New wave of US, UK strikes target Yemen
The Cradle – February 4, 2024
US and UK warships and fighter jets bombed Yemen on 4 February, in a wave of missile strikes US officials claim hit 36 targets.
The US said in a CENTCOM statement that it hit “36 targets at 13 locations,” striking “underground storage facilities, command and control, missile systems, UAV storage and operations sites, radars, and helicopters.”
According to the statement, the US, UK, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, and New Zealand took part in the attacks.
The strikes were in response to Yemeni efforts to target Israeli-linked commercial ships passing through the narrow Bab al-Mandab Strait in the Red Sea. The Yemeni attacks are in response to Israel’s genocidal bombing campaign in Gaza.
Rather than press its ally Israel to stop its military campaign, which has killed over 27,000 Palestinians, the majority women and children, the US has joined forces with the UK to bomb Yemen.
Saturday’s strikes were launched by US F/A-18 fighter jets from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier, British Typhoon FGR4 fighter aircraft, and the Navy destroyers USS Gravely and the USS Carney firing Tomahawk missiles from the Red Sea, according to US officials and the UK Defense Ministry.
The Yemen Armed Forces issued a statement detailing where the attacks took place, reporting 13 raids on Sanaa, 9 on Hodeidah, 11 on Taiz, 7 on Al-Bayda, 7 on Hajjah, and one on Saada.
“These attacks will not deter us from our moral, religious, and humanitarian stance in support of the steadfast Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, and will not go unanswered and punished,” read the statement.
The strikes come one day after the US sent B-1 bombers to target 85 locations affiliated with the Islamic Resistance of Iraq in eastern Syria and western Iraq, killing at least 16. This was in response to an operation by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq that targeted US military outpost Tower 22 in Jordan last week, killing three US soldiers.
US officials reportedly told Al-Jazeera that the strikes on Yemen are “considered a next round of retaliation for the killing of the [US] soldiers in Jordan.”
Like Ansarallah, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq coalition, formed after 7 October, has also targeted Israel, as well as US bases in Syria and Iraq. The groups say their attacks are in response to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which the US has supported militarily and diplomatically.
Ansarallah leaders in Yemen say they have no intention of scaling back their campaign despite pressure from the US and UK bombing.
Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, an Ansarallah official, said, “military operations against Israel will continue until the crimes of genocide in Gaza are stopped and the siege on its residents is lifted, no matter the sacrifices it costs us.” He wrote on social media that the “American-British aggression against Yemen will not go unanswered, and we will meet escalation with escalation.”
Kata’ib Hezbollah: Iraq strikes stem from US statesmen’s criminal mindset
Press TV – February 4, 2024
Iraqi anti-terror group Kata’ib Hezbollah has roundly denounced the latest US military airstrikes against several sites used by resistance groups in the country, stating that the attacks emanate from the US administration’s criminal mindset and its craving for more bloodshed.
“We extend our condolences to our proud and steadfast nation for the martyrdom of several compatriots, who were targeted while protecting the homeland against the evils of American forces and the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group,” it said in a statement.
It added that criminality is deeply ingrained in the mindset of American politicians, and they long for relentless bloodletting as well as starvation and massacre of ordinary people in pursuit of their interests and advancement of their malicious agendas.
“US officials do not shy away from the occupation of other countries, plundering others’ national assets, influencing their decision-making and their humiliation.
“Under the American mindset, the first solution is murder. Such an attitude has historically been responsible for the extensive destruction of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is now behind the deadly attacks against sites in al-Qa’im,” Kata’ib Hezbollah pointed out.
Separately, the Yemeni Ansarullah resistance movement censured the US aggression against areas in Iraq and neighboring Syria, terming them as barbaric, in breach of international law, and a serious violation of the two countries’ sovereignty.
“The aggression falls within the context of US support for the Zionist enemy as it continues its crimes against the Palestinian population of Gaza,” it added.
Ansarullah warned that US moves will drag the entire region into a more complex conflict, and will jeopardize international peace and security.
