Senator Mark Warner Argues “Misinformation or Disinformation” Shouldn’t Have First Amendment Protections
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | February 5, 2024
Senator Mark Warner has aggressively gone after speech protections, seeking to seemingly single-handedly reinterpret the First Amendment while complaining that courts dealing with White House/Big Tech collusion are now making the Biden administration “very timid.”
The Democrat apparently proceeds from the rule, “disinformation is whatever we say it is” – in itself too arbitrary to be taken seriously. But that doesn’t stop Warner from building a big case for rethinking the First Amendment and facilitating censorship even further, by effectively strengthening, rather than abandoning, the said collusion.
If something is considered “true misinformation or disinformation,” the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee told NPR, then that, along with another favorite yet poorly explained scare – deep fakes – does not qualify for First Amendment protections.
“I think when you’re talking about true misinformation or disinformation, or when you’re talking about utilization of deepfakes where an image…is put up and it’s not us, but it looks like us and sounds like us, I don’t think those are First Amendment protections,” is the full quote from the senator.
And Warner wants to bring some stock market rules into the world of fundamental rights and free speech, suggesting that information labeled as disinformation should be treated as malicious and banned like manipulation is banned from the stock market.
The senator then proceeded to talk about 2020 “election deniers” while in the same breath denying the integrity of the 2016 election, by once again fear-mongering about the supposed impending doom, “a perfect storm in terms of election interference.”
To stop that from happening, and to keep the current administration in power, Warner wants to make its ability to censor and keep “in contact” with the likes of Google and Facebook intact, if not stronger.
That is why he has made extra effort – penned an amicus brief – in a bid to get the Supreme Court to reverse an injunction concerning the government/Big Tech collusion, brought up in the NetChoice, LLC v. Paxton case and issued by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The senator went on to say that he “doesn’t believe” collusion of that kind has to do with free speech suppression. Instead, according to him, it has to do with “the ability of the government to be able to at least talk to Facebook and Google to say, hey, if you see misinformation – or can we share evidence of Russian activity? How do we cooperate together?”
But it seems Warner believes the US legal system, or parts of it, trying to put some breaks on this oddly undemocratic practice, are making Biden’s White House “very timid” – whereas he is “trying to push the Biden administration to be a little more aggressive.”
“But – rest assured that there is not the level of communication (with Big Tech) that existed in 2020 or 2022 or 2018,” the senator lamented.
CNN Staffers Say Network Has ‘Systemic and Institutional Bias Toward Israel’
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | February 5, 2024
Several employees of CNN spoke out against the outlet’s bias towards Israel in its reporting on the war on Gaza. Other US corporate media outlets have shown significant favoritism toward Tel Aviv.
The Guardian reports speaking with six staffers from different newsrooms who said that there is growing backlash against the leadership’s pro-Israel slant. “The majority of news since the war began, regardless of how accurate the initial reporting, has been skewed by a systemic and institutional bias within the network toward Israel,” said one CNN staffer. “Ultimately, CNN’s coverage of the Israel-Gaza war amounts to journalistic malpractice.”
“There’s a lot of internal strife and dissent. Some people are looking to get out,” the CNN staffer explained. “Senior staffers who disagree with the status quo are butting heads with the executives giving orders, questioning how we can effectively tell the story with such restrictive directives in place.”
A staffer speaking with the Guardian explained how systemic censorship occurs. “Many have been pushing for more content from Gaza to be alerted and aired.” The source continued, “By the time these reports go through Jerusalem and make it to TV or the homepage, critical changes – from the introduction of imprecise language to an ignorance of crucial stories – ensure that nearly every report, no matter how damning, relieves Israel of wrongdoing.”
The CNN employees say the bias starts at the top, with CEO Mark Thompson. The Guardian obtained emails and members that backed up the accusations made by the CNN staff members. The employees say the slant is causing a backlash.
In one memo obtained by the Guardian, Thompson gave orders that all stories mentioning the atrocities committed by the Israelis in Gaza must mention the war is only occurring because of the Hamas attack on October 7.
The memo reads, “We must continue always to remind our audiences of the immediate cause of this current conflict, namely the Hamas attack and mass murder and kidnap of civilians.” One staffer confirmed that the memo was interpreted “as an instruction that no matter what the Israelis do, Hamas is ultimately to blame.”
