally prohibited ammunition and bombs in its genocidal war on the Gaza Strip and persisting in its indiscriminate bombardment of homes, shelter centers, tents and hospitals.
“All this is happening in full view of the world, with support from the US, Britain and some European countries,” senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan told a news conference in Beirut on Saturday.
Hamdan criticized the failure of the international community and the UN to stop the brutal Israeli aggression against Gaza as a result of the US use of its veto power to support what he called the “neo-Nazis” in their crimes and massacres.
“About 19,000 citizens of our people have been martyred and about 52,000 others have been injured, while there are approximately 800 missing persons — 70 percent of them children and women,” Hamdan pointed out.
Hamdan said that a staggering 45 percent of the martyrs in southern Gaza are displaced persons, which contradicts the Israeli occupation’s claims about the presence of safe zones.
“There is no safe place or safe passages in the Gaza Strip. These are lies the occupation keeps repeating and every official of the US administration keeps parroting. The entirety of Gaza, from its northernmost to southernmost areas, is targeted by the Zio-American weaponry,” Hamdan underscored.
“The war trio and losers, Netanyahu, Gantz and Gallant, achieved nothing of their aggressive goals and their ongoing Nazi war against the Gaza Strip … Their dreams and illusions will be shattered on the land of proud Gaza,” he said.
Dying to Lose Weight? U.S. Poison Control Centers Report 1,500% Spike in Calls About Popular Weight-Loss Drug
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | December 15, 2023
U.S. poison control centers are reporting a sharp increase in calls related to semaglutide, a drug used to treat Type 2 diabetes and obesity, CNN reported Wednesday.
Developed by drugmaker Novo Nordisk, semaglutide is sold under the brand names Ozempic for diabetes, and Wegovy for weight loss. According to Medscape, Novo Nordisk said the two drugs are not interchangeable — although Ozempic is often taken off-label for weight-loss.
According to CNN, America’s Poison Centers said that between January and November, it responded to nearly 3,000 calls — a more than 15-fold increase since 2019 — about semaglutide. In 94% of those calls, semaglutide was the only substance reported, while 6% of the callers reported taking semaglutide plus one or more other drugs.
Also this week, an investigation by The BMJ highlighted examples of potentially illegal marketing of semaglutide in the U.K., suggesting the marketing may be a contributing factor to growing hype and ongoing shortages of the drug.
According to the BMJ report, webpages promoting semaglutide may violate U.K. laws, which prohibit the direct marketing of prescription drugs to consumers.
The New York Daily News reported that celebrities have publicly promoted Wegovy, helping to fuel the growing demand for the drug. According to Medscape, physicians looking to prescribe Ozempic are struggling to locate the medication for their patients due to shortages.
The hype — and the subsequent shortages — have arguably contributed to a growing market for semaglutide knock-offs and an online black market for the drug, according to the BBC.
Meanwhile, the high cost of Ozempic — partially fueled by growing demand for Wegovy — has resulted in an increasing reluctance of insurers and employers to cover the drug. Reuters reported a growing number of employers are instead hiring virtual healthcare providers to implement weight-loss management programs for employees.
Aside from the drugs’ high cost and the reluctance of insurers to pay for semaglutide drugs, weight-loss medications also have been associated with potentially serious side effects — including suicidal thoughts, thyroid cancer and gastrointestinal problems, and pose a serious but little-known risk for pregnant women.
Accidental overdoses behind many of the calls to poison control centers
Semaglutide, first approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Association (FDA) in 2017 as a diabetes medication, works by reducing blood-sugar levels and slowing down the passage of food exiting the stomach, CNN and the BBC reported.
According to CNN, among the nearly 3,000 reports of semaglutide poisoning this year, many have involved accidental overdoses.
Julie Weber, director of the Missouri Poison Center, told CNN that as of October, it had received 94 calls relating to semaglutide this year, as compared to 28 calls for all of 2021. Dr. Joseph Lambson, director of the New Mexico Poison and Drug Information Center, told CNN semaglutide calls nearly quadrupled between 2021 and 2022.
CNN reported the largest increase in calls occurred among adults ages 40 through 70 and, in particular, the 60-to-69-year-old age group.
In remarks to CNN, Dr. Kait Brown, clinical managing director of America’s Poison Centers, said most calls this year concerned dosing errors.
In some cases, callers had to be “hospitalized for severe nausea, vomiting and stomach pain,” CNN reported. Other warning signs of a semaglutide overdose are dizziness or lightheadedness, feeling jittery, sweating and chills, irritability, headache, weakness, fatigue, nausea, seizures, confusion, hypoglycemia and passing out.
Semaglutide, a GLP-1 agonist, has been associated with potentially severe adverse events even in cases not involving overdoses.
According to JAMA Medical News, clinicians are increasingly observing more serious gastrointestinal side effects associated with Ozempic and Wegovy, in addition to self-harm behavior, anesthesia complications, serious vision problems and cancer cases among people taking the drugs to either to lower their blood sugar or lose weight.
