Fluoride in Water Poses ‘Unreasonable Risk’ to Children, Federal Judge Rules
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | September 25, 2024
In a decision that could end the practice of water fluoridation in the U.S., a federal judge late Tuesday ruled that water fluoridation at current U.S. levels poses an “unreasonable risk” of reduced IQ in children.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can no longer ignore that risk, and must take regulatory action, Judge Edward Chen of the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California wrote in the long-awaited landmark decision.
More than 200 million Americans drink water treated with fluoride at the “optimal” level of 0.7 milligrams per liter (mg/L). However, Chen ruled that a preponderance of scientific evidence shows this level of fluoride exposure may damage human health, particularly that of pregnant mothers and young children.
The verdict delivers a major blow to the EPA, public health agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and professional lobbying groups like the American Dental Association (ADA), which have staked their reputations on the claim that water fluoridation is one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century and an unqualified public good.
Fluoride proponents refused to reexamine that stance despite mounting scientific evidence from top researchers and government agencies of fluoride’s neurotoxic risks, particularly for infants’ developing brains.
Instead, they attempted to weaken and suppress the research and discredit the scientists carrying it out.
Rick North, board member of Fluoride Action Network, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, told The Defender, “What’s false is the CDC claiming that fluoridation is one of the 10 greatest health achievements of the 20th century. What’s true is that ending fluoridation will be one of the 10 greatest health achievements of the 21st century.”
“The judge did what EPA has long refused to do, and that is to apply the EPA standard risk assessment framework to fluoride,” said Michael Connett, attorney for the plaintiffs. “In so doing, the court has shown that the widespread exposure to fluoride that we now have in the United States is unreasonably and precariously close to the levels that we know cause harm.”
The EPA can appeal Tuesday’s decision. The agency told The Defender it is reviewing the decision and has no comment at this time. The U.S. Department of Justice, which represents the EPA in the lawsuit, also said it has no comment.
EPA’s argument ‘not persuasive’
The ruling concludes a historic lawsuit — one that has dragged on for seven years — brought against the EPA by environmental and consumer advocacy organizations like the Fluoride Action Network, Moms Against Fluoridation and Food & Water Watch, along with individual parents and children.
It is the first lawsuit to go to a federal trial under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), as amended by Congress in 2016. The TSCA allows U.S. citizens to petition the EPA to evaluate whether a chemical presents an unreasonable risk to public health and should be regulated.
If the EPA denies a TSCA citizen petition — which the agency did when the plaintiffs asked it to reexamine water fluoridation in 2016 — the petitioners are entitled to a “de novo” judicial review of the science without the deference to the agency typically afforded it in legal cases.
Chen’s 80-page ruling, issued six months after closing arguments in February, offers a careful and detailed articulation of the EPA’s review process for chemicals that pose a hazard to human health and evaluates and summarizes the extensive scientific data presented at trial.
Chen wrote, “EPA’s own expert agrees that fluoride is hazardous at some level.” He cited a key report issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) National Toxicology Program (NTP), which undertook a systematic review of all available scientific research at the time of publication.
The report “concluded that fluoride is indeed associated with reduced IQ in children, at least at exposure levels at or above 1.5 mg/L,” Chen wrote.
The NTP also reported that although there are technical challenges to measuring fluoride’s toxic effects at low levels, “scientists have observed a statistically significant association between fluoride and adverse effects in children even at such ‘lower’ exposure levels,” Chen wrote.
He said that despite recognizing that fluoride is hazardous, the EPA’s defense rested largely on the fact that the exact level at which it is hazardous is too unclear for the agency to determine whether the chemical presents an unreasonable risk.
This argument is “not persuasive,” Chen wrote.
Pregnant women exposed to fluoride in water at levels exceeding the hazard level
The EPA requires a margin of error by a factor of at least 10 to exist between the hazard level for a toxin and the acceptable human exposure level. “Put differently, only an exposure that is below 1/10th of the hazard level would be deemed safe under Amended TSCA, given the margin of error required,” Chen wrote.
That means that even if the hazard level were 4 mg/L — well above the 1.5 mg/L identified by the NTP — the safe level of fluoride exposure would be 0.4 mg/L, well below the current “optimal” fluoride level in the U.S., Chen wrote.
The much lower probable hazard level established by high-quality studies indicates that many pregnant women in the U.S. are already exposed to fluoride in water at levels exceeding the hazard level.
“Under even the most conservative estimates of this level, there is not enough of a margin between the accepted hazard level and the actual human exposure levels to find that fluoride is safe,” Chen concluded.