CNN’s bias towards Tel Aviv is matched by the Washington Post and New York Times. Writing at FAIR, Julie Hollar explains,” At the New York Times and Washington Post, opinion editors have skewed the Gaza debate toward an Israel-centered perspective, dominated by men and, among guest writers, government officials.”
“While both papers did include a few strong pro-Palestinian voices—their pages leaned heavily toward a conversation dominated by Israeli interests and concerns.” She continued, “That was due in large part due to their stables of regular columnists, who tend to write from a perspective aligned with Israel. As a result, the viewpoints readers were most likely to encounter on the opinion pages of the two papers were sympathetic to, but not necessarily uncritical of, Israel.”
Is a New Korean War in the Offing?
BY GREGORY ELICH | COUNTERPUNCH | FEBRUARY 5, 2024
In recent days, U.S. media have been proclaiming that North Korea plans to initiate military action against its neighbor to the south. An article by Robert L. Carlin and Siegfried S. Hecker, neither previously prone to making wild assertions, created quite a splash and set off a chain reaction of media fear-mongering. In Carlin’s and Hecker’s assessment, “[W]e believe that, like his grandfather in 1950, Kim Jong Un has made a strategic decision to go to war.” They add that if North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is convinced that engagement with the United States is not possible, then “his recent words and actions point toward the prospects of a military solution using [his nuclear] arsenal.” [1]
U.S. officials have stated that while they do not see “an imminent risk of a full-scale war on the Korean Peninsula,” Kim Jong Un “could take some form of lethal military action against South Korea in the coming months after having shifted to a policy of open hostility.” [2] How do these sensationalist claims stack up against the evidence?
It is no secret that lately, the stance of the United States and South Korea has hardened against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK – the formal name for North Korea). Since the centerpiece for suggesting that war may be on the horizon is Kim’s speech at the 14th Supreme People’s Assembly, its content is worth examining in some detail. [3] What strikes one when reading the text is that mainstream media have taken quotes out of context and ignored much of the content of Kim’s speech, creating an impression of unprovoked belligerence.
Also generally absent from media reporting is the speech’s relationship to the backdrop of events since the far-right Yoon Suk Yeol became president of South Korea in May 2022. Yoon came into office determined to smash every vestige of the improved inter-Korean environment established during his predecessor’s term. Instead, Yoon prioritized making South Korea a subordinate partner in the Biden administration’s hyper-militarized Indo-Pacific Strategy.
To fully understand Kim Jong Un’s speech, one must also consider the nature of the Biden administration’s rapid military escalation in the Asia-Pacific. The United States conducts a virtually nonstop series of military exercises at North Korea’s doorstep, practicing the bombing and invasion of that nation. One South Korean analyst has counted 42 joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises conducted in 2023 alone, along with ten more involving Japan. [4] Those totals do not include exercises that the U.S. and South Korea engaged in outside of Northeast Asia, such as Exercise Talisman Sabre in Australia and Exercise Cobra Gold in Thailand. Moreover, U.S. actions on the Korean Peninsula must also be situated within the broader geopolitical framework of its hostility towards China.
Last year, in an act of overt intimidation, the United States conducted seven exercises with nuclear-capable bombers over the Korean Peninsula. [5] Additional flights involved the B-1 bomber, which the U.S. Air Force says “can rapidly deliver massive quantities of precision and non-precision weapons.” [6] Through its actions, the United States sends far more provocative messages than anything that could be honestly construed in Kim’s speech. But then, we are led to see nothing amiss in such aggressive behavior from the United States. Nevertheless, the threat is real and unmistakable from the targeted nation’s perspective.
It also has not gone unnoticed in Pyongyang that U.S. and South Korean military forces regularly conduct training exercises to practice assassinating Kim Jong Un and other North Korean officials. [7] Just this month, U.S. Green Berets and soldiers from South Korea’s Special Warfare Command completed training focused on the targeted killing of North Korean individuals. [8] The Biden administration avers that it harbors no hostile intent toward the DPRK, but its actions say otherwise, loud and clear.
North Korea, with a GDP that the United Nations ranks just behind that of Congo and Laos, is considered such a danger that the U.S. must confront it with substantial military might. An inconvenient question that is never asked is why the DPRK is singled out for punishment and threats when the other nuclear non-members of the Non-Proliferation Treaty – each armed with ballistic missiles — are not. What distinguishes North Korea from India, Pakistan, and Israel? How is it that North Korea is regarded as a threat to peace but not Israel, notwithstanding mounting evidence to the contrary? The essential distinction is that North Korea is the only one of the four that is not a U.S. ally; moreover, one which the U.S. wishes to retain the ability to bomb, whether or not it ever exercises the option to do so.