The FDA said Ozempic and Wegovy may pose a risk to pregnant women and warned they should discontinue taking these medications at least two months prior to pregnancy. However, those warnings are buried and long-term testing won’t be completed for years.
Semaglutide also has been linked to an inducement of suicidal thoughts among some users, and to serious digestive problems such as stomach paralysis, pancreatitis and bowel obstruction.
According to CNN, “There’s no specific antidote for a semaglutide overdose. The drug has a half-life of about a week, meaning it takes one week to clear half of it from your body.”
Celebrity promotion of Ozempic leads to shortages, online black market
According to the BBC, demand for Ozempic “spiralled last year after it hit the headlines for being Hollywood’s secret weight loss drug — nicknamed the ‘skinny jab,’” because users must inject it.
In addition to celebrity endorsements, an “elite” and influential group of prominent doctors and obesity specialists have received nearly $26 million in payments from Novo Nordisk to promote weight-loss drugs in their lectures, treatment guidelines, clinics and medical societies, according to a Reuters investigation and a report by investigative journalist Lee Fang.
“After celebrities began openly embracing Ozempic on social media in 2022 as a way to lose weight, demand overwhelmed supply,” CNN reported, adding that the FDA officially recognized a shortage of the drug in 2022.
This opened the door for certain qualified pharmacies to make compounded versions,” according to CNN. It also led to a rise in off-label prescriptions for weight loss, which “triggered global supply issues and created a shortage for diabetes patients in the U.K,” the BBC reported.
There are differences between the patented and compounded versions of semaglutide, CNN reported, noting that compounded versions have often not been tested for safety and are frequently sold in unapproved dosages.
According to the BBC, “Doctors say drugs bought from unregulated sources are dangerous and could contain potentially toxic ingredients.”
The name-brand versions of semaglutide “are sold in pre-filled pens, which come with some safeguards,” but the compounded versions “typically come in multidose glass vials,” for which “patients draw their own doses into syringes.”
Packages delivered by mail usually contain needles and two vials — one containing a white powder and the other a liquid — which have to be mixed together before the drug can be injected, according to the BBC.
According to CNN, some callers to poison control centers overdosed despite using the pre-filled pens — in at least one instance “giving themselves an entire month of doses at once.”
The BBC reported that the hype surrounding the use of semaglutide for weight loss fueled an “online black market” driven by “unregulated sellers offering semaglutide as a medicine, without prescription, online,” in the form of “diet kits.” The drug was also “being offered in beauty salons in Manchester and Liverpool.”
“These compounded versions are popular because they may cost less out-of-pocket, especially if the treatment isn’t covered by insurance,” CNN reported.
In June, the FDA issued a warning against taking compounded versions of semaglutide if the prescription version is available, stating the agency received adverse event reports connected to administration of the compounded versions of the drug.
The FDA has also sent letters to two online sellers asking them to stop selling the drug. Novo Nordisk sued six medical spas, medical clinics and weight-loss clinics for selling knock-off versions of semaglutide.
According to CNN, data collected by poison control centers regarding reported symptoms of semaglutide do not provide a clear indication as to whether the patented or compounded versions were taken, “but some state poison center directors say they believe that compounded versions are behind many of the calls.”
Shortages spur new virtual weight loss management programs
The shortage of Ozempic and Wegovy also created difficulties for physicians, Medscape reported. Kevin Huffman, D.O., a board-certified bariatric physician and CEO of AmBari Nutrition told Medscape physicians “must now prioritize patients at the greatest risk who stand to benefit considerably — a complex decision-making process.”
Physicians also “face a bias from private insurers and Medicare,” who typically won’t cover weight loss medications for patients without Type 2 diabetes, and who “would prefer patients try and fail at every diet plan and weight loss medication, many with serious cardiovascular side effects, before being approved for newer drugs.” Huffman said.
The high cost of semaglutide has dissuaded employers and insurers from offering coverage for those drugs, Reuters reported.
Instead, companies like Boeing, Fortune Brands and Hilton “have signed up for or expanded deals with virtual healthcare providers,” who implement “weight-loss management programs” which “may require diet and exercise before granting access to the medicines.”
According to Reuters, drugs such as Wegovy “have list prices of more than $1,000 a month,” leading insurers like Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan to offer employers the option to sign their patients up for weight loss programs offered via virtual telemedicine platforms.
Reuters quoted Truist analyst Jailendra Singh, who forecast that the market for virtual obesity drug management may reach $700 million by next year and $9 billion “longer term.”
American Medical Association President Jesse Ehrenfeld, M.D., MPH, told Reuters that telehealth providers “should be a supplement to, not a replacement for, in-person provider networks” and that a reliance on telehealth may drive patients away from their current physicians.
But in a statement provided to The Defender, Brandon Welch, Ph.D., an associate professor in public health sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina and co-author of Telehealth Success: How to Thrive in the New Age of Remote Care, said “telemedicine has the potential to create better patient outcomes” regarding weight loss.