“Simply put, the risk to health at exposure levels in United States drinking water is sufficiently high to trigger regulatory response by the EPA under Amended TSCA.”
The law dictates that the EPA must take regulatory action, but it does not specify what that action has to be. EPA regulatory actions can range from notifying the public of risks to banning chemicals.
Philippe Grandjean, M.D., Ph.D., adjunct professor in environmental health at Harvard and chair of environmental medicine at the University of Southern Denmark, top researcher on fluoride’s neurotoxicity and expert witness for plaintiffs in the case told The Defender he thought the court’s decision was “well-justified.”
He said the ruling made it incumbent on the EPA to go beyond simply ending water fluoridation.
“EPA will have to consider what to do in the southwestern parts of the country where the fluoride content of groundwater is too high due to minerals in the soil containing fluoride,” he said. “And then there is the question about ingestion of toothpaste.”
The CDC and the ADA did not immediately respond to The Defender’s request for comment.
More than 70 years of controversy
For more than seven decades, U.S. public health officials have steadfastly supported water fluoridation, claiming the practice is a key strategy for maintaining and improving dental health.
Proponents of water fluoridation, with help from the mainstream press, often attempted to cast those questioning fluoride’s benefits and raising concerns about its safety as conspiracy theorists.
The EPA in 1975 recommended adding fluoride to water at an optimal level of 1.2 mg/L for its dental benefits, but recommended a maximum level of 4 mg/L, the ruling said.
As more evidence has emerged about fluoride’s adverse health effects, including skeletal fluorosis, recommended levels were revised.
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, officially lowered the recommended dosage for water fluoridation in 2015 from 0.7-1.2 mg/L to 0.7 mg/L after considering “adverse health effects” along with alleged benefits.
However, evidence that fluoride poses a neurotoxic risk has existed for decades.
In 2017, after the EPA rejected their citizen petition to end fluoridation of drinking water in the U.S. based on evidence of health risks, namely neurotoxicity, the plaintiffs filed the lawsuit.
A seven-day trial took place in federal court in San Francisco in June 2020, but Chen put the proceedings on hold pending the release of the NTP’s systematic review of research available on the neurotoxic effects of fluoride.
The NTP sought to publish its report — which consisted of a “state of the science” monograph and a meta-analysis — in May 2022, but dental officials at the CDC and the National Institutes of Health National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research pressured HHS Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine to prevent the review from being published.
The ADA also sought to suppress the report.
Levine told the NTP to not publish the report but to put it on hold and allow for further review.
Plaintiffs submitted documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act exposing this intervention to the court. The revelation prompted Chen to rule that the trial should go forward using the draft report from the NTP.
The trial resumed in January in San Francisco, with arguments presented over the course of two weeks.
The NTP’s monograph was finalized and published last month on its website. The meta-analysis is forthcoming in a peer-reviewed journal.
Connett said that Congress created the citizen petition provision in TSCA as a counterweight to bureaucratic lethargy and as a check on the EPA.
The statute, he said, is a powerful tool for overcoming politicized science.
“When science becomes fossilized in political inertia, the citizen petition provision of TSCA is a very powerful tool for citizens,” Connett said. “Through this case, we have been able to effectuate what Congress had envisioned with this part of the statute.”
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.
Israel secures $8.7bn military aid package from Washington
The Cradle | September 26, 2024
Israel said on 26 September it had secured an $8.7 billion aid package from the US government to support its ongoing military assaults on Lebanon and Gaza and to maintain a “qualitative military edge in the region,” Reuters reported on 26 September.
The package includes $3.5 billion for critical military purchases and $5.2 billion for air defense systems, including the Iron Dome anti-missile system, David’s Sling, and an advanced laser system.
US support for Israel’s missile defense systems is crucial to shield Israeli military installations and infrastructure from Hezbollah’s large missile and rocket stocks.
While Israeli warplanes have devastated south and east Lebanon with airstrikes since Monday, killing over 600 Lebanese and Syrians, Hezbollah has hit numerous targets in the vicinity of the city of the Israeli city of Haifa, as well as an Israeli intelligence base on the outskirts of Tel Avi in central Israel.
Israel also needs US munitions and financial support to continue its horrific bombing campaign of Gaza, which is nearing its twelfth month and has killed over 40,000 people and destroyed large swathes of the crowded strip.
The aid announcement came after a meeting at the Pentagon between Eyal Zamir, the director general of Israel’s defense ministry, and US defense officials, including acting Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Amanda Dory.