“Washington could have compelled the Tel Aviv regime to halt its aggression on Palestinians and lift the siege on Gaza. It, however, decided to target the countries and nations of the region.
“We reiterate that Muslim nations reserve the right to defend themselves and protect their security and sovereignty against repeated US acts of aggression,” the Yemeni movement underscored.
US Central Command (CENTCOM) said its military forces struck more than 85 targets in Iraq and Syria “with numerous aircraft to include long-range bombers flown from the United States”.
“The air strikes employed more than 125 precision munitions,” it added in a statement.
US President Joe Biden said in a statement on Friday that the strikes were the first in a series of actions by Washington in response to a drone attack that killed a number of soldiers at a remote US base in Jordan.
“Our response began today,” Biden said. “It will continue at times and places of our choosing,” he stated.
Three US soldiers were killed and about 40 others injured in the assault on the military base known as Tower 22 near the Jordan-Syria border on Sunday.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of anti-terror fighters, in a statement published on its Telegram channel claimed responsibility for the drone strike.
In retaliation for the flurry of US aerial assaults on several locations in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq announced that it had conducted missile strikes against the Ain al-Asad Airbase, housing US occupation forces in the western Iraqi province of al-Anbar.
The group also said it had staged missile and drone strikes against the strategic al-Tanf military base in southeastern Syria near the border with Jordan and Iraq, as well as the al-Khadra Village in Syria’s northeastern province of al-Hasakah.
Nuland leaves sense of foreboding in Kiev
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | FEBRUARY 4, 2024
The commencement of political upheavals in world affairs sometimes lies with a seemingly obscure event. This is not to say that the shooting down of a Russian Ilyushin-76 military transport plane carrying dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war over the territory of Belgorod Region by two missiles fired from the area of Liptsy, in Kharkov Region (Ukraine) on January 24 is anything like the spark that set off World War I when a Serbian patriot shot and killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand in the city of Sarajevo in 1914 and within a month, the Austrian army invaded Serbia.
That said, the downing of the Russian plane would have far-reaching consequences now that Russian investigators found irrefutable proof that the plane was shot down with a US-made Patriot surface-to-air system. President Vladimir Putin disclosed this himself.
Russia sought an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council in the matter but France as the president disallowed the request, which would have cast the West in bad light. The fact of the matter is that the US and Russia are not at war and the Americans would have no hesitation to call such an outrageous incident as an act of war if a Pentagon plane were to be shot down with a Russian missile in the US airspace.
To be sure, Russia will draw appropriate conclusions and formulate a measured reaction. This is an escalation spiral as Russia’s election approaches.
Indeed, all indications are that the US strategy through this year is to ‘hold, build and strike’ at Russia, as outlined in an article in the War on the Rocks co-authored by Michael Kofman, a leading American military analyst and the director of the Russia Studies Program at the Center for a New American Security. Basically, the strategy is predicated on the premise that Russia is still far from its official goal of seizing the entire Donbas and therefore, what happens in 2024 is likely to determine the future trajectory of the war.
Kofman identified three elements as crucial: one, a well- fortified frontline in Ukraine which stalls Russian offensives; two, pressing ahead with reconstituting the battered Ukrainian military; and, three, most important, degrading the Russian advantages and “creating challenges for Russian forces far behind the front lines”, while doubling down on rebuilding capacity to resume offensive operations. In a nutshell, the strategy is to reach a level of capability where Ukraine can absorb Russian offensives while minimising casualties and positioning itself to retake the advantage over time. [Emphasis added.]
Russia is unlikely to remain passive without a counter-strategy. In fact, there is a perceptible acceleration of Russian operations lately. The factors of advantage largely lie with Russia which holds material, industrial, and manpower advantages, and therefore, recreating another opportunity to deal Russia a battlefield defeat is virtually impossible.
