Doctors win libel case against British tabloid
Malcolm Kendrick MD and Zoë Harcombe PhD win libel case
By Maryanne Demasi, PhD | October 13, 2024
In a David and Goliath battle, two doctors have won a libel case against a British tabloid and journalist Barney Calman, in what the judge described as “the most significant piece of defamation litigation” he had seen in a very long time.
The UK’s High Court found that Calman and his publishers, Associated Newspapers Ltd, had falsely accused Malcolm Kendrick MD and Zoë Harcombe PhD of deliberately making false statements about statin drugs and putting many people at risk of heart attacks and strokes, with far graver consequences than the MMR scandal.
Further, Calman’s article inappropriately branded the two doctors as dishonest brokers, who were focused on the business of selling books that downplay the role of cholesterol in heart disease.
Barney Calman, journalist at Associated Newspapers Ltd
Calman and his publishers refused to apologise, remove or alter the offending articles which were published in March 2019, so Kendrick and Harcombe sued for libel arguing the articles “caused serious harm” to their reputations.
Calman and his publishers claimed the articles were “honest opinion” published in the public interest, and therefore protected under the Defamation Act 2013. But Justice Matthew Nicklin denied them a public interest defence in June 2024. (See previous coverage)
Since then, the publishers decided not to appeal the decision.
Today, the Mail Online issued an apology to Kendrick and Harcombe, conceding that the allegations it printed were “untrue and ought not to have been published.”
It added, “We are happy to set the record straight, and apologise to Dr Harcombe and Dr Kendrick for the distress caused. We will not repeat the allegations and have agreed to pay substantial damages and costs.”
In response to the announcement, Dr Zoë Harcombe said, “I’m delighted to say it’s finally over. Malcolm and I are so grateful to those who made this possible – especially our legal team Claire & Dominic at Carter-Ruck and Adrienne & Godwin at 5RB.”
The offending articles have been removed from the website. The case serves as a stark warning to journalists who use their platform to try and discredit those who challenge orthodoxy.
See the full apology (below).
EU Leaders Face Grim Reality: How Did Bloc Seal Status as Wilting Geopolitical Power?
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 13.10.2024
Back in the spring of 2022, Russia’s president warned that the European Union’s “suicidal” and “absolutely political” decision to wean itself off of cheap and dependable Russian pipeline energy would culminate in the serious and “perhaps irreversible” loss of competitiveness against other world powers.
“The European project is approaching a tipping point” and threatens to fall into “apathy” and geopolitical irrelevance thanks to internal “political paralysis, external threats and economic malaise,” Bloomberg European Politics & Economics managing editor Ben Sills has suggested in a wistful ode to the EU’s unenviable political and economic prospects in the years to come.
“After decades of warnings and sub-par growth, the region’s leaders are suddenly confronting a barrage of evidence that decline is becoming unstoppable,” Sills’ piece, appearing on the NY-headquartered business news agency’s front page on Sunday, warned.
Pointing to a string of political and economic ‘bad news’ for Europe’s Europhile forces, from gains by the populist right in France to German carmaker giant Volkswagen’s threats to close factories, to Silicon Valley’s exit from European markets over stringent AI rules, the observer suggested that the developments demonstrate “the EU’s failure to act as a cohesive and dynamic economic bloc” against both adversaries and potentially, its allies across the Atlantic.
“If you wanted to be a geopolitical power, then economic might is the key ingredient,” Free University in Brussels professor Guntram Wolff told the outlet, stressing that in Europe, “productivity growth has just been a disaster,” and that while the region “is still rich… these differentials over 20 years have massive implications.”
“Something is changing very dramatically and very, very deeply in this world,” ex-Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski said. “We can’t react correctly, because we are too slow,” he warned.
By comparison, while the US and China – Europe’s major competitors, face problems of their own, they at least have institutions for centralized decision-making, and the ability to “generate vast amounts of private or public capital for defense and investment in cutting-edge technology” – something that’s not the case in the EU’s case.