“This substantial investment will significantly strengthen critical systems such as Iron Dome and David’s Sling while supporting the continued development of an advanced high-powered laser defense system currently in its later stages of development,” Israel’s Defense Ministry said in a statement.
The deal illustrates the “strong and enduring strategic partnership between Israel and the United States and the ironclad commitment to Israel’s security,” the statement added.
Reuters reported in late June that Tel Aviv’s allies in Washington had sent more than 10,000 highly destructive 2,000-pound bombs and thousands of Hellfire missiles since the start of the war in Gaza last October.
The news agency added that Washington had transferred at least 14,000 of the MK-84 2,000-pound bombs, 6,500 500-pound bombs, 3,000 Hellfire precision-guided air-to-ground missiles, 1,000 bunker-buster bombs, 2,600 air-dropped small-diameter bombs, and other munitions.
Since 7 October of last year, news channels and social media sites have shown a steady stream of videos and images of Palestinian men, women, and children who have been torn apart by US bombs.
Iran slams US ‘absurd scenarios’ to implicate it in alleged assassinations
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan’ani
Press TV – September 26, 2024
Iran says US claims of Iranian threats to senior American officials are “ridiculous scenarios” fabricated by Washington.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday said the US was “intensely tracking an ongoing threat by Iran against a number of senior officials, including former government officials like president [Donald] Trump, and some people who are currently serving the administration.”
In a statement on Thursday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan’ani dismissed Blinken’s “accusations as absurd and completely baseless.”
“It is clear that the formulation of such claims is merely part of the electoral atmosphere in the US and is driven by specific political goals, to the extent that they do not even warrant a response,” Kan’ani noted.
“The formulation of such false attributions and political accusations in the current tense conditions of the region cannot in any way diminish the international responsibility of the US government in aiding and participating in various international crimes against Palestine and Lebanon by the Zionist regime.”
Kan’ani said public opinion worldwide holds “the US regime” and its officials accountable for such humanitarian atrocities.
“The absurd and baseless stunts and scenarios created by the US government against the Islamic Republic of Iran will not hinder Iran’s determination to pursue legal and international accountability for the perpetrators and instigators of crimes committed against the Iranian people,” he said.
“The passage of time will not protect these criminals from trial and punishment.”
Biden issues $8bln military aid for Kiev, including 130km-range bombs
Vladimir Zelensky and Joe Biden at an event in New York on September 25, 2024. © Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images
Al Mayadeen | September 26, 2024
US President Joe Biden unveiled over $8 billion in military aid for Ukraine on Thursday, emphasizing that the support is aimed at helping Kiev “win [the] war” with Russia.
The announcement coincided with a visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the US. The Ukrainian president will meet with Democratic and Republican leaders at the Capitol prior to his meeting with Biden.
This assistance package includes the first delivery of a precision-guided glide bomb, known as the Joint Standoff Weapon, which has a range of up to 130 kilometers.
This would significantly boost Ukraine’s ability to carry out strikes further inside Russian territory, a move Moscow has warned could escalate the conflict and expand the war. It also suggests a shift in Washington’s policy, indicating unannounced approval for Kiev to utilize US-provided advanced weaponry to target areas deeper within Russia.
‘A global cryptocurrency network’
The bulk of the new aid, $5.5 billion, is to be allocated before Monday’s end of the US fiscal year, when the funding authority is set to expire. Another $2.4 billion is under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which allows the administration to buy weapons for Ukraine from companies – primarily American ones – rather than pull them from US stocks.
“That is why, today, I am announcing a surge in security assistance for Ukraine and a series of additional actions to help Ukraine win this war,” said Biden.
As part of his proposal, the President stated that the Defense Department will restore and deliver an additional Patriot air defense battery, along with extra Patriot missiles to Ukraine.
Biden also instructed the Pentagon to increase the training of Ukrainian F-16 pilots, with plans to train an additional 18 pilots in the coming year.
The United States, in collaboration with international partners, will take action to disrupt what President Biden described as “a global cryptocurrency network” used for Russian sanctions evasion and alleged money laundering.
Additionally, Biden announced that he will organize a leader-level summit of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Germany next month, aiming to unify the efforts of over 50 nations supporting Ukraine.
Firing Ukraine’s ambassador to the US
However, it remains uncertain how many Republicans will agree to meet with Zelensky, as criticism of Kiev grows among party leaders, including Donald Trump.
Trump has been vocal in his criticism of the Ukrainian President and has so far declined Zelenskiy’s request for a meeting.
During a campaign rally in North Carolina on Wednesday, Trump expressed strong disapproval of Zelensky, stating, “We continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refused to make a deal, Zelensky.”