Potentially illegal advertising practices of semaglutide investigated by The BMJ
Despite shortages and the drugs’ high cost, companies like Novo Nordisk are reportedly planning to market drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy to children as young as 6, even though the drugs’ long-term risks are unknown and despite some experts’ warnings that the drugs may exacerbate our “toxic diet culture.”
Notably, in January, just weeks after the FDA approved Wegovy for use in children, the American Association of Pediatrics issued new childhood obesity recommendations, advising that children as young as 8 can be treated with weight loss drugs, including those containing semaglutide.
Novo’s new marketing plan comes despite an investigation by The BMJ finding inappropriate and possibly illegal marketing of semaglutide.
The BMJ’s investigation focused on the U.K., and according to Fierce Pharma, the findings “rais[e] questions about the effectiveness of regulatory oversight of materials on the weight loss and diabetes treatment.”
According to The BMJ, online searches for terms like “Wegovy” turned up results including “pharmacy websites unrelated to the drugmaker,” some of which appeared to be directly marketing the prescription drug to consumers, which violates the U.K.’s Human Medicines Regulations 2012 and is illegal in most of Europe.
One such example was a blog post by Pharmadoctor, which according to The BMJ is “a website that supports pharmacists in providing services for patients.”
According to The BMJ, the Pharmadoctor post stated that “Wegovy is a weekly weight loss injection made famous by celebrities such as Elon Musk and Boris Johnson. If Wegovy is suitable for you, your pharmacist will be able to provide it.”
“With celebrity fans and proven weight management benefits, Wegovy is the weight loss jab that has everyone talking,” Pharmadoctor also stated.
Examples such as this led Shai Mulinari, Ph.D., associate professor of sociology at Lund University in Sweden, and Piotr Ozieransk, Ph.D., senior lecturer of social and policy sciences at the University of Bath in the U.K., to file a complaint Oct. 10 with the U.K.’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), for the alleged illegal promotion of a prescription drug.
The complaint stated that they were “appalled” to find that Pharmadoctor was marketing Wegovy “directly to the public.”
In a response dated Nov. 22, the MHRA said that following an investigation, the Pharmadoctor page in question was “removed in line with our guidance.” But according to The BMJ, what Mulinary and Ozieranski discovered was that “a link and the word ‘Wegovy’ had been removed” but “the blog post remained online.”
The BMJ’s investigation found that the MHRA has not issued a single sanction for prescription drugs in the past five years. Among 16 cases where the MHRA took action by requesting changes to advertisements for weight loss drugs from June 2022 to July 2023, all were” triggered by external complaints, not internal mechanisms, and none resulted in sanctions.”
Dr. James Cave, editor in chief of the Drug & Therapeutics Bulletin, a BMJ journal with a focus on drug safety, filed multiple complaints about semaglutide advertising with the MHRA and the U.K.’s Advertising Standards Authority in the past year, but according to The BMJ “was disappointed with the results.”
For instance, the ASA “would not consider websites that were not being promoted through paid advertising on search engines,” while actions taken by the MHRA were often “minor,” sometimes involving “only a few words.”
Cave told The BMJ that such lax regulation and oversight creates only weak incentives for companies to follow regulations and abstain from the advertising of prescription drugs.
Regardless of how the drug is marketed, some doctors warn that reliance on medications to lose weight is dangerous.
In April, for instance, Dr. Joseph Mercola wrote,“By relying on medication to get thin, you rob your body of the chance to balance its weight naturally, in the way biologically intended, and expose yourself to untold side effects in the process.”
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
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.
The moral obligation to shut down Israeli weapons manufacturers
By Naila Ahmed | MEMO | December 14, 2023
You may be unaware that currently eight people are standing trial for shutting down an Israeli weapons factory, amongst other actions. Over the course of the last few weeks I have managed to attend some of their hearings at Snaresbrook Crown Court. For the duration of that time, the courtroom was packed as the defendants, known as the Elbit Eight, gave evidence about why they took action for Palestine, Israeli war crimes and Elbit Systems’ participation in those crimes.
Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer
Elbit Systems is Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, profiting off the genocide of Palestinians, it markets its drones and weapons as “battle tested”. The weapons are tested on civilians in Gaza before being mass produced. Elbit Systems supplies up to 85 per cent of the Israeli military’s drones and land based equipment. These weapons are produced here in the UK by Elbit Systems’ factories across the country. In the last few weeks alone Israel has murdered over 20,000 Palestinians and destroyed hospitals, schools, homes and the entire infrastructure in Gaza – using weapons produced by Elbit Systems. One of the main witnesses from Elbit, their chief of security, was due to give evidence for the prosecution at the trial, but Israel refused to let him travel or even give evidence remotely, despite him being a crucial witness for the prosecution.
The Elbit Eight have been on trial since 13 November,two of them are founders of Palestine Action. They are all on trial for the direct action they have taken against Elbit Systems in the first six months of Palestine Action’s work, from July 2020. Direct action is a form of protest that seeks to shut down and disrupt. For the Elbit Eight this included protesting inside Elbit Systems offices, spraying red paint to signify Palestinian blood, and shutting down weapons factories by blocking entrances and locking themselves to the building so they cannot be moved and weapons supply is halted. The charges against these actionists are politically motivated and there’s even evidence of Israel’s involvement in them being charged.