It is a tribute to the persuasiveness of propaganda that the United States, with its record of multiple wars, bombings, and drone assassinations in recent decades, can convince so many that the DPRK, which has done none of these things during the same period, is a danger to international peace and stability. Yet, such towering hypocrisy goes largely unnoticed. It would appear that there is no principle involved in targeting only North Korea and not the other nuclear-armed non-members of the NPT — unless outrage over a small nation following an independent path being able to defend itself can be regarded as a principle.
Predictably, Washington think tank analysts and media commentators are throwing more heat than light on the subject of Kim’s pronouncements, and they are always ready with a cliché at hand. Some, like Bruce W. Bennett of RAND Corporation, let their imagination run wild, conjuring bizarre absurdities. Bennett suggests that armed with more nuclear weapons in the years ahead, North Korea “could threaten one or more U.S. cities with nuclear attack if the United States does not repeal its sanctions against North Korea.” Or perhaps, he suggests, the DPRK could threaten the U.S. with a limited nuclear attack “unless it abandons its alliance with [South Korea]” or “disengage from Ukraine.” As for South Korea, Bennett warns that Kim might insist that it “pay him $100 billion per year and permanently discontinue producing K-pop…” [9] This is what passes as expert analysis in Washington.
The military section of Kim’s speech was at root defensive, pointing out that North Korea’s “security environment has been steadily deteriorated” and that if it wants to take “the road of independent development,” it must be fully prepared to defend itself. Kim quotes specific threats made by U.S. and South Korean leaders to emphasize his awareness that his nation is in the crosshairs.
At one point in his speech, Kim suggested that the constitution could specify “the issue of completely occupying, subjugating and reclaiming the ROK [Republic of Korea, the formal name for South Korea] and annex it…in case war breaks out…” He added, “There is no reason to opt for war, and therefore, there is no intention of unilaterally going to war, but once a war becomes a reality facing us, we will never try to avoid it.” Such a war, he warned, “will terribly destroy the entity called the Republic of Korea and put an end to its existence” and “inflict an unimaginably crushing calamity and defeat upon the U.S.” Kim continues, “If the enemies ignite a war, our Republic will resolutely punish the enemies by mobilizing all its military forces including nuclear weapons.” Harsh language, indeed, intended to remind the war hawks in Washington and Seoul not to imagine that their nations are invulnerable if they attack the DPRK. Note also the conditional phrasing, which tends to get downplayed in Western media.
Even less attention is paid to more direct clarifying language, such as Kim’s statement that the DPRK’s military is for “legitimate self-defense” and “not a means of preemptive attack for realizing unilateral reunification by force of arms.” And: “Explicitly speaking, we will never unilaterally unleash a war if the enemies do not provoke us.”
It was entirely predictable that Western media would put the worst spin on Kim’s blunt language that mirrored earlier South Korean pronouncements. The month before Kim’s speech, South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik warned, “North Korea has only two choices – peace or destruction. If North Korea makes reckless actions that harm peace, only a hell of destruction awaits them.” [10] A few days later, Yoon ordered his military to launch an “immediate and overwhelming response” to any provocation by the DPRK. [11] Yoon and South Korean military officials use the term ‘provocation’ so loosely as to encompass almost any action the DPRK takes that they do not like, including what is normal behavior for other nations – or for South Korea itself, for that matter. South Korean and North Korean rhetoric identifying each other as enemies and destruction in the event of war differ in that the former preceded the latter. By ignoring the fact that North Korea is reacting to prior South Korean statements, mainstream media can portray Kim’s language as unprovoked.
Last December, Yoon heightened the risk of conflict when he visited an infantry division near the border and gave them an order: “In case of provocations, I ask you to immediately retaliate in response and report it later.” [12] Vague in defining neither “provocation” nor the appropriate response level and delegating to lower-level commanders to decide those questions, this formula potentially can transform a minor clash of arms into a conflict of wider impact.
Kim’s statements are presented in Western media as tantamount to a plan to start a war. Earlier statements of a similar nature by the Yoon administration that created an acrimonious atmosphere are rendered invisible or uncontroversial. It is fair to say that given North Korea’s longstanding practice of responding in kind, Kim may have adopted more restrained phrasing without South Korean officials setting the tone.