Washington should be aware that there is very little realistic chance of the West being able to outlast Russia and force it to accept peace on Ukrainian terms. Time is not on Ukraine’s side, either, militarily or economically. The noted American strategic thinker of the realist school and Harvard academic Prof. Stephen Walt is to the point when he wrote in FT recently, “Both [Biden and Trump] administrations will try to negotiate an end to the war after January 2025, and the resulting deal is likely to be a lot closer to Russia’s stated war aims than Kyiv’s.”
But that is the whole point. The new war strategy — which was outlined in a recent article in the Washington Post — takes into account the possibility of Ukraine becoming a dysfunctional state. But so long as Ukraine remains a cauldron boiling with nationalism that lends itself as a base for hostile moves to destabilise Russia and lock it in permanently in a confrontation with the West, the purpose is served —from Washington’s viewpoint.
The final act of the power struggle playing out in Kiev is, therefore, of decisive importance and is being supervised by none other than Biden’s agent in the administration ever since the Maidan coup in Ukraine in 2014 — Victoria Nuland, Undersecretary of State. Nuland’s two-fold mission has been, first, to put in place a calculus of power in Kiev that is firmly under US control and, second, to steer the transition from war to insurgency when the need arises.
The probability being talked about is that President Zelensky who has burnt his bridges with Moscow will remain in power while the army chief Valeri Zaluzhni may be replaced. That said, the outcome of high-stakes power struggles, as the one Kiev is witnessing, is also hard to predict. Gen. Zaluzhni’s nuanced op-ed in the CNN on the day after Nuland left Kiev leaves no one in doubt that the redoubtable general is in a defiant mood.
Chief of Defense Intelligence Kyrylo Budanov’s biggest qualification is that although a man of very limited military experience, his forte is intelligence and covert operations who did brilliantly well to create a network of field operatives within Russia for subversive work — just the man to navigate Ukraine’s transition from attritional war to a full-bodied insurgency against Russia.
The US agenda to weaken Russia in a long-drawn out insurgency is very much in the cards. This agenda enjoys the support of the transatlantic alliance, is “cost-effective” and allows the US to focus on Asia-Pacific, while keeping Russia down for the foreseeable future. No doubt, Russia’s reaction to the downing of the IL-86 military plane by Patriot missiles in Russian air space was anything but an accident.
Moscow’s best option would be to create a buffer that keeps Russian territories out of reach of game-changing western medium and long-range missiles that are capable of degrading Russian logistics and command and control nodes and make large swathes of territories in the east and south of Ukraine, including Crimea, untenable for Russian forces.
But that necessitates a full-fledged Russian offensive to take control of the entire region to the east of Dnieper river. Russia may face the same dilemma that Americans faced in Vietnam stemming from the requirement to expand the theatre of operations into Laos and Cambodia (aside North Vietnam.) For Russia, that involves colossal drain of human and material resources and the erosion of its international standing.
The only feasible alternative will be to end the war — through negotiations or militarily — in 2024. But Biden’s interest in negotiations is zero. That leaves the military option as the only choice. The strategy to degrade the Ukrainian military in the meat grinder was highly successful, but going forward, in reality, the US-led western alliance, especially key functionaries like Nuland (an ex-ambassador to NATO) with a long record of being Russophobic, are showing no signs of attrition.
Now that the US has broken the glass ceiling by enabling a military attack on Russian territory, Moscow should brace for more incidents like the downing of the IL-76 plane. The authorities will be keeping a beady eye. Nuland’s sudden appearance in Kiev as a psychopomp from Greek mythology at this inflection point needs to be factored in.
While in Kiev, Nuland forecast Ukrainian military successes in 2024 and that Moscow “is going to get some nice surprises on the battlefield”. The day before Nuland’s arrival in Kiev, Budanov had said that the Ukrainian military is in “active defence” but somewhere in the spring, Russia’s ongoing offensive “will be exhausted completely… and I think ours will start.” The tone of triumphalism is unmistakable, but how far it is rooted in reality time only can tell.