Choose courage for Palestine
I’ve been listening to testimony from the Elbit Eight, and reflecting on the actions they took and why they took them. One thing that stood out to me most was that these actionists chose courage for Palestine. They didn’t let the fear of prison or prosecution stop them from using their voices and their bodies to prevent weapons being sent to kill our brothers and sisters in Palestine.
In each testimony given by the eight actionists, they stated their moral and legal obligation to stop an apartheid regime, to prevent the genocide of the Palestinian people and to shut Elbit down. Many of them testified to the numerous ways they engaged in the system prior to taking direct action, whether that be writing to MPs or other forms of traditional campaigning, all of which amounted to nothing. One actionist said that they wished direct action wasn’t necessary, that our government would just sanction Israel and stop arming them. But that isn’t a reality. Britain is responsible not only in the creation of the Zionist state but also in the continuous arming of this apartheid regime. So the obligation is upon us to take action in order to stop arming Israel.
As the state seeks to protect institutions and warmongers at every level, taking action to shut down the flow of weapons to the occupation becomes the most moral action we can take. There’s a moral duty to prevent the genocide of an entire people. The state seeks to criminalise such principled actions by arresting, charging and in some cases imprisoning those who take action.
With courage comes risk
All of the actionists that work with Palestine Action are the same. They choose courage and compassion over all else. They take actions knowing there is inherent risk – risk to their livelihood, to their liberty, but the moral obligation to act and prevent harm overrides the concern for their personal lives.
I have been privileged to work alongside the Elbit Eight and many other activists in the run up to this trial. One of my colleagues at CAGE also took action previously and won her case last year by a unanimous not guilty verdict. The acts of courage she took, could have cost her a career as a barrister, but it was a material risk she was willing to take in the defence of the Palestinians and to prevent harm from reaching them.
Over the last three years, Palestine Action has been highly effective in its campaigning and direct action against Israeli arms manufacturers, in particular Elbit Systems. Its stated aim is to shut Elbit down, and this has galvanised across the country, and across the globe as you see people taking direct action to stop weapons being sent to Israel. Palestine Action in the UK has been successful in:
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Costing Elbit over £280 million ($356 million) in lost contracts,
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Shutting down Elbit’s offices in central London,
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Forcing the permanent closure of two of Elibit’s weapon factories,
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Just this month, getting their sole recruiter in the UK, iO Associates, to stop working with Elbit,
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Getting the property managers of Elbit’s drone factory in Shenstone (UAV Engines), Fisher German, to cut all ties with Elbit Systems.
These successes have inspired the launch of Palestine Action US and Italy who have already taken a series of effective actions.
‘Let him change it with his hand’
When I see those actionists taking direct action to stop Israeli weapons from being manufactured here in the UK, I am reminded of the often repeated hadith – saying – of the Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him) – one we may cite often, but how often do we implement it?
“Whoever among you sees evil, let him change it with his hand. If he cannot do so, then with his tongue. If he cannot do so, then with his heart, which is the weakest level of faith.” (Sahih Muslim 49)
I see the work of Palestine action and the Elbit Eight as an embodiment of that hadith, of seeing an evil and changing it with their hands – that is, taking direct action.
We have all been witnessing what’s been happening in Gaza, the daily massacres, destruction, devastation and we often respond with despair and helplessness. There is an obligation upon us as Muslims to end oppression. This is not a time for despondency, confusion or weakness, we must not be bystanders as we witness genocide. The Elbit Eight chose courage for Palestine and we must choose courage too. Either by joining Palestine Action’s movement or by using our voice and supporting them in their work. Courage is indeed a choice. It may not be comfortable for many of us, but it is a choice we can build up to.
No matter the outcome of the trial, the Elbit Eight have already succeeded. First, in taking action that stopped weapons and parts being sent to Palestine. And secondly, for drawing attention to Israel’s and Elbit’s war crimes in open court, testifying to the massacres and current genocide of our brothers and sisters in Palestine.
Whatever comes from this trial, the Elbit Eight have already won, they put their bodies and freedoms on the line for Palestine. A courage many of us would hope to emulate. And I’m honoured to have supported them in the Elbit Eight campaign.
Why is the Government Paying Farmers to Stop Farming?
Inside the UK’s “food security” report
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | December 14, 2023
On November 29th, the British Parliament’s cross-party Environmental Audit Committee published a new report on “Environmental change and food security”.
The timing of the report is more than interesting, considering the UN’s COP28 summit published its own “Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems and Climate Action” (which the UK signed) just two days later. But I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.
The report claims – amongst many other things – that we…
need to adapt our food and farming system to become more resilient to the effects of climate change and biodiversity loss.
This is actually an inversion of the usual argument. The standard line is that we should change our eating habits to prevent climate change (the report still claims this too), but now we are being told that we must change our eating habits or climate change will cause us to starve to death.