Additionally, many Republicans in Congress were outraged by Zelensky’s recent visit to a munitions factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Biden’s hometown. The Republican-led House Oversight Committee has since launched an investigation into the Ukrainian President’s trip.
Trump also held President Biden and Democrat presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris accountable for allowing Russia’s war to take place.
Rep. House Speaker Mike Johnson, who is not expected to meet with Zelensky on Thursday, called on the Ukrainian President to sack his ambassador to Washington over the planning of the Scranton visit.
However, he reassured the Ukrainians that this diplomatic issue is not linked to the provision of military aid to Ukraine.
Anglo-Americans attacked ally with Nord Stream sabotage – Russian intelligence
RT | September 26, 2024
The US and UK masterminded the 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines in an act of economic warfare against their EU allies, Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service has claimed.
The assessment released on Thursday, on the second anniversary of the undersea bombing, detailed an alleged effort by Washington and London to interfere in the investigation and blame another party.
The intelligence “definitively points to the pipeline attack being an act of international terrorism and an act of economic war [by the US and UK] against European allies, primarily the Federal Republic of Germany,” the statement said.
The SVR claimed that Washington and London have been conducting a sustained campaign to “remove the issue of the Nord Stream sabotage from international agenda,” ramping up their efforts in August.
“Media answering to Washington and London are promoting the narrative that the attack was conducted exclusively by Ukrainian extremists, who acted independently,” it said, adding that the scenario “does not hold water”. German investigators are being pressured to accept this version as the main one, and “wrap up the probe before the year ends,” the statement alleged.
Berlin has been issued with an ultimatum, demanding that it name “Russia-hating Ukrainian desperados” as the culprits and “deflect a blow to trans-Atlantic cooperation,” the SVR stated.
The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines were built under the Baltic Sea to deliver Russian natural gas directly to Germany. The attack in September 2022 was blamed by Western media on a privately funded group of Ukrainian divers, who supposedly acted on orders from General Valery Zaluzhny, who was later dismissed and became Kiev’s ambassador to the UK.
Prior to the attack, senior US officials, including President Joe Biden and veteran diplomat Victoria Nuland, had issued threats against Russian energy infrastructure, particularly the Nord Stream 2 project, which was completed in September 2021, a decade after Nord Stream 1 went on stream.
Nord Stream 2 significantly expanded the capacity of the network, but was never used due to Germany’s refusal to license it amid tensions with Russia over Ukraine.
Biden behind Nord Stream sabotage – Russia’s top MP
RT | September 26, 2024
US President Joe Biden “was behind” the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz helped him tank his country’s economy in the aftermath, Vyacheslav Volodin, the head of the Russian State Duma, has claimed.
The senior legislator commented on Thursday on the second anniversary of the explosions, which disabled the undersea connectors built to deliver Russian natural gas directly to Germany, noting the failure of European investigators to name the culprit. There have been accounts in the media suggesting possible scenarios, “which were occasionally laughable,” he said.
“Washington and Biden personally were behind the Nord Stream bombing. His interest was to cut Western Europe off from cheap Russian gas and force it to buy it from America at a price three times higher,” he said.
The German economy took a hit and is now in recession due to a loss of competitiveness, Volodin added, “which means that the people of Germany were punished instead of Washington, as Biden and Scholz took money out of their pockets.”
“You cannot pin this one on some ‘pro-Ukrainian group’ and civilian divers,” Volodin stressed.
On Tuesday, the German news outlet Der Spiegel published its latest retelling of the events of September 2022. It mostly repeats the story that a privately-funded operation masterminded by a now-disgraced Ukrainian intelligence officer conducted the sabotage with the blessing of former General Valery Zaluzhny. The Western press has been repeating similar versions of this story for months.
Spiegel claimed to have identified the divers, saying that most were civilians, but the group was led by a commando. The operation was first contemplated years before the outbreak of hostilities between Russia and Ukraine in February 2022, it stated.
Pulitzer Prize-winning US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh alleged that Biden had ordered the sabotage of Nord Stream in a February 2023 article. He said US military divers had secretly planted explosives to destroy the pipelines at a significant depth, using a NATO exercise in the Baltic Sea as a cover. The White House has denied the accusations, but Russian officials have called the story plausible.
Prior to the destruction of Nord Stream 1 and 2, senior US officials, including Biden, had issued threats to destroy the Russian-German pipelines.