Fluoride Expert Squares Off Against EPA on Day 1 of Landmark Trial
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.| The Defender | February 1, 2024
After a nearly four-year delay, federal Judge Edward Chen on Wednesday heard opening statements in a lawsuit seeking to compel the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to prohibit water fluoridation in the U.S. due to fluoride’s toxic effects on children’s developing brains.
Food and Water Watch sued the EPA in 2017 — after the agency denied its petition to end water fluoridation under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). This week’s trial is the first to challenge the dismissal of such a petition. Other plaintiffs include Fluoride Action Network (FAN), Moms Against Fluoridation and other advocacy groups and individuals.
Fluoride’s neurotoxic effects on children’s brain development were not in dispute during opening statements and in testimony delivered by the plaintiffs’ first expert witness, Dr. Howard Hu, an internist and preventive medicine specialist, with a doctoral degree in epidemiology.
Instead, attorneys for both sides faced off over the question of what level of fluoride in the water supply poses a risk to the developing brain of fetuses and children.
Levels of fluoride found in drinking water in the U.S. are typically 0.7 milligrams per liter (mg/L), which is lower than the 1.5 mg/L levels found to be neurotoxic by the key reports discussed in the trial.
Attorneys for FAN argued that according to the EPA’s own guidelines for chemical risk evaluation — which they allege the EPA is failing to implement — fluoridating water at a dose that is so close to a known hazard level is too risky, especially given that children are exposed to fluoride from other sources in their daily lives.
They also argued the EPA’s failure to follow its own guidelines is unprecedented. The agency bans other regulated toxic chemicals, such as methylene chloride or trichloroethylene at levels much lower than the known hazard level to ensure the chemicals won’t pose a risk to human health.
And, they said, water fluoridation is unnecessary because the benefits to dental health come from the topical application of fluoride, not from its ingestion.
The EPA argued there is no compelling evidence that fluoride is a neurotoxin at the current levels used for fluoridation in the U.S. and that therefore water fluoridation doesn’t pose a risk to children.
Over two hundred million Americans drink fluoridated water, a practice that has been backed by public health officials and dental associations for decades.
If Chen decides fluoride poses an unreasonable risk, the EPA will have to revisit its rules on water fluoridation.
Fluoride regulation ‘long overdue’
Wednesday’s trial was picked after a June 2020 ruling by Chen that placed the trial on hold pending the release of the National Toxicology Program’s (NTP) report on the link between fluoride exposure and neurodevelopment effects.
The report was released in draft form under court order in March 2023, after top public health officials at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) tried for almost a year to block its publication.
The NTP report concluded that fluoride exposure at levels equivalent to 1.5 mg/L is associated with lower IQ in children.
The second phase of the trial is scheduled to take place over nine days at the federal courthouse in San Francisco, with a Zoom feed available for up to 1,000 viewers to watch live.
FAN member Clint Griess told The Defender that fluoride regulation was long overdue, but he had confidence Chen was carefully considering the science. He said:
“This [phase of the trial] is long overdue. We won after the first trial in my opinion. The judge is being extremely cautious. He has recognized, in his own words, that ‘justice delayed is justice denied.’
“Here we are in 2024, and we are still delaying and denying justice to millions of Americans. I’m very glad we are finally here and our lawyers are doing a great job. And I have every confidence that we will be victorious.”
EPA must apply its own guidelines to fluoride
In his opening arguments, the plaintiffs’ attorney Michael Connett told the court it faced an issue of national importance, “whether the widespread addition of fluoride to water presents a risk of neurodevelopmental harm to children, including IQ loss.”
The EPA faced a similar question in the 1970s, he said, when it had to address the question of adding lead to gasoline.
The EPA was in a quandary, he said, because, at the time, there was no clear evidence that lead was damaging at the levels used. But the EPA decided the margin between the hazard level and the exposure level posed too great a risk — leading the agency to outlaw lead in gasoline.