Just like the push to change climate into a public health crisis, inverting this argument is about creating a sense of threat, about scaring people. It’s always about scaring people.
But, you’ll be pleased to know, while the reason we need to change may have altered, what we actually have to do remains the same: Eat less meat. A lot less meat.
The report repeats, countless times, the Climate Change Committee’s recommendation that the UK “reduces its meat and dairy consumption by 20% by 2030, and by 35% by 2050”
In a blatant rhetorical trick, it tries to make this figure into some kind of compromise by pointing out that some of their witnesses (eg. noted lunatic George Monbiot) advocated eating zero meat or animal products of any kind.
The report is full of this kind of manipulative language.
For example, on page 48, the authors claim that “the Government does not believe it has a role to tell people what to eat”, but then proceed to quote testimony from “experts” who tell them they have a responsibility to tell people what to eat (even though they really don’t want to).
Sue Pritchard argues people aren’t informed or sensible enough to make these decisions, while Professor Tim Lang essentially argues what we eat is chosen for us anyway:
Everyone thinks they choose their diet. We don’t, actually; we choose it by race, by class, by family, by gender, by culture, by when we were brought up, by the power of advertisers and their expenditure. Nearly £1 billion is spent on advertising food in Britain and it is overwhelmingly the ultraprocessed foods that get that advertising. There is very little advertising, let alone national guidance, for eating more appropriately.
“It’s OK to tell people what to do because choice is an illusion”. Beautiful.
The whole report is basically 90 pages of this kind of sophistic nonsense. If you’ve got a strong stomach and a lot of free time, you can read it all here.
We’re just going to focus on the “recommendations” at the end.
There’s this one…
The Government must show its leadership by upholding standards for the environmental impacts of food production in its trading relationships with other countries.
… which, loosely translated, means charging more import taxes on foods that aren’t “environmentally responsible” (or some other buzzphrase). This would mirror legislation in the EU, where the “Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism” has been in place since earlier this year.
Of course, the unwritten consequence of this would be higher prices for ordinary consumers. Oops.
Then there’s this one…
The Government’s plans for a strong food curriculum in schools should include science-based education about the environmental impacts of food production, including food waste.
Which doesn’t need to be translated. It’s about indoctrinating – sorry, educating – children.
Or this one, promoting diet-related propaganda:
We recommend… that the Government should publish national guidance on sustainable diets
And there’s this one, which is my favourite [emphasis very much added]:
The Government does not want to tell people what to eat BUT from its plans to encourage people to eat more healthily it clearly understands its role in helping people make better choices.
Other recommendations call for more “Highly Protected Marine Areas (HPMAs)” to limit fishing in some areas of the sea as well as lowering maximum yield limits.
Still more suggest “sustainability ratings” being made a mandatory part of food labeling, and it’s not hard to see how rating all food purchases on a “sustainability” scale can be parlayed into social credit systems or the like.
Another includes a demand to “designate food security a public good”, like education, infrastructure, and national defense (which I imagine would grant some more powers under some act or other).
It goes on and on.
So, for anyone keeping score at home, the report recommends…
- Using taxpayer money to create and distribute anti-meat propaganda
- Educating children that eating meat is wrong
- Publishing “government recommended diets”
- Controlling where people fish and what they are allowed to catch
- Using taxes to raise the prices of foods that are “bad for the environment”
Don’t worry though, “the Government does not believe it has a role to tell people what to eat”. Honest.
The truth is it goes well beyond simply telling people what to do. Perhaps the most concerning issue in the report is the much-praised “Environmental Land Management” schemes, described as:
a critical lever in incentivising a shift towards achieving food security in the context of environmental change
Here’s how they work…
Environmental Land Management schemes pay farmers to do certain things with their land… including to improve the environment”
You’ll notice it says “including” to improve the environment, not only to improve the environment. They never say what else is included, or what it might be in aid of.
Also, “Paying farmers to do certain things” ? That’s very vague, isn’t it?
What exactly are these “certain things” ?
Well, there’s a short list included but it doesn’t get much less vague. It mentions:
- “undertaking certain environmentally beneficial actions”
- “activities that support local nature recovery and meet local environmental priorities”
- and “long-term projects that support landscape and ecosystem recovery.”
All of which can be fairly accurately summed up as “not farming”.
Yes, the British government is actively paying farmers not to farm, and – in truly Orwellian fashion – are doing it in the name of “promoting food security”. (You can read about similar schemes in the US and UK here.)
It goes beyond “telling people what to eat”, into the realm of making sure they don’t eat at all.
Britain secretly sent 500 extra troops to Cyprus base being used to supply weapons to Israel
By Matt Kennard | Declassified UK | December 12, 2023
Britain secretly deployed 500 additional troops to its bases on Cyprus after Israel began bombing Gaza, it can be revealed.
The UK government has said previously that it deployed 1,000 troops to the East Mediterranean to support Israel but it did not reveal how these troops were distributed.