US house speaker demands Zelensky fire Ukrainian ambassador
RT | September 25, 2024
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has called for Vladimir Zelensky to fire Oksana Markarova, the Ukrainian ambassador in Washington, accusing her of interference in American elections.
“I demand that you immediately fire Ukraine’s Ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markarova,” Johnson wrote in a letter to Zelensky on Wednesday, noting that she organized the Pennsylvania event.
“The facility was in a politically contested battleground state, was led by a top political surrogate for Kamala Harris, and failed to include a single Republican because — on purpose — no Republicans were invited,” Johnson wrote. “The tour was clearly a partisan campaign event designed to help Democrats and is clearly election interference.”
The Louisiana Republican said that his party has lost trust in Markarova’s ability to serve in the US and that she “should be removed from her post immediately.”
While both Republicans and Democrats support Ukraine against Russia, Johnson wrote, “our relationship is unnecessarily tested and needlessly tarnished” when Zelensky and others in Kiev speak ill of Republican candidates in the media.
“These incidents cannot be repeated,” Johnson wrote, urging Zelensky to “take immediate action.”
USAID memo exposes Blinken’s involvement in starving Palestinians
Al Mayadeen | September 25, 2024
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration have said that “Israel” is blocking humanitarian aid heading to the Gaza Strip.
In a 17-page memo sent to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in April, USAID told top US diplomats that US law requires the administration to cut off weapons shipments to governments that prevent the delivery of US-backed humanitarian aid. The refugees bureau also delivered a similar evaluation.
If acted upon, the assessment would cause tremulous changes to the Israeli regime’s supply of weapons, as the US delivers the majority of weapons through which the regime carries out its aggression.
According to ProPublica, both Blinken and the administration of President Joe Biden refused to accept the conclusions reached by the two US agencies.
“We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of US humanitarian assistance,” Blinken said on May 10 to Congress, after receiving the reports.
Crimes, recommendations ignored
USAID’s memo also highlighted a series of grave actions by the Israeli regime, including the killing of aid workers, the destruction of agricultural infrastructure, the bombing of ambulances and hospitals, the occupation of supply depots, and the frequent rejection of trucks carrying vital food and medical supplies.
Moreover, the head of the State Department’s refugees bureau determined that the Israeli regime was blocking humanitarian aid and that the Foreign Assistance Act should be triggered to stop nearly $830 million in taxpayer dollars allocated for military aid to the Israeli occupation, according to ProPublica, which cited emails it had obtained.
Stacy Gilbert, a former senior civil-military advisor in the Refugees Bureau, resigned in protest over the wording of Blinken’s report to Congress, which she had been helping to draft. In a statement released shortly after her departure, and reported by The Washington Post and other outlets, she wrote, “There is abundant evidence showing Israel is responsible for blocking aid. To deny this is absurd and shameful.”
Hamas: Blinken, Biden’s actions are shameful
Islamic Resistance Movement – Hamas released a statement, commenting on ProPublica‘s report on Wednesday.
Hamas condemned Bliken and Biden’s deliberate concealment of evidence of “Israel’s” non-compliance with US aid missions during his addresses to Congress.
The movement said that Blinken did so, in complicity with Biden, “Out of fear that it would impact weapons supplies to the occupation’s military.”
It said that the revelations serve as evidence of Washington’s involvement in the genocide of the Palestinian people.
“This criminal conduct by Blinken demands that honorable members of the US Congress and American judicial bodies investigate his actions, which have led to the deaths of thousands of our people,” Hamas underlined.
“We call on international judicial institutions, foremost among them the International Criminal Court, to take these reports seriously and take the necessary legal action against Blinken,” the movement urged.
Hamas stressed that Blinken had participated in the deliberate starvation and the genocide of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip through his actions.
Open Letter to Dr. Jill Stein
Dear Dr. Stein,
Up to last week, you graciously provided US voters with a clear, viable, electoral alternative to the twin war parties, namely, Democrats and Republicans. Regrettably, last Thursday, September 19th, your campaign issued a statement undermining your status as the “peace candidate.”
The statement called Russian President Putin and Syrian President Assad “war criminals” for their roles resisting a US-orchestrated regime-change operation, begun in 2011 and continuing to this day, in Syria. That operation, illegal under international law, was initiated under the Obama Administration and led by his Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton. Under Clinton, the US created a government-in-waiting, called the Syrian National Council, which it recognized as the legitimate government of Syria, and marshalled its allies in Europe and among Arab countries, to recruit, finance, train, arm, insert, and coordinate armies of terrorist mercenaries (from Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and, later, ISIS) into Syria where they illegally invaded and occupied large swaths of Syrian territory. Through their barbaric war crimes, those de facto US foot soldiers caused terror among the Syrian population, causing millions to flee their homeland as refugees and even more to be displaced within Syria.