Sills pointed to surprisingly frank comments by Emmanuel Macron at a panel in Germany earlier this month, where the French president highlighted the “risk” the bloc faces of finding itself “out of the market” if it continues its classic strategies, and pointed to the loss of cheap Russian energy supplies after 2022, combined with the Biden administration’s moves to lure European industries out of the bloc via cheap energy and subsidies, as central to undermining the EU’s export-centered economies’ competitiveness.
“That adds to pre-existing challenges posed by the rise of China and its own vast manufacturing machine, and the global leap forward in technology innovation that has largely bypassed the region,” Sills suggested, warning that “the result threatens to cause damage that goes beyond simply lagging in investment and productivity,” causing EU leaders to ‘lose faith’ in the European project itself.
“It’s not just Eurosceptics like Hungary’s Victor Orban, a perennial thorn in the bloc’s side. Officials in core European countries are starting to view the EU as an obstacle they need to get around – rather than the source of prosperity and protection it has represented until now,” the observer stressed, pointing, for example, to Paris’s talk of integration with a smaller bloc of Western European economies, and divisions on issues like defense and Chinese investment inflows.
But the EU’s woes have been a longtime coming, Sills stressed, pointing out that the bloc has been in “relative decline” going as far back as the euro monetary union in the late 1990s, and citing a Bloomberg analysis estimating that the bloc would be €3 trillion richer “if it had kept pace with the US – enough to boost the income of the average worker by about €13,000 a year.”
Instead, after 2008 and particularly since 2022, many of the region’s traditional powerhouse economies, including Germany, have been teetering on the brink of and occasionally slipping into recession, and facing deindustrialization amid self-inflicted, unsustainably high energy prices, loss of markets and increasingly potent foreign competition.
“Today we see that for absolutely political reasons, due to their own ambitions and under pressure from their American overlords, European countries are imposing more and more sanctions on the oil and gas market,” President Putin said in May 2022 as Brussels announced plans to wean itself off of cheap and dependable pipeline-delivered Russian oil and gas.
“Rejection of Russian energy resources means Europe will systematically become the region with the highest energy costs in the world… This will seriously – and according to some experts irrevocably – undermine the competitiveness of a significant part of European industry, which is already losing the competition to companies in other regions of the world,” Putin said at the time. “One gets the impression that our Western colleagues, politicians and economists have simply forgotten the foundations of the elementary laws of economics, or, to their detriment, prefer to deliberately ignore them,” he added.
No Ramstein Summit of Ukraine’s Arms Donors Set for Near Future – Reports
Sputnik – 13.10.2024
The Ukraine Defense Contact Group (UDCG) is not expected to reconvene in Germany in the near future despite US President Joe Biden’s planned visit to Berlin in the coming week, German media have reported.
Der Spiegel magazine reported Sunday that Biden would travel to Berlin and meet with the top German officials Friday, more than a week after postponing a planned visit to the country to monitor the arrival of Hurricane Milton in Florida.
However, no Ramstein format meeting will be held in the near future, the ZDF broadcaster reported. Instead, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced a new standalone military aid package for Ukraine, which he initially planned to reveal at a Ramstein summit, while hosting Volodymyr Zelensky for talks last week.
Biden was originally due to come to US Air Force Base Ramstein on October 12 for a meeting of Ukraine’s donors from the United Kingdom, Germany and France, but the summit was canceled after Biden scrapped the visit.
The Ukraine Defense Contact Group, also known as the Ramstein group, is an informal bloc of 57 nations (including all 32 NATO members, plus EU, G7 members and other US allies providing military equipment and other aid to Ukraine) was formed in April 2022, after the West moved to sabotage a potential Russia-Ukraine peace deal. The group has met well over a dozen times since its creation, coordinating in the delivery of tens of billions of dollars’ worth of aid to Kiev for the ongoing NATO proxy war against Russia.