But in a letter to Alba MP Kenny MacAskill, seen by Declassified, defence minister James Heappey wrote that on 27 November half these troops were in Cyprus.
Britain now has “approximately 500 additional service personnel deployed to Cyprus,” Heappey wrote in a surprising admission.
Britain has two “Sovereign Base Areas” on Cyprus – known as Dhekelia in the east of the island and Akrotiri in the west – which are large, highly secretive military and intelligence installations comprising 3% of the island’s land area.
The major UK air base on Cyprus, RAF Akrotiri, has long been the staging post for British bombing campaigns in the Middle East, and sits 180 miles from Tel Aviv. The flight time is 40 minutes.
The extra UK troops takes the number of British military personnel deployed on the island to 2,717. The UK bases also host 273 British civil servants.
The US military has also had a base on British territory on Cyprus for nearly half a century, but its size was kept secret from the public before Declassified recently revealed that 129 US airmen are permanently deployed to RAF Akrotiri.
It is not known if additional US personnel have also been deployed to Britain’s Cyprus bases to help support Israel’s bombing of Gaza, as the British government refuses to make public any information about American activities on the UK territory.
Defence minister James Heappey also revealed in his letter that Britain has sent extra troops to Egypt, Israel and Lebanon, but he refused to say at what levels. “I have withheld specific numbers for these countries for operational security reasons,” he wrote.
The UK military personnel were said to be deployed “to support contingency planning and UK humanitarian aid efforts”.
The 500 extra UK troops deployed to Cyprus do not include British special forces, which operate completely outside of democratic oversight.
The Sun reported on 27 October that Britain’s Special Air Service (SAS), the army’s elite special force, was on “standby” in Cyprus to – it was claimed – rescue British hostages held captive by Hamas and Britons who are trapped in Gaza.
The UK military’s “D-Notice” committee, which seeks to stop the media publishing information it claims would damage national security, requested on 28 October all media editors to not publish information relating to SAS operations in Gaza.
There has been no further reporting on the SAS’s role in Gaza, while the UK military refuses to confirm or deny if the SAS has been on the ground in Gaza since Israel began bombing the territory.
It is unclear if the Cypriot government has been told of the SAS deployment—or the extra UK troops.
Declassified recently revealed that over 30 military transport flights, operated by the RAF, had flown from RAF Akrotiri to Tel Aviv since the bombing of Gaza began.
But Cypriot government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis told the Cyprus Mail he had received no information about the flights. The UK, meanwhile, denied it is sending “lethal aid” or “military equipment” to Israel from RAF Akrotiri.
Declassified then reported the US was using RAF Akrotiri to transfer weapons to Israel. Respected Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that over 40 US transport aircraft have flown to RAF Akrotiri carrying equipment, arms and forces.
The planes have been loaded with cargo from strategic depots belonging to the US and NATO in Europe, Haaretz reported, with around half the US flights said to be “delivering military aid”.
The Cypriot president Nikos Christodoulides was asked about the US deliveries in a press conference, and said: “There is no such information, our country cannot be used as a base for war operations”.
Kenny MacAskill, the MP who asked the questions in parliament, told Declassified: “We require openness and accountability about what is happening at Britain’s bases on Cyprus and the role they are playing in Israel’s criminal bombing of Gaza. 500 additional military personnel to Cyprus is a huge deployment given the large contingent already based there. What is their role?”
He added: “It’s 20 years since the UK was taken into a war in Iraq based on lies and deceit. That cost the lives of millions and still causes harm today as refugees and terrorism testify to. Iraq wasn’t in my name and neither are these actions. We need to be told what is being done by our government.”
Matt Kennard is chief investigator at Declassified UK. He was a fellow and then director at the Centre for Investigative Journalism in London. Follow him on Twitter @kennardmatt
UK Government Justifies Using Royal Air Force To Monitor Online COVID Speech, Calls “Disinformation” a “Serious Threat”
Even lawmakers and journalists had their speech monitored
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | December 12, 2023
The Mail on Sunday reported that UK Royal Air Force (RAF) intelligence agents participated in a covert operation run by Whitehall, which was suspected of surveilling private citizens speaking out against Covid lockdown measures. This secretive operation was led by The Army’s “information warfare brigade,” tasked with analyzing online commentary—a charge the Ministry of Defence repeatedly rebuffed publicly until the recent reveal.
Documentation furnished by this publication suggests the Armed Forces, particularly those located at RAF Wyton in Cambridgeshire, assisted various government bodies, such as the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport’s Counter Disinformation Unit and the Cabinet Office’s Rapid Response Unit. Their engagement in these initiatives was much more substantial than formerly known, per this latest revelation.
The clandestine operations in focus took on the challenge of countering “disinformation” and “harmful” narratives throughout the pandemic. However, they also garnered severe backlash for allegedly gathering data from lawful social media posts that challenged the Government’s lockdown maneuvers.
Prominent public figures, like David Davis MP, who voiced skepticism over the Covid mortality rates’ computed projections, and journalist Peter Hitchens, were the subjects of government reports. Insiders from the defense department conceded that the military’s contribution to such operations might be portrayed as spying on UK citizens, a segment from the furnished documents revealed.