The US end game was to destroy an enemy of Israel and a state that opposed US hegemonic initiatives in the region. The US strategy was to balkanize the country of Syria into tiny, warring, confessional statelets and leave the country as a failed state, in the same manner that the US and NATO destroyed the Libyan government at precisely the same time and left it as a failed state.
Presidents Putin and Assad were and are not the problem. Russia was and is an ally of Syria. It long maintained a naval base in Syria at Tartus. At the official request of the Syrian government, Russia was invited to help Syria, in accordance with international law, to defend the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria. With Russian help, along with support from Iran and Hezbollah (likewise allies of Syria), the Syrian Arab Army was able to liberate most of the country from terrorist control.
During his Administration, following the strategic defeat of ISIS, Trump decided to leave US troops (who were never invited into Syria in the first place) in occupation of the eastern third of Syria, where, to this day, they (along with their Kurdish militia) continue to steal Syria’s oil and wheat resources, thus preventing the legitimate government in Damascus from using these funds for reconstruction.
And, in addition to all these flagrant violations of international law, the US, its NATO partners, and various Arab countries joined the US in imposing extremely brutal coercive economic measures against Syria, devaluing the country’s currency and destroying its economy. These economic sanctions are unilateral and illegal (not having the approval of the UN Security Council). But they reduced 80% of the Syrian population today to food insecurity and to reliance on a meager hour or two of electricity per day.
Dr. Stein, your September 19th statement has disappointed many people in the USA and around the world. You cannot be the “peace candidate” on the one hand, and support criminal enterprises, (waged by both Democrats and Republicans) such as the war which continues today in Syria, on the other. We hope you will do the right thing, which would be for you to call for the US to end its unlawful occupation of eastern Syria and to drop its brutal sanctions regime against the country. Finally, you have certainly noted that Syria has been readmitted to the Arab League and that many countries of the world have re-established diplomatic relations as well as trade and communication links with the country. We hope that you, too, will champion the ending of US hostilities against Syria and call for the re-establishment of full diplomatic relations.
Suggested Resources:
- The War Against Alternative Information, by Rick Sterling
- Attacks on Academic Freedom, The Times of London and MI6
- Syria Crucified: Stories of Modern Martyrdom in an Ancient Christian Land by Zachary Wingerd and Brad Hoff
US Republicans accuse Zelensky of campaigning for Harris
RT | September 25, 2024
Republican officials have accused Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky of interfering in US electoral politics and “campaigning” for presidential candidate Kamala Harris, after he visited an arms factory in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania.
Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro gave Zelensky a tour of the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant over the weekend, where both signed 155mm artillery shells that will presumably be shipped to Ukrainian troops.
Republican officials have taken issue with the photo op, as well as Zelensky’s recent interview with the New Yorker magazine, in which he criticized former President Donald Trump and Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, the party’s nominees in the November presidential election.
“Zelensky is openly campaigning for Democrats in battleground Pennsylvania today some 50 days out from our Presidential election. Unreal,” Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt wrote on X.
Pennsylvania Representative John Joyce told a local radio station on Tuesday that the visit was “a political stunt,” judging by its “suspect” timing.
A group of nine House representatives led by Lance Gooden of Texas have called for an investigation into Zelenksy’s visit. The Ukrainian leader was flown into Pennsylvania in a US Air Force C-17 military aircraft and was provided with Secret Service protection, both of which were paid for with US taxpayer money, the GOP lawmakers said in a letter to Pentagon Inspector General Robert Storch on Tuesday.
“There is concern that these resources were used for purposes unrelated to US national security or bilateral diplomacy but rather to support a politically significant visit ahead of a major US election,” said the letter, which was shared with the Washington Examiner.
Gooden questioned Zelensky’s judgment in alienating Republican voters in an interview with Fox News.
“Why is he [Zelensky] not on his knees thanking Americans, Republicans and Democrats, for the sacrifices they’ve made for his nation? And how dare he come into our nation and opine on any election, much less the presidential race?” the lawmaker asked on ‘The Ingraham Angle’ program.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, has been seen as attempting to rally the large Polish-American voter base in Pennsylvania by touting the support for Ukraine under the current administration as a way to protect Poland.
Zelensky has said he headed to the US to attend the UN General Assembly in New York and to meet President Joe Biden, in order to present him with a ‘victory plan’ to defeat Russia.