Connett said that properly applying the EPA’s risk assessment framework for existing chemicals under TSCA is at the heart of the decision the court is facing regarding water fluoridation.
During the first part of the trial in 2020, the agency used the wrong standard to assess the evidence, he said, holding the plaintiffs to a burden of proof the EPA had never held anyone else.
Connett said:
“What you see in this trial is the clash of fundamentally different paradigms. On one hand, you have the sort of 70-year-old longstanding approach by the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and dental interests where basically it’s not a risk until you prove beyond a reasonable doubt that 0.7 [mg/L] fluoride water is causing harm, and that’s been their approach.
“But that’s not how the EPA does business. They use risk assessment. And we are in a position where the plaintiffs are the ones explaining how the EPA is supposed to do risk assessment.”
The EPA’s risk assessment framework, he said, begins with determining whether and at what level a chemical poses a hazard through a dose-response analysis. Then it assesses community exposure. The third piece, he said, is that the EPA looks at the margin between the hazard level and exposure level.
Connett said there are two types of risk. The first is when human exposure exceeds the hazard risk, but that is very rare. For example, the EPA didn’t have that type of data when it decided to ban lead in gasoline.
Then, he said, there is inferred risk, where exposure is lower than the hazard level. This scenario focuses on whether that margin between hazard and exposure may put some people at risk. TSCA mandates the EPA protect the most susceptible people from risk, he said.
The EPA typically requires a margin of 30-fold to determine whether something has a risk. However, some are much higher — for example, tetrachloroethylene is banned at levels 89 times lower than the hazard level, and methylene chloride exposure is not allowed at levels 27 times lower.
In this case, he said, rather than inferring risk as it ought to, the EPA is requiring a risk hazard at the exposure level, which for fluoride is 0.7 mg/L.
Connett outlined the evidence the plaintiffs will present. It includes undisputed evidence that fluoride passes through the placenta and gets into the fetal brain. FAN also will present data from animal studies and human studies, including the NTP report at the center of the trial.
“The NTP found that a large number of studies have been published on fluoride and human IQ. In total, they identified 72 human studies, of which 64 found a connection between fluoride and IQ deficiency. Of the 19 highest quality studies, 18 found lowered IQ, a 95% consistency,” he said.
Connett introduced the first witnesses, Hu and Dr. Bruce Lanphear, professor of health sciences at Canada’s Simon Fraser University.
Connett also previewed evidence the EPA would introduce to attempt to show fluoride is not neurotoxic at low levels, namely a study conducted in coastal Spain by Jesus Ibarluzea, Ph.D., and published in 2022 after the NTP finished its systematic review.
That study did not find evidence that fluoride is neurotoxic at low levels. Instead, it found fluoride increased IQ for boys by 15 points — a finding Connett called “implausible.”
Connett told The Defender, “The EPA has never applied the principles of risk assessment to fluoridation and this case is finally getting them to confront the principles on this issue.”
Chen pushed back on EPA during opening comments
In its opening statement, the EPA argued that anything can be toxic at high levels. The agency’s attorney laid out the EPA’s core argument that there is not enough data showing fluoride’s neurotoxicity at low levels present in drinking water and the law requires a “preponderance of evidence” of risk.
He highlighted a line in the NTP report indicating that more studies at lower exposure levels were needed to fully understand the potential associations with neurotoxicity.
Chen paused the remarks to ask the EPA to confirm the NTP report did establish that with moderate confidence that fluoride caused neurotoxicity at 1.5 mg/L, a relatively low level, which the EPA attorney confirmed.
“Do you disagree with the NTP’s use of 1.5 [mg/L as a hazard level]?” Chen asked. The EPA’s lawyer said they did not.
The EPA also argued that TSCA says “must be a preponderance of the evidence that the chemical substance presents an unreasonable risk.”
According to the EPA, studies of fluoride’s neurotoxicity at low levels have mixed findings — some show there are statistically significant adverse effects at low levels and others found there are not.