Western media have raised concerns over Kim’s labeling of South Korea as a “principal enemy.” We are not reminded that nearly one year before, South Korea had re-designated the DPRK as “our enemy” in its Defense White Paper. [13] Under Yoon’s predecessor, Moon Jae-in, the defense paper dropped the reference to North Korea as an enemy. [14] The general pattern has been for liberal presidents to shun that tag in the interests of inter-Korean relations and for conservative presidents to embrace it as one element in their project to undo progress. Yoon himself frequently refers to North Korea as the enemy, and his administration’s National Security Strategy document describes the Kill Chain system, which is designed to launch preemptive strikes on North Korea. [15] In omitting such details, cause and effect are inverted, reinforcing the media-constructed Orientalist image of an irrational leader at the helm of the DPRK, prone to unpredictable statements and rash acts.
Patience has run thin in Pyongyang, as Biden’s trilateral alliance with South Korea and Japan, “buoyed with war fever,” as Kim put it, sharply escalates military tensions in the region. In a sharp reversal, North Korea has abandoned its longstanding policy of seeking improved inter-Korean relations and working toward peaceful reunification. Any headway achieved in the past has quickly been undone in South Korea whenever the conservative party came to power. Still, Yoon has taken matters further than the norm, not only willfully dynamiting inter-Korean relations but also deliberately raising the risk of military conflict. Inter-Korean relations have reached such a nadir under Yoon that the DPRK sees no hope of progress in the current circumstances. The North Koreans are not wrong in that perception.
Sadly, in a clear signal of its exasperation with Yoon, North Korea demolished the Arch of Reunification in Pyongyang, and all governmental bodies responsible for reunification planning and projects were shut down. The latter steps are not inherently irreversible, however. But as long as Yoon remains in power, there is no conceivable possibility of progress on reunification. Yoon has slammed the door shut on inter-Korean relations.
One would never know it from Western reports, but more than two-thirds of Kim’s speech focused on economic development. “The supreme task,” Kim announced, “is to stabilize and improve the people’s living as early as possible.” Peace is an essential prerequisite for the realization of that goal. North Koreans are well aware of American and South Korean military capabilities, and a war would not only wipe out new economic projects but most of the existing infrastructure as well.
Immense damage has been done to the DPRK’s economy by sanctions designed to target the entire population and inflict as much suffering as possible. [16] The period when North Korea closed its border with China in response to the COVID-19 pandemic added to economic challenges. Reversing direction is imperative. In his speech, Kim called for “a radical turn in the economic construction and improvement of the people’s living standard” and said that progress is being made “despite unprecedented trials.” Kim enumerated industrial, power, housing, and other ongoing projects.
Kim admitted there have been internal challenges in economic development. “It is a reality that the Party and the government yet fail to meet even the simple demand of the people in life…” In particular, regional and urban-rural economic imbalances have plagued the North Korean economy for decades. “At present,” Kim continued, “there is a great disparity of living standards between the capital city and provinces and between towns and the countryside.” Kim acknowledged that these issues have not been adequately addressed in the past, but it “is an immediate task” to do so now.
Kim took the occasion to officially unveil the launch of the Regional Development 20×10 Policy. This ambitious plan calls for substantially raising material and cultural standards in twenty counties over the next ten years, including constructing regional industrial factories and establishing advanced educational institutions. In particular, emphasis is to be given to scientific and technological development. The aim is to even out regional imbalances and to accelerate overall development.
None of this can be achieved if the U.S. and South Korea are showering the DPRK with high explosives, and the Regional 20×10 Policy makes nonsense of Western scaremongering that Kim has decided to go to war. As usual, though, when it comes to reporting on North Korea, assertion substitutes for evidence, and we can expect Washington think tanks, U.S. media, military contractors, and the Biden administration to capitalize on the manufactured image of a war-mad Kim Jong Un to accelerate the military buildup in the Asia-Pacific, aimed against the DPRK and the People’s Republic of China. For his part, Yoon can be expected to amplify military tensions on the Korean Peninsula and sharpen his war on South Korean progressives. What is not in the cards is militarism abating in the foreseeable future.
Notes.
[1] Robert L. Carlin and Siegfried S. Hecker, “Is Kim Jong Un Preparing for War,” 38 North, January 11, 2024.