However, the MoD alleged that the absence of Armed Forces support in overseeing online discourse could catalyze the propagation of “misinformation,” which could cause harm.
Jake Hurfurt, representing the advocacy group Big Brother Watch, didn’t mince his words, slamming these activities asking for a review on how the government monitored the British people throughout the pandemic period. He stated to the Mail on Sunday, “The revelations that the RAF as well as the Army spied on the British people during the pandemic is yet more evidence that the MoD misled the public about the role of its psyops troops in 2020.”
The government responded to these allegations stating, “Online disinformation is a serious threat, which is why in the pandemic we brought together expertise from across government to monitor disinformation about Covid.”
They alleged that all data collected were from public sources and the units did not target individuals or interfere with public discussions.
Hungary PM Orbán vindicated, poll finds 71% of Europeans want ‘immediate end’ to Ukraine war and peace talks
Viktor Orbán claimed the recent polling showed that Brussels is not on the side of the European people
BY THOMAS BROOKE | REMIX NEWS | December 12, 2023
Bureaucrats in Brussels do not represent the European people, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has claimed after a recent study revealed that an overwhelming majority of Europeans want peace talks between Ukraine and Russia and an immediate end to the ongoing conflict.
The poll, conducted by Hungary’s Századvég Foundation, found that 71 percent of EU and U.K. citizens believe the war should “end immediately and the parties should be brought to the negotiating table,” while just 20 percent support its continuation until such a time that “Ukraine defeats Vladimir Putin”.
Similarly, 67 percent of respondents were against the deployment of their own countrymen to Ukraine, compared with 25 percent in favor of such a move.
Another question showed that respondents in every EU member state believed that the economic sanctions imposed by Brussels against Russia had been detrimental to the European Union, and saw the United States and China as the biggest winners of the policy.
Only non-EU Norway believed the sanctions had benefited their own country while just five European nations — Norway, Lithuania, Finland, Estonia, and Denmark — believed the move had been beneficial for Ukraine in its ongoing fight with Moscow.
A clear geographical divide between the northern and southern European nations was seen when asked about Europe’s foreign policy concerning China. A majority from every mainland European nation with the exception of Poland and the Baltic states called for more “peaceful economic cooperation” to be sought with the superpower, insisting a “tougher approach is not needed”.
However, Poland, the Baltics, the U.K. and Ireland, and Scandinavian nations believed a tougher approach is necessary “because of its relation to Russia”.
Europeans were also split on Brussels’ policy of sending military aid to Ukraine. Eastern European nations, with the exception of Poland and the Baltics, had a majority of respondents against the provision of weapons to Kyiv, while Ireland, Switzerland, Austria, France, and Italy were also against the move.
A majority in favor of military aid, however, was found in Scandinavian nations, the Baltics, the U.K., Spain, and Portugal
Commenting on the Századvég Foundation’s findings, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said the numbers were “clear” that the European Union was out of touch with European citizens and its policy to continue funding Ukraine in its conflict with Russia contravene public opinion across the continent.
Hungary has long been an advocate for peace talks, much to the dismay of the European liberal elite which has chastised Orbán’s administration for refusing to toe the line of Brussels.
Hungary has also remained vehemently opposed to the European Commission’s plans to advance EU membership talks with Kyiv despite the ongoing conflict, with Hungarian officials warning Brussels it risks bringing “war to Europe”.
Another study by the Századvég Foundation published on Monday found that 72 percent of Hungarians supported their government’s stance against EU membership for Ukraine, a monthly mood-checker that has seen opposition against the move increase each month since September.
The conservative think-tank warned that if Ukraine joined, “almost all Member States would become net contributors or current agricultural subsidies would have to be reduced by an average of 20 percent” in order to accommodate “Ukrainian farmers working on the richest farmland in Europe”.
Putin’s Middle East Trip Deals a Blow to Washington
By Salman Rafi Sheikh – New Eastern Outlook – 11.12.2023
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent visit to the Middle East – and the 21-gun salute welcome he received there – shows the failure of Washington’s consistent attempts to ‘isolate’ and defeat Russia. The visit also points to the Middle East’s increasing shift away from, and sole reliance on, Washington. Ever since the beginning of the Gaza War on October 7, the Middle East has been keeping contact with China, rather than the US, its first priority. The reason for this is not simply the fact that the US is supporting, militarily and diplomatically, Israel against Palestine, but also because the Middle East is strategically realigning itself with the realities of what is increasingly – and undeniably – a multipolar world. To the extent that the Middle East, a region where the US remained the most dominant extra-regional force for many decades, has made this shift also reflects the ongoing demise of US dominance more generally in the world. To the extent that China and Russia are two major proponents of multipolarity, connect the dots of this anti-US but pro-China and pro-Russia shift.