The Ramstein group is named after the massive US airbase in southwestern Germany where the group has held some of its meetings, with others held at NATO’s Brussels-based headquarters, or virtually.
The contact group’s main goal has been to facilitate lobbying for more weapons deliveries, and formulate plans for new transfers.
Israel considers plan to starve Gaza’s civilians to death
Press TV – October 13, 2024
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is examining a plan to seal off humanitarian aid to northern Gaza in an attempt to starve out hundreds of thousands of Palestinians unwilling or unable to leave their homes.
Under the proposed plan, seen by the Associated Press, civilians who remain in northern Gaza would be classified as combatants, allowing Israeli troops to kill them. They would be denied access to food, water, medicine, and fuel.
The plan proposed to Netanyahu by a group of retired generals, calls for Israel to maintain control over the north for an indefinite period to attempt to create a new administration, splitting the Gaza Strip in two.
Israeli media reported that Netanyahu told a closed parliamentary committee session that he was considering the plan.
Israeli authorities with knowledge of the matter said parts of the plan are already being implemented.
The plan gave Palestinians a week to leave the northern third of the Gaza Strip, including Gaza City, before declaring it a closed military zone.
Israel has issued many evacuation orders for the north throughout the yearlong campaign of death and destruction, the most recent of which was Sunday.
Israeli forces widened their brutal military offensive on north Gaza early on Sunday, after killing 300 people over nine days in a ramped-up ground offensive targeting the Jabalia refugee camp.
Israeli tanks made their way to the north edge of Gaza City, while airstrikes from above continued.
Residents say they have been isolated from the rest of Gaza, with Israeli forces not allowing anyone to enter or exit the north.
No trucks of food, water, or medicine have entered the north since Sept. 30, according to the UN.
So far, very few Palestinians have heeded the latest evacuation order. Much fear there’s nowhere safe to go and that they will never be allowed back. Israel has prevented those who fled earlier in the war from returning.
“All Gazans are afraid of the plan,” said Jomana Elkhalili, a 26-year-old Palestinian aid worker for Oxfam living in Gaza City with her family.
“Still, they will not flee. They will not make the mistake again … We know the place there is not safe,” she said. “That’s why people in the north say it’s better to die than to leave.”
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees, wrote on X Thursday that only about 100 Palestinians have fled the north since Sunday.
“At least 400,000 people are trapped in the area,” the UN official said “With almost no basic supplies available, hunger is spreading.”
Human rights groups say the plan would likely starve civilians and that it flies in the face of international law, which prohibits using food as a weapon and forcible transfers.
The fact that Israel is intentionally limiting food to Gaza is central to the genocide case brought against it at the International Court of Justice.
Israeli authorities say that if the strategy is successful in northern Gaza it could then be replicated in other areas, including tent camps further to the south sheltering hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
When asked about the plan Wednesday, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the US, Israel’s main benefactor, was going to “make absolutely clear that it’s not just the United States that opposes any occupation of Gaza, any reduction in the size of Gaza, but it is the virtually unanimous opinion of the international community.”
The Israeli military presses ahead with its relentless bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip now more than one year into the genocidal war.
The Israeli aggression on Gaza began in October last year, claiming the lives of more than 42,000 so far. Over 98,000 d others have also been injured since then.
Israeli Troops Breach Blue Line to Cross Into Lebanon, Forcibly Enter UN Base
Sputnik – 13.10.2024
UN peacekeepers in Lebanon saw Israeli troops breach the Blue Line that separates Israel from Lebanon on Sunday morning and force their way into a UN base at the southern Lebanese border village of Ramyah, in what the UN Interim Force In Lebanon (UNIFIL) described as a grave violation of international humanitarian law.
“Early this morning, peacekeepers at a UN position in Ramyah observed three platoons of IDF soldiers crossing the Blue Line into Lebanon,” the statement read.