Biden’s ‘Performative’ Lecture on Democracy at UN Belies True US Role in World
By John Miles – Sputnik – 25.09.2024
Biden has made his claimed struggle for democracy a primary argument for the Democratic Party’s campaign against former President Donald Trump, but a closer look reveals the malign role of the United States in preserving countries’ sovereignty and self-rule.
US President Joe Biden spoke before the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday, taking the opportunity to deliver what is likely one of the final major speeches of his political career.
The yearly gathering of world leaders and diplomats, which takes place each September in New York City, has served as the backdrop for several significant moments throughout its almost 80-year history. Cuban revolutionary Ché Guevara addressed the assembly in 1964, touting Havana’s literacy campaign and assailing US intervention in Latin America. Former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi delivered a highly memorable speech in 2009, as did ex-Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who blasted George Bush, neoliberalism, and the US War on Terror in a 2006 broadside.
The week-long event provides an important forum for developing nations, who are briefly granted equal footing with great world powers. But the General Assembly is often criticized as a “talk shop” by those who claim the recognition granted to countries is more symbolic than tangible. Author and analyst Caleb Maupin joined Sputnik’s The Final Countdown program Tuesday to discuss the 78th session of the annual event and break down Biden’s address before the international audience.
“He talked about democracy and how he’s committed to democracy,” said Maupin, noting that Biden touched on themes he has frequently spoken about during the 2024 presidential election season. “He talked against Russia. He talked against Venezuela. He talked against the Palestinians. He talked up support for Israel. Joe Biden made a series of remarks going over standard US foreign policy.”
“Joe Biden really likes to do these kinds of performative, ideological shows, and that’s what his summit for democracy that he bragged about in his UN speech was,” the analyst claimed. “He loves to do these little performances where he talks about how he’s sticking up for democracy and democratic ideals.”
Biden has made his claimed struggle for democracy a primary argument for the Democratic Party’s campaign against former President Donald Trump, but a closer look reveals the malign role of the United States in preserving countries’ sovereignty and self-rule. A 2015 study found the US provides military support to 73% of nations labeled “dictatorships,” with Saudi Arabia and Juan Orlando Hernández’s oppressive former regime in Honduras providing perhaps the most prominent examples.
Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, still lauded as one of America’s most admired and consequential statesmen, made his contempt for democracy clear in 1970, when he vowed to intervene in Chile if the country elected an anti-imperialist leader. “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people,” said the controversial figure, who spearheaded a campaign of social and economic subversion of the Latin American country after the election of Salvador Allende.
Three years later Chile’s democratically-elected president would be removed in a bloody US-backed military putsch, ushering in almost two decades of bloody dictatorship resulting in the death and torture of tens of thousands. The model was duplicated in Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Argentina in a campaign of state terror and repression known as Plan Cóndor.
The US has worked to support coups and subvert democracy in dozens of countries around the globe, but its role in Palestine has generated perhaps the most attention in recent years. The United States has frequently undermined the influence of the UN and the force of international law in the name of defending Israel from criticism, recently downplaying the importance of a vote by the UN Security Council that called on the country to end its campaign in Gaza. The US has also led a group of Western countries in defunding the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), a crucial lifeline for refugees facing hunger and displacement that Israel has long viewed as an impediment.
“There is a lot of criticism that can be leveled at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency,” noted Maupin. “[With] Israel though, in particular, there is a political issue there, which is the UN frequently criticizes Israel and calls out Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians.”
“Israel considers any connection with the legitimate elected government of Gaza, which is Hamas… support for terrorism,” he continued. “If the UN set up a health care clinic and an elected official who’s part of the government in Gaza – that would be a member of Hamas – showed up and got health care, that would be considered aid to terrorism.”
Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton revealed the country’s actual views on democracy in leaked audio of comments from 2006, in which she demonstrated that the United States’ support for democratic elections is highly contingent upon voters choosing candidates in line with views and policies supported by Washington.
“I do not think we should have pushed for an election in the Palestinian territories. I think that was a big mistake,” Clinton said of the ballot that brought Hamas’s armed resistance movement to power in Gaza.
“If we were going to push for an election then we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win,” she claimed, appearing to suggest the United States should have intervened to rig the outcome.
US to Sanction Former Georgian Leader Over Opposition to NATO Membership
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | September 24, 2024
Washington is preparing sanctions against former Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili over his opposition to Tbilisi joining the North Atlantic Alliance and the European Union.