Given that, EPA’s attorneys argued the data is “too inconsistent” to conclude that low-level fluoride exposure presents an unreasonable risk.
Chen interrupted the opening comments again to ask whether, as the plaintiffs argued, that uncertainty is precisely what should inform the discussion of risk. “If the outcome wasn’t lowered IQ but cancer or death,” he asked, “would that change things?”
The EPA closed by telling the judge that what matters for TSCA is whether 0.7 mg/L presents an unreasonable risk. Chen pushed back again, “Shouldn’t we consider that in context,” he asked, because fluoride exposure occurs through sources other than water?
The EPA named the expert witnesses it will call later in the case, including David Savitz, Ph.D., and the EPA’s Stan Barone.
‘The evidence is quite persuasive’
The first witness, Dr. Howard Hu, an environmental epidemiologist and chair of the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California took the stand yesterday to begin the trial’s deep dive into the science.
Hu has authored more than 300 papers in peer-reviewed journals and published several studies on fluoride. He also advises the EPA and collaborates with its scientists on issues related to lead exposure.
In 1993, Hu co-founded the ELEMENT research project, a pregnancy and birth cohort funded by the EPA and the National Institutes of Health and used to study how prenatal exposure to environmental toxins, including lead, mercury and fluoride affects children’s neurodevelopment.
In such cohorts, researchers collect epidemiological data during pregnancy and then from children over their lifetimes to study a variety of health outcomes tied to environmental exposures.
More recently at San Diego, Hu analyzed data on fluoride and neurotoxicity from the MADRES cohort, comprised of Los Angeles County residents, largely Latino. That research is not yet published.
Hu testified about his research, which consistently finds a link between fluoride and lowered IQ in children.
One of his fluoride studies examined the ELEMENT cohort and found that prenatal levels of fluoride that appeared in maternal urine predicted offspring intelligence scores at ages 4 and 12, with IQ levels lower with incremental increases in maternal fluoride levels.
A second paper expanded the analysis of the 2017 paper and made similar findings. Hu said the neurotoxic effects of fluoride were the strongest in the nonverbal domains, which he said is similar to lead.
Hu also addressed other cohort studies that have different findings, such as the MIREC study in Canada or the Danish study referred to as Odense where the research was conducted, which Hu also used in some of his research.
For example, the MIREC study found sex-specific findings whereas the ELEMENT study did not. The Danish cohort study did not find statistically significant toxic effects.
Hu told the court that different sexes and demographics can have different life experiences that can account for different outcomes.
Overall, he said, his research supports the idea that fluoride at current exposure levels in drinking water is toxic.
Hu also discussed his concerns about the Spanish study the EPA is using as a basis to argue fluoride is not toxic at low levels. He testified it did not control for seafood consumption, which creates high levels of fluoride exposure. He testified it did not control for seafood consumption by pregnant mothers, which creates high levels of fluoride exposure and also has been shown to confer IQ benefits, so it could be a confounding factor in an analysis.
He also criticized the EPA’s opening statements. He said the EPA was presenting data as black and white. Epidemiology, he said, is moving away from characterizing things in that way. Even when a study, like the Danish Odense study, is “negative,” as the EPA put it, the data in the study can indicate a more nuanced reality.
On cross-examination, the EPA asked Hu to concede that the Spanish study was well done. Hu agreed but said he had serious reservations about it, which he had previously discussed.
The EPA also challenged the work he did with Grandjean reporting the Danish study. The results of the Danish study, which did not identify neurotoxic effects, were only published in 2023 as part of a “pooled” study where he and his colleagues used the Danish, Mexican and Canadian data to characterize the dose-effect of fluoride exposure, which the EPA’s lawyer implied was a form of selectively reporting results.
Hu told the court combining the studies increased the power of the analysis and the ability of the research to address questions of public health.
After his testimony, Hu told journalist Derrick Broze, “The evidence is quite persuasive that there is a negative impact of fluoride exposure on the neurodevelopment of children.”