While the peacekeepers were in shelters, two Israeli Merkava tanks destroyed the main gate to the UN position and entered there, the mission said, adding that the Israeli soldiers demanded that the base turn the lights off.
“Breaching and entering a UN position is a … flagrant violation of international law and Security Council resolution 1701 (2006). Any deliberate attack on peacekeepers is a grave violation of international humanitarian law and resolution 1701,” UNIFIL said.
Two hours later, the same UN base reported the firing of several rounds some 300 feet north of the position, which caused smoke to enter the camp and cause skin irritation and gastrointestinal symptoms in UN troops. They are receiving treatment, the mission said.
In a separate incident, Israeli soldiers denied passage to UNIFIL vehicles near the border Lebanese village of Meiss ej Jebel. The critical movement could not be completed, the mission said.
UNIFIL stressed that its mandate provided for freedom of movement in the area of operations and demanded that the Israeli military and other actors fulfill their obligations to ensure the safety and security of UN personnel and property and respect the inviolability of UN premises.
US troops will deploy to Israel – Pentagon
RT | October 13, 2024
The US has ordered the deployment of a THAAD air defense system to Israel, along with a crew of American service members to operate it, Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder announced on Sunday. The move marks the first deployment of US combat troops on Israeli soil since the Israel-Hamas war began last year.
According to Ryder, the THAAD battery “and associated crew of US military personnel” will be stationed in Israel “to help bolster Israel’s air defenses following Iran’s unprecedented attacks against Israel on April 13 and again on October 1.”
US President Joe Biden, who the White House previously said had “no plans or intentions to put US boots on the ground in combat,” ordered the deployment, Ryder stated.
The THAAD, or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, is a mobile anti-ballistic missile system designed to detect and intercept ballistic missiles during their descent stage. It fires a non-explosive projectile at eight times the speed of sound, relying on kinetic energy to destroy incoming missiles.
A THAAD battery consists of 95 soldiers and six truck-mounted launchers capable of firing a total of 48 interceptors.
The US deployed a THAAD battery to Saudi Arabia after the Israel-Hamas war began last October, and to Israel on a training exercise in 2019. However, neither the system nor the American troops who operate it have been sent to Israel since the current conflict began.
While American soldiers took part in a brief aid mission off the coast of Gaza earlier this year, they did not set foot in the Palestinian enclave.
The deployment comes as Israel prepares its response to an Iranian missile attack on October 1, in which around 200 ballistic missiles were fired at Israeli military targets. Tehran maintains that the strike was a “legitimate” response to Israel’s assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and a senior Iranian general in Beirut.
Israel is widely expected to target Iran’s oil or nuclear infrastructure, although the US has advised West Jerusalem against either choice. Whatever form the Israeli response takes, Iran has vowed to retaliate. Earlier this week, a source in Tehran told RT that this retaliation would be “proportionate.” Should West Jerusalem target Iran’s oil infrastructure, Tehran will respond by striking Israel’s oil refineries. Attacks on other infrastructure, such as power plants or nuclear facilities, will likewise prompt retaliatory strikes on corresponding installations in Israel, the source explained.
Hours before Ryder’s announcement, Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi warned that the US is putting the “lives of its troops at risk by deploying them to operate US missile systems in Israel.”
“While we have made tremendous efforts in recent days to contain an all-out war in our region, I say it clearly that we have no red lines in defending our people and interests,” Araghchi added.”
Israeli Military and Police Raid International Home in Qusra
International Solidarity Movement | October 13, 2024
At about 20:00 Friday night, the Israeli army and police raided the international volunteers’ home in the village of Qusra, south of Nablus. This raid was conducted at gunpoint by a heavily armed force.
Leading the raid was the same military officer who had commanded a squadron that forced Palestinian harvesters out of their land in the village of Duma earlier in the day. During the raid, he pointed out specific volunteers to the police, saying he recognized them from earlier in the day.