[2] Edward Wong and Julian E. Barnes, “U.S. is Watching North Korea for Signs of Lethal Military Action,” New York Times, January 25, 2024.
[3] “Respected Comrade Kim Jong Un Makes Policy Speech at 10th Session of the 14th SPA,” KCNA, January 16, 2024.
[4] http://www.minplusnews.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=14494
[5] Chae Yun-hwan, “S. Korea, U.S. Stage Joint Air Drills with B-52H Bombers Over the Yellow Sea,” Yonhap, November 15, 2023.
[6] https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104500/b-1b-lancer/
[7] Jeongmin Kim, “Drills on Assassinating Kim Jong Un Remain an ‘Option,’ ROK Defense Chief Says,” NK News, December 19, 2023.
[8] Lee Yu-jung and Esther Chung, “Kim Jong-un Instructs North Korea’s Navy to Prepare for War,” JoongAng Ilbo, February 2, 2024.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQJF7tbzwfY
Donald Kirk, “U.S. to Enrage Kim Jong Un with Assassination Dry Run,” Daily Beast, August 19, 2022.
[9] Bruce W. Bennett, “Is North Korea Really Getting Ready for a War Against America?” The National Interest, January 17, 2024.
[10] Chae Yun-hwan, “Defense Chief Warns N. Korea of ‘Hell of Destruction’ in Event of Reckless Acts,” Yonhap, December 13, 2023.
[11] “Yoon Orders Swift, Overwhelming Response to N. Korean Provocation,” KBS World, December 18, 2023.
[12] Kim Han-joo, “Yoon Orders Military to Retaliate First, Report Later in Case of Enemy Attacks,” Yonhap, December 28, 2023.
[13] Kwon Hyuk-chul, “S. Korea’s First Defense White Paper Under Yoon Defines N. Korea as ‘Enemy’”, Hankyoreh, February 17, 2023.
[14] Yosuke Onchi, “South Korea No Longer Calls Pyongyang ‘Enemy’ in Defense Paper,” Nikkei Asia, January 16, 2019.
Josh Smith, “South Korea Doubles Down on Risky ‘Kill Chain’ Plans to Counter North Korea Nuclear Threat,” Reuters, July 25, 2022.
[16] https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/19/trumps-war-on-the-north-korean-people/
Germany’s energy crisis deepens further due to Biden’s halt of U.S. LNG projects
Germany has dug itself into an energy hole
By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | February 4, 2024
Due to the environmental and climate hysteria over the past decades, Germany has steadily moved to shut down its vast fleet of nuclear reactors, coal power plants, and even natural gas supplies (a major supply line from Russia got blown up).
Moreover, Germany is moving to ban fossil fuel heating systems for homes, and mandating electric cars by 2035.
Now in an energy crunch
Since the supply of natural gas from Russia got cut off, it became necessary to find an alternative source quickly – from USA in the form of imported LNG. The German government approved the construction an LNG terminal at the north German coast in record time. This would help secure Germany’s energy supply. Surely the USA could be viewed as a reliable partner.
That was the plan – until President Joe Biden unexpectedly put a stop to further LNG projects. Now, Germany suddenly risks finding itself in energy isolation. It’s panic time in Berlin.
“Devastating energy crisis”
“Germany is facing a devastating energy crisis that seriously threatens its security of supply,” reports Germany’s Blackout News. “Biden’s decision now has far-reaching consequences that could pose serious problems for German energy policy.”
Also see. berliner-zeitung : 26.01.24
The USA is the world’s largest exporter of LNG, but because of climate protection, Biden bowed to pressure from climate radicals and stopped plans to build new export terminals. This development has sent shockwaves through energy-starved Germany.
According to US government officials, four U.S. terminal projects are directly affected by Biden’s decision.
Berlin has backed itself into a corner with its years of misguided green energy policy. Now the chickens are coming home to roost.
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.
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Newly Released FBI Docs Shed Light on Apparent Mossad Foreknowledge of 9/11 Attacks
By Whitney Webb | MintPress News | May 17, 2019
NEW YORK — For nearly two decades, one of the most overlooked and little known arrests made in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks was that of the so-called “High Fivers,” or the “Dancing Israelis.” However, new information released by the FBI on May 7 has brought fresh scrutiny to the possibility that the “Dancing Israelis,” at least two of whom were known Mossad operatives, had prior knowledge of the attacks on the World Trade Center. … continue
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