Putin’s trip to the UAE and Saudi Arabia has many dimensions. One of these dimensions is bilateral. Between 2017-2022, the trade turnover between Russia and the UAE has grown by almost six times. In 2022, the overall trade increased by almost 68% amounting to US$9 billion. The UAE is Russia’s largest trading partner in the Gulf Region, accounting for 55% of Russia’s total trade with the Persian Gulf.
It, therefore, makes sense for Washington to pressure the UAE government to drastically limit their trade ties with Moscow. Earlier in September, several Western officials from the United Kingdom, EU and US visited the UAE to persuade the UAE to review its trade ties with Russia. Western officials have been assuming that, in the wake of the threats of the Israel-Gaza war spreading to other parts of the Middle East, the UAE would go back to its ultimate security guarantor: the US. This would, however, happen only if the UAE has good ties with the US. Good ties, under the present context of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, mean the UAE ending its trade ties with Russia, especially the ones that may have military implications.
The UAE has been resisting these pressures. In fact, its decision to welcome Putin himself means that the UAE is considering an alternative means of protecting itself in the wake of a wider war in the region. It is ensuring Russian (and Chinese support), and it is using this (possible) source of support to send a message to Washington, i.e., multiple options are possible in a multipolar world. The message is quite similar to the message that the Saudis have been giving to the Americans since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine military conflict.
If the Americans have been doing their best to convince the Saudis to break out of the OPEC+ deal and increase the production of oil to help reduce its prices and consequently help control the inflation in the West, the Saudis have not submitted. In this context, Putin’s visit to Saudi Arabia sought to reinforce the ‘oil alliance’ – which is also a major dimension of Russia-Saudi bilateral ties – at a time when the burden of wars (supporting Ukraine plus Israel) on the West is increasing manifold. For Putin, an appropriate message to the Middle East in particular and the Global South in general is this: the West supports aggression against all states, regardless of whether it is Russia or Palestine, and it expects other states (e.g., the Middle East) to support that aggression.
Russia understands that the West is fighting two wars, and it does not have any narrative to justify them both simultaneously. As even the US-based Carnegie Endowment said in one of its recent reports, “Washington’s pro-Israel stance undermines the legitimacy of the West’s broader reasons for supporting Ukraine in the eyes of many in the Global South. The moral argument against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine now looks like empty words, particularly in Middle East nations”. In this sense, the timing of Putin’s visit was far from coincidental. It aimed to tap into the opportunity to wean powerful states in the Middle East, who are also keen to expand ties with the non-Western world via BRICS, away from the US as much as possible.
Therefore, the purpose of Putin’s visit, as some Western media analysed and sought to trivialise, was not simply to “discuss” the Gaza war. It was part of Moscow’s wider outreach to the Middle East at an appropriate time to reorient the Middle East’s strategic priorities. Soon after coming back, Putin hosted Iran’s president in Moscow to build on the success of his visit and deepen Russia’s foothold in the region, a region that allows Russia to fight the West in the economic field by, for instance, coordinating the production of oil.
Still, the Gaza war was discussed. But that discussion was underpinned by the strategic failure of Washington’s plans to create a new Middle East. The failure of the US in the Middle East becomes yet another opportunity for Moscow to present itself as a potential peace broker rather than, and unlike the US, a troublemaker. If it was simply a war of narratives, Russia (and China) are clearly winning it in the Middle East.
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From the Archives
Remembering Fallujah: The War Crimes Committed under Command of Jim Molan and Jim Mattis
Defending Australian Values in Iraq
By David Macilwain | American Herald tribune | February 8, 2018
Ross Caputi, a former Marine who was “witness and accomplice to the atrocities” committed in Fallujah in November 2004 during “Operation Phantom Fury”, wrote this about his unit’s entry into the city:
Perhaps it was just too painful of a realization for many of us to make, because we saw ourselves as the liberators, the good guys, and to admit that we were hurting innocent people would have contradicted everything that we claimed to stand for. I can only speculate about what the motives were for the people who dreamed up that mission and decided to make the people of Fallujah flee into the desert. Was it also too painful for the decision makers to admit to themselves that we were hurting innocent people? Or were they so evil that they just did not care who we were hurting? Whatever their reasons for doing it were, the fact of the matter is that our entire command was aware that we had forced the majority of the city’s population, about 200,000 people, into refugee status, but nobody took responsibility for their wellbeing, as international law required of us.
Central to that command was Major General Andrew “Jim” Molan, an Australian who was seconded to the US military in 2004 and took overall command of US coalition forces in Iraq, alongside the current US defence secretary Jim Mattis.
What happened in the so-called “second battle of Falluja” however, went far beyond a failure to attend to the needs of the civilian population who were able to flee the city before the US assault. Those who remained found themselves imprisoned in a “free-fire zone” for 10,500 US troops and 850 UK special forces, along with 2000 Iraqis loyal to the Occupation government in Baghdad.
While the “Battle for Falluja” has been glorified and celebrated as the most destructive and significant US battle since Vietnam, intended to be a final stand against insurgents who had become concentrated there, it has also been recognised as one of the worst war crimes committed by US coalition forces during the whole occupation of Iraq. … continue
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