The police broke into the house by destroying the door using a pneumatic hammer, and proceeded to search the premises without a search warrant, as well as the car of a Palestinian resident of Qusra who was there at the time. They demanded all the international activists present to show their passports, and photographed them.
Israeli law and police regulations only allow for police to require identification on the basis of suspicion of having broken the law, or for several specific reasons, which must be stated to those identified. The police had refused to state their grounds for either the search or identification, even declaring before they left, “You have done nothing wrong; we were only here to see who you are.”
The raid on the international volunteer quarters directly followed the forced removal of harvesters from their lands in the village of Duma earlier in the day, under the claim that it is forbidden for Palestinians to access their lands anywhere in Area C – which comprises around 60% of the West Bank – without prior coordination.
Smotrich: Israel’s future is ‘to expand to Damascus’
MEMO | October 13, 2024
Israel’s finance minister Bezalel Smotrich has acknowledged his aim for a Jewish state that not only encompasses all Palestinian territories but also extends to Syria, in the latest such open statement referring to Tel Aviv’s potential pursuit of a ‘Greater Israel’ project.
In an interview for a documentary produced and aired by the French-language channel Arte, titled ‘Israel: Extremists in Power’, Smotrich stated that “I want a Jewish state… that operates according to the values of the Jewish people”.
He was then posed the question of whether Israel aims to extend its sovereignty which currently “starts at the [Mediterranean] sea and ends at the [Jordan] river”, to which he smiled and said “okay, bit by bit”.
Smotrich stated that “it is written that the future of Jerusalem is to expand to Damascus”, adding ominously “only Jerusalem, until Damascus”. The documentary then detailed the Israeli finance minister’s plan – and that of other extremist and right-wing Israelis – to have Israeli statehood extend into Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.
His comments come at a time when Israel continues to bombard Lebanon and launch its ground invasion, with many illegal Jewish settler groups advocating for Israeli forces to remain in Lebanon and settle the country. Efforts have steadily been made on that front, an example being a childrens’ book which was recently published on the Israeli occupation of Lebanon.
Although the Israeli government itself has kept the scope of its aims on defeating the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah, and has not formally announced any plans to occupy Lebanon and settle Jewish immigrants on newly-conquered territory.
The views of government figures such as Smotrich, however, as well as their significant support base, increasingly ignite concerns that Tel Aviv could potentially possess the goal of expanding Israeli territory in the Middle East via conquest of surrounding Arab states.
Netanyahu orders UN to evacuate Lebanon peacekeepers
RT | October 13, 2024
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has demanded that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres withdraw UNIFIL peacekeepers from southern Lebanon, adding that by remaining there they are “providing a human shield to Hezbollah terrorists.”
In a Hebrew-language video message posted to social media on Sunday, Netanyahu told Guterres “it is time for you to withdraw UNIFIL from Hezbollah strongholds and from the areas of combat.”
“The IDF has repeatedly asked for this, and has been met with repeated refusals, all aimed at providing a human shield to Hezbollah terrorists,” he continued.
UNIFIL, or the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, was formed in 1978 to oversee the withdrawal of Israeli forces to below the so-called ‘blue line’, which separates Lebanon from Israel and the occupied Golan Heights. Headquartered in the town of Naqoura, UNIFIL is currently composed of around 10,000 troops from around 50 countries, who are tasked with monitoring the demilitarization of southern Lebanon between the blue line and the Litani River.
Israel maintains that UNIFIL has done nothing to prevent Hezbollah entrenching itself in this region, while preventing its own forces from responding to the threat. In the weeks since the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) crossed the blue line and entered southern Lebanon, UNIFIL has claimed that Israeli forces have repeatedly hit its bases and outposts.