A senior US official told American state media, Voice of America, that Ivanishvili’s growing ties with Russia are concerning the White House. “We have information that Ivanishvili undertook actions to develop relations with Russian oligarchs, took actions to enable Russia to gain better access to the Georgian market,” the official explained. “In fact, he took some actions at the direction of the Russian intelligence services.”
While Ivanishvili has not personally been involved in Georgian politics since 2013, his populist Georgia Dream party is gaining influence in Tbilisi. The party has increasingly found itself at odds with Washington over a foreign agents law that was passed in Tbilisi earlier this year.
Similar to the US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) the legalization required agencies operating in Georgia and receiving more than 20% of their funding from foreign sources to register as foreign agents.
A source familiar with the Biden administration’s plan to sanction Ivanishvili said the move is coming out of frustration that Washington has been unable to move Tbilisi. “I think the Biden administration has been frustrated by its inability to get the Georgian government to take seriously the position they’ve put themselves in,” a source said. “The Biden people are trying to convey the seriousness and hope that somebody in the Georgian government is listening in a serious way.”
In 2008, NATO signed a pledge to one day admit Ukraine and Georgia into the Washington-led bloc. However, the Kremlin views the countries’ entrance into the alliance as a national security threat. In 2022, Moscow invaded Ukraine, in part because Kiev was becoming a de facto member of NATO.
Featured Video
Did the 9/11 Hijackers Really Fly the Planes?
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Book Excerpt
Biden’s Closed Circle on Russia
An excerpt from ‘The Great Betrayal’
By James W. Carden | The Realist Review | June 14, 2026
Joe Biden’s presidency may ultimately come to be seen as a cautionary tale. Here was a president who showed little interest in entertaining arguments that might have contradicted his most deeply held assumptions.[1] And there were precious few within the upper ranks of the administration who might have attempted to do so, after all, only policy hands and political operatives who had come up through the ranks of the Clinton and Obama administrations or had longstanding ties to the citadels of the foreign policy community were invited into the fold. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Hezbollah fighters confront intruding Israeli forces in southern Lebanon
- The Straight of Hormuz is Open for Iranian Business… Oil is Moving and Iran is Getting Paid
- Biden’s Closed Circle on Russia
- Lebanon Accuses Israel Of Violating The Chemical Weapons Convention By Spraying Toxic Herbicide Over Farmland
- Did the 9/11 Hijackers Really Fly the Planes?
- ‘Jewish lobby’ deceived Putin – Lukashenko
- The UK Joins the Pirates
- Israeli government plans to fund extremist occupier group in occupied West Bank with $1.89M: Report
- Press TV reporter wounded in Israeli drone strike on southern Lebanon
- Time for Trump to Tell Benjamin Netanyahu to Go Away!
- If Americans Knew
- Jared Kushner’s Israel-linked island, and other dubious projects
- Why Are Crypto Billionaires and AIPAC Spending $8+ Million to Elect Adrian Boafo?
- Why the Mainstream Media Should Stop Using the ADL as Their Go-To Antisemitism Source
- Censorship and Thuggery Won’t Save Israel’s Reputation
- Israel Searches for a Red Sea Foothold in Somaliland
- They Weren’t Convicted of Terrorism, But These Palestine Activists Got Sentenced as Terrorists Anyway
- “Ceasefire” is not in Israel’s vocabulary – Daily Update
- Did Trump just threaten a nuclear attack on Iran? Another merger for Israel-Firster David Ellison –Daily Update
- Israeli Firm Accused of Launching Smear Campaigns During US, European Elections
- As World Cup kicks off, Gaza amputee girls chase football dreams
- No Tricks Zone
- Beyond The Pitch: Why FIFA’s World Cup Is One Of Humanity’s Best Investments
- Climate Alarmists Now Using Natural Phenomena To Support Their Claims
- New Study: Significant CO2 Fluxes From Non-Volcanic Sources Are Largely Neglected In Carbon Budgets
- Women Climate Scientists Being Harassed, Insulted By Skeptics, Claims Berkeley Earth Researcher
- Germany’s Longterm Spring Climate Data Show “No Climate Trend”
- New Study: Solar Photovoltaic, Wind Power Fail To Meet Annual Energy Demands 62% Of The Time
- Germany’s Die Welt: “Too Much Is Too Much” … Green Energies Are Cannabalizing Each Other!
- Germany’s Ecological Holocaust… Once Fairy Tale Forests Getting Cleared For Wind Turbines
- A Grand Solar Minimum Has Arrived…Global Cooling Of At Least 1°C Is Expected By The 2030s, 2040s
- European “Expert Commission” Urges COVID-19-Like Global Climate State Of Energency!
Aletho News 