The Defender is providing daily updates on the landmark trial pitting Fluoride Action Network against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency taking place in San Francisco, beginning Feb. 1.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Microsoft CEO Says the Company Is Working To Address Election “Disinformation and Misinformation”
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | February 2, 2024
Concerns are growing over the role of Big Tech companies in moderating “misinformation,” particularly due to the fear that these corporations already wield significant power and influence which could potentially sway political outcomes, including elections.
Many worry that the concentrated power in these tech giants allows them to arbitrarily define what constitutes misinformation, leading to a situation where they could suppress certain viewpoints or information. This raises questions about the impartiality and fairness of such moderation, especially in the context of political discourse and the democratic process. The debate is fueled by the concern that these companies, due to their size and reach, could have a disproportionate impact on public opinion and electoral processes.
In an AI-focused interview with Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, it was revealed that Microsoft intends to combat alleged “disinformation” throughout the 2024 elections.
During his conversation with NBC’s Lester Holt on NBC Nightly News’ January 30 edition, Nadella was questioned about how AI might either assist or endanger the future election.
However, Nadella’s response seemed to imply a willingness to use technology for censoring content in pursuit of fighting what he identified as disinformation.
Nadella stated, “This is not the first election where we dealt with disinformation or propaganda campaigns by adversaries and election interference.
“We’re doing all the work across the tech industry around watermarking, detecting deep fakes and content IDs. There is going to be enough and more technology quite frankly in order to be able to identify the issues around disinformation and misinformation.”
No Iranian base or advisors targeted by US strikes in Iraq, Syria: Diplomat
Press TV | February 3, 2024
Iran’s Ambassador to Damascus Hossein Akbari says no Iranian bases or military advisors have been targeted in deadly strikes by the US occupation forces on a number of sites in Iraq and Syria.
Akbari said on Saturday that contrary to claims, the attacks aimed to destroy Syria’s civil infrastructure amid the pro-Palestine actions undertaken by the resistance front.
He said the US government’s terrorist act on Friday night was carried out mainly to make up for Israel’s defeats in the Gaza Strip and strengthening armed Takfiri terrorists based on the borders of Iraq and Syria.
The US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement on Friday that its forces had struck more than 85 targets “with numerous aircraft” during overnight raids on localities in Iraq and Syria.
The Syrian state media reported that the US aggression targeted positions in Syria’s eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr and the city of al-Bukamal near the Iraqi border, falling short of providing details on the extent of damage and the exact number of casualties.
Sixteen people were killed, among them civilians, and 25 injured in the US airstrikes in Iraq, Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani’s office said.
ISIS exploits US strikes to attack Iraqi forces in Anbar
The Cradle | February 3, 2024
The Iraqi army and the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMU) clashed with ISIS militants in western Anbar governorate on 3 February, an Iraqi security source told Al-Mayadeen.
The Iraqi Al-Nujaba satellite channel said that ISIS took advantage of the US bombing of targets in Iraq and Syria by launching an attack on the army and the PMU forces in the area of Kilometer 160 on the Al-Sakkar highway near the town of Rutba in Anbar.
The US has occupied the nearby Al-Tanf Base on the Syrian side of the border since 2015 and has used it to arm and train ISIS militants.
The US and allied intelligence agencies used ISIS to attack the Syrian and Iraqi armies as part of its effort to effect regime change in Damascus starting in 2011 and to depose Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki in 2014.
After ISIS conquered large swathes of Iraq and Syria, US forces turned against the group. With help from Kurdish forces, the US took control of much of the territory in Syria ISIS once controlled. In Iraq, the US partnered with Iraqi forces to retake Mosul.
Gulf-backed Syria researcher Charles Lister wrote in Foreign Policy on 24 January that ISIS is enjoying a resurgence and that 10,000 ISIS militants are detained within at least 20 makeshift prisons in US and Kurdish-controlled northeastern Syria, constituting an ISIS “army in waiting” and its “next generation.”