Four Sri Lankan and Indonesian peacekeepers were injured on Thursday and Friday when Israeli tanks fired on their watchtowers, UNIFIL said. Another was hit by gunfire at Naqoura later on Friday, although UNIFIL said that it could not identify the origin of the fire. IDF bulldozers have demolished UNIFIL walls and bunkers, while a contingent of Irish peacekeepers found themselves surrounded by Israeli tanks earlier this week when they refused the IDF’s demand that they leave their outpost.
Switching to English, Netanyahu told Guterres to “get the UNIFIL forces out of harm’s way. It should be done right now, immediately.”
“Your refusal to evacuate the UNIFIL soldiers makes them hostages of Hezbollah,” he continued, warning that “this endangers both them and the lives of our soldiers.”
UNIFIL has refused to withdraw from its positions, and in a joint statement on Saturday, 40 countries contributing to the mission called on Israel to investigate the attacks on peacekeepers. One day earlier, the leaders of France, Italy, and Spain expressed “outrage” at the attacks, and accused Israel of violating UN Security Council resolution 1701, which states that its forces cannot operate in southern Lebanon.
Netanyahu said that Israel “regrets” injuring the peacekeepers, but added that the “simple and obvious” way to prevent further bloodshed is “just get them out of the danger zone.”
Israel escalated its military campaign against Hezbollah last month, pounding Beirut with a wave of airstrikes including one that killed the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah. A ground invasion followed, and the death toll in Lebanon currently stands at over 2,100, according to the country’s Health Ministry. The IDF has acknowledged the deaths of two dozen of its soldiers in Lebanon, although Hezbollah insists that the true scale of Israel’s losses is far higher.
Stock depletion prompts ‘Israel’ to restrict arms use
Al Mayadeen | October 13, 2024
The Israeli military has adopted a policy of “strict weapons economy” regarding the use of shells and other arms in response to the depletion of ammunition stocks and the global embargo on arms exports to “Israel”, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.
According to Haaretz sources, the Israeli military is now operating under “tight weapons management,” with the authorization for using certain weapons being elevated in some cases to brigade commanders who hold the rank of colonel.
This policy is designed to ensure that senior commanders prioritize weapon usage based on their operational objectives, a responsibility previously handled by lower-ranking officers.
The Israeli military also mentioned that its “ammunition economy” for Iron Dome interceptions began in the second week of the war. However, the current state of ammunition stocks has necessitated further restrictions.
This comes as “Israel” is facing relentless military operations involving rocket, missile, and drone launches by the factions of the Axis of Resistance, namely Hezbollah, the Palestinian Resistance, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, and the Yemeni Armed Forces, since the onset of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023.
In light of these developments, countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and Canada have recently imposed restrictions on arms exports to “Israel”, raising concerns that Israeli-owned companies may not be able to offset these losses.
The devastating number of Palestinian civilians killed due to Israeli attacks on Gaza sparked widespread pressure on several countries to limit their weapons exports to “Israel”, especially after an International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling called on the occupation entity to do everything possible to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza.
In a related context, the Israeli security establishment has expressed concern over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to delay Security Minister Yoav Gallant’s visit to the United States.
Senior officials indicated that Gallant’s planned meetings with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and other top officials in Washington were intended to discuss “Israel’s” arms requirements and shipments, as well as the potential for an attack on Iran.
Netanyahu postponed Gallant’s trip, insisting on speaking directly with US President Joe Biden before the visit.
A couple of days ago, Netanyahu and Biden held a 30-minute phone call—their first in seven weeks—during which they discussed the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iran, with the Israeli premier seeking to gauge US support and understanding of the situation.
Exposing US Foreign Policy in Middle East | Gary Vogler Interview
Counter Currents | October 12, 2024
Gary Vogler, who spent eight years working with the Pentagon’s Iraq oil team and even briefly served as the country’s oil minister, joins host and former CIA analyst Larry Johnson to discuss the following issues:
- Role of oil in Iraq War
- US occupation of Syrian oil fields
- Israel’s oil dependence vulnerability