The comments raised fears the US may use ISIS militants to counter forces from the Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI), a coalition of Shia armed groups that seek to expel US forces from Syria and Iraq and end the Israeli genocide on Gaza.
Iraq summons US chargé d’affaires in protest over airstrikes
Press TV – February 3, 2024
Iraq has summoned the US chargé d’affaires in Baghdad to deliver a formal memorandum of protest over the overnight airstrikes on dozens of sites used by anti-terror resistance groups in the country.
The Iraqi Foreign Ministry announced in a Saturday statement that it is going to call in David Burger “in protest at the US aggression which targeted Iraqi civilian and military sites” due to the absence of Ambassador Alina L. Romanowski, the official Iraqi News Agency (INA) reported.
The statement said Iraqi officials will deliver an official note of protest regarding the strikes against locations in the towns of Akashat and Al-Qa’im in the western province of Anbar.
The Iraqi government said at least 16 people were killed in the US strikes. It condemned the “new aggression against” Iraq’s sovereignty. Civilians were among the fatalities, and 25 people were wounded in the bombings that targeted both civilian and security areas, a government spokesperson said.
“This aggressive strike will put security in Iraq and the region on the brink of the abyss,” the Iraqi government said, and denied Washington’s claims of coordinating the attacks with Baghdad as “false” and “aimed at misleading international public opinion.”
The presence of the US-led military coalition in the region “has become a reason for threatening security and stability in Iraq and a justification for involving Iraq in regional and international conflicts,” a statement from Prime Minister Mohamed Shia al-Sudani’s office read.
Syrian official news agency SANA also reported several casualties after the attacks in the desert region and border areas with Iraq.
US Central Command (CENTCOM) said its military forces struck more than 85 targets in the two countries “with numerous aircraft to include long-range bombers flown from the United States.”
“The airstrikes employed more than 125 precision munitions,” it added in a statement.
US President Joe Biden said in a statement on Friday that the strikes were the first in a series of actions by Washington in response to a recent drone attack that killed a number of soldiers at a remote US base in Jordan.
“Our response began today,” Biden said. “It will continue at times and places of our choosing,” he stated.
Three US soldiers were killed and about 40 others injured in the assault on the military base known as Tower 22 near the Jordan-Syria border on Sunday.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of anti-terror fighters, claimed responsibility for the drone strike.
In retaliation for the latest flurry of US strikes in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq announced it had conducted missile strikes against the Ain al-Asad Airbase, housing US occupation forces in the western Iraqi province of Anbar. The group also said it had staged missile and drone strikes against the strategic al-Tanf military base in southeastern Syria near the border with Jordan and Iraq, as well as the al-Khadra Village in Syria’s northeastern province of al-Hasakah.
Pentagon, Raytheon Sign Contract Worth $68.4Mln for Delivery of 50 Missiles to Taiwan
Sputnik – 03.02.2024
The US Department of Defense has signed a contract worth $68.4 million with the Raytheon defense-industrial company for the production and delivery of 50 air-to-ground missiles to Taiwan, the Pentagon said on Saturday.
“Raytheon Missile Systems, Tucson, Arizona, was awarded a $68,420,396 modification (P00001) to a firm-fixed-price order (N0001924F2560) … This modification exercising an option for the production and delivery of 50 Joint Standoff Weapon Air-To-Ground Missiles (AGM-154 Block III C) for the government of Taiwan,” Pentagon said in a statement.
The work under the contract is expected to be completed in March 2028, the statement read.
Taiwan has been governed independently of mainland China since 1949. Beijing views the island as its province, while Taiwan — a territory with its own elected government — maintains that it is an autonomous country but stops short of declaring independence.
Beijing opposes any official contacts of foreign states with Taipei and considers Chinese sovereignty over the island indisputable. In response to visits of high-ranking US delegations to Taiwan in 2022 and 2023, the Chinese military launched large-scale drills near the island, in what it called a warning to Taiwanese separatists and foreign powers.
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